Honeybees on the outside of a bee hive. U.S. agriculture has become almost 50 times more toxic to honeybees and other insects over the past 25 years, a new study finds.
Credit: Dieter Telemans/Panos/Redux
America’s agricultural landscape is now 48 times more toxic to honeybees, and likely other insects, than it was 25 years ago, almost entirely due to widespread use of so-called neonicotinoid pesticides, according to a new study published today in the journal PLOS One.
This enormous rise in toxicity matches the sharp declines in bees, butterflies, and other pollinators as well as birds, says co-author Kendra Klein, senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth US.
“This is the second Silent Spring. Neonics are like a new DDT, except they are a thousand times more toxic to bees than DDT was,” Klein says in an interview.
Using a new tool that measures toxicity to honey bees, the length of time a pesticide remains […]
Another stupid move by Trump to “make America great again”???????
Another story that reinforces what I see daily here in central NC. So few insects flying or crawling to be found in a very wooded environment. This destruction of habitat and increasing deadly poisons against plant and animals have created a clean, lonely, quite world. Bird song is very rare now as there are just very few about even around my feeder. Bats used to fly about at dusk but no more. This disappearance has been very apparent over the last 3 years most of all this season. What is it about these closed hearted greed heads who run the world?