Save the Bees!

Natural Remedies Matter ^ | 04/19/2012 | Libertynotfree

[Libertynotfree]

Over 1 million urge EPA to suspend use of pesticide harmful to bees, fix broken regulatory system (Washington, DC) Today, commercial beekeepers and environmental organizations filed an emergency legal petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suspend use of a pesticide that is linked to honey bee deaths, urging the agency to adopt safeguards. The legal petition, which specifies the pesticide clothianidin, is supported by over one million citizen petition signatures, targets the pesticide for its harmful impacts on honey bees. “EPA has an obligation to protect pollinators from the threat of pesticides,” said Jeff Anderson of California Minnesota Honey Farms, a co-petitioner. “The Agency has failed to adequately regulate pesticides harmful to pollinators despite scientific and on-the-ground evidence presented by academics and beekeepers.”

[shalom aleichem]

cell phone proliferaiton is “linked” to bees’ deaths also. There are a lot of correlations. EPA will ban ALL pesticides instead of only the one (?) that is causing harm. Last I heard they had not started to narrow down what the problem was. They even tried to blame it on global warming.

[BitWielder1]

Asking EPA to ban something is a bad idea.
Ever heard of unintended consequences?
They will be all to happy to regulate, and make things worse and more expensive in the process.
Next they will go after bee keepers.
I'm sure they're using something that's bad in someones book.

[shalom aleichem]

There was a rash of miscarrahges of thoroughbred colts in Blue Greass Country, which became a huge financial loss (stud fees lost etc.). They finally narrowed it down to a worm on the grass, and a pesticide (yes, the “p” word) had to be used to save horse racing.

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/may/13/news/mn-62850

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98568&page=1

(articles written before they found the precise cause)

[shalom aleichem]

Absolutelt. EPA is the last thing you want on this problem.

[sunny48]

Monsanto
banned in other countries and should be banned in the US.
But if you follow the money you’ll find why it isn’t.

[Tenacious 1]

I just did some light reseach on clothianidin.

Guess what? It is a chemical that protects the active pesticide, nicotine, from degrating in the environment. But that is not neccessarily the cause of the death of bees. Nicotine kills bees too apparently.

Solution if the “bee keepers” get their way for the farmers? Spray the less technological stuff about 4x as often at about 3x the cost. Now, what does all that pesticide do when we cook those goodies they are trying to protect and eat them?

Oh yea! This is not about humans so the argument is not valid.

I didn’t do any in depth research. But, as I understand it, the reason this pesticide kills bees so effectively is because it kills all insects so effectively. It keeps the active ingredient protectected from....get this....THE AFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT.

[chopperman]

Maybe you'd change your minds about saving the bees if you saw this:

[Cyber Liberty]

Honeybee colonies are mysteriously collapsing all around they country. In the face of encroachment by the Africanized bees, this must be stopped. If this pesticide is a cause, a replacement must be found.

[Mad Dawgg]

If the EPA and the enviroMENTAL movement were consistent they would move to eradicate the Bee used by most Commercial Beekeepers being they are not native to North America.

[Texan5]

The rural area I live in is on/near the river and lake-no chemical pesticides can be used because of the risk of poisoning groundwater consumed by humans and livestock.
The organic stuff works just fine, and smells better, too. And we have plenty of bees here-one of my neighbors sells organic honey. Bees are an absolute necessity to crop production, stings and all.

[PGR88]

Fracking is bad for bees. Ban it.

So are coal-fired power plants. Ban them.

Backyard BBQ’s may kill bees. Ban them.

[Frenetic74]

Growing up in NJ honey bees were everywhere in huge numbers and bumblebees were rare. You only see honey bees occasionally now. The last couple seasons I noticed huge quantities of little indigenous wasps, bees and shocking amounts of bumblebees. My garden yields have consistently been great so pollination doesn’t seem like an issue. Interestingly, prior to the Europeans settling here and bringing along honey bees, bumblebees were the main indigenous pollinator. It’s actually kind of nice seeing them make a comeback.

I suspect the only kind of farms that are worried are the enormous corporate farms that plant hundreds of acres of only one crop and who depend on traveling bee hives, fertilize the hell out of the barren and depleted soil, keep their crops on life support with synthetic pesticides or plant Monsanto’s evil GMO’s.

Moral of the story…only buy and support REAL organic or all-natural non-GMO food (ex. Trader Joe’s), support small local farms, heirloom crops and species diversity, ‘pick-your-own’s’ and farmers, petition government to force food companies to label if their product contains GMO’s and don’t buy any that do, stay away from processed food with labels of ingredients you can’t pronounce, grow your own garden.

[ak267]

Only the bees know...

...only the bees.