Honeybees are vital to our life on Earth. They are critical to ecosystem success, providing food for amphibians, fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals. Insects play a role in decomposing animal wastes and dead vegetation, recycling the nutrients in these materials and returning them to the soil. Without bees, plants would not be able to reproduce and the core of our agricultural system would crumble.

Insecticides targeting crop-damaging pests reduce both the number and diversity of insects in an ecosystem¹. With conventional farming practices relying primarily on chemical insecticides for pest insect management, ecosystems comprising US agricultural lands are highly impacted through both direct effects on insects and direct and indirect effects on other species². Although many members of the ecosystem may not be exposed to sufficient doses of insecticides to suffer acutely lethal poisonings, sublethal and indirect adverse effects have been demonstrated to occur.

Right now is the time to take action in favor of saving our bees. Bee populations have begun to see sharp declines in recent years. There are several theories as to why this may be occurring, but the most widely-accepted is that neonicotinoid-based pesticides meant to protect us from other harmful bugs are having the unintended effect of killing off the bees.

Neonicotinoids are deadly to a wide range of insects, but they are safer for people and other mammals than an older family of insecticides called organophosphates. In recent years, farmers have rapidly increased their use of neonics³, which are generally applied at lower rates per acre; however, they are considerably more toxic to insects and generally persist longer in the environment⁴.

One of these chemicals, clothianidin, is very toxic to honeybees and has not been tested for its potential to leave trace chemicals on food.

Clothianidin impairs a bee colony's immune response and ability to reproduce, and especially threatens the lives of queen bees⁵. Bee colonies in clothianidin-treated fields produce up to 66% fewer males than colonies that weren't exposed to the chemical, and up to 74% fewer queen bees⁶.

Clothianidin can also lead to colony collapse disorder, or even make colonies less likely to clear out dead or sick bees from their hives, which means more bees can become infected over time⁷.

Sign the petition asking the EPA to ban clothianidin's use in agricultural and household applications.

More on this issue:

1. Turnbull, L A; Hector, A, Nature (2010), "Applied Ecology: How to get even with pests.."
2. David Gibbons, Christy Morrissey & Pierre Mineau, Environmental Science and Pollution Research volume (2015), "A review of the direct and indirect effects of neonicotinoids and fipronil on vertebrate wildlife."
3. Dan Charles, NPR (6 August 2019), "New Evidence Shows Popular Pesticides Could Cause Unintended Harm To Insects."
4. Michael DiBartolomeis, Susan Kegley, Pierre Mineau, Rosemarie Radford, Kendra Klein, PLOS ONE (6 August 2019), "An assessment of acute insecticide toxicity loading (AITL) of chemical pesticides used on agricultural land in the United States."
5. Michael DiBartolomeis, Susan Kegley, Pierre Mineau, Rosemarie Radford, Kendra Klein, PLOS ONE (6 August 2019), "An assessment of acute insecticide toxicity loading (AITL) of chemical pesticides used on agricultural land in the United States."
6. Dimitry Wintermantel, Barbara Locke, Georg K. S. Andersson, Emilia Semberg, Eva Forsgren, Julia Osterman, Thorsten Rahbek Pedersen, Riccardo Bommarco, Henrik G. Smith, Maj Rundlöf, Joachim R. de Miranda, Nature Communications (2018), "Field-level clothianidin exposure affects bumblebees but generally not their pathogens."
7. N. Tsvetkov, O. Samson-Robert, K. Sood, H. S. Patel, D. A. Malena, P. H. Gajiwala, P. Maciukiewicz, V. Fournier, A. Zayed, Science (30 June 2017), "Chronic exposure to neonicotinoids reduces honey bee health near corn crops."
8. Thomas James Wood and Dave Goulson, Environmental Science and Pollution Research (7 June 2017), "The environmental risks of neonicotinoid pesticides: a review of the evidence post 2013."