The Year the Monarch Didn’t Appear
This year, for or the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead. They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.
“It does not look good,” said Lincoln P. Brower, a monarch expert at Sweet Briar College.
It is only the latest bad news about the dramatic decline of insect populations.
Another insect in serious trouble is the wild bee, which has thousands of species. Nicotine-based pesticides called neonicotinoids are implicated in their decline, but even if they were no longer used, experts say, bees, monarchs and many other species of insect would still be in serious trouble.
That’s because of another major factor that has not been widely recognized: the precipitous loss of native vegetation across the United States.
“There’s no question that the loss of habitat is huge,” said Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, who has long warned of the perils of disappearing insects. “We notice the monarch and bees because they are iconic insects,” he said. “But what do you think is happening to everything else?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sunday-review/the-year-the-monarch-didnt-appear.html?emc=edit_tnt_20131122&tntemail0=y&_r=0
= new reply since forum marked as read
Hence the EU's fully justified moratorium on their use here.
The outcome of which was :
Bayer sues EU for trying to save the bees.
European moves to temporarily ban the use of three insecticides linked to declines in bee populations have been met with legal action from two of the world’s biggest agricultural companies.
Syngenta, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, said yesterday that it was challenging the European Commission’s ban on the controversial ‘neonicotinoid’ pesticides. The ban, which comes into force on 1 December, will last two years and cover three neonicotinoids: clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2013/09/bayer-sues-eu-for-trying-to-save-the-bees/
****s 
ty for the link.which didn't seem to come from a Micky Mouse site. There are many others. Guess what shows may depend on word order of search.
Appalling isn't it and the shape of things to come with the proposed trans Pacific and Atlantic trade agreements.
Plant it everywhere you can! 
Screw the sterile green lawn.
We were reported to the city by a "concerned neighbor" and someone came to cite us for weeds. When he saw they were milkweeds he asked my husband why he planted them. My husband said for the butterflies. He told us to make it look more like a garden, and kept referring to it as "your butterfly garden." He said he'd check back in a few.
We put bullet bricks around it and all is well. It's about 20' round and we'll just keep it looking nice and move the bricks as it spreads. 
One less place to mow.
Off topic, but we have not put chemicals on our lawn in 27 or 28 years. This year we had a lot of bees including green sweat bees in our front lawn near the milkweed.
