What chance do bees have?

What chance do bees have?

A couple of things recently cropped up that indicate what a long road it is.

Neonicotinoids pesticides have been increasingly linked to the dramatic collapse in bee numbers over the last decade and in 2013 a two year ban on using them on farmland was imposed by the EEC.
Two countries voted against the ban. The UK was one of them.

At the time one of the major insecticide companies, Syngenta launched an attempt to get the ban over turned and failed and there were concerns that there wasn't sufficient research in place to monitor the effects of the ban.
Given the huge amounts of money to be made by selling insecticides, I hardly expect Syngenta and others like Monsanto are sitting back thinking, 'I wonder how the things will turn out. If the ban is confirmed, that'll be fine with us'.
Instead I expect they've indulged in the same lobbying frenzy they've carried out in other countries like America and Canada to make sure the ban will be over turned. In this country they will be supported by the National Farmers Union and Conservatives who deny the evidence and oppose the ban.
Equally I'm sure that the multi billion dollar drug firms will be lining up their pet scientists to produce a snow storm of confusing and contradictory 'science' with phrases like 'there is no definite proof'', the results are not clear', 'if farmers cannot use Neonicotinoids then we'll go back to DDT', 'more research needs to be done'.

On a bee keeper forum this was spotted.


'Free seeds for bees! What lovely people Bayer are, doing their best for the bees' you might say.
Trouble is Provado contains a  Neonicotinoid that has been banned, so although farmers can't kill  bees with it, consumers can and Bayer try to encourage people to do this by giving away seeds. I suppose it helps the bees that aren't killed by Provado.
Apparently the Soil Association has written to Bayer and although I can't find the seed offer, Provado can still be bought at Homebase and B&Q.
In fact a number of insecticides have neo's in them and  a list of them can be found on the Soil Association web site here.

In America neo's are not banned. The fact that the Deputy Commissioner for Food is Michael R Taylor who once was an executive of Monsanto is entirely unrelated, my lawyers have asked me to state. 
Also they have asked me to confirm that in no way do I consider this similar to the situation in the American Fed where there was a 'revolving door' with executives of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros etc that contributed to the financial collapse in 1998. How could anybody think such a thing?

In America a number of home and garden retailers were called on the carpet for selling “bee-friendly” plants that were, in fact, treated with systemic neonicotinoids. Consumers complained, and some of these stores vowed to label such plants in the future.
As a reaction this this, some retailers started using labels in the pots saying things like “This plant is protected from problematic aphids, white flies, beetles, mealy bugs and other unwanted pests by Neonicotinoids.” The names of the pests (aphids, white flies, beetles, mealy bugs) are printed in black, all caps, on a white background. All the other words are printed in a tan color, upper/lower case, on a white background. Needless to say, the pest names are extremely visible, the rest is harder to read.
The problem with this tag is not what is says, but what it doesn’t. It doesn’t say that the plant is also protected from most other insects, including beneficial ones—like lady bugs, and pollinators—like butterflies and bees. While asserting the plant is protected from “unwanted” pests, it fails to mention it is also poisonous to the rest, to the “wanted” insects.

Unfortunately bees don't vote nor have the money to buy scientists or lawyers.