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Comment by alionski | Hacker News Reader

I wish the industry and governments spent an equal amount on battling the decline of wild bees. When they say "save the bees", it's not honeybees they mean. Honeybees are cattle.

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North American native bees tend not to form giant eusocial colonies and are less vulnerable to pathogens; their biggest threat (after habitat loss, of course) may in fact be honey bees.

Yeah, it really gets me irritated when people seem to think that honey bee colonies are something to be celebrated from an ecological perspective.

I'm not saying anyone is doing 'enough' but neonicotinoid bans in EU are perhaps the most effective and 'costly' thing done so far. In Not that costs borne by poisoners

The EU neonicotinoid ban seems potentially very useful but do we have data that it actually was effective?

I mean, even if it wasn't effective for the bees - it certainly helped human health with regards to breast cancer and neurological damage in children [0]. If you scroll to the bottom of the article, you'll find links to the studies that are source to this claim.

[0] https://www.pan-europe.info/blog/acetamiprid-brain-toxic-neo...

Edit: typo

Neonicotinoid are just analogs of nicotine but with less affinity for mammals aka less toxic(higher LDL). If you’re worried about the effects of nicotine(eg: cancer,ADHD in kids), don’t eat anything from the nightshade family like eggplants, potatoes, peppers or tomatoes. There’s more nicotine in your mashed potatoes than neonicotinoid residue on your vegetables.

I couldn't find any source to confirm that acetamiprid is naturally in nightshade. If you know of any for this specific compound, would you please link them?

Beside the point you were making, but is there an established link between nicotine consumption and cancer, without smoking? What do you mean by "effects of nicotine - ADHD in kids"?

he means vaping makes kids less compliant and listen less to what hes saying

I may miss something but the linked studies say that neonicotinoids are bad (which I 100% believe), but don't actually say anything about the effectiveness of the bans.

E.g. it is possible EU agriculture replaced these pesticides with different ones which are just as bad, or with larger amounts of different ones.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have banned these substances, I'd just like to know if we have data showing this was actually useful.

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