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It's now officially summer, and one of the greatest things about the season is the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables. My personal favorites: peaches, cherries, and a nice cold, tart homemade lemonade. But if we don't take action to stem the massive bee die-off, cherished summer treats like these could pay the price.
Beyond supplying us with honey, bees pollinate 1 in every 3 bites of food we eat. They're responsible for more than 70 percent of the world's most widely consumed food crops, from almonds to strawberries to the alfalfa dairy cows eat.
But right now bees are dying at alarming rates, often double what beekeepers and scientists deem acceptable. Last month, a report supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed a 44 percent loss of bee colonies from April of last year to March 2016 -- close to the highest annual loss rate over six years of collecting data.
Scientists point to a complex web of factors, including climate change and habitat destruction, to explain the massive collapse of bee colonies in the U.S. and across the globe. But one class of insecticides has emerged as a clear culprit. Sharing the same chemical properties as nicotine, neonicotinoids, or neonics, are neurotoxins that can kill bees off directly. They can disorient them and make it harder for them to get back to their hives. And they can create long-term health and reproductive problems for bee populations.
Numerous lab studies have shown neonics to pose dangers to bees, and last year the journal Nature published the first study to establish a direct causal link between neonic exposure and bees' ability to do their job as pollinators.
Responding to this evidence, major garden retailers Lowes and Home Depot have announced plans to phase out sales of pesticides containing neonics and neonic-treated seeds. A handful of cities and states, most notably Maryland, have also acted to restrict use and sales of the dangerous chemical.
Environment America's Anna Aurilio at Keep the Hives Alive Rally. Photo: Suzannah Hoover.
But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is lagging behind. Last May the Agency began a process to assess the risks four types of neonics pose to bees and other pollinators, and in January it issued the initial results of its first assessment, acknowledging that imidacloprid could indeed harm bees. But preliminary assessments of the other three neonics are not scheduled to be released until late 2016 at the earliest, and the entire process won't be complete until 2018.
Given the facts we have at hand and all that's at stake, there's no reason to wait. We're urging EPA suspend all uses of bee-killing neonics now.
We're far from alone. For the last two weeks, we've been proud to join the Keep the Hives Alive Tour, organized by beekeepers, farmers, food advocates and others to raise awareness about threats to our pollinators. We capped off the tour in front of EPA headquarters during National Pollinator Week, delivering a whopping 4.8 million signatures calling for a ban on neonics.
If you haven't yet, join us, and tell EPA you support a ban on bee-killing pesticides. Then reward yourself with a tomato-basil-mozzarella salad, or other favorite summer snack, brought to you by the honeybee.
