Northern Ontario beekeeper says she lost nearly 2 million bees this season

In June, CTV News Northern Ontario told the story of a Greater Sudbury area beekeeper who lost half of her bee population – about 1.5 million bees, due to what she believed was an acute chemical kill.

Northern Ontario beekeeper Dawn Lalonde walking through fields that were once a buzz with bees after losing more than 1 million bees from her colonies in June 2024. (File photo/Lyndsay Aelick/CTV News Northern Ontario)

Now, testing done at the University of Guelph’s Agriculture and Food Laboratory has confirmed that was the case.

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“I still fear walking out into my yard today, tomorrow, if these companies come and spray within the residential areas, within anywhere from three miles of me, that the it's going to be another day like it was in July, August. It doesn't stop,” said beekeeper Dawn Lalonde.

“It's not just one and I know it's not just one company and I'm not here to point fingers and place blame these products, if used correctly, can be done safely for protection of our food sources. Unfortunately, in my opinion, and this is my opinion, cosmetic green lawns is the new monoculture of the north and it's not a food source.”

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Lalonde is the owner-operator of Mikkola Family Farm & Apiary and the True North Honey Company. She told CTV News that since the last time our cameras caught up with her she has experienced even more loss and has now lost almost 2 million bees in total.

Dawn Lalonde speaks with CTV News over Zoom about her loss of about 2 million bees in the Greater Sudbury-area in the last three months. September 13, 2024. (Lyndsay Aelick/CTV News Northern Ontario)

“This is not just about myself or the 200 and some beekeepers just in the Sudbury district,” she said.

“This is our native pollinators. My bees, like my colleagues have said in previous articles, is my bees are the canary in the coal mine. There is a problem here, a catastrophic environmental problem that is about to come down on us that wasn't there five years ago.”

Northern Ontario beekeeper Dawn Lalonde holding one of more than 1 million bees that suddenly died in June 2024. Lalonde believes the mass deaths were caused by chemical toxicity. (File photo/Lyndsay Aelick/CTV News Northern Ontario)

Costly testing

Thanks to more than $10,000 raised through a GoFundMe initiative, Lalonde was able to send her bees away for testing and while she won’t specify which chemicals were found in the bees she did say there was a variety of fungicides as well as pesticides.

“If my math is correct, it did exceed the Ld50, which is the lethal dose of pyrethroids that were in the on the bee sample as one of the bee samples,” she said.

“That was the fresher one here as well as within the pollen within my colonies. So I will say that, yes, there was something that did show up. Now who used it? How it was applied. That is up to the ministry to find out.”

Ontario Ministry of the Environment investigating

In a statement to CTV News, a spokesperson for the province’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks said in part:

“Ministry staff are following up with local commercial pesticide operators to assess whether any local residential pesticide applications took place around the time of the June 14, 2024 bee kill. We are assessing the available information to help determine what may have caused the bee kill and will get back to the business owner when that assessment is complete.”

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A collection of bee colonies in the Greater Sudbury community of Lively that recently lost more than 1 million bees in June 2024. (File photo/Lyndsay Aelick/CTV News Northern Ontario)

Lalonde said she intends to rebuild, relocate and continue to educate and advocate. She currently has 15 original surviving colonies preparing to go into winter – a number she said should be more than 75.