Bees die en masse in Puli, pollen contaminated with pesticides poisons the ecosystem, melons and fruits left without bee pollination

Text / By Upstream and Downstream reporters Cai Jiashan, Lin Jiyang

Today is the day the bees flee for their lives. Puli beekeeper A-Ji in Nantou loads box after box of his few remaining bees onto a truck and sets off for the mountains of the south. It has been 12 days since he first noticed signs of pesticide poisoning in his bees, and he estimates that 80 percent are already dead.

Every August, when the betel nut palms bloom and are sprayed, fleeing with the bees has become routine for most beekeepers in Puli. But this is not just a war between betel nut farmers and beekeepers; the widespread spraying of insecticides has affected agriculture across the board. Passion fruit, bitter gourd and luffa gourd all face the plight of pollinating bees dying and yields declining. Every betel nut spraying season, the bees suffer, and some farmers have no choice but to hand-pollinate, which greatly increases their workload.

It is not only bees that suffer. The drifting pesticide spray shrouds the surrounding flowers and grasses. Upstream and Downstream collected pollen from dead hives for identification and found it came mainly from Bidens pilosa, Ageratum conyzoides and Mimosa pudica, along with a small amount of betel nut pollen and passion fruit pollen. These flowers are not only a food source for bees; butterflies and other insects also visit them. When pollen is contaminated with pesticides and kills bees and butterflies, a "silent summer" may descend on Puli year after year, and what is buried with the ecosystem is also humanity's future.

Beekeepers have their reasons for not moving, but officials can only suggest "fleeing for their lives"

Pesticide poisoning of bees in Puli has occurred for three consecutive years, with mass deaths every August during the betel nut flowering season. The Council of Agriculture confirmed that spraying the banned pesticide fipronil on betel nut flowers is the main cause of bee deaths. But the government has been slow to produce effective countermeasures. Puli beekeepers, finding it hard to fight the widespread spraying of betel nut, have had no choice but to flee with their bees one after another.

Why move so late? A-Ji says he has an elderly father at home to care for and cannot just move at a moment's notice, but seeing his bees on the verge of dying out, he had to hurry to find shelter. In the end, through a friend in the south, he found a safe place to put his hives. After moving them, he still has to travel frequently between the two places, more than 300 kilometers round trip, but he cannot abandon his father.

A-Hua, a beekeeper who suffered severe losses, is in poor health. If he moved his bees, he would have to travel daily between the apiary and his home, which he could not bear, so he has had to watch more than 200 hives of bees keep dying.

Betel nut spraying trucks come and go every day, and the government is helpless

Another beekeeper, A-Zheng, runs an ecological tourism operation. Visitors may come to tour the apiary at any time, so he cannot move it. His bees have suffered heavy deaths, and he can only buy box after box to replenish them, but he cannot keep up with the rate at which the bees are dying. "We farm normally, and we are affected by those who farm abnormally. It really makes us bitter." He further criticized that the high-altitude spraying method used for betel nut will cause an ecological mass extinction.

This contrasts with the statement from the Council of Agriculture's Miaoli District Agricultural Research and Extension Station: according to last week's survey, most beekeepers had already gone elsewhere to avoid the trouble; beekeepers naturally follow nectar sources, and those still staying put without moving should be only isolated cases. But beekeepers angrily retort that in Nantou alone there are more than 40 beekeepers whose bees show pesticide poisoning, "so all the government can do is tell us to move?"

For years the government has been negligent and hands-off about betel nut spraying, and beekeepers have reported bee poisoning incidents for three consecutive years, yet officials still take no active action and repeatedly tell beekeepers to relocate, effectively making fleeing a way of life. The Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine says it will crack down on betel nut spraying, but since the incident began, spraying trucks can still be seen coming and going toward betel nut plantations every day at around 5 a.m.

Passion fruit pollinating bees poisoned, growers have no choice but to rely on hand pollination

Bee poisoning is not just the beekeepers' problem. Puli's abundant passion fruit, bitter gourd and luffa gourd all need bee pollination. Zeng Wenchang, a neighborhood chief in Yixin Village, observed, "Every year in this season, there are fewer bees!" He said that more than 20 years ago wild bees flew everywhere, and there was no need to worry at all about pollinating melons and fruits. Later, wild bees declined, and farmers had to rent or buy bees for pollination, but now even the bees they buy cannot be kept.

"Our passion fruit and luffa gourd yields have been declining in recent years." Passion fruit grower Zeng Meinü found that a box of bees they bought to pollinate passion fruit showed signs of pesticide poisoning a while ago, and two days later, all were dead. She also believes it is related to betel nut spraying. "The flowers of betel nut are most severely affected. The pesticides used are very toxic; any pesticide can be used. In betel nut orchards, they just spray with all their might; it is people from elsewhere who come to spray."

Without bees, they have to do it themselves. Zeng Meinü and her husband Shi Hansheng hand-pollinate. In a 7-fen (about 0.7 hectare) passion fruit orchard, the two of them pinch flower after flower and are busy all day. Passion fruit blooms in wave after wave, and the production period keeps them busy from late June until before the Lunar New Year. "If there were bees, no manpower would be needed at all!" The two practice grass-covered cultivation and try hard to reduce pesticide use, but still suffer collateral damage. Unregulated betel nut spraying affects all nearby crops that need bee pollination.

At Dapingding, the most famous passion fruit production area, a grower surnamed Chen from the production cooperative also said: this month two boxes of bees died. "The past two or three years have been quite serious!" He also said that in the past everyone relied on wild bees for pollination, but the number of wild bees has plummeted, so they had to buy bees. However, the bees they buy also often die from poisoning, so growers have no choice but to buy more and more. Three to four hundred meters from his orchard there is a betel nut plantation. "Beekeepers used to rent land here to place bees, but now no one dares to come up."

Another Peng surnamed grower in Yixin Village called out even louder: "Bees are our bread and butter! Without bees, passion fruit will not set fruit. Why allow betel nut to use such toxic pesticides to poison us? The government is effectively strangling our farmers' livelihoods!"

Most of the bees pollinating bitter gourd also died

Not only fruit growers, vegetable growers also suffer. Puli bitter gourd grower Lin Yuxian found that his 20-plus boxes of pollinating bees, placed outside the net house,