Bees Do It, Birds Do It, Let’s Not Call The Whole Thing Off*
How an insidious pesticide is ruining a father’s tale
I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell my daughter the “birds and the bees” story.
No, not THAT story.
I mean the “circle of life” one.
Birds and bees get drunk on plant nectar. Unwittingly take off with seeds and pollen. Seeds escape to underground hideouts; pollen hooks up with compatible plants. Add water, sunlight, and time and, voila, new flora.
Unfortunately, the opportunity to see that happen in real life seems to be slipping away.
In part, that’s because of a controversial type of pesticides known as neonicotinoids (neonics for short). While the manufacturers of these chemicals claim that they’re harmless to humans, they fail to mention how their product fries bees’ nerves and messes with birds’ navigation systems.
Maybe I’m peculiar, but I think of psycho bees and befuddled birds as a potential harm to this human.
On top of that, there’s what I learned in ninth grade biology: “No bees, no food.”
That, I think we’ll all agree, is well beyond a “potential harm.”
Yet, some agribusinesses are pushing to use even more neonics. This spring, farmers expect to plant neonic-covered seeds in about 280,000 square miles of American soil. For context, that’s roughly the equivalent of the the East Coast states from New Hampshire to Georgia
Neonics have been used particularly a lot around the Great Lakes. A recent EPA study found traces of neonics in 74 percent of their monthly Great Lakes water samples.
I find this particularly disturbing, because I’ve wanted to tell my daughter the birds and bees story by the banks of Lake Erie, near where my in-laws live. Just a few years ago, my mother-in-law’s gardens attracted birds from miles around. My father-in-law was an amateur beekeeper, much to the delight of his honey-loving family.
One trip to the grandparents and the story would tell itself.
But, today, Meemaw’s backyard is no longer filled with birdsong. And Poppy’s artificial hives have been cut up and recycled, the queen bees and drones mysteriously dead.
So, I’ll have to tell my daughter the story using the Colorado birds and bees that occasionally grace our flower beds. Thankfully, neonic use is low here… and I aim to help keep it that way.
I’m not giving up on Ohio or elsewhere, either.
When my in-laws were my daughter’s age, Lake Erie was a biological desert and the nearby Cuyahoga River was prone to catching fire.
Nowadays, they’re happy to eat fish caught in the lake (though not the bottom-feeders, they’ll tell you). And they love to take their grandchildren to the park alongside the river.
It took a lot of political willpower to revive those endangered waterways.
Today, groups like Environment America aim to do the same for the birds and the bees. And, for all of our sakes, they have to win.
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To learn more about neonics, the campaign to ban them in your state, and the Bee Friendly Food Alliance of top chefs and restaurant owners, click here for Environment America’s No Bees, No Food Campaign and here for USPIRG’s Ban Bee-Killing Pesticides drive.
* Apologies to Cole Porter and the Gershwin Brothers for this mashup of their American Standard songs. If only they were around now to find a good rhyme for “neonic.”
