Please Help Save the Bees Pt 1
Have you noticed how few bees are about this season? Have you seen any bumble bees in your garden, or are there none of these sweet fuzzy creatures visiting your flowers and vegetables this year? Mankind has been causing mass extinctions of plants and animals for thousands of years. It was human beings, for example, who hunted the woolly mammoth to final extinction, and Easter Island is living proof of what can happen to a society that has chopped down all its trees. Right now we are at it again, flattening the Amazon forests, and now it appears as if we are also willy-nilly killing the world’s bees. If we kill all the bees, starvation will result, but many good people, even including gardeners are totally unaware of the threat or of the fact that they are contributing to the problem.
A number of disasters threaten domestic and wild bees, but this brief article is just to alert you to some of the hazards to bees from pesticides and to let you know, as gardeners, how you can help. One of the threats comes from Spinosad, a somewhat new pesticide used by farmers and gardeners and touted by experts as a safe and harmless product. Even organic gardeners who avidly avoid chemical pesticides suggest this organic spray as a control for budworm, bougainvillea looper, rose slug, and other caterpillar-like pests. The active ingredient in Spinosad is a fermented soil-bacteria, similar to BT (Bacillus thuringiensis), but in this case it is Saccharopolyspora spinosa, an organism originally found under the floorboards of an abandoned rum factory in the Caribbean. This product is totally organic, thus it received the OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) Seal of Approval. But if you read the label, which one would hope all consumers do, you immediately discover in the first line that Spinosad is highly toxic to bees. How, I wonder, did Spinosad get the OMRI seal of approval? Worse yet, Spinosad is sold in containers with spray attachments on the top of them, inviting the unsuspecting public to broadcast the spray on everything in sight. This is what people did with DDT before Rachel Carson exposed its hazards, and DDT was used against the same pest: the lowly caterpillar. Couldn’t we rely on birds and trichogramma wasps and other beneficials to control caterpillars and thus save our bees?
The instructions on the label of Spinosad suggest spraying in such a way that the spray will be dry before bees return to the sprayed area. What are we supposed to do, put up warning signs? Even if bees could read and would obediently stay away, the dry product will be in the pollen, and this pollen will weaken the bee larvae when the parent bees lovingly take it back to the hive and feed it to their young. Infected pollen will make some of the larvae sick and kill a few of them. (The label won’t tell you this. I had to do some research to find it out.) Now if I were a bee I would be more than a little upset if I took food home to my young and discovered it made them all sick and that it even killed a few of them. I wouldn’t want any of my babies to be weakened or sickened, let alone killed. And yet organic gardeners are using this product and recommending it to others. Expert horticulturists and agriculturists are recommending it. I always hope to follow the latest in scientific information, but since I am also an organic gardener I have to differ with those who consider Spinosad a safe spray. On the other hand it is possible to use Spinosad in a safe way, but that requires care, thought, restraint, and knowledge—qualities the public at large usually lacks.
Please help save the world’s bees by your own actions and by spreading the word. Please never spray with Spinosad unless in the evening hours and in very small quantities while using a small hand sprayer (the kind sold for moistening laundry), and then only moistening the leaves of plants at a distance from flowers or only on geranium blossoms, since bees never visit them. Never purchase or use Spinosad in a broadcast spray container. If you have it in a container use it slowly by pouring the right quantity into a hand sprayer. Don’t give it away to someone else who can misuse it. Never use Sluggo Plus in moist spots visited by bees, because it contains Spinosad.
Wow! I wasn’t aware of this chemical (I try to use the good old-fashioned smush method of killing pesky caterpillars), but it sounds like a stealth killer. I’m in New England, but have noticed fewer bees (and sadly, bats) in recent years. I hope more people read your work and become aware of and responsible for what they dump on their lawns, an in turn, in our air and drinking water.
Hi Pat, What do I do about the rose slugs? I will not use Spin -O -it’s -Sad. But holes and worm poop are everywhere! I have 100 + Rose’s. Also they are attacking my strawberry plants with thousands of holes!
Thanks Pat
Thank you for not using Spinosad, though if you were able to put it only on leaves, not on flowers,I think you could apply it without killing the bees. This is what I suggest you do: Cut off all flowers from a rose, feed and water it to create a quick bounce back. Leave on the buds. Then go ahead and spray it with Spinosad. Bees will not visit unopened buds and by the time the buds open the center of the flowers where the bees go will not harm them.
Here is another way to accomplish the task: Cover each of your roses with plastic bags that your daily newpapers arrive in. Twist tie them on. Spray the rose with Spinosad. Then remove the plastic bags. This is worthwhile to save the bees. I have never seen bees land on the leaves of roses, only on the flowers. Spinosad does indeed kill rose slugs. You will feel good that you are getting rid of the rose slugs but also protecting the bees.
Rose slugs are the larvae of rose sawflies. (There is more than one kind of sawfly.) Sawflies emerge from the ground under the rose in spring. They mate and lay eggs under the leaves on the rose. The larvae emerge and chew on the rose leaves, then fall to the ground and pupate and another generation of sawflies emerges in spring. Usually this happens here in May or early June continuing on into July. It would be a good idea to mark on the calendar next year when we first see the rose slugs. If we can figure out the timing of the life-cycle of the sawfly then we have a chance to stop them in their tracks. It’s all about timing the spreading of the dry worm castings ahead of the time the adults emerge from the ground. Diatomaceous earth might work if placed on the ground at the right time but the problem with that is that once it gets wet it doesn’t work. The important thing with rose slugs is to “stop them at the pass” and accomplish this in an organic way.
Now to explain about the worm castings. Dry bagged worm castings laid down like mulch on top of the ground in spring ahead of the time the rose sawflies emerge do cut down or even stop rose slugs in spring but this has to be timed properly. If done early in the year the sawflies cannot emerge from the ground under the rose. Having worms and seeing the “poop” as you call it on top of the soil doesn’t stop the cycle because the emerging saw flies go around it and fly up onto the stems of the rose plants to lay their eggs.
It is the dry worm castings themselves that kill insects (in this case sawflies) as they try to emerge from the ground. Once they have emerged they will mate and fly up onto the rose, but these hatching flies cannot get through the dry worm castings because the worm castings kill insects on contact. (I have not tried making a worm-casting spray by mixing worm castings into water. Some people do this and say this also works but I have never done this, so I can’t guarantee results.)
As far as other sprays go, some people say Neem oil and Pyrethrins kill rose slugs but of course Pyrethrins are poisonous sprays, even though natural and Neem oil has never worked for me. There is an organic spray made by Gardens Alive called Pyola. You might try that against rose slugs. It might work, but I am not sure. I cannot guarantee that Pyola kills rose slugs.
This is our first year vegetable gardening at our new place in Palms, West LA. We have lavender bushes and rosemary on the property, courtesy of the landlord. As a result, we have seen bees just thriving here all day long, every day, and we have had excellent pollination. We also have a great deal of wasps and hornets that love to patrol our melon patch and tomatoes. Also, we get daily visits from at least one huge black bumblebee and many hummingbirds.
Our only real problems this year have been consistently severe powdery mildew (especially on the cukes). I will use Serenade from now on to prevent. And I will look for PM resistant varieties next year. However, I am currently trying a tea made from cornmeal, on the advice of a friend. Apparently, it encourages good fungus that kills powdery. Do you know anything about that?
Anyway, I wanted to write this to let you know that bees are alive, well and simply thriving here in our little plot in West LA, just north of downtown Culver City. Bumblebees, and wasps too. And lots of ladybugs! I just needed to compliment your article with some good news!
Thank you for everything you do. We love our bees and will never use Spinosad, since we have plenty of wasps.
Found out about spinosad this morning and thought… “Too good to be true?” Went to the interweb and found your site. Thanks so much. Thank you not only for enlightening me about the dangers to the bees but also for offering an alternative solution to the spray-with-abandon theory suggested by some.
We like to think that there is at least one person FOR the bees for every person oblivious. Thanks for being there!
Thank you so much for writing to me regarding my article on Spinosad and how it harms bees, despite its OMNI label. It warms my heart that you looked this up and found my article on the subject.
I fear that chemical companies are destroying our precious planet. I believe we come back to Earth more than once and must take care of it for future generations and that we are those generations to be. So we should do this for ourselves. My next book (already completed) will make this philosophy clear. Even if people don’t agree with me, perhaps it will awaken some thoughts about what we humans are doing to this magnificent world.
Oh Pat, Thank you so much for the information. You took a lot of time to help all of us rose growers. You are amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank You
Brigitte
Thanks hugely for the compliment. I’m so glad to know the information was helpful.
Thank you so much for this. I bought this on the glowing reviews of the nursery staff, but was suspicious that it might hurt bees, ladybugs or other beneficials. I found this post while looking for more info.
I’ve got a lot of bees right now on my thyme blossoms and am so happy to see them.
An odd thing happened to me when I used Spinosad on my lime tree.
I sprayed early evening against Citrus Leaf Miner. A few days later I noticed a dead bee inside the flower, intact with no signs a spider had been the culprit.
I think you are right when you say that the dry product on the pollen could still be a problem. I don’t buy the manufacturer’s claim that it is less toxic to bees when dry. I think it’s highly questionable that it should be used on any plant in flower, regardless of when it’s applied or whether the product is dry or wet.
Thank you for sharing this incident. I totally agree with you and have been trying to get people not to use Spinosad on flowering plants because it can kill bees.