Beekeepers Say They're Stung By Pesticide Use
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Beekeepers Say They're Stung By Pesticide Use
Date:
Mon, 15 Jul 2002 07:47:52 -0400
From:
Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide
Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an article dated: Sun, Jul. 14, 2002 from the Pioneer Press entitled: Beekeepers Say They're Stung By Pesticide Use. Western Minnesota beekeepers claim in a lawsuit that pesticides sprayed on poplar groves are killing off their honeybees. The defendants say they're not to blame. BY DENNIS LIEN EAGLE BEND, Minn.
The first thing Jeff Anderson noticed was how oddly his honeybees acted. At hive after hive, young queen bees challenged their elders in the fall, the wrong season for such confrontations.
Then came the ever-larger hits to his bee population. Instead of an average over winter mortality rate of 6 percent, he endured 10 percent, then 15 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent losses.
"By the time it got to 30 percent, we were sure something was wrong,'' said Anderson, who owns California-Minnesota Honey Farms in Eagle Bend and keeps his bees at 104 locations in five west-central Minnesota counties.
But it was only when Steve Ellis, a Barrett beekeeper, suffered a bee kill in 1999 that a possible answer emerged.
Ellis' dead bees were near a hybrid poplar grove that had just been sprayed with an insecticide. A Minnesota Department of Agriculture test determined they died from exposure to Sevin XLR Plus, which contains an ingredient called carbaryl that's toxic to bees. It fined the sprayer $950.
That kill was quick, but Anderson, Ellis and other area beekeepers said others have been more insidious. Since the mid-1990s, they said they've suffered a rash of bee kills, marked by prolonged, painful decimations of their hives, which now threaten Minnesota's nearly $8-million-a-year honey industry.
Those losses, they said, coincide with the emergence of hybrid poplars, a relatively new tree crop in the region.
DEADLY SPRAY?
A cross between two kinds of cottonwood trees, the hybrids are fast-growing, bulkier versions of poplar, designed for the pulpwood market and to fuel wood-burning power plants. Between 25,000 to
30,000 acres have been planted during the past decade in Minnesota, mostly in the west-central portion of the state, which has a particularly heavy concentration of beekeepers.
The hybrid poplars are planted in long rows over large areas and, when young, are vulnerable to attacks from cottonwood leaf beetles, which defoliate the trees and stunt their growth.
When Sevin is sprayed from airplanes and helicopters, beekeepers contend the chemical drifts onto nearby flowers favored by honeybees, whose hives are often within a mile or two of the groves. The bees, they said, collect traces of contaminated pollen on their hind legs and take it back to their hives. Once there, it builds up and, over a period of months or years, gradually kills many bees, including queens. The bees that transport the chemical gradually absorb it and die as well.
The Agriculture Department has been investigating the kills, but hasn't reached any conclusions, according to Greg Buzicky, director of its agronomy and plant protection division.
"We believe this is a serious issue, but we haven't been able to prove one way or the other whether there is a cause and effect,'' Buzicky said. "We also don't minimize the accuracy of their observations.'' BEEKEEPERS FILE SUIT Anderson, Ellis and fellow beekeeper Jim Whitlock aren't waiting around for the final word.
They've sued International Paper, which owns half of the state's hybrid poplars; pilots who sprayed insecticide over the trees, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which manages a program that allows hybrid poplars to be grown on Conservation Reserve Program set-aside land.
Among other things, the beekeepers accuse them of negligence and of violating a state law that says pesticides must be applied in ways that won't cause environmental harm. A trial is scheduled for early next year in Douglas County District Court.
Spokesmen for the DNR and International Paper disputed the allegations, saying they take pains to avoid harming bees, first using biological agents and using Sevin only before 9 a.m. and after 7 p.m., when the wind is down and chemical drift can be kept to a minimum.
"We don't think our spraying is doing it,'' said Alan Jones, the DNR's supervisor of forest development on state land. "We think something else is going on.'' Tim Beebe, International Paper's manager of fiber procurement, said he couldn't comment on the lawsuits.
But he said International Paper began its hybrid poplar project in
1995, planting the trees as a fiber source for its Sartell, Minn., mill. The fiber, he said, is similar to aspen's and the trees are closer to the mill. He said the company has 13,000 acres planted in hybrid poplars and hopes to expand that to as much as 25,000 acres.
So far, it's unclear whether any honey has been contaminated.
Blane White, state apiary inspector for the Agriculture Department, said a number of factors make honey the least likely portion of a hive to be contaminated.
Anderson, however, said no one, including his honey marketing cooperative, Sioux Honey Association of Sioux City, Iowa, tests the western Minnesota honey for environmental pesticides. A spokesman for the cooperative agreed, saying federal inspectors haven't found "much, if any" traces of insecticides during previous tests elsewhere.
INDICATOR SPECIES
Each fall, Anderson and his family pack up their bees and transport them to California, where the bees pollinate almond and cherry trees.
In the spring, they bring the bees back to Minnesota, where they forage the countryside for alfalfa, clover and basswood tree blossoms and make honey.
Honeybees, like butterflies, bumblebees and hummingbirds, are among nature's pollinators, ensuring the fertilization of flowers, plants and crops.
Anderson said bees also are an indicator species. Like the proverbial canary in the mine, they are among the first to detect or be affected by environmental changes. "If you have a yard of bees, and there's anything wrong four miles in any direction, that'll show up in the health of the hives,'' he said.
That they are dying in large numbers in places where they've traditionally thrived should be a warning to everyone, according to Anderson.
Beekeepers gravitated to western Minnesota because there was comparatively little insecticide spraying there. But Anderson said that changed when hybrid poplars were planted. Because the trees are planted in rows like corn and beans, they can be managed and sprayed in much the same manner.
Daniel Mayer, a retired Washington State University entomologist associated with the beekeepers, said Sevin can be transported back to colonies within three days of a spraying and still be an effective killer. Younger bees, he said, feed on the contaminated pollen and die.
"Sevin has been around for 30 years, and it is highly hazardous to bees,'' Mayer said.
"One of the symptoms is the bees just go spastic,'' Anderson said.
"They'll just lie there and twitch, just like their brain is telling them to do something and their body isn't responding. They will lay there and die.'' '
HARD TO PIN DOWN'
Bee kills from insecticide use have occurred over the years, according to Paul Liemandt, the Agriculture Department's manager of the environmental response and enforcement section.
But only a handful have ever resulted in official complaints, according to the agency's records. And fewer still have been substantiated. During the past three years, the department has just 10 complaints of bees killed by an insecticide. Only one of those complaints turned up evidence of a violation.
Whitlock discounted the department data, saying beekeepers rarely file complaints with the state because of the difficulty of tying events together.
"Most of the time, we have just lived with it - it's hard to pin it down,'' he said, referring to the insecticide's source. "Over a period of years, where does it come from?'' While the hybrid poplars are raised elsewhere in the United States, Buzicky said reports of spraying-related bee kills seem to be limited to western Minnesota.
"We have talked to some of our counterparts in other states and there does not seem to be anything unusual happening right now,'' he said.
"We seem to be the only state with the hybrid poplar issue.'' Rep. Mary Ellen Otremba, DFL-Long Prairie, said there's widespread concern in the area about hybrid poplar spraying. "People around here don't like it,'' she said.
A solution may be on the way.
Vera Krischik, an associate entomology professor at the University of Minnesota, recently began researching biological controls, including a fungicide and strategic use of Asian and ladybird beetles, to control cottonwood leaf beetles.
"I think it's very promising,'' Krischik said.
Without a solution, the beekeepers aren't hopeful. "We aren't going to survive much longer,'' Whitlock said.
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Dennis Lien can be reached at dlien@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5588.
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/3653880.htm
Well Mr. Helliker, I believe that you keep on demanding only your "registered" POISONS can be used to "control" pest problems; many of us are not going to survive much longer!
Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten
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