latest buzz

I've been covering bee problems for well over a decade now - since the crisis around colony collapse disorder in the mid-00s. Progress has been made in terms of recognising the subtle kinds of damage that neonicotinoids can do to pollinators. But the fundamental paradox remains - we depend on insects for our nutrition (never mind to maintain a residue of a natural environment), and yet we put tonnes of insecticides into the environment.

Three neonics are now being banned EU-wide, but one of the products that may replace them is now also implicated in (bumble)bee problems. One day we'll have to acknowledge that the problem isn't insects, it's monocultures. And we'll have to learn agriculture from scratch again as our ancestors did some 12,000 years ago.

Anyhow, my latest buzz on bees is out now:

Bee worries beyond neonicotinoids

Current Biology
Volume 28, Issue 19, 8 October 2018, Pages R1121-R1123

FREE access to full text and PDF download




(Own photo, taken at Chelsea Physics Garden, London.)