There is a bee-killer on the loose and you can help lock it away.

Bees are responsible for one out of every three bites of food we eat, but they are dying at alarming rates. A growing body of science shows that neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides are a key contributor to bee declines.

But Lowe's continues to sell neonicotinoid pesticides and plants pre-treated with them – with no warning to consumers.

This Halloween, tell Lowe's to give bees treats, not tricks, and take bee-killing pesticides and plants pre-treated with these harmful chemicals off their shelves.

Over a dozen retailers across the country recognize that neonics are a problem and are doing their part to start fixing it. Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer, agreed to label all plants treated with neonics by the end of 2014 and is working with its suppliers on alternatives to protect bees. BJ's Wholesale Club, a store with over 200 stores in 15 states, eliminated neonics from its store. These stores demonstrate Lowe's can make the shift!

But Lowe's isn't listening to clear science or its customer base. Thousands of you have signed petitions, made calls and taken action on social media asking Lowe's to be a pollinator champion and stop selling "poisoned plants" and bee-killing pesticides.

We need your help to ramp up the pressure: Tell Lowe's to take the bee-killers off its shelves.

Just this week, Ontario Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller said neonicotinoids are "the biggest threat to the structure and integrity of the ecosystem that I have encountered in my life, bigger than DDT."

Help to stop Lowe's from continuing to be a "Little Shop of Horrors" housing these bee-toxic pesticides – take action today.

Thanks!

Kevin Curtis
Director, SaveOurEnvironment.org
[email protected]

Tell our government to side with science and stop the use of systemic pesticides.

Have you heard of flupyradifurone? 

Probably not… 

Flupyradifurone has a lot in common with neonics. This new pesticide is a nerve poison and Health Canada states it may pose a risk to bees, birds and small mammals.

While dithering over neonics (more than a year after Europe banned them), the federal government is now proposing to give flupyradifurone the green light.

Enough is enough. Let’s ban neonics and put the brakes on flupyradifurone before giant multinational chemical companies use our fields, waterways and bees as a testing ground for potentially harmful pesticides.

Canadians are done with the federal government's "kill bees first, ask questions later" approach to regulating pesticides.  

Please join us in asking Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) to get serious about addressing the concerns with neonics and related pesticides like flupyradifurone.

Join us in telling the PMRA not to “F” the bees!

Lisa Gue 
Researcher and Analyst
David Suzuki Foundation

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As we’ve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated America’s apis mellifera population that one bad winter could leave fields fallow. Now, a new study has pinpointed some of the probable causes of bee deaths and the rather scary results show that averting beemageddon will be much more difficult than previously thought.

Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.

When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite called Nosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.

Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they’re designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.

“There’s growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study’s lead author, told Quartz.

Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides.

Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the country’s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And that’s not just a west coast problem—California supplies 80% of the world’s almonds, a market worth $4 billion.

In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the pesticide for two years in Europe where bee populations have also plummeted. But vanEngelsdorp, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, says the new study shows that the interaction of multiple pesticides is affecting bee health.

“The pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to be believe,” he says. “It’s a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product.”

The study found another complication in efforts to save the bees: US honey bees, which are descendants of European bees, do not bring home pollen from native North American crops but collect bee chow from nearby weeds and wildflowers. That pollen, however, was also contaminated with pesticides even though those plants were not the target of spraying.

“It’s not clear whether the pesticides are drifting over to those plants but we need take a new look at agricultural spraying practices,” says vanEngelsdorp.