THE decline of England’s wild bees has been linked for the first time to the use of neonicotinoid pesticides on oilseed rape farms.
The effects such pesticides have on bees have been documented before, but there was no strong evidence linking them to long-term losses of wild bee species.
Now, Ben Woodcock at the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, UK, and his colleagues have studied data on 62 bee species from 31,800 surveys across more than 4000 square kilometres of land.
Populations across all species declined by an average of 7 per cent after 2002, when farmers started widely using neonicotinoids on oilseed rape. Species that forage on rapeseed were hit three times as hard as those that do not (Nature Communications, doi.org/bn72).
Woodcock says other factors may also be implicated in bee decline, such as climate change and disease.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Bee decline linked to pesticide”