Treated corn seed linked to bee kills, Health Canada urges farmers to use best practices

Government issues list of 25 best practices to lower the risk of contamination 
instead of following Europe’s lead and banning neonicotinoid insecticides

Another round of “bee incidents” last year has prompted Health Canada to issue an updated list of mitigation measures to corn farmers who may have inadvertently killed the pollinators. A severe death rate during planting season in 2012 has been linked to a dry spell and widespread use of nitro-guanidine neonicotinoid insecticides on corn seed.

Beekeepers ask courts to ban controversial pesticides

U.S. environmental regulators are failing to protect honeybees and should immediately suspend use of some toxic insecticides tied to the widespread deaths of bees, charges a new lawsuit. “It is a catastrophe in progress,” said migratory beekeeper Steve Ellis, who maintains 2,000 hives for pollinating crops from Minnesota to California. “We have an ongoing problem


EU Commission wants curbs on pesticides to protect bees

Reuters / The European Commission said Jan. 31 it wanted EU member states to restrict the use of pesticides linked to the decline of bees. The commission said it was asking EU countries to suspend the use of neonicotinoid insecticides — among the most commonly used crop pesticides — on sunflower, rapeseed, maize and cotton.

Standing water can lead to drowned bees

Hot weather might be slowing some Manitobans down, but soaring temperatures have kept leafcutter bees flying high. “Leafcutter bees like the hot weather, more so than honeybees,” said David Ostermann, a pollination expert with Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives. “Honeybees, if it gets too hot, will shut down, but leafcutters tend to keep going,”


Bees Make A Buzz At The Forks Market

Jim Campbell of the Manitoba Beekeepers Association (centre) sets up a display at the ManitobaHoneyShowatTheForksMarketinWinnipeg.P hoto: ShannonVanRaes By Shannon VanRaes Co-operator staff Kids and adults alike swarmed the Manitoba Honey Show early this fall, as apiarists took the opportunity to share their honey and insights. The bees are important to Manitoba, said Ray Hourd, owner

Bees Need Diverse Landscape To Thrive

If you’ve ever complained about there being too many bees around, consider yourself lucky. Pollinators – such as bees, butterflies and bats – are responsible for the continued existence of more than 70 per cent of the world’s flowering plant population. But they are significantly decreasing in number. By carrying pollen from the male to


Bee Sensitive To Helpful Insects, Urbanites Urged

What do Mount Everest and honeybees have in common? Check out May 29. That was the day in 1953 when Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to successfully climb the world’s highest mountain. Hillary was a beekeeper from New Zealand. This year, May 29 was the day proclaimed by Ottawa,

Aphid Killer Remains Available In Manitoba

“The procedural problem that has been identified in the U. S. didn’t occur here.” – PIERRE BEAUCHAMP, PMRA The abrupt removal of the agricultural insecticide spirotetramat from the market in the United States will not affect the product’s status in this country. “The short answer is no,” said Pierre Beauchamp of Health Canada’s Pest Management



Bee Stings Top Concern Among Public

“How does anything survive on that kind of a schedule? That’s not the way to keep bees, I don’t think.” – MURRAY COX Do you get stung a lot? That’s the question asked by 95 per cent of the public who stop in to check out the beekeeping display at the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair.