"Public and private partners are collaborating in response to this week's die-off of bees in Wilsonville. . . . Bee-proof netting is being placed on 55 European linden trees at the site where an estimated 25,000 bumblebees were found dead or dying this week."
Oregon Department of Agriculture, 21 June, 2013
THE Oregon bees died and still are dying because Safari - one of a group of insecticides known as neonicotinoids - was sprayed on 55 aphid-infested linden trees.
When will we ever learn? The spraying was unnecessary because, as I learned from my parents, a mix of mild soap and tepid water would have brought the beasties under control, albeit more slowly.
By the time I emailed Bruce Pokarney, director of communications for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, the bee-kill for the Wilsonville incident had climbed to 50,000 and 1,000 dead bees had been discovered under a single tree in the nearby community of Hillsboro.
Whether the use of Safari violated local or state regulations is yet to be determined by an ongoing investigation, as is the answer to another question: Why are the Hillsboro bees dying now when that tree was sprayed in March?
Last Thursday, ODA director Katy Coba said that out of an abundance of caution she had directed the agency to restrict the use of "18 pesticide products containing the active ingredient dinotefuran . . . to avoid the potential for similar large bee kills this summer."
Our resident bee-master par excellence, Ric Erikson, was not surprised to hear about the Oregon incidents.
"Bees are today's version of the canary in the mine," he told me. "The health or otherwise of our bee population is the best way we have of measuring the success of our sustainability efforts," he explained.
Judging from the wealth of information Erikson has at his fingertips, our sustainability efforts are not doing so well.
Bees - like human beings if we'd only admit it - need a diversity of habitat in order to thrive. Yet our indiscriminate use of cosmetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, coupled with farming trends toward monoculture have brought us to a point where bees have almost disappeared from the Fraser Valley.
Native bees, I learned, are not the travelling kind. The most venturesome of the species rarely exceed journeys of 500 metres and the habit of solitary bees to stay within this perimeter of the nest has contributed to their downfall.
The pollinators so essential to berry production and to the growing of the other fruits and vegetables we're urged to eat, now come from outside farming communities. At an average cost of about $87 per colony, blueberry farmers require two to five colonies - about $500 per acre - to pollinate the crops we value so highly. Incidentally, the cost of that contrived solution has tripled since 1989.
Explaining that this situation is primarily due to the widespread loss of native pollinators, Erikson says the loss has increased the demand for honeybee colonies in the Valley.
Due to the not yet fully understood global decline in bee populations, Erikson estimates farmers' demands exceed supply by about 3,000 hives every year.
"We have been depending on bees for more than 4,000 years, yet only began studying them seriously about 30 years ago," he said.
Remembering the gardens of my childhood, I asked Erikson how England maintains its agrarian heritage so well in the face of populations that are significantly denser than those of the Lower Mainland.
His reply hit me like a sucker-punch: "Not anymore," he said. "Bees are starving there - to such an extent that government now legislates the growing of bee-friendly plants in English gardens."
Will we learn from that experience?
I discovered encouraging news when I followed up on Erikson's comment about Scotland.
Sponsored in part by a Heritage Lottery Fund, the Scots' Bumblebee Conservation Trust works to provide and improve bee-friendly habitat and education. Using funds our local bee-steward initiatives find hard to come by, Scotland's BCT has taken the steps Erikson and his wife Sharon had in mind in 2011, when they began the Beefriendly Society which was officially registered as a non-profit organization in September, 2012.
You know they mean business when you see the hours Erikson puts in as he helps tend the beautiful garden 93-year old Gerry McPherson began wrestling out of a weedy bramble patch at Loutet Park six years ago. Aided by Good Samaritans from the City of North Vancouver, Gerry's garden is as friendly as the two adjacent bee-hives could hope for in our urban environment.
Erikson is working with the enthusiastic co-operation of staff to establish 10 Beefriendly Principles - two of which have already been adopted. The city has banned the general use of cosmetic herbicides, pesticides and insecticides in the community and a city-sponsored program for the identification and removal of invasive plants is in place.
That work continues but funding is scarce, so one of the most important goals, that of educating catch-'em-young elementary students in bee-friendly ways, is proving harder to achieve. The society has all the material it needs. Teachers are willing and the kids are eager. Unfortunately, the North Vancouver Board of Education has no funds.
That's where we come in. The Eriksons cannot fund it all themselves. Can we avoid Oregon's sad experience and make the North Shore Canada's first bee-friendly community to be certified by Pollination Canada and the North American Pollinators Protection Campaign?
If you would like to help, learn more at Beefriendly.ca or email Joseph MacLean at: [email protected]. [email protected]
