Welcome to our Pollinator Field Note Series! Offshoots released a Pollinator Action Plan with the City of Somerville, in collaboration with bee scientist and expert Nick Dorian. Continue reading to take a sneak peek into our conversation about embracing the wild!

___________________________________________________________________________________

Wilderness Over Pesticides

Pollinators are essential to ecosystems and food production, yet their populations are declining due to habitat loss, pesticide use, invasive species, light pollution, and climate change. Urban development and agricultural expansion have fragmented once-diverse landscapes, replacing them with lawns and non-native plants that offer little value to pollinators.

These animals rely on connected habitats for nectar, pollen, nesting materials, and host plants, often traveling hundreds of yards or more to find resources. Ensuring connectivity between habitat patches is critical for their survival.

Pollinator gardens in urban areas can help restore these connections while also engaging communities. When people appreciate and interact with pollinator-friendly spaces, they are more likely to support conservation efforts, creating a cycle that benefits both pollinators and people.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Find Neonicotinoid-Free Plants for your Garden!

The way habitat areas are maintained is a critical step to embracing the wild. In many cases, we can do more for our pollinators by doing less, including refraining from using pesticides and chemicals to maintain our gardens.

Pesticide use is a major contributor to insect decline worldwide (Sánchez- Bayo & Wyckhuys, 2019) and should be avoided whenever possible. Pesticide is an umbrella term that includes insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides, which can each cause harm to insects (Xerces, n.d.). One of the most popularly used insecticide classes in the United States, neonicotinoids (neonics), is a “systemic” synthetic chemical. Once sprayed onto any part of a plant, it is absorbed into the plant tissue and spreads throughout the entire organism. This makes all parts of the plant highly toxic to insects that attempt to collect nectar, pollen, or other resources from the plant (Hopwood et al., 2016). Insects that come into contact with a plant treated with neonicotinoids experience “uncontrollable shaking and twitching followed by paralysis before eventually dying” (Lindwall, 2022). Alarmingly, it was discovered in the last decade that the standard neonic levels of just one corn seed have enough chemical active ingredients to kill over 200,000 bees (European Food Safety Authority, 2013). The extended presence of neonicotinoids in plants raises a cause for alarm because the plant remains toxic long after application, killing any insects that come in contact with it. Importantly, 51% of plants labeled for sale as bee-friendly species at major U.S. retailers are found to contain toxic levels of neonicotinoids at levels substantially higher than the maximum approved level for agricultural crops (Friends of the Earth, 2014; Malfi, 2024). In addition, the extended presence of active chemicals in pesticides results in contamination of water systems due to water runoff carrying soil particles exposed to and imbued with neonics (Lindwall, 2022). It is beneficial for many reasons to avoid using all pesticides, but especially neonicotinoids, as well as avoiding purchasing plants that have been treated with neonicotinoids. Ask your local plant nursery what they carry that is neonic-free.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Avoid pesticides!

Avoid using pesticides in the landscape and try to purchase plants from growers who have pledged not to use them. Most seed suppliers will include information on any pre-treatment on the product information. However, sourcing live plants without pre-treatment of pesticides can be challenging and requires asking the grower to confirm. If a perennial plant has been pretreated with pesticides, it is best to snip off the blooms in the first year to avoid harming any insects that visit while the pesticides are still present. Trees and shrubs may continue to have systemic pesticides for several months to years in their biomass, so sourcing from growers that do not use pesticides is best (Xerces, 2021).

Pesticides are often considered an integral part of traditional garden and lawn management, especially when invasive species removal is involved, but there are other options available that limit harm to pollinators, wildlife, and humans. The least impactful option is to use mechanical removal, or hand-pulling, of any weeds. While labor-intensive, this process avoids the use of potentially harmful chemicals. In some cases, such as invasive species removal, the benefits of carefully applied herbicides may outweigh the risks. Pesticides should only be applied with caution by a licensed professional and following all manufacturer recommendations.

Broad-scale use of pesticides to manage mosquitoes or ticks is commonplace. Remember that these treatments will harm other insects (and the food web) too. Consider alternative approaches to control, such as eliminating standing water (to break the mosquito breeding cycle), mowing or avoiding the edges between wooded areas and lawns (to minimize tick habitat), or other alternative approaches recommended by our local UMass Extension service. (https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvae126)

___________________________________________________________________________________

This research was a part of Offshoots’ research project in partnership with the City of Somerville and field scientist, Nick Dorian, to create the Somerville Pollinator Action Plan (SPAP). Citations and links to academic articles can be found in the SPAP document. To learn more about the action plan, visit our SPAP projects page here.

Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, Kris A.G. Wyckhuys, Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers, Biological Conservation, Volume 232, 2019, Pages 8-27, ISSN 0006-3207, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.01.020. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320718313636)

Lindwall, C. (2025, June 11). Neonicotinoids 101: The effects on humans and bees. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Retrieved July 17, 2025, from https://www.nrdc.org/stories/neonicotinoids-101-effects-humans-and-bees

Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. (2018, May). How neonicotinoids can kill bees: The science behind the role these insecticides play in harming bees (2nd ed., revised & expanded) [PDF]. Xerces Society. Retrieved July 17, 2025, from https://www.xerces.org/sites/default/files/2018-05/16-022_01_XercesSoc_How-Neonicotinoids-Can-Kill-Bees_web.pdf

European Food Safety Authority. (2013). Conclusion on the Peer Review of the Pesticide Risk Assessment for Bees for the Active Substance Thiamethoxam.” EFSA Journal, vol. 11(1), 3067. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2013.3067.

Friends of the Earth. (2104). Gardeners Beware. Bee-Toxic Pesticides Found in ‘Bee-Friendly’ Plants Sold at Garden Centers across the U.S. And Canada. In Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Earth.

Malfi, R. (2024, March 7). Somerville Pollinator Action Plan Expert Interview [Zoom interview]