SAVE the BEES

where seeds had been neonic-treated. The contaminated dust was shown to contain 700,000 times the lethal dose to bees of the neonicotinoid used.

Honeybee pollination, alone, is worth $15 billion a year to the US economy. Other pollinators - now also in serious decline -add to the economic value of crop pollination.

This led to President Obama stating in a 2014 Memorandum: “The problem is serious and requires immediate atention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment.”

President Obama set up a special task force to “focus on understanding, preventing and recovering from pollinator losses.” The USA’s Environmental Protection Agency is now reviewing the use of neonics in the country.

Much of the severe global decline in bee populations is atributable to the poorly understood phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder, (CCD), which emerged in the US in 2006, causing the loss of 30 to 90 per cent of hives.

Affected hives are found empty of adult worker

bees. 12 Only immature August 2015 bees, with arrested development, remain in

Special Report

addition to the queen. These colonies quickly die out as they lack the supply of nectar, pollen and plant resins gathered by worker bees to feed the colony and to build the wax cells for eggs and larvae produced by the queen.

Starvation and malnutrition weakens the immune system of bees in affected nests, leaving them susceptible to cold, disease and parasites. Affected colonies tend to have higher levels of parasites and pathogens such as the deadly Varroa mite and viruses.

Environmentalists suggest that these attacks reflect an impaired hive immunity due to lack of adequate nutrition. Neonics are oſten used to treat these pathogens in the commercial hive, particularly in the US, says PAN UK.

Like Friends of the Earth, it argues that CCD and the overall decline of pollinators is the result of chronic sub-lethal doses of neonics. Neonics contaminate the food supplies within the colony long aſter crop flowering periods have passed and may remain in the soil for up to three years aſter sowing a neonic-treated crop, systemically contaminating new crops or vegetation.

Much of the severe global decline in bee populations is attributable to the poorly understood phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder, (CCD), which emerged in the US in 2006, causing the loss of 30 to 90 per cent of hives.

The disappearance of the mature worker bees remains a mystery, but research published this year by Dr Chris Connolly, of the University of Dundee, and Professor Steve Buckland, of St Andrews University, shows conclusively that a tiny sub- lethal dose of neonics immediately - and adversely - affects the bee brain. It inhibits homing ability, impairs learning and memory and leads to poor communication with nest mates.

Dr Connolly suggests a number of measures which can be used by the general public as well as agriculturalists to reduce the risks of neonic pesticides to bees and other pollinators: DON’T use neonics on garden plants, especially flowering types; INCREASE the availability of bee friendly blossoming