Bee my friend

Bee my friend:

Insecticides killing bees

Insecticides
in particular pose the most direct risk to pollinators. As their name
indicates, these are chemicals designed to kill insects, and they are
widely applied in the environment, mostly around cropland areas.

Although
the relative role of insecticides in the global decline of pollinators
remains poorly characterised, it is becoming increasingly evident that
some insecticides, at concentrations applied routinely in the current
chemical-intensive agriculture system, exert clear, negative effects on
the health of pollinators – both individually and at the colony level.
The observed, sub-lethal, low-dose effects of insecticides on bees are
various and diverse.

 

 The role of the bee
Bees and other pollinating insects play an essential role in ecosystems. A third of all our food depends on their pollination. A world without pollinators would be devastating for food production.

Who would pollinate all the crops? Hand-pollination is extremely labour-intensive, slow and expensive. The economic value of bees’ pollination work has been estimated around € 265 billion annually, worldwide. So, also from a purely economic point of view, it pays to protect the bees.