Anatoly Rubtsov looked despondently at the beehives lining his property. "The farm used to be loud, it sang," he said. Today just a faint buzz is audible but an overpowering rotting stench hung in the air after his bees were likely poisoned by a pesticide.
Rubtsov,
who keeps a large honeybee farm on the edge of a small village in the Tula
region south of Moscow, is one of hundreds of beekeepers across Russia to
report mass bee deaths that have robbed them of their livelihood.
Eighty-two
bee colonies -- almost the entire farm -- have died since early July, and the
survivors will unlikely make it through the winter, he said.
That is
over three million dead bees and Rubtsov estimated his losses at 1.6 million
rubles ($25,000).
All the
bees in the vicinity have met the same fate.
People
around Bobrovka are certain that the culprit is a local company growing
rapeseed, a cash crop with yellow flowers used for cooking oil, cattle feed,
and biofuel, that treated its fields with insecticides on July 4.
Viktor
Morozov, another beekeeper who kept hives in a nearby forest, filmed empty
pesticide containers lying on the ground alongside the rapeseed fields, but
said the workers denied using a strong insecticide that contains fipronil.
A lab in
Moscow eventually confirmed the presence on the rapeseed plants of fipronil,
which is legal in Russia provided certain precautions are taken but banned in
the EU.
"They
broke all the rules possible" regarding spraying, said Rubtsov.
NT Agri,
the accused company, denied that it broke any rules. "We followed all
instructions," said its director Irina Trubitsina.
"Flowering
rapeseed is a big attraction for the bees, so it was like an ambush," said
Rubtsov.
Worker bees
gathered the toxic nectar and brought it to the hive, where even bees born days
later were poisoned.
"They are the living dead," he said, peering at the bees crawling chaotically on the bottom of one hive, unable to fly. "The whole farm is doomed."
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Beekeeper
Anatoly Rubtsov has lost nearly all of his hives
|
"They are the living dead," he said, peering at the bees crawling chaotically on the bottom of one hive, unable to fly. "The whole farm is doomed."
'Rapeseed
takeover'
Russia's
agriculture watchdog confirmed the bee deaths were caused by uncontrolled use
of insecticides and acknowledged that their use is not being monitored closely.
"The
volumes of pesticides being used and their quality aren't checked by the
government," spokeswoman Yulia Melano told Russian news agencies.
Fipronil
had been used widely in the European Union before a 2017 scandal when it was
found in Dutch eggs after being used illegally to treat chicken stables.
Studies
have shown that the neurotoxin fipronil, along with so-called neonicotinoid
substances used in other pesticides, can cause bee colonies to collapse and
harm other insects such as butterflies, as well as worms and fish.
The EU
banned the use of fipronil and most neonicotinoids on outdoor crops in 2017 and
2018, respectively.
In Russia,
they are still allowed: fipronil can be sprayed on potatoes, grains and
pastures -- but only at night in non-windy weather, with bees kept away for
several days.
Those
requirements were ignored by farmers growing rapeseed in the Tula region,
beekepers told AFP.
They are
bitter that Europe makes environmentally-friendly biodiesel from Russian
rapeseed grown with pesticides that the EU has banned for use at home.
"The
pesticides banned in Europe have all been dumped here in Russia," Morozov
said angrily. "Somebody has to take responsibility."
Rapeseed
cultivation has doubled in Russia over the past decade with most of the
processed oil exported abroad.
"Rapeseed has taken over the whole region," said Morozov, who lost 50 bee colonies in July -- the worst catastrophe in his 40 years as a beekeeper.
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The bees
still alive can't fly
|
"Rapeseed has taken over the whole region," said Morozov, who lost 50 bee colonies in July -- the worst catastrophe in his 40 years as a beekeeper.
But
rapeseed is a delicate crop and experts say farmers are tempted to take more
radical steps as pests become resistent to certain chemicals.
"Pesticides
are expensive, and sometimes they dilute them with cheap toxins and ignore
application rules," said Anna Brandorf, who heads Russia's national
beekeeping research centre.
Not only is
use of pesticides not monitored, she noted, but nobody coordinates between
beekeepers and farmers about their use.
Global
crisis
Brandorf
said Russia is beginning to experience the same bee crisis as other parts of
the world -- one that has alarmed scientists and constitutes a threat to our
food supply -- and has already forced some Chinese farmers to pollinate crops
by hand.
Tula is
just one of 30 Russian regions that have experienced large-scale bee deaths
this summer, according to the country's beekeeping association.
The agriculture
ministry said the deaths inflicted "considerable damage" on
beekeeping nationwide. It estimated that about 300,000 colonies have perished,
out of a total of about 3.3 million.
This has
taken a toll on beekeepers, with Rubtsov saying several of his colleagues have
had heart attacks from the stress.
Some are
fighting for compensation, but even when they have evidence they face a long,
often uphill battle in Russian courts. Many others haven't bothered.
Brandorf
believes that following the loss of their hives many beekeepers will simply
quit, as with no government support, the profession is becoming unprofitable.
"It's
becoming easier to just close bee farms," she said.
Russian
beekeepers south of Moscow have been seeing their bees die off en masse due to
what they believe is improper sraying of an insecticide that is still legal in
Russia but has been banned in the EU
Beekeeper
Anatoly Rubtsov has lost nearly all of his hives
The bees
still alive can't fly.
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