"Popular Pesticides Keep Bumblebees From Laying Eggs"

"Wild bees, such as bumblebees, don't get as much love as honeybees, but they should. They play just as crucial a role in pollinating many fruits, vegetables, and wildflowers, and compared to managed colonies of honeybees, they're in much greater jeopardy.

A group of scientists in the United Kingdom decided to look at how bumblebee queens are affected by some widely used and highly controversial pesticides known as neonicotinoids. What they found isn't pretty.

Neonics, as they're often called, are applied as a coating on the seeds of some of the most widely grown crops in the country, including corn, soybeans, and canola. These pesticides are 'systemic' — they move throughout the growing plants. Traces of them end up in pollen, which bees consume. Neonicotinoid residues also have been found in the pollen of wildflowers growing near fields and in nearby streams."

Dan Charles reports for NPR August 14, 2017.