Minnesota links insecticide to damaged hives | Animals | Forums

What I don't understand is why the state would compensate them and not the applier or the company, sounds like a stupid law for dispersing tax payers money

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.”

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