Bobrovka, Russia: 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.
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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.
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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.
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That is over three million dead bees and Rubtsov estimated his losses at 1.6 million rubles ($25,000).
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All the bees in the vicinity have met the same fate.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“They broke all the rules possible” regarding spraying, said Rubtsov.
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NT Agri, the accused company, denied that it broke any rules. “We followed all instructions,” said its director Irina Trubitsina.
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“Flowering rapeseed is a big attraction for the bees, so it was like an ambush,” said Rubtsov.
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Worker bees gathered the toxic nectar and brought it to the hive, where even bees born days later were poisoned.
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“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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‘Rapeseed takeover’
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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.
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“The volumes of pesticides being used and their quality aren’t checked by the government,” spokeswoman Yulia Melano told Russian news agencies.
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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.
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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.
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The EU banned the use of fipronil and most neonicotinoids on outdoor crops in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
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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.
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Those requirements were ignored by farmers growing rapeseed in the Tula region, beekepers told AFP.
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They are bitter that Europe makes environmentally-friendly biodiesel from Russian rapeseed grown with pesticides that the EU has banned for use at home.
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“The pesticides banned in Europe have all been dumped here in Russia,” Morozov said angrily. “Somebody has to take responsibility.”
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Rapeseed cultivation has doubled in Russia over the past decade with most of the processed oil exported abroad.
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“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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But rapeseed is a delicate crop and experts say farmers are tempted to take more radical steps as pests become resistent to certain chemicals.
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“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.
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Not only is use of pesticides not monitored, she noted, but nobody coordinates between beekeepers and farmers about their use.
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Global crisis
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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.
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Tula is just one of 30 Russian regions that have experienced large-scale bee deaths this summer, according to the country’s beekeeping association.
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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.
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This has taken a toll on beekeepers, with Rubtsov saying several of his colleagues have had heart attacks from the stress.
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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.
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Brandorf believes that following the loss of their hives many beekeepers will simply quit, as with no government support, the profession is becoming unprofitable.
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“It’s becoming easier to just close bee farms,” she said.
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