Study Addresses Pesticides & Hon­ey­bees

“Pesticides not yet Proven Guilty in Bee Dieoffs: Study,” by the University of Exeter and World Science staff.
Con­tra­ry to some pre­vi­ous stud­ies, crop pes­ti­cides are un­likely to cause dev­as­tat­ing de­clines in hon­ey­bee popula­t­ions, the au­thors of new re­search say. Writ­ing in the Sept. 20 is­sue of the jour­nal Sci­ence, U.K. sci­en­tists from the Uni­vers­ity of Ex­e­ter and Food and En­vi­ron­ment Agen­cy said more work is needed to pre­dict the im­pact of widely-used ag­ri­cul­tur­al in­sec­ti­cides, called neon­i­coti­noids, on hon­ey­bees. The U.K. researchers in par­tic­u­lar took issue with one previous study that they said failed to cor­rectly re­flect the rate at which hon­ey­bee col­o­nies re­cov­er from los­ing mem­bers. Real the full article in World Science.