Bug Blog
plants carry deadly pesticide
Beekeepers warn store-bought plants may carry deadly pesticide
Environmentalists are warning the public over a pesticide they say is bad for bees. Manitoba Bureau Chief Jill Macyshon explains.
Beekeepers and scientists say some store-bought herbs, flowers and seeds may contain a pesticide linked to mass bee die-offs in North America.
Studies have linked neonicotinoid pesticides to an epidemic in the bee-farming community called colony collapse disorder, which is thought to be responsible for the deaths of millions of bees worldwide each year. The Ontario government has taken steps to limit neonicotinoid use in farming, but the pesticides are still used in other provinces and continue to pop up in store-bought plants across the country.
Experts haven’t determined the exact harm inflicted by neonicotoids, but bees exposed to the chemical have been known to become lost, confused and inefficient. In many cases, whole bee colonies die as a result of exposure.
Beekeepers and scientists say some store-bought herbs, flowers and seeds may contain a pesticide linked to mass bee die-offs in North America.
Several major retailers have committed to phasing out plants and seeds treated with neonicotinoid pesticides, but the chemicals are in widespread use and phasing them out will be slow. Seeds are often treated with the pesticide en masse, and plants that grow from those seeds are laced with it.
Backyard gardeners are encouraged to ask about neonicotinoids before buying plants at their local greenhouse.
Apiarists have seen a startling rise in bee deaths in recent years, and many blame the growing popularity of neonicotinoids.
Winnipeg-area apiarist Phil Veldhuis cares for about 1,200 hives and the effects of colony collapse disorder has hit his bees hard.
“Over half of my hives the last two years have collapsed,” Veldhuis told CTV Winnipeg last month. He says many apiarists have observed a rise in bee deaths in recent years, coinciding with the growing popularity of neonicotinoid pesticides.
“There’s a correlation that we’re concerned about,” Veldhuis said.
Pesticide companies have blamed the die-offs on changing weather patterns and pests, but studies have shown those to be minor factors in causing colony collapse disorder.
Delta Pest Control Ladner Pest Control Tsawwassen Pest Control Go Green Pest Control Randy Bilesky
Killed by bedbug insecticide
Second child dies after being exposed to bedbug insecticide
The two-year-old boy died Thursday while being treated at Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton.
Imam Sherif El Sayid of the Al Rashid mosque told mourners about the boy’s death during the funeral for his eight-month-old sister, who died Sunday.
Allan Vinni, who is the lawyer for the Fort McMurray family, identified the boy as Zia-Ul Hasan Syed. His father is Syed Habib and the mother is Nida Habib.
RCMP have said the mother took her five children to the hospital in Fort McMurray on Sunday after they started vomiting. The baby girl died and two of the children were transferred to Edmonton for treatment.
Taj Mohammed, principal of the Fort McMurray Islamic School, said one child, believed to be about five years old, remained in hospital.
“All we know is that the second child has passed away,” he said. “The other one is still critical. The two who are with the parents are doing well.”
Mohammed said the parents are struggling to come to terms with what has happened to their children.
He said people are doing what they can to help the family, which moved to Alberta from Ontario a few years ago.
“This family needs support. They need all the prayers that all the people can give.”
The family had recently brought a type of aluminum phosphide back from a trip to Pakistan. The green tablets were placed around the apartment, particularly in one bedroom, to try to kill bedbugs.
Aluminum phosphide can cause long-term damage to a body’s liver, heart and kidneys.
The Canada Border Services Agency and RCMP have said they are investigating the case.
According to Health Canada’s website, imported pesticides must be regulated under the Pest Control Products Act and bear a Canadian label.
The poison is listed in Alberta as a Schedule 1 substance, meaning its availability and use is restricted to commercial applicators and trained farmers with licences. Each province has its own classification system.
Bees and Pesticides
It’s not a huge thing in the fight to reverse a dramatic population decline. The decline of the nation’s honeybee population started in the 1980s and has been blamed on a variety of factors, including neonicotinoids, a type of insecticide and other seed producers, and the varroa mite, a parasite that may contribute to colony collapse disorder. Bees are suffering the same fate as the monarch butterfly, which has seen its population hammered by the loss of milkweed that was once plentiful across the nation. Likewise, bees have lost considerable amounts of foraging area. Herbicide use has kind of eliminated that. The impact on honeybees has been substantial. There are an estimated 2.5 million honeybee colonies in the Canada today, less than half the population found in the 1940s. And given that bees are responsible for pollinating a quarter or more of the food that we consume, there could be significant financial costs to farmers — and consumers — if the bee population continues to dwindle. There needs to be stronger communication between beekeepers, sprayers and the farmers who use their services particularly when you factor in the reality of professional beekeepers who sell their pollination services. The professional operations, with hundreds or thousands of hives, are constantly on the move. They’ll stay in an area for three to four weeks before moving on to their next customer.
pesticides and bee deaths
The government is censoring its own scientists for studying ties between pesticides and bee deaths?
The signatories include the American Bird Conservancy, Avaaz, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Farmworkers Association of Florida, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Green America, Organic Consumers Association and Sierra Club.
The research in question centers on neonicotinoids, a nicotine-like class of insecticides that impair the neurological systems of insects and which studies have linked to die-offs of bees and monarch butterflies—two key pollinators—as well as birds. Neonicotinoids have been strongly linked to honey-bee colony collapse disorder (CCD), a syndrome first observed in Germany that has been blamed for massive bee population declines across the globe. In 2013, certain neonicotinoids were banned by the European Union and a few non-EU nations.
The global food system relies on bees to pollinate at least 30 percent of the world’s crops. Bees are responsible for pollinating a host of American crops, from apples and almonds to cantaloupes and cucumbers, impacting $15 billion a year in U.S. crops.
In March, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an environmental activist group supporting local, state and federal researchers, filed a legal petition with the USDA seeking new rules meant to increase the job protection for government scientists and citing censorship and harassment. At least 10 USDA scientists have come under fire for research into farm chemical safety that conflicts with the interests of the agribusiness sector, according to PEER executive director Jeff Ruch.
In April 2014, the group released “Follow the Honey: 7 ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis to protect profits,” a report documenting the deceptive tactics used by agrochemical companies to deflect blame from their chemicals to pollinator declines and stall governmental regulation on neonicotinoids. The companies named in the report include U.S.-based Monsanto, Switzerland-based Syngenta and Germany-based Bayer, which patented the first commercial neonicotinoid, Imidacloprid, the world’s most widely used insecticide.
Eating Organic Can Rid Pesticides
A new study suggests that just two weeks of eating a changed diet is enough to drastically reduce the amount of lingering ag chemicals.
There are pesticides—and other agricultural chemicals too—in your body right now. With organic food production accounting for less than 1 percent of the world’s farmland, herbicides, fungicides, plant growth regulators, and all the rest are part of the global dietary reality—and when we eat foods treated with them, the chemicals stick around.
Do they pose a health risk? Do they ever go away? Do we need to be worried about them? Should you be paying way more for organic groceries to avoid them?
The short answer is that no one really knows, but a new study funded by a Swedish grocery chain suggests that eating only organic food could be a quick way to get rid of whatever pesticides are in your body. Although the full, independent study, conducted by the Swedish Environmental Research Institute, is not available in English, a video posted Monday suggests that eating organic food for just two weeks could get rid of nearly all of the chemical residues.
The study tested the urine of a Swedish family of five before and after overhauling their kitchen, which originally featured little organic food. “It cost more than conventional food,” said Anette, who, with her husband, Mats, has three young children, “and we’re a big family.”
The initial test showed that each family member had a variety of agriculture chemicals in their urine, which all but disappeared after just 14 days of changing what they ate. While their exact diet isn’t made clear, the video, which shows the family being served mac and cheese and sausages for a meal, isn’t exactly a juice cleanse.
Still, even eating a strictly organic diet doesn’t guarantee a body free of pesticides, as a more extensive study of 4,400 individuals, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in February, showed. People who ate organic were found to have significantly less organophosphate—one of the most commonly used classes of pesticides—than those who did not, though they still had some residues.
But while direct exposure to organophosphates can be highly dangerous—they’ve been linked with some cancers and can disrupt the endocrine system—it’s unclear what problems long-term, low-level exposure causes.
So what is, as the Swedish video calls it, “the organic effect”? Scientists are still trying to determine that, because it’s that remnant of pesticide and the effect that it has that we really need to understand.
Randy Bilesky & Go Green
Randy Bilesky owner/operator of Go Green Pest Control is interview by Delta Cable.
May 7 2015, Delta cable interviewed Randy Bilesky of Go Green Pest Control Corp. The discussed quickly turned from what Randy does to what he is concerned about in the local area. “We are looking at a massive invasion of the Impressive Fire Ant here in Delta” states Randy, “Once the ants find their way to Delta it will not be pretty. Delta is known for condition that the Impressive fire ant thrives on: a lot more sunshine than the rest of the lower mainland and moist fertile soil”. Randy Bilesky also talked about alternative or eco-friendly methods of pest control. “We first determine the magnitude of the pest problem by implementing the Integrated Pest Management protocol: what is causing the problem, what damage has been done, to what extend can the home or business owner live with, what can be done to exclude the pest from the property, is the actual source of the issue originating inside or outside. Then we can tackle the problem with natural or a synthetic approach”.
Randy always put safety first by advising his clients what the potential risks can be depending on the products he uses. Randy arsenal ranges from the common natural products like Diatomaceous Earth ( The diatoms, a common aquatic shell, are mined and ground up to render a powder that looks and feels like talcum powder) to creative application tools such as an extension pole and applicator that can reach wasp nests that are high up on the second floor of a building.
You can contact Randy with Go Green Pest Control through their website gogreenpestcontrol.ca, booking@gogreenpestcontrol and calling or texting at 778-886-4111
Last comment by Randy at the end of the interview “Like us on Facebook” https://www.facebook.com/gogreen.pestcontrol.1
Randy Bilesky Talks About Rats Getting In Your Car
Do to continue Government pressures, north American car companies are “going green” by using biodegradable components to build their cars. Unfortunately for many car owners this has come at a cost: the expensive repair bill resulting from rodents chewing the wire coatings and other electrical parts under the hood!
Randy Bilesky of Go Green Pest Control in Delta talks about rats getting under the hood and what preventative measures car owners can take to stop it.
Randy’s Recommendations:
1) Place a bag of moth balls in the engine compartment and interior of the vehicle.
2) Spray a hot pepper based spray around the vehicle and the engine.
3) Obtain an electronic pest deterrent sonic noise maker like the Ultrasonic Rodent Repeller Commercial Triple Speaker Model Repels Rodents, Rats & Mice. By Innovative Rodent Repeller
4) Live rodent traps
5) Do not place bait stations near the vehicle as the rodent may use your vehicle as a final resting place.
Rats vs Vancouver Hospital’s
Rats scurrying down hospital hallways, chewing through wires and nibbling on food scraps near the cafeteria. Children’s Hospital, the rodent problem there has definitely got worse in recent years.
These are a few of the recent rodent sightings reported by public health inspectors, nurses and staff members at B.C. Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.
A surging rat population in the hospital’s cafeteria and food preparation area has prompted management to step up rodent control efforts in recent weeks.
Inspectors believe that despite the increase, the rodents do not pose an imminent health risk to the hospital’s patients, visitors or staff, said Richard Taki, regional director of health protection for Vancouver Coastal Health.
But the results of last month’s inspection highlight the hospital’s ongoing challenges dealing with vermin, a situation hospital management and health inspectors say has been exacerbated by demolition and construction work in recent months.
There are no mentions of rodent problems in the most recent inspection reports for the cafeterias of other Vancouver hospitals, including St. Paul’s Hospital, UBC Hospital, and Vancouver General Hospital.
Kristy Anderson, a spokeswoman from the provincial Ministry of Health, said if an inspector finds a food service establishment is not responsive to food safety notices or orders, the establishment “could be fined or ultimately be required to shut down until the situation is remedied. To our knowledge this has never occurred in a hospital or health authority-run facility.”
Blame the ‘Impressive Fire Ant’
Blame the ‘impressive fire ant’ for delayed at Vancouver’s airport and don’t expect things to get much better
Richmond B.C. — The invasive fire ant continues to spread in the Lower Mainland, wreaking havoc on Vancouver airport runways and forcing CP Rail to burn the soil on the Arbutus corridor in attempts to eradicate them.
Last summer, several planes hit birds feeding on the fire ants at YVR, forcing a series of short runway closures.
And the pest problem is no longer confined to the common European fire ant.
It has branched out to include a lesser-known species dubbed the “impressive fire ant,” according to Thompson Rivers University entomologist Rob Higgins.
“We’re talking of two different types of fire ants,” said Higgins, noting both fire ants appear to be on the move. “We’ve got them in virtually every municipality.”
We’ve got them in virtually every municipality
Higgins has been conducting surveys of known fire ant infestations and doing random sampling throughout southwestern B.C. to assess the extent of these tiny aggressive insects, which possess a painful sting and swarm very quickly when disturbed.
The investigation initially focused on the European fire ants, which spread naturally over short distances by budding off new colonies in which a queen and a group of worker ants leave a nest to form a new colony.
His research took a turn, though, after a Burnaby entomologist sent Higgins a sample a few years ago of a fire ant discovered at his home. Higgins, who was heading back east to compare his collection, took the ant along and determined it to be the Myrmica specioides, a lesser known species from Europe, that undergoes mating flights every summer.
But it wasn’t until later that fall — after a call from Vancouver International Airport’s wildlife program — that Higgins started researching the impressive fire ant.
Airport officials were worried about a spate of collisions between small birds, mostly barn sparrows, and planes on the runway during July and August, which forced them to close the runway for five to eight minutes each time to clear away the mess.
“They wanted to know what they’d been eating,” Higgins said. “I looked at their gut contents and they were full of impressive fire ants. They’d been eating a lot of them, especially the winged queens.”
Higgins said it appears the impressive fire ants, who nested in the grasslands around the airport, were attracted to the end of the runway for their mating flights. The swarm of ants then attracted the birds, most of them barn swallows. In one month last summer, he said, there were 50 collisions between birds and planes. One day, there were five runway closures.
David Bradbeer, a runway wildlife specialist at YVR, confirmed the situation. “It is a service inconvenience, but we do close the runway to remove the carcass because we don’t want another bird to be attracted and get hit.”
Bradbeer said the situation only became a problem in the past year. He noted the YVR wildlife management branch has been trying to understand the ecology of the many species around the airport, including the swallows and fire ants, to figure out how to deal with the problem. The investigation has just started, he said.
Fire ants are difficult to control or eradicate, even with pesticides.
Higgins acknowledged the impressive fire ant is “just emerging as an invasive species here” and while he and Bradbeer are looking at running an experiment at YVR to control the ants, he expects it could take a year to get the permits.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Pacific Railway, which is tearing up its tracks along the Arbutus corridor on Vancouver’s westside, has been incinerating the soil along the tracks and said it will now also burn the rail ties to ensure the ants aren’t transported to another location.
“I just got confirmation we will incinerate the ties in that whole area,” said CP spokesman Jeremy Berry, noting the move will likely happen next week.
Although Higgins has yet to tally the numbers he has collected through his research, in the past four years, the ants have been introduced to at least 25 locations on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland through the movement of landscaping materials, soil and potted plants.
He noted the most common areas for fire ants tend to be Vancouver and Chilliwack, but they were recently spotted in West Vancouver, Burnaby and handful of spots in the District of North Vancouver.
Protect pollinators from pesticides
2. If you must spray plants in bloom, select a pesticide that is less toxic to bees (e.g. Bt, insecticidal soap, summer spray oil). Spot spray when possible to limit pesticide exposure risks.
3. Apply pesticides only after flower petals have fallen, when plants are less attractive to bees. This will reduce the risk to bees coming in contact with pesticides.
4. Select pesticide formulations carefully to reduce risk. Dust (D), wettable powder (WP), flowable (F) and other formulations that leave visible powdery residues on plants are picked up by bees more easily than emulsifiable (EC) or soluble concentrate (SC) formulation. Follow any specific pesticide label requirements to protect bees.
5. Follow any specific pesticide label requirements to protect bees.
6. Read the package label to see if the pesticide contains a neonicotinoid insecticide with these active ingredients: clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid or thiamethoxam. Use these products after flower petals have fallen because they may be highly toxic to bees for several days after application.
7. Avoid applying these neonicotinoid insecticides by soil drench or tree injection methods to plants known to attract bees. These methods may contaminate nectar and pollen for some time after treatment.
8. If you must use a soil drench or tree injection to apply these neonicotinoid insecticides, do it after flower petals have fallen and use the lowest possible effective dosage to help reduce the risk to bees. Also, try to select an insecticide that offers the shortest persistence in ornamental plants while still controlling the pest.
