How a South Carolina Zika mosquito spraying killed millions of bees
On Monday, a neighbour knocked on South Carolina beekeeper Nita Stanley's door. He said he'd seen a plane fly over the day before. Bees in the area had since been found dead.
So they walked over to her own field.
"I knew something was really wrong, because it was silent," Stanley tells As It Happens guest host Laura Lynch." There was just piles of dead bees."
The smell was awful. Her population of millions of bees had been wiped out. Maggots and other insects had invaded.
"I've had to burn everything," she says.
The day before, representatives of Dorchester County had sent a plane over the area. They'd dropped the pesticide Naled, intended to kill mosquitoes and prevent the spread of diseases they can carry.
It's like taking a sledgehammer to crack a peanut.- Nita Stanley, owner of Flowertown Bee Farm and Supplies
But the spraying had unintended consequences.
"This was my business, my only business," Stanley said of her now-destroyed operation at Flowertown Bee Farm and Supplies in Summerville, South Carolina.
Up to this point, she'd spent tens of thousands of dollars investing in the business. Her eventual payoff was around the corner. She'd secured contracts to sell the bees.
"Now I don't have those bees to fulfil those contracts," she says.
Dorchester County posted notice of its plans on August 26, the Friday before it sprayed on Sunday morning.
The County explained that the pesticide was meant to prevent common mosquito-borne diseases, including "West Nile, Eastern Equine Encephalitis, La Crosse Encephalitis, Saint Louis Encephalitis, and dog/cat heartworm."
Zika had also been a concern among residents, though South Carolina has had no locally acquired cases of the disease as of September 2.
The County added that the chemical "poses minimal exposure risks to people, animals and the environment," and that anyone concerned about it "should remain indoors during the scheduled spraying."
Stanley hadn't heard about the alert. She said she was told she'd be notified directly in the event of plans to spray. And she'd been on a no-spray list.
"The big picture is, this should have never happened to begin with," she says. "An aerial spray with this substance is never a good idea. If it's going to kill my bees almost immediately, then what is it doing to us?"
She suspects that fears over Zika were what ultimately prompted the decision. But she thinks the response was too extreme. "It's like taking a sledgehammer to crack a peanut."
On Tuesday, the County acknowledged the damage done to the bee population and said that no further aerial spraying was planned.
But that's little comfort to Stanley, who's spent the week cleaning out her apiary.
"I'm trying to regroup and think and get a new plan, and not let this break me, not let it break my spirit and my dreams," she says. "But you know, that's hard to do."
"This has got to stop," she adds. "We can't keep poisoning ourselves like this."
For more on Nita Stanley's story, listen to our full interview.