Pollinators are an innocent casualty of the war on insects. Noted 50 years ago by Rachael Carson in her book Silent Spring, and continuing to arouse great concern in natural science and agriculture, the unintended biocide poisoning of wildlife persists. The insects, many of the bees, sustain agriculture and wildlands by collectively allowing crops and wild plants to reproduce. No pollinators would mean no seeds or fruit, and therefore the collapse of agriculture – and no plant reproduction in the wild means that many plants become locally extinct. The chemicals and pesticides used for seeds, plants, livestock and even pets find their way to non-target animals through the rain, air and the soil. We are at a crossroads at this moment, with new data now rapidly coming in. The well-known honey bees and bumble bees are failing to adjust to pesticides in the temperate zone. Yet we know nothing of most other pollinator groups and terribly little about the tropical part of the world. In biologically rich and productive regions, the “free” pollinators are taken for granted, because until now, they have lived alongside the human communities that rely upon them. Is it too late to change course? What can be done about the way agricultural biocides are tested or applied? Here we examine, in detail, how pesticides and bees are intertwined, and how our knowledge can be applied toward avoiding ecological disasters that are certainly threatening to take place.
