Bees mysteriously dying
Piles of dead insects lay just outside a group of hives John Van Blyderveen keeps at the back of his Burgessville shop, Oxford Honey and Supplies.
The same bleak scenario is occurring at his other eight hive locations spanning Oxford County.
"Until about a week ago Thursday, everything was looking fairly normal," he said calmly Wednesday morning, as dozens of sick and dying bees littered the ground convulsing and struggling to move a few metres away. "I came out that morning and there was a bunch of dead bees just outside of the end hive.
"A day later more dead bees and then more and more. You can tell which hives are more affected than the others, but all of them are suffering losses."
Van Blyderveen guessed roughly 20% of the hives' populations have died in the past week.
Similar losses are being reported all over the province.
"I know personally of about 30 other beekeepers that are experiencing the same thing. It's everywhere from Chatham to Windsor and over to Niagara Falls and everything in between. I had someone drive in from Niagara Falls with a jar full of dead bees," he said.
Although he, along with many others in the industry, strongly believe the deaths are linked to systemic pesticides (neonicotinoids) used in corn farming, he said no one will know for sure until toxicology reports are completed.
Dead bee samples from his honey operation were sent to a lab in Nova Scotia over the weekend. Van Blyderveen is unsure when results will be available.
The alarming situation has even prompted the attention of the Ministry of the Environment, which visited Van Blyderveen's hives to collect information after the deaths started occurring.
This isn't the first time in recent years that massive bee deaths have occurred.
In 2007, high numbers of bees were killed off in various colonies in Ontario and in more than 22 U.S. states.
The deaths, which were called colony collapse disorder, had researchers scrambling to find answers.
Van Blyderveen said nothing conclusive was ever released to explain those deaths, mostly because, at that time, the bees were dying but their bodies were disappearing.
"They'd just fly away and not come back. There was nothing to really test," he said.
Speculations ran rampant with many in and out of the industry blaming the cause on a myriad of different reasons, including, fungi, pesticides and even altered magnetic fields that disorientated bees so they couldn't find their way back to the hive.
Van Blyderveen said it's been a difficult few years in the industry.
Bees are busy working just to survive instead of collecting extra pollen that would make more honey.
been tough," he said
"We're definitely not making any money because we are constantly trying to rebuild. It's
http://www.stratfordbeaconherald.com/2012/05/04/bees-mysteriously-dying
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