This past winter was a harsh one – particularly for bees and beekeepers across the United States. A recent survey by the Bee Informed Partnership and the Apiary Inspectors of America has shown that one in every three honey bee colonies collapsed this past winter. The staggering 31.1 percent loss is twice the percentage that beekeepers say is “acceptable” to maintain their business.

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Post tags: Apiary Inspectors of America, bee deaths, bee Informed Partnership, bee populations, colony collapse disorder, eco design, green design, honey bee population, sustainable design

Just days after Europe placed a two year ban on bee-killing pesticides, the US government has released a claim that there is no clear link between widespread colony collapse and neonicotinoids, The Guardian reports. Seemingly ignoring a lot of research upon which the EU based their decision to ban pesticide use on crops that attract bees, the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency blame plummeting bee populations on a mite.

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Post tags: agriculture, Bayer, bees, colony collapse disorder, Environment, environmental protection agency, epa, neonicotinoids, News, pesticides, pollinator, US Dept of Agriculture

Beekeepers across the country are reporting that colony collapse disorder has resulted in bee losses in their hives at higher rates than ever before. Bees have been dying off at alarming rates since 2005, directly affecting farmers’ output of food — less pollination means fewer crops. Many beekeepers are blaming the combination of neonicotinoid pesticides, fungicides and herbicides to be responsible for killing bees.

Read the rest of Beekeepers Report Bee Losses of Up to 50 Percent in 2012

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Post tags: bees, colony collapse disorder, eco design, falling bee populations, green design, neonicotinoid, sustainable design

American beekeepers, conservation groups and food campaigners have filed a lawsuit against the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to protect the country’s bees from toxic pesticides. Three quarters of the country’s crops rely on bees for pollination, according to The Guardian, yet the EPA is accused of rushing bee-toxic pesticide registrations despite a suite of scientific reviews that have identified neonicotinoids as a serious threat to declining bee populations.

Read the rest of Coalition Sues US Government Over Pesticides Toxic to Bees

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Post tags: agriculture, Bayer, bees, colony collapse disorder, Environment, environmental protection agency, epa, neonicotinoid, News, pesticides, pollinators, Sierra Club, syngenta, US

Bees have had a rough time in the past few years – from the Varroa mite and colony collapse disorder to factory waste contaminating their honey. Heeding the insect’s buzz for help, UK home improvement retailers B&Q and Wickes have pledged to withdraw products containing a family of compounds called neonicotinoids – pesticides linked to the decline in bee populations. B&Q will stop selling its only product using imidacloprid, and Wickes will remove products with thiamethoxam, both of which are neonicotinoids. Together with clothianidin, these three chemicals are identified by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as nerve agents that are seriously damaging to the health of pollinators.

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Post tags: b&q, Bayer, bees, colony collapse disorder, efsa, epa, european food safety authority, friends of the earth, home improvement, neonicotinoids, pesticides, prime minister, soil association, united states, varroa mite, wickes

Poor bees. Not only do they have problems with Colony Collapse Disorder and pollutants affecting the quality and color of their honey, they also have to worry about coming into contact with a barrage of pesticides on their flights for food. A new paper published in the scientific journal Nature has shown that foraging bumblebees exposed to the chemicals are twice as likely to die than those not exposed, and are only half as efficient in collecting food.

Read the rest of Stinging New Study Uncovers More Evidence of Pesticide Harm to Bees

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Post tags: bees, bumblebee, colony collapse disorder, honeybee, Nature, nigel raine, pesticides, tomatoes, UK, University of London

Italian actress, filmmaker and veteran insect reenactor Isabella Rossellini has teamed up with Burt’s Bees to create a thoroughly bizarre set of PSAs titled “Burt Talks to the Bees,” which look at the troubling decline in bee populations due to colony collapse disorder. Donning a paper beard, Rossellini takes the role of “Burt” himself, a real-life beekeeper who founded the company some 25 years ago, and imagines the conversations he might have with his own bee population about their plight (the bees too, played by Rossellini). The videos come just in time for National Pollinator Week, which was established by the US Senate five years ago to raise awareness of declining pollinator populations. Find out more and watch the PSAs over on Ecouterre!

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Post tags: bee decline, bee population, bee threat, burt shavitz, burts bees, colony collapse disorder, green porno, isabella rossellini, pollinator decline, pollinators week

This week the French government announced that it plans to prohibit the use of Cruiser OSR, a pesticide manufactured by the Swiss company Syngenta that researchers say may contribute to the massive disappearance of bees. The ban comes in the light of studies indicating that pesticides such as Cruiser OSR are linked to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a phenomenon that has occurred throughout the world that worries agronomists, farmers and environmentalists alike. The problem is critical because of the role pollination has in agriculture, and it has festered in North America and Europe since 2006.

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Post tags: and the Environment, ANSES, bees, CCD, colony collapse disorder, cruiser osr, france, french government, honeybees, National Agency for Food, pesticides, safety, sygenta, thiamethoxam

Scientists from San Francisco State University just announced the latest in a string of explanations for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) (a phenomenon that has decimated worldwide populations of honeybees): parasitic flies are attacking bees and turning them into zombies. The study, published in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE, reveals that after the flies attack the bees and lay eggs in their abdomens, the bees then abandon their hives and congregate around light en masse, Walking Dead-style. When they finally do die, their bodies then become cocoons from which up to 13 fly larvae emerge about a week later.

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Post tags: apids, apocephalus borealis, bee deaths, bees, bumble bees, cell phones kill bee, colony collapse, colony collapse disorder, eco design, green design, honeybees, parasite, parasitic fly, phorids, san francisco state university, sustainable design, what is killing bees, zombie bees

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Post tags: Architecture, arup, bee hotel, bee house, british land, bug architecture, bug hotels, city of london, colony collapse disorder, Design Competition, eco design, green design, insect hotels, London, Sustainable Building

Design can change the world for the better, but our wide reaching imprint on Mother Nature doesn’t always yield the best results. Case in point: the decline of bees. More specifically that commercially raised bumblebees are affecting the wild bee population. For years, researchers have been linking a decline in bees to everything from pesticides to genetically modified crops, and now the news is pointing to the bees themselves – the ones that humans “create” in greenhouses.

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Post tags: bee decline, bumblebee population, bumblebee population decline, colony collapse disorder, commercially raised bees, commercially raised bumblebees, declining bee population, declining bumblebee population, genetically modified crops, wild bee population decline