>Peter, have you observed survival of non Apis pollinators
after the spraying of the other classes of insecticides?

The biggest problem was with bumblebees when it was legal to spray Hostathion from the air.  This was done particularly on OSR and the Midlands (a big OSR growing region) lost huge numbers; those were the days when our spray liaison officer was very important to us.  The law was changed so that Hostathion could only be sprayed from the ground, and then its use was discontinued.  The bumblebees recovered well, probably because there are so many in towns and villages and they were able to re-colonise the countryside. I have no data on other species but I suspect that they were affected similarly - we certainly had plenty living in urban gardens.

My wife and I moved into the countryside nearly three years ago to an area with mixed farming, woodland, and quite large areas that have been planted with trees in recent years (the Heart of England Forest Project); there is OSR, but not as much as in other areas where we have apiaries.  At home we are now seeing very large populations of bumblebees, solitary bees, hornets and numerous other unidentified flying insects.

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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