Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

At least one fifth of Irish SMEs have direct exposure to property debt

  

At least one fifth of Irish SMEs (small & medium size firms) have direct exposure to property debt and these firms are almost twice as likely to default compared with a similar firm with no property debt according to research by the Central Bank economists.

Loan-level data show that at least 10% of firms with bank debt have exposure to property investment at the same bank, with this figure rising to 16% when including Buy-To-Let mortgages for a subset of the data.

Data on loan default suggests that property-related borrowing has had a detrimental impact on firms: SMEs with property-related borrowings have a loan default rate of 43%, compared to 23% for those without property exposure.

Fergal McCann and Tara McIndoe-Calder say that the performance of SME loans is of crucial importance from an economic recovery perspective. As identified in the CSO’s Business in Ireland report for 2011, 69% of the 1.2m private sector employees in Ireland, or 828,000 people, work in SMEs. Impairment rates of 25% suggest that there are a large number of employees potentially at risk as these companies may need to cut costs, downsize, or in some cases enter liquidation.

The economic letter says that property borrowing is highest are the business and administrative services, hotels and restaurants and the wholesale and retail sectors, where 30 to 40% of the outstanding bank loans are linked to property.

SME owners with loans for the main family residence are less likely to default compared with firms with no property debt.

SMES are defined as firms with less than 250 employees and whose turnover does not exceed €50m or whose annual balance sheet does not exceed €43m.

The SME lending volumes are dominated by the Real Estate sector, which accounts for €29.8bn of the €67.6bn of total lending. The Financial Intermediation sector is the second largest sector, with €11.6bn of credit outstanding. The economists remove the Real Estate and Financial Intermediation sectors, and plot the same data for the remaining sectors, which they refer to as comprising the “real economy.”

These are firms whose primary business activity does not relate to property investment.

The economists say that firms in the manufacturing and services sectors were least likely to invest in property, while firms involved in agriculture or construction were the most likely to take on property borrowings.

Larger firms were also more likely to be involved in property borrowing, with 25% of firms employing more than 50 people having property exposure, as opposed to 17% of micro firms defined as employing less than 10 people.

Half of Irish teenage drivers on phone talking to a parent

     

New research has found that over half of all teenagers who talked on the phone while driving were talking to a parent. Fewer than half were talking to a friend.

Talking on a phone or texting is regarded as distracted driving, but up to now it was not known that the main cause of distraction for young drivers is the call from home.

Using a mobile phone while driving makes you four times more likely to crash and driver distraction is now reckoned to play a part in up to 30% of all road collisions.

More than half of 408 teenage drivers who took part in a clinical study reported being on the phone with their parents. The findings were presented to the American Psychological Association’s annual convention in Washington.

“Teens told us parents really expected to keep track of them, and they are expected to answer the phone if the parent calls.

“In some cases, the parent might continue to call until the teen answers,” said psychologist Noelle LaVoie, whose research company conducts corporate and government studies.

The research included interviews with drivers from 31 states, aged 15 to18, who have learner permits or driving licences.

It sought to find out why they talk or text while driving. It found that 53% of teenagers who talked on the phone while behind the wheel talked to a parent and 46% talked to a friend. Text messages were more likely to go to a friend than to a parent.

“One of the things teens talked about is the fact that parents used their cell phone while driving,” Ms LaVoie said, adding: “It was just very surprising to see how directly parents are involved.”

“What we do know for sure is if parents would not call their teens while they’re driving, it would reduce teen distracted driving.”

In a separate distracted driving study presented to the National Psychological Association annual convention, researchers at colleges in Missouri and Virginia asked college students about their driving distractions.

A total of 89% made mobile phone calls while driving and 79% texted while behind the wheel, either sending or receiving.

“Younger drivers seemed overconfident in their ability to multi-task,” co-author Keli Braitman, an assistant professor of psychology at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri said.

Yesterday, Noel Gibbons, an Irish road safety officer, urged parents to try to ensure that they only call their children when they are not behind the wheel.

“The findings from this study are US figures, but we have no reason to believe that they would be any different here.

“It’s human nature for a parent for a parent to want to keep in touch with their children, but they should be careful not to do so while they are driving,” he said.

From 2008 to 2009, the number of penalty points issued for driving while using a mobile phone increased by 70% — from 44,624 to 75,040.

App that you cannot ignore

Since time began children have found inventive ways to ignore their parents as they in turn tried to find new ways get their attention.

The latest development in this long-running circle of parent-child conflict is Ignore No More, an Android app that allows parents to lock their children’s phones from afar with a password of the parent’s choosing.

After the parent does so, the only way that the child will be able to unlock the phone is to call the parent and ask for the password.

The app was created by Sharon Standifird, a mother who was fed up with being digitally brushed off by her teens. After coming up with the idea, she researched how to code an app and then spent months working with developers to bring it to reality.

Her son, Bradley, is only half-proud of his mother. “I thought it was a good idea,” he told CBS. “But for other people, not me.”

1,000 pubs could close in the next decade in Ireland

  

AS MANY AS 1,000 irish PUBS COULD be CLOSEd OVER THE NEXT DECADE, ACCORDING TO THE AUTHOR OF A NEW REPORT INTO THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THE DRINKS TRADE ON THE TOURISM SECTOR.

Anthony Foley of the Dublin City University Business School said 1,000 pubs, mostly in rural areas, closed between 2007 and the end of last year, sparked by the economic crash.

He said a similar number could be expected to close down over the next decade, as “no magic solution” was likely to be found to retain their economic viability.

“A reasonable figure would be in the past six years we have lost 1,000 pubs, in particularly bad economic circumstances,” he said.

“IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS I WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED IF WE LOST ANOTHER 1,000.”

He made his comments following the publication of a report, The Contribution of the Drinks Industry to Tourism, commissioned by the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland.

Using available data, it highlights how 80% of tourists surveyed by Fáilte Ireland said they most wanted to experience a visit to an Irish pub during their stay, while 83% of overseas visitors surveyed on leaving Ireland said they had experienced listening to Irish music in a traditional pub during their stay.

However, while the report highlights how the Irish pub is essentially the country’s top tourist attraction, spearheaded by the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, which attracted more than 1m visitors last year, the fate of the suburban and rural pub is less certain.

The publication of the report was backed by a seminar in Dublin, launching a new ‘Support Your Local’ campaign.

Mr Foley said: “The first thing we are going to do is recognise that we are not going to save all the pubs.”

Of likely pub closures he said: “That is going to continue — there is not going to be a miracle solution.”

However, he said government could reduce excise duties to give more pubs “a fighting chance” and also urged action to reduce the price gap between alcohol for sale in pubs, and alcohol for sale in off-licences.

He also said education was needed to change attitudes towards alcohol abuse and to allow pubs to be places where drinking soft drinks and coffee was not just “tolerated”.

Bart Storan, campaign manager for ‘Support Your Local’, said “punitive excise increases in the last two budgets” had harmed pubs and thereby the tourism sector and needed to be reversed.

“Pubs are closing and the small businesses that make up the industry are struggling to stay afloat,” he said.

The report also highlighted how the Jameson and Midleton Distilleries, among others, attract thousands of tourists every year.

The research showed that Co Longford had the fewest number of pubs, at 87, from a national network of 7,315. By contrast, Cork has 980 pubs.

The report also listed the range of events sponsored by drinks firms, although Mr Foley admitted that Arthur’s Day had come in for some criticism in recent years.

'Breastfeeding link to a mums' mental health state & postnatal depression

  

NEW MOTHERS WHO SUCCESSFULLY BREASTFEED THEIR BABIES ARE LESS LIKELY TO GET POSTNATAL DEPRESSION, NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS.

Expectant mothers who plan to breastfeed after they have given birth but are unable to are at the highest risk of developing the condition, experts found.

DEVELOPMENT

Around 13% of new mothers experience postpartum depression within 14 weeks of giving birth.

As well as posing serious mental health problems for the mother, it can have significant effects on the newborn’s cognitive, social and physical development.

Researchers said the effect that breastfeeding has on postnatal depression is not well understood, and they set out to investigate whether there is a link between the two.

The authors, from the UK and Spain, surveyed women who had 14,000 babies in the Bristol area during the 1990s when their children were two, eight, 21 and 32 months old.

They also examined whether the women suffered depression during their pregnancy so they could take into account previous mental health conditions.

Their study, in the journal Maternal and Child Health, found mothers who planned to breastfeed and who went on to do so were around 50% less likely to become depressed than mothers who had not planned to – and did not – breastfeed.

Those who planned to breastfeed but did not go on to do so were more than twice as likely to become depressed as mothers who had not planned to and did not.

“The lowest risk of postpartum depression was found among women who had planned to breastfeed and who had actually breastfed,” the authors wrote.

Neanderthals in Europe died out thousands of years sooner than some people thought

A STUDY REVEALS

  

THE NEANDERTHALS, OUR HEAVY-BROWED RELATIVES, SPREAD OUT ACROSS EUROPE AND ASIA ABOUT 200,000 YEARS AGO. BUT WHEN DID THEY DIE OUT, GIVING WAY TO MODERN HUMANS?

A new analysis of Neanderthal sites from Spain to Russia provides the most definitive answer yet: about 40,000 years ago, at least in Europe.

That is thousands of years earlier than some scientists have suggested, and it narrows the period that Neanderthals and modern humans overlapped in Europe.

“After that, we don’t think there are any Neanderthals on the continent anymore,” said Thomas Higham, the deputy director of the radiocarbon accelerator unit at the University of Oxford in England.

The findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, run counter to claims that pockets of Neanderthals persisted in Portugal, Spain and Gibraltar until just 30,000 years ago, even as modern humans spread outward.

“This is a very strong compilation,” said Chris Stringer, who leads research on human origins at the Natural History Museum in London and who was not involved in the research. “I think it kind of replaces the picture we had before.”

In 1995, researchers including Jean-Jacques Hublin, now at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, announced fossil evidence of Neanderthals living 30,000 years ago in a cave near the southern Spanish city of Málaga.

Dr. Hublin said he had changed his mind as better radiocarbon dates became available. “To me, I’m ready to buy the new date,” he said.

Modern humans migrated out of Africa at least 60,000 years ago, and anthropologists have been trying to figure out what happened when the two groups encountered each other.

One of the reasons some researchers think Neanderthals survived longer on the Iberian peninsula is that there are no signs of modern humans living there at that time.

A recent analysis of Neanderthal DNA shows that Neanderthals and modern humans not only crossed paths, but interbred. For non-African people living today, 1 to 4 percent of their genome has Neanderthal origins.

The genetics suggest that interbreeding occurred about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, somewhere in western Asia.

“You’ve kind of got two parts of the story,” Dr. Stringer said. “There must have been a western Asia coexistence, which included interbreeding. Then there was a later coexistence in Europe, for which we have no evidence of interbreeding but possible evidence of some cultural contact between the groups.”

Dr. Higham, the lead author of the Nature paper, and his colleagues took advantage of advances in radiocarbon dating in testing samples of bone, charcoal and shell from 40 sites, mostly in Western Europe. The dating method takes advantage of unstable, radioactive carbon 14 atoms produced from the bombardment of the atmosphere by cosmic rays from outer space. The radioactive carbon combines with oxygen atoms to form carbon dioxide, and plants and animals take up some of it as long as they are alive.

But when they die, they absorb no additional radioactive carbon, and the carbon 14 disappears over time. The ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12, which is stable, thus tells the age and can be used to date bones and artifacts up to about 50,000 years ago.

Contaminants containing younger organic molecules can distort the dating. Dr. Higham said just 1 percent of modern carbon infiltrating a 50,000-year-old fossil would make it look 7,000 to 8,000 years younger. The researchers prepared samples that would extract collagen in the bone and remove the contaminants.

“What we find is often the dates get older,” Dr. Higham said. “We’ve managed to chip away at these erroneous younger Neanderthal dates to come up with a more refined, and we think accurate, estimate for when Neanderthals disappeared.”

Dr. Higham said his team would like to expand the research to Neanderthal sites in Eastern Europe and across Russia to Siberia. It is possible that Neanderthals survived later in those areas.

Some of the conclusions are tentative because many of the sites do not have bones of the actual inhabitants, and paleontologists are still debating whether it was Neanderthals or modern humans who made the tools found at some sites.

“This gives us a framework, basically, which allows us to ask more interesting questions,” said William Davies of the University of Southampton in England, who wrote an accompanying commentary in Nature. “About what the tools might mean, how they were used, what they tell us about Neanderthal interactions.”

The findings so far indicate that Neanderthals did not disappear all at once.

“I think we’ll see patchy disappearance prior to extinction,” Dr. Higham said.  

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Saturday

Calm Frances Fitzgerald the woman who gets things done has already led major breakthroughs

    

At the launch of Fine Gael’s local election campaign, Frances Fitzgerald sent the candidates out to do battle on the doorsteps with a speech beginning with the declaration that most people get into politics in order to change things.

One week later, the newly appointed justice minister is being required to show she can not only make change but manage change as she takes over a portfolio in bumpy transition.

But if she had to sit herself down, self-administer smelling salts, or breathe deeply into a paper bag before saying yes to the appointment, it wasn’t showing yesterday.

Characteristically cool and unruffled, she kept a scheduled appointment, joining the Taoiseach visiting a community college for the start of the Youth2Work initiative, and returning directly to the front benches of the Dáil announcement of her promotion with a focused Fitzgerald Work demeanour.

M/s Fitzgerald, who will be 64 in August, was born Frances Ryan in Croom, Co Limerick, but her family moved to Kildare with their father who served in the army. Frances was educated at the Dominican College, Sion Hill, Blackrock, Dublin.

Leaving school, she knew what she wanted to do and went for it, graduating from University College Dublin with a degree in social science and taking a job as social worker at the now closed St Ultan’s Children’s Hospital on Dublin’s Charlemont St, which cared mainly for deprived inner city children.

It was during her early years in social work that she met her husband, the child and adolescent psychiatrist Professor Michael Fitzgerald, an expert in autism and Asperger’s.

They moved for a time to Britain, where Fitzgerald obtained a master’s degree in social work from the London School of Economics.

The couple now live in Castleknock, in the Dublin Mid-West constituency, in a suburb to which the overused description “leafy” truly applies. They have three sons, student Owen, accountant Robert, and stage actor Mark.

Back in Ireland, Fitzgerald worked in a number of hospital and social care settings and at the time of her first election to the Dáil, had most recently worked at the Mater Child and Family Centre in Ballymun.

She first got involved in politics through the Women’s Political Association, which she chaired from 1987 to 1989. But she really came to public prominence during her four-year stint as chair of the Council for the Status of Women — now the National Women’s Council of Ireland — from 1988 to 1992.

The final year of her term put her under the spotlight as she spoke out strongly on the need for reform of the laws on rape and treatment of victims following the Lavinia Kerwick case.

She was also vociferous on the right of women to make choices for themselves in the run-up to that year’s three-pronged abortion referendum, held on the same day as the general election.

Weeks before the election, Ms Fitzgerald was declared a candidate for Fine Gael in Dublin South East at the invitation of Garret FitzGerald, having also been approached by Fianna Fáil.

It was a breakthrough year for women in politics, with 20 female TDs elected, a massive leap on the previous record of 14; but with just 25 currently, the momentum has been slow since.

Ms Fitzgerald held the seat for 10 years, serving in opposition under John Bruton and Michael Noonan, firstly as party spokesperson on arts and then defence before putting her background to use in social, community, and family affairs, equality, and social welfare.

During this time, she was also elected to Dublin City Council, having lost her Dáil seat after Fine Gael’s slump in the 2002 general election.

She stood in the 2007 general election without success but returned to Leinster House via the Seanad and was made leader of the opposition as well as Fine Gael spokesperson on health and children.

It surprised nobody that when Fine Gael returned to power in 2011, Ms Fitzgerald not only got back into the Dáil but into Cabinet, being appointed the country’s first full children’s and youth affairs minister.

She has since scored notable successes, getting the children’s rights referendum passed, and establishing the Child and Family Agency to tidy up the baffling array of often overlapping and uncoordinated statutory agencies involved in child welfare.

She was also responsible for making creche inspection reports public, has action plans on childhood bullying and obesity, and generally speaks a lot of sense about youth drinking, crime, and pressure from social media.

She was a calm voice through last year’s abortion controversies and although she has attracted the ire and despair of many adopted people by moving slowly on releasing adoption papers, she rarely attracts criticism in either the public or political arenas.

But that could all change with her promotion to justice.

The Irish poor cut back on medicines because of drug levies

 

CHRONICALLY ILL PATIENTS ARE GOING WITHOUT NECESSARY MEDICINES BECAUSE OF THE €1 HIKE IN THE PRESCRIPTION LEVY.

Pharmacists have found that 38% of medical card holders say the increase makes them “think twice” before seeking prescriptions.

The issue will be discussed this weekend at the National Conference of the Irish Pharmacy Union in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, which is being attended by hundreds of pharmacists from across the country.

EXEMPTION: Incoming president Kathy Maher has called on the Government to introduce an exemption from the charge for vulnerable patients including the homeless, people with intellectual difficulties and those in palliative care and residential care.

The cost would not be huge, but the benefits to these patients would be, she said.

“As pharmacists, we are very concerned that the hike in the levy is having a significant impact on medicine usage,” she said.

“We need to make sure that vulnerable patients are encouraged to take prescribed medicines, not discouraged.

An independent behaviour and attitude survey of medical card holders found 38pc were reluctant to get all the medications on their prescription list because of the dispensing cost per item of €2.50. The fee was raised in the last budget.

M/s Maher said the main issue this weekend will be the expanded role of the pharmacist in health care.

“International evidence suggests that there is huge scope for pharmacists to expand their services and to help alleviate pressures elsewhere in the healthcare system with considerable benefits for patient welfare,” she said.

An expanded role, she added, could alleviate pressure on hard-pressed family doctors.

Patients with minor conditions or with chronic conditions could have their medications or their conditions reviewed by the pharmacist.

“Our members want to engage with the Government to see their role expanded,” added M/s Maher.

The prescription levy was introduced in 2010 and caused outrage.

When he took office in March 2011, Health Minister James Reilly promised to scrap the levy. Instead, it has increased from 50c to €2.50.

BUDGET: In the 2013 Budget alone, the fee underwent a three-fold increase to €1.50.

Patients with a medical card have to pay the fee for each item under prescription, though the cost is capped at €25 a month.

The total charge was originally capped at €10 a month, which increased to €19.50 when the fee was at €1.50.

It was expected the fee would raise €2m a month when it was introduced.

Plight of the Irish homeless people highlighted

 

Homeless families held a protest about Ireland’s housing crisis on last Friday.

With the backing of Paul Murphy MEP and the Anti-Austerity Alliance, who helped organise the Dublin-based protest, they called for rent controls, the building of new homes and an end to discrimination against people on rent allowance.

The protest was the brainchild of Gwen Connell and Tamara Kearns who have both had personal experience of homelessness.

Ms Connell, who was forced out of her home due to a 400 euro rent hike, said: “There is a massive housing crisis in the country at the moment, which is particularly severe in Dublin. Anyone who is trying to find rental accommodation will know that rents have increased massively over the last year or so. This and the lack of housing is resulting in families becoming homeless.

“It’s time for the Government to act. They are allowing landlords to abuse the system and are wasting huge amounts of money putting homeless families up in hotels. There are 90,000 people on the housing waiting list, we need the immediate building of social and affordable housing, release the Nama houses and to introduce rent controls.”

Ms Kearns, who was forced along with her family into a homeless unit after they were unable to keep up with their rent, said: “My family and I have been homeless since October last year. We could no longer afford to keep up the price of rent. We do not receive rent supplement and we are not entitled to help from the social welfare. Our lives have been turned upside down. Our children are finding it hard to settle and have nowhere to play. Our daughter has had to change school, we don’t know for how long.

“I contacted all the so called ‘right people’ and was left stunned by the lack of a decent response.”

Councillor Ruth Coppinger of the Anti-Austerity Alliance called on the Government to “act immediately” to solve the housing crisis while Mr Murphy claimed that cuts to housing budgets would not help families who are on the housing waiting list for years. He suggested that massive state investment is needed to provide homes.

‘When mothers think there not perfect' they feel lots of guilt

  

An Irish counselling charity has said there is no national policy on screening for post-natal depression in Ireland, and is holding a conference today to highlight this issue and others.

Nurture claims the Irish health system does not cater well for those with mental health issues around conception, pregnancy, childbirth or loss of a baby.

The group is holding an ‘Emotional Wellbeing Education Conference’ conference in Dublin today Friday to raise greater awareness of mental health issues.

  Some 42,000 women are diagnosed each year with mental illness and emotional trauma surrounding childbirth. An estimated 13% of Irish women suffer with post-natal depression, with women from all socio-economic backgrounds affected.

Senior lecturer at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at UCC Dr Patricia Leahy Warren carried out a study on social support for first-time mothers, which revealed tremendous pressure to be the “perfect mother”.

“Every mother wants to be the best mother, so they feel they have to put up this front,” she said.

“There’s a society pressure to get into size zero jeans, that you have to be breastfeeding, that you have to love your baby… When mothers don’t have these feelgood factors, they feel guilty and they feel they can’t tell anybody about it, because they feel so bad about it.”

Tangible Leadership Series a charter for a New & excellent Ireland

   

The Tangible Leadership Series is a speaker series that was established by Raymond Sexton in early 2009. The purpose and aim of the organization is to assemble a diverse collection of intellects and advocates to create an excellent Ireland.

Founded by Raymond Sexton (above right picture) the participants debate issues in a positive and pragmatic way. Tangible Leadership Series has now taken place from Crossmaglen in Northern Ireland to Sydney and yesterday Tangible New York took place in Rockefeller Plaza hosted by Irish American lawyer John C. O’Reilly of Squire Saunders.

In attendance were an eclectic mix of Irish diaspora. The main topic under discussion was the notion of the global Irish nation and what can be done to engage positively with Irish diaspora all over the world. The group heard presentations from Neil O’Hagan, Atlantic Youth Trust, Noreen Bowden, Global Irish, Eve Earley Empowering Change, Paul Finnegan CEO of New York Irish Center and Ann Murtagh of Fitzpatrick’s Hotel Group.

The Irish are a courageously global people. Ireland is both the earth wire for this people and the source of great pride as it took its place among the free nations of the earth, but one small island in the Atlantic can no longer limit our dreams and aspirations. In an era of serial crises, Ireland, beset with institutional and leadership problems, seeks a new way of moving

Combining the Irish in Ireland and the Irish Diaspora to create the Global Irish will unleash the power of a people of great art, creativity and energy. Moving beyond one small island frees us from parochialism and allows us to enhance our contribution to the world. To ignore the Irish outside Ireland is an act of wanton neglect.

To create the structures that guarantee the inclusion and participation of all the Irish in the life of the nation is to create the global Irish Republic. Once created, Irish emigration ceases; from that day, Irish people are always at home and Irish nationalism is replaced by Irish internationalism.

All Irish-born people are entitled to citizenship. The descendants of our emigrants together with immigrants to Ireland and others with a strong affinity to Ireland should be entitled to apply for citizenship of a global Irish Republic. All citizens should have appropriate representation in the houses of Irish government and the opportunity to contribute to developing Ireland’s role in the world. This global Irish Republic should be a non-ethnic, true republic in which we can all participate and take pride; it should not tolerate domination, segregation or sectarianism.

It is now time to find and work with the willing to develop the policies, projects and structures that will breathe life into Global Irish-ness. Through collaborative leadership we can create a culture of shared excellence throughout the Irish world. We can build a truly dynamic and sustainable economy that benefits all our people and powers the social services necessary for a humane society.

No longer content with mediocrity or with the worst of the ways of the past, with passivity, deference and dependence, we will apply the full range of skills, qualities and abilities of all our people to the challenges we face.

Honeybee population collapse is due to use of insecticides

SCIENTIST’S CLAIM

  

Another mystery has been solved: recent honeybee population collapses are due to insecticides, according to a team of Harvard researchers.

The mysterious decline of honeybees over the past several years has been blamed on everything from cell phone radiation to global warming, but the scientists now believe they have evidence that the collapse can be blamed primarily on two widely used insecticides. The study, out of Harvard’s School of Public Health, was published in the Bulletin of Insectology this week.

The recent dramatic decline of honeybee populations is largely due to a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, in which bees abandon their hives in the winter and eventually die. The researchers followed 18 colonies in Massachusetts, monitoring them for population levels and exposure to insecticides.

What they found is an indictment of modern agricultural practices: the populations with the worst outcomes were exposed to two kinds of neonicotinoid, a kind of insecticide, during an especially harsh winter. According to the paper, this is because the cold weather triggers a neurological response in bees exposed to the insecticide:

It is striking and perplexing to observe the empty neonicotinoid-treated colonies because honey bees normally do not abandon their hives during the winter. This observation may suggest the impairment of honey bee neurological functions, specifically memory, cognition, or behaviour, as the results from the chronic sub-lethal neonicotinoid exposure.

The findings could have big implications for industry: the European Union last year banned three kinds of neonicotinoid for a two-year trial, and the Harvard scientists’ findings may lead to more of the same. With increasing weather extremes and more need than ever to grow and pollinate healthy crops, the study spreads much further than just the honey industry. “Hopefully,” the study’s authors say of the findings, “we can reverse the continuing trend of honey bee loss.”