[ti:Study Insecticide Is Killing Wild Bees] [ar:Marsha James] [al:Agriculture Report] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]From VOA Learning English, this is the Eviornment and Science Report. [00:07.22]A new study says a widely-used insecticide [00:12.61]is damaging wild bee populations. [00:16.10]Wild bees are important, [00:19.63]because they pollinate crops and wild plants. [00:23.82]Environmentalists in the United States [00:27.17]and Europe say chemicals called neonicotinoids [00:31.47]are causing a drop in the number of bees. [00:34.61]These insecticides are among the most commonly-used worldwide. [00:41.31]Farmers often use seeds treated with the insecticides. [00:46.54]The chemicals target insects that eat crops, [00:50.87]and they do not spread beyond the field. [00:54.21]But they do get into pollen and nectar, [00:58.04]which is where the bees come into contact with them. [01:01.68]Maj Rudlof is a researcher at Lund University in Sweden. [01:07.53]She led the neonicotinoids study. [01:10.97]She and other researchers studied bees in fields. [01:15.94]Half of the fields were grown from seeds treated with neonicotinoids. [01:22.03]The other half was grown with seeds that were not treated. [01:26.55]She spoke about the results of the study [01:30.00]in a video released by the journal Nature, which published it: [01:34.89]"The most dramatic result we found [01:38.13]was that bumblebee colonies almost didn't grow at all [01:43.38]at the treated sites compared to the controlled sites." [01:46.31]She says there were about half as many wild bees per square meter [01:52.25]in treated fields as in untreated ones. [01:56.00]Dennis vanEngelsdorp is an entomologist, [02:00.83]a scientist who studies insects. [02:03.42]He works at the University of Maryland. [02:06.61]He was not involved with the research on neonicotinoids. [02:12.03]But, he says banning the chemicals may not be the answer. [02:17.06]He says they are not as bad as other insecticides. [02:21.50]He spoke to VOA on Skype. [02:24.78]"In many cases, (neonicotinoids) are actually the safest alternative [02:29.17]and so by banning it, [02:30.72]what you're doing is forcing farmers to use other products [02:33.37]that may either be just as bad or worse." [02:36.85]He says farmers often use the chemicals too much, [02:41.75]and that may be hurting bees. [02:44.66]Mr. vanEngelsdorp thinks farmers [02:48.65]might not need to stop using neonicotinoids completely. [02:53.55]He says the chemicals should be used more sensibly, [02:57.64]or, in other words, only when necessary. [03:01.39]The same chemicals are thought to be linked to a problem with European honeybees ¨C [03:08.22]the bees kept by farmers to pollinate crops. [03:12.41]The problem is called Colony Collapse Disorder. [03:17.05]The worker bees from a beehive, or colony, suddenly disappear. [03:23.43]Farmers do not see the dead bees around the hive. [03:28.74]A United States Department of Agriculture report [03:33.96]included information about the effects of neonicotinoids. [03:39.00]It said the chemicals make the bees more likely to become sick. [03:44.57]The bees cannot fight the viruses that commonly affect them. [03:50.47]And that's the VOA Learning English Environment and Science Report. [03:56.50]I'm Marsha James. [03:58.70]¸ü¶àÌýÁ¦Çë·ÃÎÊ51voa.com