A local honey business blames their shrinking hives on the pesticide called neonicotinoids.
“It’s really frustrating because you see it but you don’t know what you can do about it,” says Elizabeth Schuit of Saugeen Country Honey. “You see them dying. They just kind of flop around.”
After losing thousands of dollars and half their hives, Schuit and her sister Esther are packing up their jars and moving out of the province.
In the last two years, Ontario beekeepers have lost millions of bees. There is no definitive answer about what’s causing the deaths, but the Schuit sisters blame neonicotinoids.
“There’s no doubt in our minds,” says Esther Schuit. “Every time we know that there’s neonics going out in the ground we see our bees dying.”
The pesticide is often used by farmers to protect their crops from insects.
The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario called for a complete ban on neonic pesticides in 2014.
As of last year, farmers who use neonic seeds had to prove to the provincial government that they need to use them.
But the new restrictions aren’t enough for Saugeen Country Honey.
After twelve years at the St. Jacobs Market, the sisters have sold their last jar of unpasteurized raw honey.
The family is moving to New Zealand where it’s much harder to use the pesticide.
