30 January 2012

Pesticides blamed for bee decline

There was a very interesting article in this Sunday's Independant, this excerpt gives a flavour '...Researchers found that bees deliberately exposed to minute amounts of the pesticide were, on average, three times as likely to become infected when exposed to a parasite called nosema as those that had not. The findings, which have taken more than three years to be published, add weight to concern that a new group of insecticides called neonicotinoids are behind a worldwide decline in honey bees, along with habitat and food loss, by making them more susceptible to disease....' 
Clearly it's not just bees that are being affected!
Click here to read the full article.

1 comment:

Andrew Lucas said...

If you read the original article and subsequent comments, it's interesting that the research has produced a new brand of 'denial' - the 'pollinator skeptic'. And the smears have started. The research is unsound, the scientists are biased, it's all a plot etc etc