Blame poor management practices for most bee deaths, he says

Applied correctly, neonics are safe, beekeeper says

By Patrick Meagher

NIAGARA REGION — An Ontario beekeeper, whose small 50- to 60-hive operation is part of a study on the effects of neonicotinoids on bees, said he has not lost a single hive in three years and that heavy bee losses by many beekeepers are a result of poor management practices.

“There is a golden rule in beekeeping around the world: Do not put bees in harm’s way,” said Walter Zimmermann, owner of Little Wolf Apiaries in West Lincoln Township, southeast of Hamilton. He added that beekeepers are obligated by Health Canada to confer with farmers as to what is being planted and when.

Ontario’s meltdown over neonicotinoid-treated seeds could have been avoided if areas with losses, after inspection by Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency in 2012, had been quarantined, he said.

You don’t let animals suffer, he said, adding that to avoid allowing bees to suffer slowly, the hives in areas suffering heavy losses should have been taken out of production. While bee colony collapse has become a worldwide phenomenon, Canada’s bee population has been steadily rising and a Health Canada report last month noted that 72 per cent of post-planting reports of dead bees and “colony effects” this year in Ontario came from only three beekeepers.

Ontario’s environment ministry announced Nov. 25 that Ontario has set a goal to reduce neonicotinoid-treated seeds by 80 per cent in two years. Almost all Ontario corn and soybean seeds are treated with neonics, a seed coating which replaces spraying, to protect crops from insects. About 100 of more than 8,000 Canadian beekeepers blame neonics for their bee losses and have launched a $400-million class-action lawsuit against two neonic manufacturers.

The lawsuit has not been tested in court.

Poor management practices are much more detrimental to bees, Zimmermann said. There are as many management practices as there are beekeepers and many are operating on hand-me-down and outdated knowledge about bees, he said, noting that there is no standard of practice.

Couple that with the fact the operator has to deal with his own use of insecticide on an insect that has a life span of six weeks and the management complexities become more apparent. The queen bee lays about 1,500 eggs daily, which means ongoing batches of bee deaths is a normal part of the operation. But there is a plethora of factors that can kill bees including parasites, poor food supply, pathogens, and weather conditions.

While there are many good beekeepers, there are many “piss poor beekeepers,” Zimmermann said. He said he knows of a beekeeper who has been in the business 30 years and his only explanation for his heavy bee losses is that there is a cornfield nearby.

“I call any of the suggestions by the premier to even regulate this (neonics), outright sabotage of the farming industry,” said Zimmermann, who is retired from Environment Canada and whose operation is part of an independent “sentinel hive study” designed to immediately investigate the contributing factors affecting colony health should they occur. While the study is paid for by Bayer CropScience, all analysis, including pesticide residue analysis, is conducted by third-party laboratories.

Zimmermann said the neonic issue has become politicized, driven by special interest groups. “I’m a man of science. All the science has shown that it is safe from the standpoint of being correctly applied.”