As they leave their hives, the bees get coated with a beneficial fungus that they spread to plants, which protects things like strawberries from disease.
More than 500 million bees were found dead by beekeepers in Brazil over a three-month period earlier this year. Now, scientists are linking these mass bee die-offs to an increase in the use of pesticides.
Neonicotinoids, one of the most popular insecticides in agricultural use worldwide, has often been claimed as a major factor in commercial bee colony collapse.
Agriculture in the United States has become 48 times more toxic to insects over the last 25 years, largely due to a controversial, widely used class of pesticides that are particularly harmful to bees.
Hundreds of bus stops in Utrecht, Netherlands, have been covered in plants over the past few months in an effort to improve the community’s biodiversity and air quality.
The brain-harming metal is discharged directly into the river and carried to it on air currents. Some argue authorities are doing too little to stop both routes of pollution.
