I hate to have to tell you it is the mostly widely used class of pesticides in the world now, and the retail sale of it is a drop in the bucket compared to the commercial use. It started out as a pesticide for ornamentals, to be used primarily in an enclosed environment once per growing season. Its label kept getting expanded to now include food production and field use, pet delousers, spraying house foundations, etc ad nauseum.

While the matter at hand is serious, I wonder...if, for sake of argument, the pesticide class in question was stopped, what would we use in its place?

Would that pesticide used in place of it work well enough, and would the damage it did be less?

Richard.

I share your sentiment but do not know what to do about it. Heck, I even use two bug sprays around my home that fit into that category. One for home protection one as an EAB treatment.

But yeah, in the big sense, what do people think, spraying their flowers with insectide will not harm the butterflies the flowers attract.

If it makes ya feel better my ash is treated after it flowers even though I understand some level of imadicloropid (spelled wrong I bet) will stay in it year round.

what would we use in its place?

Do we need to use something? How much of pesticide use is simply for cosmetic reasons?

"How much of pesticide use is simply for cosmetic reasons"

None of mine lol. I am too cheap AND lazy.

I do like to keep the bugs out of the house and after cutting down three poorly placed white ash trees (and I knew EAB was coming) I can't stand losing that last big ash that was part of the group which gave my home such a good show in the fall.

"Do we need to use something?"

Yes. Many people will have definitions of 'need' you will argue with - such as protecting ornamentals from Japanese Beetles. But Calliope indicated it's used in food production, which suggests that a whole lot must be in use.

Interesting thought - Roundup-resistant crops were genetically engineered. Perhaps imadicloropid-resistant bees can be manufactured?

Ah, but I'm guessing THAT would start a new hot controversy. Might be worth doing, though. Bees are important.

Richard.

If I have to spray an insecticide on a plant to keep it alive or looking good, I don't plant it. There are plenty of other plants I can plant that don't require the killing of insects.
It's simple and it works for me.
Mike

Sometimes the best solution is multi-faceted - systemics for the really tough situations (if they are wind pollinated, it shouldn't harm bees), plus things like pyrethrins, milky spore, other biological controls (Japanese beetles are on my mind), etc.

Most of Europe has banned neonicatoids. The problem is also from fungicides, which to my knowledge are not nicotine based. Monoculture doesnt help at all, and niether does shipping bees across the continent.

Im of mind that if I have to baby a plant too much (other then my own choice. I have to bury bamboo here, but again thats MY choice) I do not spray. IF I do I use a bit of dishsoap with water, a drop of olive oil and garlic peels. My goal isnt to eliminate bugs, but to keep them in control. The best thing to do is to leave things alone IMO. Aphids were bad, and didnt get set back until i stopped babying my stuff. Lady bugs moved in.

I generally leave things alone too, except for a few things:

Japanese beetles
Certain moths/caterpillars (gypsy moths must DIE)

Also, I'll do anything necessary to kill Kudzu (a plant, not a bug, but you get the idea)

I hope many folks know by now that Japanese beetles live as grubs in grass (lawn) roots which they eat. Reduce your lawn and you reduce the source of their food. I reduce my lawn about 2 feet on the western edge every year and I have fewer and fewer JBs each year. I also hand edge my remaining lawn and kill every one of those tiny grubs that I find in the process (you do have to learn to recognize them so that you don't kill good grubs but generally that is all I find in the grass roots).

The EPA did just recently announce that they'll be releasing new labeling requirements of the use of neonicotinoids on plants that may be bee-pollinated. The new labels indicate that one should not apply during flowering. However, IMO it's left very unclear how this guideline relates to soil drenches (as opposed to foliar applications). There have been studies that show that such chemicals can show up in tree nectar months after soil application. See for example Byrne et al. 2013 - in citrus trees, it was present in nectar from flowers that bloomed 232 days after application, although at low levels.

I'm generally not in favor of using insecticides on trees for aesthetic and/or native pests, but this is at least one tool that can be used to manage some exotic tree-killing insects such as emerald ash borer or hemlock wooly adelgid, in a way that is more targeted than surface sprays.

Both ash and hemlock are wind-pollinated, but bees do forage for pollen in addition to nectar, and it's known that soil-applied neonics can end up in pollen. And there's cause for concern not just about honey bees, but also all the native pollinator species out there. It would make life easier if we could dismiss these issues, but based on the recent research I've seen, I don't think we can.

So, this creates a dilemma: do we use these products to try to temporarily protect individual trees from invasive pests that are devastating their species, or do we let them die to avoid harming other species? With EAB now found in Georgia and almost certainly headed to my state soon, this is something I'm thinking about a lot. We need more options, and better ones.

I think we can make great strides if we put our money/research where it does the most good. Nobody really can project the ultimate consequences of products introduced into the environment on a massive scale until it has happened and they all have some sort of impact. Massive scale is the most important factor here and that has to do with labeling for use. I see this class of insecticides very appropriate for interior or specific uses. The equation for any chemical changes when we start using it on massive expanses of monocultures. It all goes back to the labeling. The testing of many pesticides when going for labeling is carried out primarily by the companies who produce them. This introduces a bias into the equation, and not necessarily an intentional one. It may simply mean that the regulatory institutions who grant the labels needs to be especially open to studies who challenge a product. Commercial growers are always warned early-on to NOT put all their eggs in one basket with pesticides since resistance always rears its ugly head and it will with this one too and I imagine already has. I suspect agricultural producers have their part in this too since this class is extremely good at what it does, and the product is far less toxic than many other classes of pesticides. IOW just overuse.

To add to this discussion is the current suspicion that Monarch butterflies are now in significant decline due to milkweed destruction around crops; this is due to "round up ready" crops allowing farmers to spray adjacent weeds with herbicide much more easily than ever before.

Consequences of our practices are coming back to bite us day after day. Although I'm sure some folks will argue that Monarchs are just pretty bugs, we don't really need them like we do the bees.

most likely not..

because i buy HARDWARE.. at the HARDWARE store ...

and nursery stock.. from the NURSERY ...

ken

"Could you be contributing to the great Bee die off?" Probably... I've already bought multiple cans of bee spray... I'm going to be getting a couple more cans here this month.

Those freakin things won't leave me be. They made a huge hive up in the rafters above my front door (I can't to the hive because of the molding). So I just go out there on the weekend and spray dozens as they enter/exit.

I knocked down 3 hives and killed dozens in my building

Some animal dug a hole in the roots of one of my plants. I went to fill it in only to find a bee hive inside. Killed a couple more dozen.

This past weekend I was moving boulders around the edge of the house. The vibration must have made the bees mad... I had to stop because I was being swarmed by what looked like at least 50+ bees. I shot them all down and still didn't get them all. They made a hive under the dirt next to the concrete block of my house.

I've never had this problem in the years past.... maybe it's because my neighbors started there bee combs or whatever you call it. I don't know... but they have become a real problem this year and I don't hesitate to take them out. Leave it go to long and the hives will just get larger with more bees. So I'm correcting the problem before I have one you could say =)

I learned a lot about bees several years ago when I read the Xerces Society book on native pollinators. I had no idea that the VAST majority of bee species are solitary. They build no hive, just create a hole in the ground, bark, a dead stem and in the absence of those things ... manmade lumber. And each species has a preferred habitat.

A single female bee provisions each egg with food for when it hatches - a ball constructed of pollen and nectar that she gathered. She will do a string of eggs sometimes with dividers between them. Then she leaves them alone; she's done.

Yet it is the very few social bees that get all the attention: the European honeybee that builds hives in buildings and which we create hives for so that we can harvest honey; the native yellow jacket that creates hives in the ground and which sting us when we run over them with a lawnmower; the bumblebees (not the same as the carpenter bee which is a solitary bee). But social bees represent only 10% of the species of native bees.

So when people talk about bees dying off, it isn't just the bees that you know as social groups that get in your way ... it is the very many bees that you never really notice but who are out there getting the job of pollination done.

Here is a link that might be useful: native bees

So very true. I work a vegetable garden the old fashioned way, and spend a good deal of time on my hands and knees cultivating and pulling weeds, and sometimes just sit and watch who is pollinating what. Today, around my blooming green beans, very tiny hovering bees were working the blossoms. My colony of honey bees prefer my veggies to flowers. Other insects pollinate besides bees. Even birds and bats pollinate, as well as flies. Our native flora were pollinated long before honeybees ever came to the shores of North America, they are an imported species. Even things we think as being wind pollinated are also visited by bees. Several years ago, I stood for almost an hour watching my honeybees work corn tassles.