The NYC Department of Health has decided to spray a couple more neighborhoods with a very bee-unfriendly pesticide on August 10th. I'm on vacation so I don't have to deal with this shit, but y'all stuck in the city do!
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August 10
8:15PM - 6:00AM | Spraying in Brooklyn- • Neighborhoods: Bath Beach, Dyker Heights
- • Zip codes: 11228
- • Pesticide to be used: Anvil 10+10 (Sumithrin)
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August 10
8:15PM - 6:00AM | Spraying in Staten Island- • Neighborhoods: Elm Park, Grymes Hill, Port Richmond, Randall Manor, Sunnyside, West Brighten and Westerleigh
- • Zip codes: 10301, 10302, 10310 and 10314
- • Pesticide to be used: Anvil 10+10 (Sumithrin)
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I'll warn you now that if you have hives in or close around these neighborhoods, you will see some losses of your foraging bees. Most will likely die out in the field, but some will make it back to the hive and get tossed out by the undertaker bees, so you might see more corpses than usual. Don't panic unless you see so many bodies that the bees can't keep up and you start to see them collected in large numbers on the bottom board.
However, there are some methods to minimize the number of bees killed by the sprays. For the full write up check out my previous post on the subject-
Pesticide Sprays: Keep Your Hive Alive.
If you can't be bothered, here's the tl;dr version:
The short version:
1.) In the EVENING BEFORE THE SPRAY: Close up your hives with screen mesh blocking the entrance and a wet, breathable cloth draped over the front of your hive. This will prevent direct exposure of the bees to the pesticide, and help prevent the hive from getting covered with chemicals.
2.) In the MORNING AFTER THE SPRAY: Open the hive back up by removing the cloth and screen. This prevents your hive from overheating.
3.) GORGE YOUR HIVES with artificial feed (sugar syrup and pollen supplement) before and for several days AFTER the spray. This minimizes (but does not eliminate) the number of bees actively foraging and being exposed to residual pesticides.
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