| Beekeepers Sue Chemical Companies Over Pesticides | 19 September 14 |
Canadian beekeepers are taking chemical companies Bayer and Syngenta to court alleging their pesticides – neonicotinids in particular – are responsible for the massive outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder in the last few years. Think of it like the way alcohol works in the human body. Too much alcohol over too long a period of time and the human body begins to shutdown. This is essentially the same thing that is happening to the bees, except the pesticides in the environment have built up and are causing havoc with bee colonies. The lawsuit alleges that Bayer Cropscience Inc. and Syngenta Canada Inc. and their parent companies were negligent in their design, manufacture, sale and distribution of neonicotinoid pesticides, specifically those containing imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiomethoxam. A survey conducted by the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists found that of 100,000 Ontario honeybee colonies wintered in fall 2013, over 58,000 were dead or unproductive in spring 2014. Even taking a conservative estimate of 20,000 bees per hive, this means that over a billion bees died in Ontario this past winter.
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