The Green Party has tabled a petition in Parliament calling on the Government to protect New Zealand’s honeybees.

The six and a half thousand signature petition wants to suspend the use of a group of pesticides known as neo-nicotinoids which, the Greens say, are highly toxic to bees and are implicated in bee deaths around the world.

Green Party food spokesperson Sue Kedgely says New Zealand needs to take urgent steps to ensure its honeybees do not suffer from mass die-offs, as is happening in other parts of the world in a phenomenon known as colony collapse.

Ms Kedgley says that demise would  put New Zealand’s entire food chain in danger. She says there was huge support for honeybees. It only took a month to raise the six and a half thousand signatures.

“There was great enthusiasm for it, because there’s huge concern out there; and we got 6 and half thousand in a month or so which we thought was pretty good going.

“It will now be the local government environment committee that will be going to be continuing to look at the issue, and will hopefully make some good recommendations to government, about trying to protect and improve the health of our bees, to make sure that we don’t get the mass bee die-off that’s happening in other parts of the world.”