European Union countries voted on Friday in favour of a near-total ban on neonicotinoid insecticides which are blamed for an alarming collapse in bee populations as well as other beneficial insects and many birds. The move comes after the European food safety agency said in February that most uses of the chemicals posed a risk to bees, prompting environmentalists to push the 28-nation EU to immediately outlaw them. Bees help pollinate 90 percent of the world's major crops, but in recent years have been dying off from "colony collapse disorder," a mysterious scourge blamed on mites, pesticides, virus, fungus, or a combination of these factors.
A Commission statement said EU states had "endorsed a proposal by the European Commission to further restrict the use of three active substances... for which a scientific review concluded that their outdoor use harms bees." The pesticides—clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam—are based on the chemical structure of nicotine and attack the nervous systems of insect pests.
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-eu-bee-killing-pesticides.html#jCpMeanwhile, in North America, the news is not as good.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering allowing the bee-killing pesticide thiamethoxam to be sprayed on the most widely grown crops in the United States. The application, if approved, would allow the highly toxic pesticide to be sprayed directly on 165 million acres of wheat, barley, corn, sorghum, alfalfa, rice and potato.
Canada proposes to limit, not ban, use of pesticides that kill bees. Neonics are most often used as seed treatments. In Ontario alone, more than one million hectares (nearly three million acres) were planted with neonic-treated corn and soy seed in 2017, despite provincial restrictions to reduce neonic use.
A plan to protect pollinators must address neonic seed treatments and sprays.
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2017/pesticides-12-19-2017.phphttps://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/12/19/canada-proposes-to-limit-not-ban-use-of-pesticides-that-kill-bees.htmlhttps://action2.davidsuzuki.org/neonicsThe bee below was captured on a Blueweed flower (Echium vulgare) in a pesticide free area in Carden Alvar in Ontario