ORONO, Maine - As part of a years-long federal effort to address a die-off of honeybees, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a new rule to crack down on the use of pesticides whenever working bees are present on a farm.
With about 90 percent of all honeybees now living not in the wild but in hives maintained by beekeepers, the rule is aimed squarely at protecting a pollinator population that has, itself, become a farming commodity.
Some of the most popular fruits and nuts on grocery store shelves simply wouldn't be there if it wasn't for an army of working bees. These days, the insects are trucked all across the country, hives and all, to pollinate field after field on a tight schedule as flowers roll into bloom.
"Maine is second only to the almond crop in California in the amount of imported hives," says John Rebar. Maine's wild blueberries rely heavily on these traveling bees, says Rebar, executive director of the Maine Cooperative Extension.
Apples, and other crops, are not far behind. "You know, tomatoes and strawberries, all your squash and pumpkins - all really dependent on pollinators," Rebar says.
So, says Rebar, it's important to protect them. But with all these fruits just as tempting to a host of voracious insects, farmers must also protect their crops, and that can mean applying pesticides, many of which can harm the bees.
A new EPA rule under development, called A Proposal to Mitigate Exposure to Bees from Acutely Toxic Pesticide Products, seeks to limit the risk that a colony will come into contact with a poison by prohibiting a farmer from leaf-spraying when a crop is in bloom, and hired bees are actively working on it.
"I don't know of one farmer in this whole entire world that would want to spray a bee," says Jeff Timberlake, a state legislator and apple farmer with Ricker Hill Orchards in Turner. He says the EPA proposal came as a surprise to him.
Farmers do need to apply insecticides at crucial times, says Timberlake, but he says a farm will always notify a beekeeper ahead of time so that the bees can be removed from the orchard.
He doesn't understand why it's necessary to draft such a rule. "The only thing that I can imagine, there had to have been a beekeeper somewhere along the way that didn't get his bees out on time, or a farmer that wasn't being a good neighbor - and I can't imagine - but everybody knows there's a bad apple in every bunch, right?"
The rule applies to more than 1,000 pesticide products. It also only applies to growers who actively rent bees to pollinate crops in bloom. It does not apply to neighboring farms, other homeowners in the area, or regional mosquito control projects.
And therein lies a problem, says Andrew Dewey, a master beekeeper and member of the Maine Beekeepers Association. He applauds the federal agency for acting. And he doesn't think the regulation will hurt anything. But, Dewey says, unless everyone in the area is following the same rule, its efficacy will be limited.
"A lot of the blueberry fields work on a two-year cycle so you may have a field that's not in production that's getting treated with something, and the honeybees that are placed on a neighboring property are very likely to fly over and be exposed," Dewey says.
And, he says, homeowners are probably the worst offenders when it comes to using- and misusing- pesticides.
The public now has 60 days to offer comment on the proposed rule.
