Neonicotinoids kill bees, don’t help crop yields

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Bees in the Borough – saving the British Black Honeybee

14 October 2013

Learn about the British Black Honeybee and how we are trying to reintroduce this native species back into Lancashire. The Bees in the Borough project is delivered at our Offshoots Permaculture Project in Burnley.

From Wildlife Extra:

Ban on neonicotinoid seed treatments has not affected rapeseed crop yields

ADAS, the UK’s largest independent agricultural consultancy, has confirmed the first harvest results of winter oilseed rape planted without neonicotinoid seed treatments have come in, and the crop has been better than usual – yields are higher than the 10-year average.

The report says that with 15 per cent of the oilseed rape harvested, yields are between 3.5 and 3.7 tonnes/ha, higher than the normal farm average of 3.4.

According to the charity Buglife, this makes a nonsense of the Government’s recent controversial decision to allow the banned bee-killing agrotoxins to be used in four eastern counties as an ‘emergency’ measure.

Particularly concerning to conservationists is the fact that most of the harvest data comes from eastern England where 40 per cent of the crop has already been brought in.

Matt Shardlow, Buglife’s CEO says: “This is further evidence that neonicotinoids are not essential to maintaining crop yields.

“While some farmers struggled to establish their oilseed rape crop because the weather last year was ideal for flea beetles, where they have persisted the results have been good.

“We seem to have forgotten that bees and other pollinators are essential to good crop yields, in the trade off this year pollinators may have had a bigger positive effect than any negative impact of flea beetles.”

Buglife is calling on the UK Government to reconsider its decision to allow the use of banned bee toxins now that it is clear that there is no ‘emergency’ and indeed that bees have helped farmers bring in a bumper crop.

Study suggesting neonicotinoids are safe is severely flawed says scientists: here.

New study reveals “worrying link” between neonicotinoids and decline of UK butterflies: here.

Rolling Stone asks what’s killing America’s bees.

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