The U.S. government have admitted for the first time that bees are dying in record numbers due to pesticide poisoning, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) say they have known this for at least 20 years. Despite a decade of pressure from environmentalists and beekeepers to deal with the bee crisis and curb the use a harmful insecticide causing the bee deaths, the EPA has fought against the public pressure until recently. Motherjones.com reports: Marketed by European chemical giants Syngenta and Bayer, neonics are the most widely used insecticides both in the United States and globally. In 2009, the agency commenced a long, slow process of reassessing them—not as a class, but rather one by one (there are five altogether). Meanwhile, tens of millions of acres of farmland are treated with neonics each year, and the health of US honeybee hives continues to be dismal. The EPA’s long-awaited assessment focused on how one of the most prominent neonics—Bayer’s imidacloprid—affects bees. The report card was so dire that the EPA “could potentially take action” to “restrict or limit the use” of the chemical by the end of this year, an agency spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement. Reviewing dozens of studies from [...]