What started out as a bit of curiosity about the time-dependent toxicity of insecticides led to a blog piece I did a little over a year ago titled Time-dependent Toxicity of Imidacloprid in Bees and Ants. I thought my results were interesting enough to get a comment from other scientists that were looking at the time-dependent [...]
Tag: time-dependent toxicity
Environmental Implications of Pesticides with Delayed Toxicity
The debate about the environmental safety, or lack there of, for the neonicotinoid insecticides begs us to ask what would be the characteristics of an environmentally safe or benign pesticide? Despite a growing and flourishing organic agriculture movement, industrial agriculture is not going away any time soon. Hence it is important to understand how to [...]
Neonics and Bees — Political Inaction Persists Despite Mounting Evidence
Over the course of the last year, the issue of bees and the neonicotinoid pesticides has finally begun to appear in the popular press in this country. A campaign by Friends of the Earth in the UK resulted in major garden center chains removing the neonics from their shelves in February of last year. Early [...]
Time-dependent Toxicity of Imidacloprid in Bees and Ants
Honeybee colony losses continue to be unacceptably high. In the US this spring, colonies brought in to California to pollinate almonds from throughout the country, about half of the colonies were lost (New York Times, March 29, 2013). It is generally accepted that multiple pathogens ultimately bring down stressed colonies (Cornman 2012). However the role [...]
The Case Against Imidacloprid
Ever since French beekeepers saw their bees dying as they collected pollen from treated sunflowers back in 1996, beekeepers have been concerned that their bees are being harmed the highly toxic neonicotinoid insecticides, with imidacloprid most widely used. The use of this class of insecticide has grown steadily ever since. Bee losses have become chronic [...]
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