No way to bee
EPA knuckleheads hide info on pesticide implicated in colony collapse disorder
by Tom Philpott

So there's this insecticide called clothianidin that seems likely to be implicated in colony collapse disorder. By the EPA's own reckoning [PDF], clothianidin "has the potential for toxic chronic exposure to honeybees, as well as other nontarget pollinators, through the translocation of clothianidin residues in nectar and pollen." Over in Germany, the introduction of clothianidin coincided with a sudden bee die-off, so German authorities recently banned it. They reckoned that giving clothianidin a rest would provide researchers time to look deeper into it without further endangering bees. (France did the same thing with a related pesticide.)

Our own EPA must be preparing to do something similar, right? Well, no. That's not how our EPA works. Rather than banning clothianidin, EPA bureaucrats have busied themselves hiding information about clothianidin.

This, even though, according to NRDC, there's a "a growing consensus among bee specialists that pesticides, including clothianidin and its chemical cousins, may contribute" to colony collapse disorder. Frustrated by this intransigence in light of ongoing colony collapse, the NRDC has resorted to suing the EPA to force the agency to release the info.

LINK TO CON.