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February 2016
FOOD BITES
By Angela S. Hoover, Staff Writer
Honeybee Collapses
and Pesticides
The most widely used insecticide,
neonicotinoids, which are marketed
by European chemical companies
Syngenta and Bayer, harm bees and
other pollinators at even tiny doses.
Environmentalists have been pressuring the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) to recognize this threat
for more than a decade. On Jan. 6, the
EPA released a report confirming the
five neonic pesticides are the cause of
bee die-offs. The EPA could potentially
take action to restrict or limit the use
of the chemical by the end of this year.
Of the five neonics, imidacloprid is the
most prominently used and the only
one to have been closely investigated
by scientists. The EPA risk assessment
team found bees are harmed when they
are exposed to imidacloprid at levels
above 25 parts per billion, a common
level for neonics in farm fields. “These
effects include decreases in pollinators as well as less honey produced,”
said the EPA in a press release. Cotton
and citrus crops are the most likely to
expose honeybees to harmful levels of
imidacloprid. The EPA still needs to
assess the remaining four neonics as
well as imidacloprid’s effects on other
species, such as birds, butterflies and
water-borne invertebrate