This page is a part of the corpus (Annexe 1) used to write Stéphane Foucart and neonicotinoids.
Here, I relate what the journalist said in his article « En hiver, les taux de pertes des abeilles ne devraient pas excéder 5 % ». All quotes, originally in French, were translated by me.
Gérald Arnold, director of research emeritus at the CNRS, was “one of the first groups of experts to study the causes of the decline of bees. For him, it would be necessary to “put everything back together” and “correctly retest the toxicity on bees of each pesticide currently in the environment”. “
Beekeepers have reportedly suffered “catastrophic” winter losses this year, possibly as high as 70% of colonies. They have been around 30% for many years. In a “normal” situation, the losses should be “5% to 10%”.
This excessive mortality is largely due to pesticides and, above all, to NNIs, which weaken or poison bees and hives by the cocktail effect. To combat this problem, it would be necessary “to re-examine everything, and to correctly retest the toxicity on the bee of each pesticide present today in the environment, taken in isolation, or in mixture. “