The EPA has approved the use of a powerful pesticide that the agency’s own research determined was lethal to honeybees.
The agency’s approval of the insecticide sulfoxaflor, manufactured by the Dow Chemical Corporation's Corteva Agriscience, comes just days after the USDA acknowledged that it has stopped tracking the honeybee population. The agency’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) collected statistics on the number of honey bee colonies and U.S. honey production for decades, to help track honey bee mortality. Lack of data going forward will make it difficult to gauge the effect of sulfoxaflor use on the been population.