The bees started dying, noticeably, almost a decade ago in this country.

What would come to be known as Colony Collapse Disorder was already widespread in the U.S. and Europe, and in the spring of 2007 New Brunswick beekeepers reporter losses of 59 per cent of their bees over winter.

Last year, Ontario lost 58 per cent.

“We need bees if we are to continue to grow the food we eat,” says a senate report released this week, after hearing from 85 witnesses over eight months.

The report by the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry points out that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food, more than 70 are pollinated by bees.

Canada has 800 different species of wild bee and more than 8,700 commercial and hobby beekeepers managing over 694,000 bee colonies. Bee crop pollination is worth an estimated $2 billion a year.

Though neonicotinoid insecticides have borne the brunt of blame for killing bees – the European Union has put a two-year moratorium on the use of some use, Ontario wants to reduce by 80 per cent neonic use in soybean and corn crops, the city of Montreal just banned them  - the senate committee found that a combination of factors are involved.

“Witnesses identified a number of stressors that may explain these losses, namely weather and climate change, transportation of bees, diseases and parasites, disease and parasite treatments, a lack of floral diversity and neonicotinoid pesticides,” the report stated. “These factors likely interact and combine to cause the high levels of bee mortality.”

On neonicotinoid pesticides, the committee was circumspect.

Among nine recommendations made in the report, they urge the federal pest management regulatory agency complete its review of these insecticides “without delay.”

It was a missed opportunity, says Gwen Barlee, policy director of the British Columbia-based Wilderness Committee.

“Neonics were designed to kill insects in tiny doses, and that is exactly what they do, so it hardly a surprise that bees are dying by the hundreds of millions where neonic-treated crops are planted,” Barlee, one of the 85 witnesses to appear before the committee, tells Yahoo Canada News.

“The senate, as the body of sober second thought, could have been leaders on this issue, instead they relinquished that role and instead of meaningful action they dragged their feet and recommended further ‘monitoring’ and more research funding to evaluate pollinator health.”

There were some good recommendations, she says, but overall the report is “tepid, underwhelming and a missed opportunity to protect bees,” Barlee says.

Neonicotinoids, or neonics, are a class of insecticide with a chemical structure related to nicotine. They attack the central nervous system of insects, causing paralysis and death.

Introduced about two decades ago, today they are one of the most widely used insecticides in the world.

Numerous studies have linked neonics to bee mortality but a study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently cast doubt on those findings.

The Grain Farmers of Ontario say the report – and grain producers – recognize that neonics are one factor in the overall health of bee populations. But there are many factors that need to be considered, says Mark Brock, a member of the board of directors.

“What they did identify is there doesn’t seem to be this looming crisis or this apocalypse happening,” Brock tells Yahoo Canada News.

“We have some time that we can afford to make sure we do move forward and do it properly.”

The federal government has already put in place a bee health forum and is developing a national bee farm biosecurity standard, in addition to the re-evaluation of the neonics.

In addition to accelerating those measures, the senate committee recommends accelerating the regulatory process to reduce the number of conditional registrations granted to the neonicotinoids and more funding for long-term research.

The report also suggests lifting a ban on importing bees from the U.S. and continuous bee health monitoring, rather than the current four-year rotation.

They also recommend an audit of whether recommendations made in 2008 have been put in place.

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Photo Credit: Peter Shanks via Flickr