Understanding the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on bees is vital because of reported declines in bee diversity and distribution and the crucial role bees have as pollinators in ecosystems and agriculture. Neonicotinoids are suspected to pose an unacceptable risk to bees, partly because of their systemic uptake in plants, and the European Union has therefore introduced a moratorium on three neonicotinoids as seed coatings in flowering crops that attract bees. The moratorium has been criticized for being based on weak evidence, particularly because effects have mostly been measured on bees that have been artificially fed neonicotinoids. Thus, the key question is how neonicotinoids influence bees, and wild bees in particular, in real-world agricultural landscapes. Here we show that a commonly used insecticide seed coating in a flowering crop can have serious consequences for wild bees. In a study with replicated and matched landscapes, we found that seed coating with Elado, an insecticide containing a combination of the neonicotinoid clothianidin and the non-systemic pyrethroid β-cyfluthrin, applied to oilseed rape seeds, reduced wild bee density, solitary bee nesting, and bumblebee colony growth and reproduction under field conditions. Hence, such insecticidal use can pose a substantial risk to wild bees in agricultural landscapes, and the contribution of pesticides to the global decline of wild bees may have been underestimated. The lack of a significant response in honeybee colonies suggests that reported pesticide effects on honeybees cannot always be extrapolated to wild bees.

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The differential np scattering cross section has been measured at 96 MeV in the angular range c.m. ϭ74-180°at the neutron beam facility of the The Svedberg Laboratory in Uppsala. A subset of the data, covering 116-180°, has previously been published. The new, extended angular distribution has been normalized to the experimental total np cross section. Between 150°and 180°, the angular distribution is steeper than for most previous measurements and nucleon-nucleon potential predictions. At 180°, the difference amounts to about 10%, implying serious consequences because of the fundamental importance of this cross section. A value of the charged NN coupling constant consistent with our earlier result at 162 MeV has been extracted from the data.

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