Apiarists: Avocado buzz is killing bees

There is a theory that, yes, this is due to poisoning, there are some crops around here that perhaps have not managed their agrochemicals well and so this area was affected

Armenia, Colombia (AFP) — For the second time in two years, Gildardo Urrego is scooping up piles of dead bees after an invisible evil invaded his hives in northwest Colombia, wreaking havoc among his swarms.

However, Urrego has no proof, but he suspects the culprit is pesticides which have been fueling a commercial avocado and citrus boom in the country.

Hundreds of hives have been killed off in Colombia in recent years, and some investigations have pointed to fipronil, an insecticide banned for use on crops in Europe and restricted in the United States and China.

It is used to control all manner of insects, including ants and ticks, and has been blamed for several bee massacres around the world.

Urrego’s apiary in Colombia’s Antioquia Department produces honey flavored with pollen from nearby passion fruit orchards. In 2019, he lost 10 of his 19 hives.

This time, he said, a third of his 12 hives were wiped out — a loss of some 160,000 of the industrious little pollinators.

“There is a theory that, yes, this is due to poisoning, there are some crops around here that perhaps have not managed their agrochemicals well and so this area was affected,” he told the

Over the last two years, we have calculated more than 80 million dead bees.

In recent years, bees in North America, Europe, Russia, South America and elsewhere have started dying off from “colony collapse disorder,” a mysterious scourge blamed partly on pesticides along with mites, viruses and fungi.

The UN warns that nearly half of insect pollinators, particularly bees and butterflies, risk global extinction.

Free fertilization

About 1.4 billion jobs and three-quarters of all crops around the world, according to a 2016 study, depend on pollinators, mainly bees, which provide free fertilization services worth billions of dollars.

Some 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Antioquia, in the Quindio Department, Abdon Salazar has no qualms pointing the finger at fipronil as he counts his losses.

“Over the last two years, we have calculated more than 80 million dead bees,” he said, as he walked among the 300 vibrating hives of his business Apicola Oro (Golden Beekeeping).

“We are talking some 800 hives, 100,000 bees per hive, it is a very large quantity, an alarming quantity,” he added.

Salazar and other beekeepers in the region are increasingly having to clear out mounds of dead bees from their apiaries which are surrounded by avocado and citrus plantations in an exceptionally fertile and biodiverse part of the world.