About five million bees died by poisoning this past week inLagunillas de Orotina, Alajuela, the Costa Rican Beekeepers organization denounced on August 13th.
The incident was caused by a group of “unscrupulous people” who applied toxic substances to their crops, which ended the life of the bees that inhabit 50 double-chamber hives, including new and vigorous queens, according to the affected beekeepers.
“As a result of the poisoning of the bees, we have lost everything, and feel very emotionally affected because bees are our livelihood,” said an affected beekeeper. “There are no living bees left, so our loss was total,” he added.
The organization indicated that representatives of the National Animal Health Service (Senasa) have already appeared at the site to collect samples of the insects and send them to their laboratories, in order to determine the chemical agent that caused the death of the bees.
In addition to the damage to the hives, the beekeepers suffered the loss of wax, honey, and materials for beekeeping use; calculated in an amount over ¢ 25 million.”However, environmental damage is considered inestimable, because bees are indispensable elements in the conservation of ecosystems and in the reproduction of basic plant species for food production,” emphasizes the affected. This is the third incident of bee poisoning reported by Beekeepers from Costa Rica so far this year. The first was reported on May 8th in Esparza, where more than two million bees died from the insecticide Fipronil. The other mass bee poisoning occurred in an apiary of 30 hives at San Isidro de Alajuela, on June 20th.
