Tainted honey spells more trouble for bees. Are we losing the battle to save them?
by Larry Powell Three out of every four samples of honey tested in a global survey released this week, were tainted with neonicotinoids, the world's most widely-used insecticide. A five-member Swiss research team tested almost two hundred honey samples from every continent except Antarctica (including several remote islands), for the five main compounds in the "neonic family" of pesticides (acetamiprid, clothianidin, imidacloprid, thiacloprid, and thiamethoxam). At least one of those compounds was found in 75% of all samples tested. (Fourty-five percent contained two or more, while ten percent showed traces of four or five.) The levels detected were considered too low to pose a risk to people who actually eat honey. But, for adult bees, honey is their only food in winter and when flowers aren't blooming. While "neonics" may not always kill the pollinators outright, they've been shown to have "sub-lethal