A precipitous decline in honeybee populations raised public awareness of the importance of the bees and other pollinators in maintaining the nation’s food production. And research into the causes of the bees’ demise has produced other invaluable insights upon which regulators should act.
Agricultural researchers long have suspected that a widely used class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. Now, new research shows that the substances likely are more dangerous than previously thought.
In 2013 the European Commission banned the use of three of the neonicotinoids – clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam – on all flowering plants. The European Food Safety Authority had determined that the chemicals posed "high acute risks" to pollinating bees.
Now a new study by researchers in Ireland and Great Britain has determined that honeybees and bumblebees actually were attracted to two types of neonicotinoids, and that exposure caused them to eat less and increase their mortality rates.
Researcher Geraldine Wright of the University of Oxford told The New York Times that bees could not taste the substances, but that the nicotine-like substance affected their brains. Other researchers have reported that neonicotinoids diminish bees’ memories and navigational skills, inhibiting their abilities to return to their hives from fields. Studies also have found that exposure adversely affects bees’ growth and reproduction.
In Sweden, researchers established test fields, some of which were sprayed with the pesticides. There were half as many wild bees per square meter in treated areas, compared with areas that had not been sprayed.
In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has precluded any new use for the pesticides while it reviews the European research and other research conducted here.
Given the importance of bees to the food supply, it should be aggressive in controlling use of the substances. Producers should accelerate their own search for safer alternatives.
