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Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 17:43:54 PM PST
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After I posted about neonicotinoid insecticides and their harmful effects on bees, I received an email from Jeroen van der Sluijs from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The very same one who published this study on bees (PDF). Here's his email:
I read your post Nicotine: Bad for People, Bad for Bees with much interest.
I would like to bring to your attention a new study that has just been published that explores a causal link between the neonicotinoid imidacloprid to honeybee decline in France.
The study shows that by applying widely accepted criteria for causality, scientist were able to identify exposure to the systemic insecticide imidacloprid (a neonicotinoid used in plant protection products such as Guacho and Admire) as the main cause for honeybee decline in the sunflower and maize area's in France. The method allowed researchers to conclude that 73% of the increased colony collapse in areas of extensive agriculture in France is caused by imidacloprid. The remaining 27% of the increased colony mortality can be attributed to diseases (9%), illegal pesticides (8%) and a number of minor causes such as genetics, climate change, availability of pollen and new sunflower strains (each 2 or 3%). Note that these figures are not for France as a whole but only for the regions where the pesticide has been used on a large scale. We also show that other actors have different beliefs of what the relative importance is of the various causes (see figure 4 of the paper).
You can see the study summarized here and here or you can read the study itself, which is linked to above. |
| Jill Richardson :: More On Nicotine and Bees |
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