Beekeepers and environmentalists abuzz with news that pesticides harm the bee population.

The bee population has been dropping. This has worried the scientific community greatly, as bees as essential to the ecology of our world. It is estimated by the UN in a 2011 study that bees and other pollinators do the equivalent to about $203 billion of work for the human economy.
The effects of pesticides were analyzed in a study at the University of Stirling by comparing a bee colony exposed to a low dose of pesticide to a control bee colony group.
Another study, done at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research in Avignon tested the effects of low doses of pesticides on bees homing systems. The bees that were exposed were 2 or 3x more likely to die away from their nest, an effect that is claimed to be due to their inability to find their way back to their nest.

In March, a group of beekeepers teamed up with environmental organizations to file an emergency petition that the federal government ban certain pesticides for the benefit of the bee population. The EPA stated that is has found no evidence that pesticides are harming bees, but will accelerate a current study being done so that it can publish its findings by 2018.