But last week the Belgian government -- under fierce pressure from industry lobbyists -- handed out exemptions that will allow corporations like Bayer to continue selling their toxic pesticides.

We all depend on bees to pollinate our food. Without them, the delicate balance of nature and food production, that’s developed over millennia, would fall into disarray. But Europe’s bees are dying, and there’s a mountain of evidence that toxic neonicotinoid pesticides kill bees.

That’s why European Governments came together to ban three of the worst and most widely used neonics.

But the pesticide industry is furious that people-power, beekeepers and environmental common-sense won the argument. And since the ban they’ve gone into overdrive to find ways around it and protect their profits.

Now they’ve managed to persuade the Belgian government to misuse rules that allow some exemptions to the ban to be given out in emergency situations -- even though there’s no emergency!

People-power won the Europe-wide ban on neonics, and it’ll be up to us to defend it too. Our politicians know how important bees are to voters -- it’s how we persuaded them to vote for the ban in April this year.

Together, let’s show the Belgian government, and any other country considering following them, that bees are still a top issue for us -- and that we won’t stand for politicians that put profits over bee-health.

Six other countries have already handed out exemptions; Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia and Romania, but Belgium is the first country in Western Europe to break the ban. Hundreds of SumOfUs members have already chipped in to place adverts supporting the ban in Belgium, Poland and Romania -- now can you help increase the pressure on Belgium by signing our huge, media-grabbing petition?

Helping to convince EU governments to ban bee-killing pesticides is just one of the amazing things that SumOfUs members like you have done to protect the bees.

Hundreds more SumOfUs members have chipped in so that the Bee Defender Alliance -- a group of independent scientists and beekeepers -- can take on Bayer in court and defeat the pesticide giant’s latest legal challenge to the ban. Bayer already lost its first attempt -- and now beekeepers are preparing to meet them in the European Court of Justice and beat them again.

The bees need us more than ever. Unless European countries respect the ban on bee-killing pesticides, it won’t be worth the paper it’s written on. So please sign the petition now, and tell the Belgian government to protect our bees.