ontario posed to ban bee killing pesticides

just saw this article and thought i would pass it on to you guys
I'm sure that this will snowball fast in Canada and the US
http://www.ecojustice.ca/pressrelease/ecojustice congratulates ontario on being first in north america to restrict bee killing pesticides/

clothidinan , is the killer of bees , and also the active ingredient in poncho , seed co , use for corn root worm control ,, most deadly when corn is silking , the bees haul the vaporback to the hive and kill everything..

Its on a site called "ecojustice"... it must be true.

What are they thinking?Don't they know REAL farmers need the ability to kill every organism on Earth
except Corn and Beans?

I'm a small scale beekeeper but bigger than backyard hobbiest. I manage 30-50 hives and raise my own queens with plans to get into the nucleus hive sales game. I've seen first hand what happens at planting time to colonies close to row crop fields. For about a week or until the first rain after planting I have pretty high bee kills of forager population. You get literally piles of dead bees on the landing board and in front of a hive. The effects are lasting but not as drastic after it's rained once and washed the seed treatment dust off everything. I have dead brood (larvae and pupae) get taken out of the hive and dumped in front and the hives that aren't as hygenic (don't do as well cleaning up dead and sick bees and brood) you get disease problems with the dead bees in the hives. The winter survival rates for colonies place near row crops is DRASTICALLY different from those placed in strategic locations on the edges of river bluffs and residential areas. We're talking <10% losses as compared to roughly 50% losses. If you lost 50% of your crops every year because of the actions of your neighbors you'd be pretty ticked off.

This problem has been addressed in farm magazines. Most planters here in the Midwest use vacuum to hold the seeds against the metering disks. A fan or fans depending on the planter size sucks a little pesticide away from the seed and it ends up in the fan's exhaust and is blown into the air. It's carried by the talc or seed lubricant. Every time I start up my vacuum planter a cloud of dust comes out of the fan and I'm sure some seed treatment is in that dust. I'm sure changes are on the way.

By the way, 'real' farmers do not try to kill everything on the face of the earth except for corn and beans. A few farmers do get in a big huff and start spraying insecticide as soon as they see one bug on a plant whether it's economically feasible or not and I can name a neighbor of mine who does just that. As with every substance, some people abuse it. MOST do not. Only the very insensitive and unknowledgeable farmer doesn't care if beneficial insects are killed.

Farm magazines that depend on Industrial Ag to exist are propaganda mouthpieces for large ag companies.Sort of like expecting the New York Times to do an objective piece on the Tea Party.

Farm magazines definitely do print what the farmer likes to read and they do have to keep their advertisers happy. I have to chuckle when I read articles in the latest issues advising farmers on how to save their farming operation with the current low commodity prices. A couple of years ago the same magazines were advising on how to spend to avoid taxes. I tend to get on my soapbox about spending huge amounts of money, even going into debt to keep from spending a comparatively small amount of increased tax.

The farm magazine articles I have read concerning bees and insecticides have been very sympathetic to the bee keepers. There has been no mention of trying to sweep this under the rug. Killing of beneficial insects has also been cautioned about numerous times.