Bees and the Silent Spring

Yesterday's front page in the Independent on the poisoning of bees by neonicotinoids was timely for me as I'm re-reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

While life in the world of pesticides has moved on in the 50 years since Carson's book helped awaken the world ecology, the problems of pesticides keep coming back to haunt us. The saga of colony collapse is the latest in the long line of problems that seem to get ignored by big chemical companies.

It is ridiculous that a quarter of all arable land in the UK was sprayed with this stuff. No wonder the bees are suffering.