Not long ago, MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow observed that “the Minnesota Senate is a weirder place than I imagined it might be,” when covering its no-eye contact rule.

After yesterday's "gag amendment" on an ag policy bill, Bluestem thinks that the place is even more unfathomable than that--and we hope readers will let the Governor know that Minnesotans don't think bee deaths are a joke.

The Star Tribune's Josephine Marcotty reports in Minnesota Senate pulls back on pollinator protection:

With a little discussion and a lot of kidding around about bees, the Minnesota Senate passed a bill Thursday that says plants sold as “pollinator friendly” don’t need to be free of insecticides. The new language, which scales back bee legislation passed just last year, was included in the 2015 agriculture omnibus bill, which passed unanimously. The bill passed the House on Monday and now heads to Gov. Mark Dayton. Dayton’s office said Thursday that he’s aware of the issue and expects it to become part of end-of-session negotiations at the mansion on the state budget. The new provision modifies a law passed in 2014, which said that plant nurseries could not market plants as bee- and butterfly-friendly if they are grown with the controversial class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. That class of pesticides has been implicated in the global decline of honeybees and other insects. But the Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association successfully pushed back with a provision, added to the House agriculture bill, that will allow nurseries to use the label on plants as long as they are not toxic enough to kill an adult honeybee outright.

We had noted this was coming up in our post, What's a little poison between friends? Industry to have way with MN pollinator-friendly labeling.

But the Senators didn't stop at rolling back a modest pollinator-friendly consumer labeling law. They went farther, mocking the situation of bees during the same week in which KSTP and others reported More than 50 Percent of Minn. Bee Hives Died in Past Year.

At least the Minnesota House jumped in to object to Ron Erhardt's ridiculous schtick about the avian flu.

But bee deaths in the Senate? Check out the video:

Marcotty reports in the Strib article:

Then, in some late-session humor, Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, offered up a gag amendment. He said he understood that bees that visit a flower more than once are more likely to experience higher toxic exposures. So any bee that visited a flower more than five times “would be guilty of a felony,” he said to laughter around the Senate chamber.

In adopting House language to roll back pollinator protections, Latz felt it was appropriate to make light of ordinary Minnesotans' concern for bees.

At the Pioneer Press, Bill Salisbury writes in Senate kills time during high-level budget talks:

With little important business to do, the Minnesota Senate spent 10 minutes Thursday debating the number of times a bee can legally visit a flower. Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, proposed an amendment to a farm bill that read: “Any bee visiting one plant more than five times for the purposes of pollination is guilty of a felony punishable by up to five years of imprisonment and a mandatory fine of $10,000.” He was kidding, of course, but other senators couldn’t resist offering even sillier amendments to pass the time.

Bluestem thinks this episode--which the senate thought was oh-so-funny as they agreed to roll back protection for pollinators at the behest of special interests--illustrates the lobbyist-lined bubble that is the Minnesota legislature.

Tom Philpott at Mother Jones reports in Bee Die-Offs Are Worst Where Pesticide Use Is Heaviest:

The nation's honeybee crisis has deepened, with colony die-offs rising sharply over last year's levels, the latest survey from the US Department of Agriculture-funded Bee Informed Partnership shows. A decade or so ago, a mysterious winter-season phenomenon known as colony-collapse disorder emerged, in which bee populations would abandon their hives en masse. These heavy winter-season losses have tapered off somewhat, but now researchers are finding substantial summer-season losses, too. . .. Note that total losses are more than double what beekeepers report as the "acceptable rate"—that is, the normal level of hive attrition. Losses above the acceptable level put beekeepers in a precarious economic position and suggest that something is awry with bee health. "We traditionally thought of winter losses as a more important indicator of health, because surviving the cold winter months is a crucial test for any bee colony,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, University of Maryland entomologist and director for the Bee Informed Partnership said in a press release. But now his team is also seeing massive summer die-offs. "Years ago, this was unheard of," he added. And here's a map a map depicting where losses are heaviest: The survey report doesn't delve into why the nation's bees are under such severe strain, noting only, as USDA entomologist and survey co-coordinator Jeffrey Pettis put it, "the need to find better answers to the host of stresses that lead to both winter and summer colony losses." A growing weight of science implicated pesticides—particularly a ubiquitous class of insecticides called neonicitinoids, as well as certain fungicides—as likely factors. . . . .

Check out the maps of pesticide use in the Mother Jones article, and you'll get a sense of the power of the agrichemical industry to turn the brains of Minnesota state senators into complete piles of nincompoopery.

TELL THE GOVERNOR BEE PROTECTION IS NO JOKE



We're hearing that some staffers in the Governor's office are a-okay with a soft approach on the lobbyists' victory here, and that there will be talks with the stakeholders---and we don't have to tell you how that will work out.

But we're hoping that readers will call the Govenor's Office at Telephone: 651-201-3400

Toll Free: 800-657-3717 (Greater Minnesota) and request that he task his staff with being the advocates for pollinators--and Minnesota citizens who don't think bee death is a laughing matter. Rather, it's an agricultural and environmental crisis.

Update: Some readers are telling us that they're unable leave voicemail messages. If you encounter that situation, use this link to a form from the Governor's website to send your comments to Governor Dayton and Lt. Governor Smith. Be polite (both Dayton and Smith prize civility) but firm.

Photo: Bees, which deserve more than stupid puns from senators who refuse to take citizens' concerns about pollinators seriously.

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