[whyenot]

We already have many, many, many pesticides that do this, but neonicotinoid pesticides are really useful for a couple of reasons:

1. Very low toxicity to mammals. Neonics are used in flea collars, and to kill lice in farm animal bedding materials for this reason. Neonoics are also very safe to apply by human applicators.

2. Neonics are systemic pesticides in plants. They are absorbed into the plant and provide long term protection against insects pests. Less pesticide drift, less danger to applicators, BUT it also gets into floral nectar, causing problems for bees and possibly other insect pollinators.

3. Neonics are cheap. I can buy 5lbs of Marathon 1G, a neonic pesiticde for about $80. Something more targeted, such as Rycar is more than $500 for a similar quantity, and Rycar is not systemic, it has to be applied several times.

There is a move towards more targeted pesticides such as Rycar, Floramite, Kontos, etc. but they are expensive, and in many cases more difficult to use. That's the darn problem. Neonics are terrible for bees, but for agriculture, they are really useful and there is no clear replacement.

[Joof]

Ok, so lets make bees more resistant to Neonics.

:P

[mintplant]

And then force it through the population with a gene drive? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive

I'm sure there won't be any negative consequences ;)

[Joof]

Impossible! Outside of gene drives (which sound a little dangerous...), I really want to do some simple CRISPR projects (I have a specific idea in mind; although not for hacker news ;). Too bad you need a lab, even if it's probably a good idea to limit hobbyists.

[whyenot]

the non-native bees shipped around the country (US) and that are the primary pollinators in agriculture appear to already be fairly resistant to neonics.

[tptacek]

Honeybees are themselves non-native! They're an introduced species.

[mvidal01]

Which species of bees are you referring to?

[cmdrfred]

I say bring back nicotine sulfate.

[StanislavPetrov]

>Very low toxicity to mammals.

What is the difference between killing us directly and destroying the food web and ecosystem we depend on to survive?

[whyenot]

* Most of the food crops we depend on both directly and indirectly are grasses and are wind pollinated (corn, wheat, etc.).

* There is no evidence of neonics disrupting food webs or destroying ecosystems. How do you even "destroy" an ecosystem? that doesn't make any sense, at least with an ecologist's definition of "ecosystem."

There has also been a coevolutonary arms race between plants and insect pests going back millions of years and many plants contains chemicals many times worse than any pesticide used on crops.

[pvaldes]

> How do you even "destroy" an ecosystem?

Easy. Wiping the key groups, like top predators or pollinators

In any case, destroying is not the right verb here, "changing" the ecosystem would be a better fit. Often for worse.

> There is no evidence of neonics disrupting food webs

There's plenty of evidence. This article is just one more. No wild bees and other pollinators -> no apples, plums, peaches, pears, onions, lattice, pumpkins, carrots, peas, peanuts, caffe, honey... I think that this qualifies as a case of "food web in trouble".

> Most of the food crops we depend on both directly and indirectly are grasses and are wind pollinated (corn, wheat, etc.)

Yes human diet is mostly based in cereals. The problem is that a lot of areas in N of Europe, Russia USA or South America aren't suitable to temperate or tropical cereals like corn or rice, because weather. Thus they need either spend gas for bringing cereals to the population, or rely on potatoes, apples, cabbages and other crops that stand frost and short summers. The 'big' cereals can be also difficult in desertic or high mountain areas, because they need a lot of water and soil is too poor. Legumes and other desertic crops (fruit tree cacti for example) are awesome in this cases. If you use all the water in culturing lattice, the wild organisms suffer obviously.

[tudorw]

Destroy is fine,lots of ecosystems collapse if you remove one link in the chain, they don't have time to evolve a solution. They just die.

[tptacek]

Can you present any evidence that neonics are destroying the food web? The difference might be "toxicity of legacy pesticides is a real concern, and destruction of the food web from neonics is fictitious."