It was a big day for beekeepers in the United States yesterday. After years of worrying about declining bee colonies, the appeals court blocked the use of a pesticide that is highly toxic to bees, as studies have shown. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) neglected these studies before approving the use of the pesticide sulfoxaflor in 2013, the court ruled. The pesticide, part of a group of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, was used on crops like citrus and cotton, and might have contributed to the collapse of honey bee colonies throughout the U.S. The judge ruled that the EPA needs to take the pesticide off the market, to do more studies first. Knowing that honeybees pollinate plants that produce roughly a quarter of the food consumed by Americans, it’s not hard to image how important these animals are to all of us.
This article was originally published on September 11, 2015
