The EU’s highest court ruled on Thursday (19 January) that EU countries should no longer be allowed temporary exemptions for banned, bee-toxic neonicotinoid pesticides, putting half of all such derogations to an end.
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Bees are likely to be at high risk from exposure to glyphosate, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, via contaminated wildflower nectar and pollen after pre-harvest spraying (desiccation), according to new research from Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University scientists in Ireland.
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Recently we announced in our Daily Digest some findings from yet another in a series of studies carried out by different groups of scientists over many years showing that the spread of GM glyphosate-tolerant crops is a major cause of the decline of monarch butterflies in the US. The glyphosate herbicide sprayed on these crops kills the milkweed that is the sole food for monarch larvae.
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Most bees are in trouble. Colonies around the world are collapsing and many species are edging towards extinction. Their plight has been described as the death of a thousand cuts, and the causes range from widespread pesticide use to disease to climate change.
Read moreFar North’s owners Mike Swanson and Cheri Reese decided to start making their presence known to their customers by applying for a Bee Friendly Farm designation from Pollinator Partnership, a national nonprofit dedicated to protecting and promoting pollinators and the ecosystems they rely on.
Read moreDays after Maryland state legislators introduced a bill aimed at protecting pollinators by restricting the use of neonicotinoid insecticides in residential areas, a group of representatives of Bayer, Syngenta, CropLife America, Maryland Farm Bureau, and the Maryland Department of Agriculture planned and executed a counter-offensive. Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know show the strategies they used over the next two and a half years.
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Advocacy groups responded to the Biden administration's new conclusions about how a trio of popular neonicotinoid pesticides threaten endangered species with calls for a total ban on the products. While neonics are widely known for harming bees and other pollinators—and are banned in the European Union—this is the first time the EPA has reviewed impacts of this class of pesticides on the nation's most imperiled species.
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Insect populations are taking a hit around the globe, and climate change and Big Ag may be to blame.
According to a study conducted by University College London (UCL), the combination of rising temperatures due to climate change and land-use changes are directly linked to widespread losses in insect species around the world.
Read moreRichard Coy is a fourth-generation beekeeper. For decades, he moved his bees around the country to provide pollination services and make honey in multiple states, returning to a home base in Arkansas, where they produced “soybean honey.”
“We called it [that] because that was basically the only thing growing in the area,” he said. “But the bees were actually collecting honey off all of the wild plants along the edges of the soybean fields.”
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