Washington -- The Natural Resources Defense Council has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regarding information on the pesticide clothianidin.

The NRDC said the EPA failed to meet the legal deadline to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the pesticide's possible impact on honey bees. Many beekeepers suspect the Bayer AG pesticide may be linked to colony collapse disorder, American Beekeeping Federation president Troy Fore told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

"Recently approved pesticides have been implicated in massive bee die-offs and are the focus of increasing scientific scrutiny," NRDC Senior Attorney Aaron Colangelo said in a statement. "EPA should be evaluating the risks to bees before approving new pesticides, but now refuses to tell the public what it knows."

Clothianidin was recently banned in Germany due to concerns about its impact on bees and a similar insecticide was banned in France for the same reason, the NRDC said.

A Bayer AG spokesman said clothianidin won't harm bees if applied correctly, the newspaper said.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.