A landscaping company sprayed an insecticide on 55 linden trees in the parking lot of a Target big box store in the Oregon town of Wilsonville in the U.S. last Saturday to control for aphids. Within minutes, bumblebees began falling from the trees, twitching on their backs or wandering in tight circles on the asphalt. As this weekend approaches, estimates of the number of dead insects has risen to more than 50,000.
The Oregon Department of Agriculture confirmed the bees were killed by an insecticide called Safari whose main ingredient is dinotefuran, belonging to a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. There are two main kinds of neonicotinoids. Safari is a member of the nitro-group which research has shown to be generally more toxic to bees than the other type.
This totally avoidable tragedy is simply another example of the myriad of unregulated poisons that continue to be applied to the earth by people…
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