Commercial beekeeper Phil Raines says you have to be crazy to want to take care of bees for a living.
“We’re part of the farming community, but we’re farmers’ ugly duckling,” he told the Tribune.
When farmers with pest issues turn to pesticides and insecticides, it poses devastating consequences to both commercial and wild pollinators, Raines said.
Last month, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and attorneys general from 12 other states called for nationwide restrictions by the Environmental Protection Agency on the use of sulfoxaflor, a chemical insecticide they say has toxic effects on bees and other pollinators.
“EPA’s own research has shown that sulfoxaflor is harmful to bees,” Raoul press secretary Jamey Dunn-Thomason said in a written statement to the Tribune.
Sulfoxaflor is part of a family of insecticides called neonicotinoids, which affect the nicotine receptors in the body, according to Sonya Lunder, senior toxics policy expert for the Sierra Club’s Clean Water, Toxic Chemicals, and Climate Resilience Program.
Sulfoxaflor is useful for killing pests because it specifically targets a specific receptor in insects that mammals don’t have, before attacking their nervous systems, Lunder said.
“These (neonicotinoids) were replacements to insecticides that were highly toxic to people,” Lunder explained. “So they’ve been heavily marketed as a way to have industrial agriculture production that is healthier, less toxic to humans.”
But Lunder said more subtle and equally concerning impacts to the environment have come into focus over the last decade.
The EPA released a biological evaluation last month that reported sulfoxaflor poses the risk of extinction to 63 species, and it is likely to harm another 462 endangered species, 314 of them plants.
This isn’t the first time the insecticide has attracted attention on the national stage.
In 2015, an appeals court overturned federal approval of the insecticide, ruling that it could hasten an already concerning decline in bee populations. A year later, the EPA allowed sulfoxaflor for certain uses — on crops that are not bee-attractive or harvested before bloom, and with limited spraying distances 12 feet from blooming vegetation.
In 2015, an appeals court overturned federal approval of the insecticide, ruling that it could hasten an already concerning decline in bee populations. A year later, the EPA allowed sulfoxaflor for certain uses — on crops that are not bee-attractive or harvested before bloom, and with limited spraying distances 12 feet from blooming vegetation.
Beekeeper Raines said it’s even harder to be a bee farmer. He is the head beekeeper at Raines Honey Farm, which has hundreds of hives in four counties in Illinois and three counties in Wisconsin.
He reiterated the harmful effects of pesticides on bees and the necessity of these endangered pollinators for lucrative agricultural practices to function.
“There are anywhere from $22 (billion) to $38 billion worth of produce and seeds in the United States alone that wouldn’t exist if there weren’t bees to pollinate those crops,” he said.
Source: chicagotribune.com
Photo Credit: Kerem Hanci
Categories: Illinois, General