What’s happened to the bees and why should we care?

Beekeepers on the Island are all stirred up. You should be too!

Beekeepers’ grumblings have mounted into horrified rumblings – the situation is dire. I hear them at Church and at Free Range Folk Choir. They talk about it at Saturday Market. It’s not just members of the Fruit Club or the Beekeepers Club. And it’s not just Vashon: there is concern from the Harvard School of Public Health to the New York Times. (For one online report, see www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120405224653.htm

The buzz is out. It’s mounted to an insistent drone:

The bees are dying. No, the bees are dead. No bees again this spring.

How many bees have you seen this spring? Even the bumblebees are scarce.

We have to do something.

The hazardous waste mobile comes to Vashon April 27, 28 and 29 – it’s time for a rodeo to rid our homes of Roundup, amidocloprid and other poisonous chemicals. It’s time to exercise the power of the dollar and stop buying the stuff. It’s time to talk to friends and neighbors. It’s time to raise awareness in our personal circles of influence. We may not be able to stop Monsanto, Bayer or Dow, we may not be able to overhaul American agricultural practices tomorrow, but we can take action in our community today.

That’s the clear message coming out of a recent eklectic roundtable gathering hosted by GreenTech. Beekeeper Bob Dixon and Sheila Brown (Vashon Food Security working group) shared anecdotal stories of massive bee Colony Collapse Disorder and overwhelming evidence from scientific studies that puts the sting on our use of toxic pesticides and herbicides. Even undetectably low exposure levels impair bees’ learning and memory. Low-level exposures synergize to dramatically increase bees’ susceptibility to infection and likelihood of death. Accumulation of the poisons is the critical catalyst in decimating bee populations.

Honeybees pollinate most things in our gardens: apples, asparagus, blackberries, blueberries, broccoli, cabbage, cherries, cucumbers, pears, plums, pumpkins, sunflowers, raspberries and squash – to name a few that grow in mine. With beekeepers continuing to lose more that one-third of their hives EACH YEAR, scientific evidence concludes that neonicotinoid pesticides are the key culprit. We have to stop using these chemicals or all we’ll have to eat are beets, said Bob.

The wide-ranging GreenTech discussion opened the mind of at least one participant, and others were put on notice: our justification that we just use a little bit and only now and then is lame. As Tag Gornall points out, if you put out something that kills, that’s what it does: it kills or mutates – and not just the weeds.

And it’s not just the bees, either. The trickle down effect of upland use means that we risk contaminating our watersheds and contribute to pollution in Quartermaster Harbor and Puget Sound. The dispersal through natural systems is mind-boggling with these kinds of poisons mounting the food chain to accumulate in apex species – like whales and humans. Neurological problems, respiratory disease and infant mortality are just a few of the confirmed results.

I know a virtuous woman who never uses Roundup. She hides in the house and pretends not to know when her husband gets out the poison. He’s one of the only-a-little-now-and-then types. Their neighbor is another. She puts her hand to the side of her mouth as she whispers guiltily not to tell her husband, but what am I gonna do? Things get out of control here.

I know, I know. Our mild climate nurtures prodigious growth of briars, quack grass, escaped ivy, and such. Some of us wage war on dandelions. Moss grows on the roof. What’s a girl to do?

Well, there are the obvious solutions like eliminate your lawn or dig out the bad stuff. Planting trees is good. You can try baking soda; we all know the beer in the can trick for slugs. You can spray with homemade vinegar solutions. You can pick bad bugs off by hand. And there’s middle ground, too: instant solutions for those of us who simply can’t keep up with the weeds and the bugs and the slugs and don’t have the time, inclination or youthful vigor to labor mightily.

A few years ago, on behalf of the Vashon Groundwater Protection Committee, Michael Laurie and Susie Kalhorn prepared simple red (bad – don’t buy), yellow (warning – be careful!) and green (okay to use) cards listing locally available products. The info is outdated, they are looking for funds to update and print new cards, but meanwhile, it’s a start. Email Michael (mlaurie@mindspring.com) for one, and you can easily see what’s okay to buy. And don’t roll your eyes, yada-yada-yada: in researching for the update, Sheila reports she and Emily McCrae experienced headaches and other neurological distress just by standing in aisles of the poison for 20 minutes or more.

Sheila also says that Country Store sells only benign products. There’s nothing bad at DIG. They are getting rid of some bad stuff at Kathy’s Corner this weekend, and Kathy will have fewer of the toxic products to sell. At other outlets, you have only to ask. While the varieties, supplies and displays are smaller, organic non-toxic products are available everywhere.

It’s a matter of money, says Joe Ulatoski. Use the power of the pocketbook. If you don’t buy it, they won’t stock it or sell it.

Other suggestions came out of the roundtable as well: Jay Becker told how he stopped using bad stuff years ago when he learned that raising the mower blade to 5 and a half would do the trick for his lawn. After about three years, the grass beat out most of the weeds.

Tom Bangasser suggests asking VAA to feature gardens that are poison-free on its annual Garden Tour.

Tag advocates talking to groups who have a vested interest like landscapers and the Garden Club and also those who maintain open space on Vashon: your church congregations, the radio stations, our parks department, the school maintenance department, the road folks, the golf and swim club, the water districts.

Poison is in widespread use as GMO crops dominate American agriculture. "Roundup-Ready" seeds are treated to resist aerial spraying of pesticides. Researchers have proven that in a single flight over freshly-sown corn fields, bees suffer acutely toxic exposure from neonicotinoid contaminated dust raised by planters depositing treated seeds.

This is a huge, closely related topic, and buying organic, non-GMO products is another way to protect your health and exercise power as consumers. But let’s bring it back to the bees. Let’s bring it home to the question of what’s going to pollinate our gardens?

What can we do? I’ll say it again: Stop using poison, get it out of our homes, take it to the waste mobile. Tjomsland Gravel Pit (17001 107th Ave., just south of Cove Road on the west side of 107 Ave.), 10-5, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, April 27-29. See you there.