The recent article by Jane Howard in the News-Herald about local beekeeper Mark Ditmanson brought home the problem of “Colony Collapse Disorder.” A related article in Solutions, a publication of the Minnesota College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Science (CFAN), by Becky Buyers is about Vera Krischik and her Department of Entomology lab. Killer in a Bottle explores how neonicotinoids, a group of insecticides commonly used in urban gardens and forests, as well as in the agricultural field, might be making bees less resistant to parasites and pathogens, which researchers now believe likely the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder.
Home gardeners use imidacloprid [a neonicotinoid] under many names. When neonicotinoids are applied, the chemicals are absorbed through the plant’s vascular system, making the entire plant toxic to insects. The toxic effect to bees can last several months to years in pollen and nectar from just one application.
Early this year beekeepers from Minnesota and California petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to immediately suspend sales of neonictinoid insecticides. In July the EPA denied the request and is reviewing the insecticides’ effects, a process that could take until 2018. Recently members of Congress have asked the agency to speed up the process. Limits for amounts presently permitted for treatment of corn and canola are specified, but the rates for greenhouses and perennial landscape plants allows a rate 444 times that of field plants.
Worse, home gardeners may disregard instructions and apply insecticides at peak flowering times, giving home use much greater potential to affect bees and other beneficial insects.
Imagine your refrigerator without apples, berries, cucumbers, and squash. Lack of foraging habitat, agricultural pesticide use, mites, fungus, viruses and a host of other causes have all been blamed for the bees’ plight.
Bees are too important to be ignored, Krischik says, “If you don’t support managing them in the appropriate way, you’ll lose part of your diet, a lot of the antioxidants found in fruits. People rally for polar bears 3,000 miles away and that is great. We need people to rally for bees in their own backyard!”
Gardeners must be judicious with use of insecticides for the sake of the bees and beneficial insects by using alternative methods of control of harmful insects. For beekeepers in Cook County it is critical that infected bees not be imported to our area.
Let’s give it up for the bees!
Joan Abrahamson
Cook County Master Gardener
Grand Marais
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