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Popular Pesticides Keep Bumblebees From Laying Eggs (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Wild bees, such as bumblebees, don't get as much love as honeybees, but they should. They play just as crucial a role in pollinating many fruits, vegetables and wildflowers, and compared to managed colonies of honeybees, they're in much greater jeopardy. A group of scientists in the United Kingdom decided to look at how bumblebee queens are affected by some widely used and highly controversial pesticides known as neonicotinoids. What they found isn't pretty. Neonics, as they're often called, are applied as a coating on the seeds of some of the most widely grown crops in the country, including corn, soybeans and canola. These pesticides are "systemic" -- they move throughout the growing plants. Traces of them end up in pollen, which bees consume. Neonicotinoid residues also have been found in the pollen of wildflowers growing near fields and in nearby streams. The scientists, based at Royal Holloway University of London, set up a laboratory experiment with bumblebee queens. They fed those queens a syrup containing traces of a neonicotinoid pesticide called thiamethoxam, and the amount of the pesticide, they say, was similar to what bees living near fields of neonic-treated canola might be exposed to. Bumblebee queens exposed to the pesticide were 26 percent less likely to lay eggs, compared to queens that weren't exposed to the pesticide. The team published their findings in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The bee population increased 3% in 2017, after dropping 33% in 2016.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-...
In the stock market, and in statistics, that's what's known as a "dead cat bounce".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'll bet you didn't know that Rhonda Brooks, the editor of aggprofessional.com, worked in marketing communications for DuPont for a few decades. DuPont manufactures one of the pesticides that's blamed for killing bees.
I see you also linked to a USDA report from August 1. Donald Trump appointed Sam Clovis, who has no science background at all to be the head scientist at the USDA. His work experience was as a campaign staffer for Rick Perry (noted idiot who now heads the Department of Energy). This after the Administration announced that all scientific publications from government agencies could not be released until they were vetted by the White House.
Then, the one actual scientific article you link to actually refutes your points.(read the article, it's short)
You believe what you want to believe, bucko. You're entitled to your own reality and don't let anybody tell you different.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Bumblebees are the most peaceful kind of Apidae. And also one of the most important polllinators because they fly out when other insects are still hibernating due cold temperatures.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
AFAIK these kinds of pesticides are used the most by organic farmers because they are pretty much the only "natural" ones that work, with the others being synthetic pesticides. May not be a coincidence that the organic industry's rise has coincided with the decline in bee populations.
Neonicitinoids. Just as natural as arsenic and Death Angel Mushrooms? Natural doesn't equal safe, and even then, these compounds, which are similar to nicotine - hence the name - are quite synthetic.
They were introduced mainly because they are less toxic to mammals and birds than organophosphates. It was also thought that they would break down fairly quickly. As it turns out, they don't, and they are proving to be very toxic to some beneficial insects.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.