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Beekeepers: State Laws Ignore the Plight of Dwindling Hives

Posted on: Sunday, 23 April 2006, 21:00 CDT

By Dawn House, The Salt Lake Tribune

Apr. 23--LOGAN -- Utah, the Beehive State, is losing its honeybees to pesticides, and commercial beekeepers' pleas to tighten state law to protect their hives so far have gone unheard.

Since hundreds of his hives were killed three years ago, Cache County beekeeper Darren Cox has been asking state officials to comply with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and and Rodenticide Act, enacted by Congress in 1947 to control the sale and use of pesticides.

"Utah is developing the reputation of being a renegade state [when] it comes to pesticides that kill bees," said Cox. "Bees are like canaries in the mines. If something happens to them, humans are next."

Pesticide labels instruct users not to spray during times when bees are foraging. And those label instructions "have the force of [federal] law," said Barbara Barron of the Environmental Protection Agency in Denver.

In Utah, property owners and land managers apparently enjoy some exemptions. They can use "pesticides known to be harmful to honeybees," according to an administrative rule of the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, which has the force of state law. They also may spray the toxic chemicals during daylight hours, when bees are pollinating crops and plants.

Beekeeper Cox said he had numerous meetings with state officials in 2003 when more than 1,000 of his hives were destroyed or significantly damaged by sprays and again in 2004, when nearly 500 more hives were lost. To set up more talks, he met last fall with Agriculture Department Commissioner Leonard Blackham.

Clair Allen, plant director for the department, said it's likely the state exemption conflicts with the federal pesticide act and he'll work to change state regulations if the rules are determined to be out of compliance.

"Farmers aren't knowingly killing bees," added Allen. "When it happens it's inadvertent. They want bees pollinating their fields because they'll get a better crop."

Department spokesman Larry Lewis said current rules were enacted by past administrations under circumstances that apparently no one can recall. For his part, Allen expressed some frustration last week by saying Cox is "jumping the gun by talking to the media. We're meeting with him next week."

The EPA's Barron declined to comment on the specifics of the Utah law but said there are no exceptions to the federal pesticide law, including property owners.

"Beekeepers have been marginalized in Utah," said Cox's father, Duane, in a family that spans four generations of beekeepers. "The big orchards are gone, and development has taken over. It's difficult for our voices to be heard."

The Coxes are not the only ones whose bees have died.

Roger Allen lost half his hives last year in North Ogden and Plain City, around the time farmers and mosquito-abatement districts were spraying neighboring lands. Unlike the Coxes, he didn't spend money for tests to determine who had sprayed "because nobody would do anything anyway."

Agriculture officials said beekeepers are compounding problems because they are failing to erect signs indicating where their hives are located, a requirement under Utah law. That requirement, however, exempts anyone using pesticides from giving beekeepers advance notice so they can move their hives.

By contrast, California landowners are required to post advance notice of spraying, including dates, times and type of pesticide to be used.

Wayne Perry, past president of the Utah Beekeepers Association, said that because bees already are being decimated by parasites, anything that can be done to protect colonies is critical.

"Our biggest problem is keeping our hives alive," he said. "As for pesticides, it's pretty simple to read the label on the poison to see how if affects bees."

Beekeepers also have contacted State Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, asking for help. He referred them to state agriculture officials with the recommendation that the state administrative law exempting landowners from some pesticide controls be changed.

"I talked to them a couple of years ago," Hillyard said last week. "I thought it had been resolved."

The issue is not unique to Utah. In Minnesota, Jeff Anderson and two other beekeepers went to court to recoup their losses after neighboring fields were sprayed with the deadly Sevin XLR Plus to kill beetles infesting trees. They contend that half their hives were wiped out.

"We have good laws," Anderson said in a telephone interview, "but we also have bad cops enforcing them."

A state judge and an appeals court threw out the case, holding that landowners have no legal obligation when bees trespass onto their land. But the Minnesota Supreme Court reversed the rulings, saying landowners "have a duty to use their property so as not to injure that of others."

"The wheels of justice move very slow," Anderson said of his case, which is scheduled for trial next month. "This first happened in 1999."

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Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

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