http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/42551/title/Study--Pesticides-Harm-Bees/
Study: Pesticides Harm
Bees
A researcher challenges the UK government’s
conclusion that neonicotinoids aren’t that bad for pollinators.
By Kerry Grens | March 27, 2015
A redo on the data analysis of a study by the UK’s Food and Environment
Research Agency (FERA) that concluded
neonicotinoid pesticides do not harm bees has found the opposite. The
original study was used to form the UK government’s controversial
position on the use of the chemicals.
“I would argue they didn’t correctly interpret their own results,” the
University of Sussex’s Dave Goulson, who conducted the reanalysis, told
Nature News.
The
original field study (which was never peer reviewed) found that
bumblebees were unaffected by exposure to certain pesticides. But when
Goulson applied a different model predicting the bees’ exposure, he found
the number of queens produced and the weight of colonies correlated with
exposure.
“Despite the conclusions that were originally drawn by FERA, their data
appear to provide the first clear evidence that colonies of free-flying
bumblebees exposed to neonicotinoids used as part of normal farming
practice suffer significant impacts in terms of reduced colony growth and
queen production,” Goulson wrote in his report, published in
PeerJ this week
(March 24).
The European Commission has
restricted neonicotinoid use based on other studies that identified
risks to bees.
FERA told Nature: “Whilst there was an absence of evidence to
support the hypothesis that neonicotinoids harm bees, this does not lead
to the conclusion that they are benign.”
“What this shows is how data can be used to support different positions,”
Trevor Mansfield, head of policy at the Soil Association, told
Farmers Weekly. “That’s why we think it is vital that Defra
[the UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs] commits to
publishing the resultsin fullof the research it has funded on
neonicotinoids and to not making any long-term decisions on their future
in the UK until academics and wider society have had a good opportunity
to review that data and draw their own conclusions.”