Thank you for inviting me here.
I'm between Sarnia and London, and we run about 3,000 hives. Last year 1,000 of our hives were hit with pesticide sprays. We got them tested and of the samples tested only one showed that they had non-detectable clothianidin. When this product comes out, it's supposed to be “parts per billion”, and in my case the report came out in “parts per million”, so it's quite high.
The reason we're asking Ontario to get this product banned is because it is so water soluble. It is leaching everywhere and the bees are sucking up this water off the top of the soil. It accumulates in the soil. It accumulates in the hives. It accumulates in water. It doesn't break down. This product, this neonics, they say it lasts 365 days, but then we're hearing it will last up to seven years. So what's the truth? We don't even know.
It expresses itself in all parts of the plant, which includes the flower, the nectar, the branches, and the fruit or the vegetable. My wife doesn't even want to eat a lot of things anymore because she knows it's inside the plant. It's not on the outside where you can wash it off. It accumulates inside the fruit.
I'm sorry if I'm jumping around on this because I just point-formed this in the last couple of days.
For the bees, it makes every piece of food available to them—and water—toxic. This product is used on virtually every crop in North America. It's been banned in Europe. If you put it on corn this year and you plant clover the next year, for 365 days it's going to express itself in the clover the next year. It's going to be hard on these bees. With trees that grow close to fields and the root systems go in there, this is sucked up into the leaves of the trees. Linden trees, maple trees, they're all toxic. It's going into those too. They get pollinated very year.
This product was conditionally registered. It's not even fully registered. It alters the immune system in the bees, and it affects their brains. We wonder why they put it on everything? Why don't they use an IPM, or integrated pest management, if they have to use it? I think we're past that. I think we need to get this off the product.
In the United States this year, their losses are up 78% from last year, so this product is really causing problems. We're getting calls every day for more bees, more bees. We do pollination. We pollinate blueberries, and there just aren't enough bees to pollinate. Almond groves in California, they're not getting pollinated. This is a North American problem.
Our PMRA should be shutting this stuff down. A few years ago we had problems with Furadan, but it was a spot here and spot there and you didn't notice it. They told us, we have Bt corn and it's going to eliminate all your problems. You don't have to worry about spraying anymore. Where's Bt corn? It's gone. They're treating every piece of seed out there. I talked to a professional at Purdue University and he tells me that he doesn't see any significance in using these insecticides on this corn. The fungicides, yes, but as for the pesticide, he's doing testing on areas that are highly infested and sees a negligible difference in the yield from the treated seed to the untreated seed with the insecticide.
Krupke was one of the first ones to talk about this poison. We've had these problems for the last five or six years. It's not just the last year that we had the problem. We had the problem before, and it was more hit and miss. You say, well, it's only one yard.
Last year there were 30 different locations, and this year it's already started to happen. They have these new BMPs that somebody never consulted with Ontario beekeepers about, and they're not working. We're already getting results. I was getting phone calls on the way here that the bees are lost. One is involved in a study, and before they could put the traps on, it wiped out the flying bees. They're doing an investigation on it today.