This winter about 3,000 beekeepers in Massachusetts are watching nearly silent hives, wondering if the bees inside huddling around their queen will emerge again when temperatures rise.
“We used to have bees that’d make it through the winter, no problem, and now what we’re seeing is they’re not making it all the way through,” said beekeeper Lucy Tabit of Hana’s Honey in Westport. “And I’m afraid that it has a lot to do with pesticides.”
Pesticides and weed killers have long been suspects in the massive die-offs of bees worldwide. Recently researchers have singled out one type of pesticide in particular as the possible culprit: neonicotinoids.
“In the recent survey we released, we looked at pollen in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and found 70 percent had neonicotinoids,” said Chensheng “Alex” Lu, an assistant professor of environmental exposure biology at Harvard University.
Lu said most pesticides can kill at high enough levels, but neonicotinoids can take bees down with just trace amounts. They were developed from the nicotine plant, and are the most commonly used pesticide in the world. If you apply them to a seed, the entire plant that grows from it is protected.
“From the pest control perspective, neonicotinoid is a wonderful drug,” Lu said.
European countries temporarily banned neonicotinoids, and Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Boulder, Colo., have placed restrictions on their use. Lowe’s and Home Depot stopped selling them. The EPA issued a warning about neonicotinoids earlier this month, but the agency is signaling it might leave decisions about whether to restrict them to individual states.
Massachusetts beekeepers are advocating for the Commonwealth take action. State legislators have proposed three bills on honeybee health, including Holliston Rep. Carol Dykema’s legislation which would restrict the use of neonicotinoids—taking them off store shelves but still allowing trained farmers to use them.
“My bill provides a balanced approach that recognizes there are some limited needs, but because it will be limited, it will constrain the overall amount of this pesticide in the environment,” she said.
But farmers, and the companies that make neonicotinoids, say they’re safe—and they blame tiny mites as the cause of honeybee deaths. Richard Bonanno, who just stepped down as president of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau, said he’s been using neonicotinoids for years and the bees on his farm in Methuen are fine.
“I personally don’t feel that the legislature should be making these decisions,” he said. “Because the legislature is not the scientific community. It’s not the state toxicologist, it’s not the pesticide board, it’s not the EPA. Those are the people that should be making those decisions.”
Tabit hopes those decisions come soon. She says every time a colony dies she spends hundreds of dollars to replace it.
“So how much longer I can do this I don’t know. I was hoping to do this into my retirement—a lovely thing to do in retirement is to keep bees,” Tabit said. “They have one hive. They all work for the good for the hive. I hate to say that because it’s so corny but it’s true.”
Tabit said humans might be able to find a solution and save bees by acting more like them.
