The Soil Association today condemned Hilary Benn’s decision not to ban chemicals known to kill honey bees. In a letter to the Soil Association, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Efra) has rejected calls to prohibit use of the group of pesticides (Neonicotinoids) which have already been withdrawn in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia. There is now a mounting body of evidence from other European countries of the damaging effects these insecticides have on the neurological and immune systems of honey bees.

Hilary Benn’s decision coincides with the opening today of the laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects, and follows his announcement of £4.3 million of funding to try and save the British honey bee. 30% of British honey bees died during the 2007/8 Winter, mirroring massive losses of bees worldwide.

Peter Melchett, Soil Association Policy Director said: “While new funding and new research are welcome, it will not help if the Government ignores existing scientific evidence that has led other countries to ban chemicals known to kill bees.

“The Government prefers to blame ‘very wet weather’ and poor management by ‘less experienced beekeepers’ than to face their own responsibility to control bee-killing chemicals that have been used on up to 1.5 million acres of farmland in the UK.”

Others are less frightened of facing facts - the Co-op has just donated £150,000 for their 10-point ‘plan bee’ to save the bees, and has banned the use on their farms of all Neonicotinoid sprays. The Soil Association has today published a briefing paper that supports the Co-op’s position, and summarises the evidence of the damaging impacts of Neonicotinoids.

Bees are acutely susceptible to pesticides for a number of reasons. Honey bees have less detoxifying capacity in their bodies compared to some other insects, and this makes bees particularly susceptible to sub-lethal exposure to pesticides. Honey bees have also been found to have a higher number of the neurological receptors that are targeted by Neonicotinoids than other insects.

Honey bees have complex skills that are based on both innate and learned behaviour patterns in their quest for nectar and rely on the integrity of a nervous system where each synapse is crucial. So the disruption to the neurological signalling of honey bees by Neonicotinoids means that they become disorientated. The chemicals impair their communication, homing and foraging ability, flight activity, ability to smell (smell is also vital to bees’ communication systems), and learning. Neonicotinoids also weaken the bees’ immune system.

Honey bees do not live as individuals; they thrive as a colony. Therefore looking at what amounts to lethal doses of pesticide in individual bees, as is the case in most pesticide safety trials, does not tell us how neurological disruption will affect honey bees. This has been recognised by other European governments, but in the UK, with one of the least effective systems of pesticide safety in Europe, official advice is that Neonicotinoids are ‘safe’ to use.