Report: Bill could bring honeybee disaster

WASHINGTON, April 19 (UPI) -- The farm bill being negotiated in the U.S. Congress could speed the extinction of honeybees and other pollinators by encouraging crops in areas now wild.

There are a number of suspects in the search for the cause of colony collapse disorder, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. They include pesticides designed to be safe for humans that disrupt insects' nervous systems and monoculture, in which huge fields devoted to one crop deprive insects of food for most of the year.

The final bill is expected to provide incentives to grow grain in high prairie areas where farmers are now paid to keep land wild, the Chronicle said. Many beekeepers send their hives to the Dakotas to rest when crops that need pollinating in California are not in bloom.

Jim Ringelman, director of conservation for Ducks Unlimited in North Dakota, said the result could be the loss of much of the protected land to agriculture. He said the result could be a disaster for native pollinating insects and birds as well as bees.

"Most birds won't use cropland to reproduce in," he said. "It's just not habitat that works for them."