Bees are crucial to the pollination of crops and to agricultural efficiency. However they are under threat from a number of chemicals – some in a quite unexpected manner. For example selective herbicides and fertilizer might not be expected to hurt bees at all. However spray drift from herbicides and fertilizer run off from the crop areas have led to field margins becoming dominated by a sparse vegetation composed of coarse grasses, nettles, docks and hogweed. Few flowering plants thrive here and bees have insufficient blossom to feed from.
More to be expected as a threat are modern compounds called neonicotinoids. These are a class of insecticides implicated in harming bees. Hardly surprising since bees are insects too! The use of neonicotinoids is restricted within the EU, mainly to the treatment of wheat and oilseed rape seeds before planting, and particularly any use on crops considered to be especially attractive to bees. The UK government voted against these restrictions but eventually had to accept them following a majority vote. However the UK did manage to negotiate some temporary exceptions to the bans.
In December 2013 the EU agreed to a ban of neonicotinoids but the UK Environment Secretary, Liz Truss, managed to partially overturn this ban to permit neonicotinoid use in the main arable belt of Central and Eastern England.
However recent research has revealed that residues of fungicides used on crops can increase the toxicity of neonicotinoids by nearly 1000 times compared to traces of neonictinoids by themselves.
The UK has used some of the Common Agricutural Policy money to pay farmers to sow flower rich habitats next to crops. It might have been a good idea but for this newly discovered enhancement of nicotinoid toxicity by fungicides. What should have been a safe haven for bees has now become a toxic trap.
The UK government must adopt a scientifically based strategy for reducing pesticide use on farmland. And it must resist the chance brexit might give it to allow a self-destructive free for all for Britains farmers – if if did that we would all be the losers.