EPA proposes pesticide restrictions to protect honeybees

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed label restrictions this week to ban the use of pesticides that are acutely toxic to honeybees when fields are in bloom and under honeybee-pollination contract.

This comes less than two weeks after the White House unveiled the National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators.

This proposed EPA rule stands to impact farmers significantly by limiting nearly all commonly used insecticides and many herbicides while crops are in bloom.  

The Pollinator Health Task Force has released the White House report, which is 58 pages long and includes the four themes of the Presidential Memorandum from June 2014. The Memorandum was titled “Creating a Federal Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators.” The themes include expanding public outreach and education programs, focusing on research to prevent and recover from pollinator losses, creating public-private partnerships and improving habitats for pollinators.

The report also includes a “Pollinator Research Action Plan,” which will focus on the conditions that harm pollinator habitats and populations, including pathogens and pests.

The findings from the task force are meant to heighten the science and strategy that are currently in place for guiding the government’s regulatory and land-management decisions.