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EU Votes To Ban Bee-Harming Pesticides (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The European Union will ban the world's most widely used insecticides from all fields due to the serious danger they pose to bees. The ban on neonicotinoids, approved by member nations on Friday, is expected to come into force by the end of 2018 and will mean they can only be used in closed greenhouses.
Bees and other insects are vital for global food production as they pollinate three-quarters of all crops. The plummeting numbers of pollinators in recent years has been blamed, in part, on the widespread use of pesticides. The EU banned the use of neonicotinoids on flowering crops that attract bees, such as oil seed rape, in 2013. fBut in February, a major report from the European Union's scientific risk assessors (Efsa) concluded that the high risk to both honeybees and wild bees resulted from any outdoor use, because the pesticides contaminate soil and water. This leads to the pesticides appearing in wildflowers or succeeding crops. A recent study of honey samples revealed global contamination by neonicotinoids. The ban on the three main neonicotinoids has widespread public support, with almost 5 million people signing a petition from campaign group Avaaz.
Bees and other insects are vital for global food production as they pollinate three-quarters of all crops. The plummeting numbers of pollinators in recent years has been blamed, in part, on the widespread use of pesticides. The EU banned the use of neonicotinoids on flowering crops that attract bees, such as oil seed rape, in 2013. fBut in February, a major report from the European Union's scientific risk assessors (Efsa) concluded that the high risk to both honeybees and wild bees resulted from any outdoor use, because the pesticides contaminate soil and water. This leads to the pesticides appearing in wildflowers or succeeding crops. A recent study of honey samples revealed global contamination by neonicotinoids. The ban on the three main neonicotinoids has widespread public support, with almost 5 million people signing a petition from campaign group Avaaz.
They can pry it from my cold dead fingers. Nothing gets rid of roaches like it
You know, that could be prophetic. Some of these things affect humans as well.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So do you not believe that this is the cause of colony collapse or do you not think that a huge decline in pollinators is a problem?
It seems like we'll soon be getting a reasonably definitive answer on that first question. If colonies rebound after the ban, then that's a pretty good indicator of causality. Likewise, if no rebound occurs over a period of time, such that persistent contamination is ruled out, then that also is an indicator that there may be something else at play.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
That's horseshit. California feeds most of the country to one extent or another, and we've got the most stringent pesticide reduction program in the US.
We can have crops without pesticides. We can't have crops without bees.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So do you not believe that this is the cause of colony collapse or do you not think that a huge decline in pollinators is a problem?
My cousin is a beekeeper here in Ontario, and she doesn't believe it's the case. Her hives were hit a few years ago with repeated collapses, and it nearly wiped her out. Her idea is and it seems to have worked in her case is that the domesticated bee is well far too domesticated. It's recessive breeding on recessive breeding because queen breeders selectively pick particular queens that show the same traits over and over again with no new injections DNA into the hives, making the hives weaker to parasites and environmental factors. Anyone who's worked on a farm already knows the dangers of recessive breeding traits in livestock, we try to avoid that or branch particular breeds and try to keep the genetic diversity up. It really doesn't happen in beekeeping, they breed the same 'type' of queen repeatedly and in large numbers, and it's becoming more common as colonies collapse to try and keep the number of active drones working.
So in her case, introducing new queens into collapsed hives from other regions, instead of the current "regional selection" that currently goes on, her hives rebounded in less then a year. Maybe in her case it was off-luck, but she hasn't had any problems since and now breeds her own queens.
Om, nomnomnom...
Ironically wild bees appear to be the most threatened of all: https://www.wired.com/2015/04/...
A count of insects last year found that the number of insects living for instance in Germany has dropped to a quarter since the 1980ies. No. Not dropped by a quarter (25% less). Dropped to a quarter (25% remaining). And that's in protected areas, where the use of insecticides is limited.
A ban of three insecticides (there are many more) will not cause the insect population to immediately rebound to the numbers of the 1980ies. So there is no imminent famine due to insects eating our crops. There might be an imminent famine due to the lack of pollinators, which also are reduced to a quarter.
What will farmers do without pesticides?
And what will farmers do without bees?
Ezekiel 23:20
Genetic diversity does seem to be a factor, but the question is loaded by talking about "the cause". Given the complexity of the systems it's reasonable to expect there to be multiple relevant factors, and there is also evidence that neonicotinoids are a factor. Regulating pesticides falls within existing legislative frameworks, but I'm not sure about regulating breeding practices.
Would that be the same Bayer that sells neonicotinoids and argues against banning them?