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http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40382086
The most extensive study to date on neonicotinoid pesticides concludes that they harm both honeybees and wild bees. Researchers said that exposure to the chemicals left honeybee hives less likely to survive over winter, while bumblebees and solitary bees produced fewer queens.
The study spanned 2,000 hectares across the UK, Germany and Hungary and was set up to establish the "real-world" impacts of the pesticides. The results are published in Science [open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa1190] [DX]. Neonicotinoids were placed under a temporary ban in Europe in 2013 after concerns about their impact on bees. The European Commission told the BBC that it intends to put forward a new proposal to further restrict the use of the chemicals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @04:50AM
Tomatoes are self-fertile. The flower parts sort of crash into each other as they grow.
Bananas, potatoes, and sweet potatoes are all vegetatively propagated. There are flowers, but we don't give a damn if they are pollinated.
Vanilla is pollinated by people with electric toothbrushes. There is some sort of bug that could pollinate it, but that doesn't live in most of the places where we grow the crop.
There are non-bee pollinator animals, including bats.
And of course there is wind, as you mentioned. This happens to provide a huge portion of humanity's food. Grain is what feeds us, directly (starch, sugar, oil) and via meat.
We wouldn't want a world without bees or a world without insecticides. If we had to choose, feeding 8 billion people is far easier without the bees than it is without the insecticides.