The May 2016 State Legislatures Magazine Stateline: Legislative News From Around The Nation includes this item:
2. Sting Operation
Call it a honey of a deal. Two Minnesota beekeepers whose hives were damaged by pesticides from a nearby farm received compensation from the state under a system created by the Legislature two years ago. Representative Rick Hansen (D), who sponsored the bill that created the system, says the result for the beekeepers was a national first and could serve as a precedent in a larger battle against neonicotinoids, a controversial group of insecticides thought to be connected to the decline of bees and other pollinating insects. “This is the first action of any state, a finding of fact, that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees,” he said.
Stateline is published by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The Star Tribune's Josephine Marcotty reported on the case in In win for beekeepers, Minnesota links insecticide to damaged hives:
In the first test of a landmark environmental law, Minnesota has compensated two beekeepers whose hives were severely damaged last spring by toxic dust that drifted off the fields of a neighbor planting corn.
Investigators from the state Department of Agriculture confirmed, in effect, what beekeepers have been saying for years: Even when used according to law, the most widely used class of insecticides in the world are acutely toxic to honeybees under routine circumstances.
Even more importantly, said state Sen. Rick Hansen, the finding marks a precedent in the ongoing national fight over the controversial group of insecticides called neonicotinoids, which have been implicated in the decline of bees and other wild pollinating insects.
“This is the first action of any state, a finding of fact, that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees,” said Hansen, who sponsored the 2014 law that created the compensation system. “Once you have a state compensating people for a loss, it’s real.”
An official with Bayer CropScience, which makes the insecticide, said he is not familiar with the case and could not comment. . . .
Read the rest at the Strib.
Photo: Honeybees.
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