Bee Pollen Is Full of Pesticides Like Mosquito Repellents

[NickB79]

http://www.newsweek.com/bee-pollen-full-pesticides-mosquito-repellents-465166

Bees that live next to cornfields and soybean fields spend only a minority of their time feeding on these crop plants; instead, they mostly seek out pollen from flowering weeds, trees and gardens nearby. In the course of their foraging, they are exposed to a surprisingly wide and concerning range of pesticides, new research shows.

In a study published May 30 in the journal Nature Communications, researchers Elizabeth Long and Christian Krupke show that bees next to cornfields collected pollen containing up to 32 different pesticides, most of which didn’t originate from crops or agricultural applications. Pollen samples were taken over a four-month period from three hives in West Lafayette, Indiana, where Purdue University is located.

Some of these pesticides were expected. Neonicotinoids, for example, which some research has implicated in the decline of bees, are used to coat seeds and are known to be found in corn and soybean pollen. But others came as quite a surprise. The pesticides found in the greatest quantities were pyrethroids, synthetic products generally used in households to repel insects, says Krupke, an entomology professor at Purdue. Among these were phenothrin, which is used to repel ticks and fleas, and prallethrin, for killing wasps and hornets.

[appal_jack]

1. We all live downstream. k&r, nt

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Maybe this shouldn't be so surprising ...

Home lawns, and particularly gardens, are often dosed with pesticides at much higher loading/acre than agricultural fields. Farmers are working on slim profit margins and try not to pass the point of diminishing returns w/pesticides. They also time their sprayings to the life cycles of both crops and pests. Homeowners, on the other hand, pay so little for enough pesticide to treat their whole lawn that there's no effective disincentive to use big excesses. And if the first dose doesn't finish the job, just do it again. Millions of homeowners making the same decisions can release a lot more pesticides than farms, just because there are so many of them practicing the same high-intensity spraying and "bug-bombing".

[progressoid]

3. Yep.

It's easy to blame farmers for "drenching" their crops in chemicals. But god forbid you point a finger at the city park, backyard gardener or golf course.