Obama Administration Announces New Measures To Protect Bee Populations (Photo : Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Within a few minutes, millions and millions of honeybees have been killed following the spraying of the Zika insecticide. South eastern U.S., particularly South Carolina's honeybee farmers have been reeled after their apiaries have been sprayed from the sky with the neurotoxic insecticide.
Beekeeper Juanita Stanley of Flowertown Bees, a company that colonizes honeybees laments that her farm looked "like it's been nuked". It has been estimated that a whopping 2.5 million bees were decimated, Earth Island Journal reported.
In the county of Dorchester in South Carolina, USA, according to the Santa Monica Observer, they experienced the first aerial Zika spraying after 14 years with an insecticide named Trumpet.
The Trumpet insecticide producer has its labels with the caution indicating that insecticide exposure is deleterious or harmful to bees as well as to their beehives and it causes destruction to weeds and crops that are blooming.
In order to minimize harm to the beehives and to the bees, the Trumpet is best applied no more than two hours before the sun rises and two hours before the sun sets. The reason is that honeybees are least active during those hours.
The administrator of Dorchester County expressed that they followed the protocols and warnings. However, the Zika spraying occurred from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m., a time when the sun shines brightly and the bees are active and outside from the beehives and apiaries.
Horrified beehive farm owners witnessed as the bees die midair. Ward expressed that they implemented the Zika spraying during those times because they reckon people were not up and about and out.
The county's protocol is to do insecticide Zika spraying until two hours after sunrise only. However, bee keepers say that bees are out as soon as the sun rises. So instead, Zika spraying of insecticide should be done at night.
The Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency recommended the insecticide Trumpet which is containing a naled, a type of poison to control the spread of the Zika infection through killing of the Aedes Aegypty mosquito carriers.
