European authority says widely used pesticide is definite cause of colony collapse disorder in bees

A European Food Safety Authority report has named the world's most widely used insecticide as an "unacceptable" danger to bees feeding on flowering crops, Damian Carrington of The Guardian reports. The report found that imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid made by the German firm Bayer, is a cause of bee decline. This is the first time neonicotinoids have been definitively linked to bee collapse.

Bees are important pollinators for one-third of the world's food, and recent studies have concluded that neonicotinoid pesticides were likely a cause of colony collapse disorder, a condition that prevents bees from finding their way back to hives. Scientists concluded that honeybees are exposed to imidacloprid through nectar and pollen, and that it could only be used on crops that honeybees don't pollinate, such as canola, corn and sunflowers. (Read more)