Mosquito Control’s bee glitch costly mistake
It’s a shame that Tybee Island beekeeper David Strickland lost thousands of his honey-making bees Tuesday night because of a mistake by Chatham County’s Mosquito Control unit. This unfortunate accident illustrates the importance of protecting bees and other pollinating insects, which have been disappearing in alarming numbers which poses a potential threat to the future of the nation’s food supply.
Because of a technical glitch, the county didn’t give Mr. Strickland the usual warning that its helicopters would be spraying for mosquitoes over Tybee that night, which would have allowed him to take precautions to protect his insects from the deadly spray.
To the county’s credit, it has admitted it made a mistake, when the names of Strickland and eight other Tybee residents were inadvertently omitted from a round of automated calls that the county routinely makes to alert area beekeepers and others that its yellow helicopters would be out spraying pesticides.
Fortunately, the mistake didn’t wipe him out. “Our hives will live, but we lost bees out of each,” Mr. Strickland said. “The largest had a couple thousand dead.”
County spokeswoman Catherine Glasby said the county’s legal department would consider compensating Mr. Strickland for his losses. That’s only proper.
But in addition to writing a check, the county must fix the glitch in its notification system and examine the efficacy of controlling mosquitoes through its vast aerial spraying programs. Neighboring counties, such as Effingham, don’t have aerial programs to prevent beneficial insects, like butterflies and pollinators, from being killed.
Effingham County beekeeper Harold Ward said he had had good experiences with Mosquito Control warning him in advance about upcoming spraying. But he could still see the environmental impact of the pesticide program.
“If you go up to Effingham, Bulloch or Screven you see dragonflies and fireflies, but you don’t have those in Chatham County,” he said. “It’s because of Mosquito Control.”
While wiping out mosquitoes that carry and spread the Zika virus and other diseases like the West Nile virus and eastern equine encephalitis is a service to the public’s health, wiping out honeybees, butterflies, dragonflies and fireflies come at a cost, too. Scientists worry that the kill off of bees and pollinators will do grave harm to the food chain and affect the availability of what we eat.
According to experts, 70 of the world’s top 100 crop species are pollinated by bees — and those foods feed 90 percent of mankind. Without a large, healthy bee population, most foods we rely on would disappear, they say. Talk about a real buzzkill. To the county’s credit, Jeffrey Heusel, director of Chatham County Mosquito Control, takes a conservative approach when it comes to pesticide use to minimize the risk of killing beneficial insects. But again, no system is 100-percent error-free. The absence of fireflies and dragonflies, in Chatham County, that Mr. West and many other have noticed, speaks for itself.
Mr. Strickland seemed to take his bee losses personally, which is understandable, given the time and attention he has devoted to his hives.
“They’re like our little pets,” he said. “We love them. This is our lifestyle.”
While it may seem odd to describe honeybees as pets, they do more than produce a sweet sticky goodness used to flavor foods and drinks. Bees are vital to America’s food supply. While Strickland’s loss certainly stings, it’s nothing compared to the widespread loss of bees that has been noted across the country. It may be time to consider restricting the use of the most powerful pesticides that could be doing more harm than good.
Mosquito Control avoids the use of its helicopter-applied Naled spray as much as possible, Mr. Heusel said, because it’s expensive and reducing its application reduces the possibility of mosquitoes developing resistance. “We’re trying to minimize any type of unintended impact,” he said.
That’s as it should be. But the dead bees on Tybee are evidence it doesn’t always work out that way.
In a study commissioned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a Florida-based researcher found in 2015 that Naled and permethrin, another pesticide, even when used properly, harmed butterflies and caterpillars. Miami has since instituted limits on where it sprays to protect endangered butterflies.
Mr. Heusel’s focus is on preventing mosquito-borne diseases, saying, “If we can do that without affecting anything else, that’s what we’re going to do.”
It’s the “anything else” part that is worrisome.
TMike Lester, Washington Post Writers Group