bees

Trump’s EPA Greenlights ‘Emergency’ Bee-killing Pesticide Over 13.9 Million Acres

Q: Where are the campaigners from Extinction Rebellion, where are the Climatists?
A: When it comes to actual, tangible threats to the environment, they are becoming increasingly difficult to locate.
Here, we see no activists gluing themselves to chemical trucks, and no street theater activists dressed in bumble bee costumes posting their exploits on Instagram. Nothing…

Doctors Find 4 Sweat Bees in Woman’s Eyes, Living Off of Her Tears

Sweat bees are a common nuisance in the summertime, but they’re much less frightening than, say, hornets or wasps. Still, you wouldn’t want to have a sweat bee in your body. Yet, a Taiwanese woman experienced just that. Doctors discovered 4 of the winged creatures living in the woman’s eye, where they were feeding off of her salty tears.

Scientists Create First-Ever Edible Honey Bee Vaccine to Protect Bees from Disease

If the world were to lose honey bees, it would be a crisis for humanity unlike any we have ever seen. The food supply would shrink drastically, leaving large swaths of the Earth’s population to starve. Unfortunately, bees face numerous threats, and bacterial diseases are among the direst of these threats (along with neonicotinoid pesticides). Researchers in Finland say they’ve created the first-ever vaccine for insects, and it could help protect struggling honey bee populations.

Scientists Link Honeybee Deaths to Glyphosate in New Study

Glyphosate, the highly controversial weed-killing chemical found in the popular Roundup herbicide, is harming honeybee populations around the world, a new study shows.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin say glyphosate is making honeybees more susceptible to infection and death.
The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Bees Get Hooked on Pesticides Like People Get Hooked on Cigarettes

A recent study reveals some startling news about the effects some pesticides have on bees, and it’s not good news. According to researchers from Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London, bees get addicted to some pesticides in the same way that humans get addicted to nicotine. [1]
Over time, bees start to enjoy the taste of pesticide-laced food, eventually eating more and more in what the authors of the study describe as addictive behavior.

Neonics Pesticide Replacement Found to be Equally Dangerous to Bees

A chemical touted as a safer replacement for bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides (neonics) has similar harmful effects, researchers in the U.K. have discovered.
Neonicotinoids are a class of insecticides intended to protect crops from pests by blocking receptors in the insects’ brains, paralyzing and killing them. Even small doses of neonics can cause bees to struggle with navigation, hunting for food, reproduction, and their ability to form new colonies.

In a Huge Win for People and the Planet, EU Bans Bee-Killing Pesticides

(CD) — Faced with mounting scientific evidence that bee-poisoning neonicotinoids, or neonics, could cause an “ecological armageddon,” European regulators on Friday approved a “groundbreaking” and “historic” ban on the widely-used class of pesticides—an announcement met with immediate applause by campaigners. Congratulations to the millions of people across Europe who've taken action and put pressure on politicians to #SaveTheBees! If there are […]

As Europe Readies Ban on Bee-Killing Pesticides, Attention Turns To Bayer-Funded Studies

A series of studies funded by Bayer and submitted to European regulators by the company to support claims that its neonicotinoid pesticides do not harm bees have been criticised by a leading scientist and an industry expert.
The news comes as environment secretary Michael Gove announced the UK would back a European move to ban neonicotinoids, also known as neonics, due to mounting scientific evidence linking the chemicals to bee deaths.