South Carolina Accidentally Kills Millions Of Honeybees With Zika Spraying
- September 6, 2016
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- health
- Posted in EnvironmentalHealthIndustry News
County officials had been targeting mosquitos when they blanketed a 15-square mile area with pesticide on Sunday. But they ended up killing at least 2.5 million honeybees as well.
More than 40 travel-related cases of Zika have been reported in South Carolina, including four cases in Dorchester County. Concerned about the potential spread of the disease, county officials launched aerial mosquito spraying operations over the weekend, a first for the county, which typically sprays pesticides from the ground using trucks.
Officials used the insecticide naled. Though commonly employed for mosquito control, naled is known to be toxic to honeybees and, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, can pose some risk to aquatic and terrestrial wildlife.
To protect honeybees, the EPA suggests spraying naled between dusk and dawn “while bees are not typically foraging.” But in Dorchester County, the spraying was conducted between 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. County officials said they followed manufacturer instructions, which had recommended application “no more than two hours after sunrise” to minimize hazard to bees.
The morning after the spraying, beekeepers in the area were stunned to discover the deadly impacts of the chemical.
“There was no need for a bee suit Monday morning to go down there because there was no activity. It was silent,” Juanita Stanley, whose apiary Flowertown Bee Farm was the worst hit in the spraying. “Honestly, I just fell to the ground. I was crying, and I couldn’t quit crying.”
Stanley estimated that the pesticide killed 2.5 million of her bees.
“Nobody called me about the aerial spraying; nobody told me at all,” she said through tears. “[I] would have been screaming and pleading if they had … ’Do it at night when bees are done foraging,’ I would have told them. But they sprayed at 8 a.m. Sunday, and all of my bees were out, doing their work by then.”
County officials apologized for the unintentional massacre. http://goo.gl/gU4rLv