Over seventy out of the top 100 human food crops, which supply about 90 percent of the world’s nutrition, are pollinated by bees. The steep decline in honey bees population has been fueling fear regarding food security, and spurring a flurry of research activity into the cause of their demise. Neonicotinoids, chemical compounds contained especially in insecticides, have been singled out by scientists as bee killers. Portland, Oregon, just became the eighth city in the United States to ban them in order to protect bees and other pollinators.