Fall
2015
grainswest.com
27
T WAS THE MORNINGOF APRIL 18, 2012, WHEN
Davis Bryans, owner of Munro Honey, was told
something was wrong with one of his bee yards in
Sarnia, ON. A few hours earlier the bees had been busily
foraging, but now there was a pile of them sprawled on the
ground in front of the hives.
Some were twitching. Others were already dead. Across the
road, a farmer had been planting corn.
Bryans called Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory
Agency (PMRA), which is responsible for pesticide regulation in
Canada. The PMRA sent investigators to gather samples of the
dead bees for analysis.
Other beekeepers began reporting similar incidents. By
the end of the spring of 2012, the PMRA had investigated
240 reports of honeybee deaths, involving 40 beekeepers in
Ontario. Ontario is the second-largest producer of honey in
Canada, after Alberta.
In a 2013 report, the PMRA concluded that 70 per cent of the
dead bees showed neonicotinoid residues. Neonicotinoids are
a group of widely used pesticides, commonly used to treat crop
seeds to protect against pest insects. The PMRA concluded
that the bees’ exposure to neonic dust during the planting
season “contributed to bee mortalities in 2012 and 2013.”
In 2012, the spring planting of crops in Ontario and the start
of foraging season for honeybees were nearly simultaneous. In
southern Ontario, farmers were planting neonic-coated corn
and soybean seeds, raising clouds of dust from the treated
seeds in the process. This neonic-contaminated dust drifted
among foraging honeybees like those at Munro Honey.
For Bryans, and for many other Ontario beekeepers who
now support a neonics reduction, the PMRA report was
the equivalent of a lightbulb turning on. Bryans said he had
watched his business fall from a high of 3,500 hives before
2007 to a struggling 2,500 hives in 2014, and he couldn’t
account for it. Neonics exposure provided an answer.
In its report, the PMRA recommended industry changes
to minimize “fugitive dust” during planting. Life sciences
company Bayer CropScience responded with an improved
seed lubricant, and the farm equipment industry has likewise
taken steps to reduce crop dust. These changes have resulted
in a steep decline in bee poisoning incidents during planting
season—a change of 80 per cent from spring 2013 to spring
2015. The number of bee yards reporting incidents throughout
the growing year has also declined, from a high of 395 in 2013
to 323 in 2014.
Yet these measures have not satisfied Bryans and other
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