Regarding the article about honeybee decline (“Honeybee decline causes concern on Vashon,” July 9), there is one thing that wasn’t mentioned.

Many “bee friendly” home garden plants sold at Home Depot, Lowe’s and other leading garden centers have been pre-treated with pesticides shown to harm and kill bees.

As one of the many new beekeepers on the island, I am concerned for my new friends and want them to be healthy. You can buy plants at these stores thinking you are helping the bees and unwittingly cause much harm. I am grateful to any store that agrees to stop carrying these lethal products and hope that they research the practices of their wholesalers as well.

If these chemicals are banned in many other countries and are proven to harm birds, bees and butterflies, wouldn’t it naturally follow that, perhaps, we don’t want them around ourselves?

The big corporations who profit from these poisons obviously have more clout than we do with our own government or they wouldn’t be able to keep poisoning us. These types of grass roots activities are all we can do, so let’s.

— Julie Hempton