Poison suspected as bees perish
Hundreds of thousands of bees are dying in Murchison, near Nelson, and beekeepers are at a loss to save them.
Veteran beekeeper Ricki Leahy said he first noticed dead bees in front of his hives in the Mangles Valley on Friday.
Leahy, who is an Apiculture New Zealand (ApiNZ) board member, produces Tutaki Honey through his business Trees and Bees. He said the 40 hives used for queen-rearing around his home had been affected, as well as another 186 hives located half a kilometre away. He estimated the number of dead bees to be in the hundreds of thousands.
‘‘We had a look at them again this morning to see if we could rescue any and it is just hopeless. There are so many dead bees,’’ he said yesterday.
The hives were fine when Leahy checked them on Thursday, but since Friday bees had continued to die.
‘‘What bees are left are looking very unstable on their feet. They have got the jitters and there is actually nothing we can really do to help the situation. There is nothing we can do.’’
In his 40 years beekeeping, Leahy said he hadn’t experienced a loss of hives on such a scale and that the impact was ‘‘absolutely devastating’’.
‘‘We are expecting to have a complete wipeout of all our hives here. The heart of our business is being struck with a sword.’’
Leahy had notified the Ministry for Primary Industries and followed instructions to put some of the affected bees in the freezer so they could be tested. He had also notified the police.
He suspected the bees were dying as a result of ingesting poison, but said they would have to be tested to ascertain the cause of death.
Leahy said it was possible the bees had consumed a sugar-based bait meant to kill wasps.
‘‘We can’t prove anything and we can’t find any evidence of it, but that is what we are assuming. We don’t believe there was anything malicious.’’
The deaths could also be the result of an aerial spray or something used on a neighbouring farm.
‘‘We don’t know, we haven’t got a clue. We would really like to have someone come and verify what is happening.’’
He said the number of wasps in the Murchison area had increased in the past three weeks and his team had been killing wasp nests and using Vespex, a protein-based bait that was not attractive to bees.
‘‘Anybody who is going to attempt to poison wasps should make sure they don’t use bait that attracts bees. They must not use any jams, honey, sugar syrups or anything like that. Any bait must be meat-based.’’
Leahy said they had been in the middle of ‘‘queen rearing’’ and had lost up to 400 mated queens, which were ready to put into hives.
The impact of that would have a run-on effect on the quality of hives in the next season.
‘‘It’s going to take a lot of labour and work to get them all back up and running.’’
Until he knew what the cause of death was, it was hard to know what action to take. If the bees had been poisoned, there was no point establishing new hives in the same area as those bees might also die.
The Ministry for Primary Industries and the Environmental Protection Agency have been approached for comment.