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| honeybees are getting killed by pesticide |
Honeybees not only produce honey, the food, but, as pollinators, they are also crucial to our food production in general. However, it has been reported that honeybees have experienced mysterious annual massive die-offs (known as "colony collapse disorder") here in the United States at least since 2006.
A document leaked by Colorado beekeeper reveals a dodgy dealing between German agrichemical giant Bayer and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The issue involves permitting the use of pesticide, clothianidin; which is toxic to honeybees.
Apparently, an internal EPA memo confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which Bayer racked up €183 million (about $262 million) in sales in 2009.
Clothianidin has been widely used on corn, the largest U.S. crop, since 2003. Suppliers sell seeds pre-treated with it. Like other members of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides, clothianidin gets "taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen and nectar," according to Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), which leaked the document along with Beyond Pesticides. That effect makes it highly toxic to a crop's pests -- and also harmful to pollen-hoarding honeybees,.
Corn is one of our major crops which covers 88 million acres of farmland nationwide and produces a bounty of protein-rich pollen on which honeybees love to feast. According to PANNA, other crops commonly treated with clothianidin include canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat -- all among the most widely planted U.S. crops.
