Neonicotinoids: What Home Gardeners Might Want to Know

With the purchase in a local garden center or nursery of a rose, black-

eyed Susan, sweet alyssum, or other flowering plant, could we
unknowingly be contributing to the deaths of pollinating insects, and of
possibly even birds? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is yes.

The plants could contain neonicotinoids, a family of powerful pesticides with deadly
consequences for bees and butterflies, the same pollinators that many of us try to attract to
our gardens by planting pollinator-friendly flowers.

Neonicotinoids (neonics for short) have been

linked to adverse ecological effects including
commercial honey bee colony collapse and die-offs
of native bees and other pollinating insects. They
may also be responsible for a loss of birds with the
reduction in insect populations.

Neonics are commonly used in modern, intensive

agriculture and are marketed as a way to protect
crops from harmful insects. They can be applied to
seeds as a coating, used as a foliar spray, applied to
soil as granules, or mixed in irrigation water. At
least 75 percent of corn seeds and 50 percent of
soy bean seeds, crops grown extensively in
Ontario, are treated with neonics.

But neonics are also present in the home

gardening sector in both flowers and vegetables. In
2018, the environmental group Friends of the Earth
Canada bought a selection of common garden flowers including daisies, asters and lavender
from five major retailers. The flowers are favoured by, especially native, bees which are
responsible for pollinating one-third of the world’s crops and 90 percent of all wild plants. The
samples were sent to the University of Guelph where they were tested for neonics. Half were
found to contain traces of the chemicals (Globe and Mail, 18/04/2018).

Break down the Latinate scientific name, neonicotinoid, and you have: “new” (neo), “nicotine”
(nicotin), and “like” (oid). Neonics are “new” because they have only been around since
development in the 1980s and 1990s. They are “nicotine-like” because their mode of behaviour
is similar to that of nicotine, which has been used as an insecticide for hundreds of years.

Because neonics are systemic,

once in plant tissues they
become persistent and are
carried into new tissues as the
plant grows. This is true both
for agricultural crops and
flowers and vegetables grown
in home gardens.

The chemicals act as a neuro-

toxin. If a honey bee consumes
pollen containing neonics, it
either dies outright or becomes
permanently impaired and
succumbs to a more lingering
death. The same fate awaits
native bees, butterflies and
other insects that come into contact with pollen or plant tissue containing neonics.

Production nurseries (companies that produce plants for sale by retailers) are drawn to neonics
because they allow the low-cost creation of large volumes of plants relatively free of
blemishes. But they make the entire plant, from root to tip, toxic to insects for a year or more.

In 2017 a home gardener in Toronto conducted a survey of several big-box stores with garden
centers in the city and found that awareness of neonics ranged from considerable to some to
none. (http://sharonharris.ca/neonicotinoid-use-in-toronto-big-box-garden-centres/)

Although neonics are subject to regulated use in Ontario, the Ontario Beekeepers Association
(OBA), in concert with 13 other Canadian conservation and environmental groups including the
David Suzuki Foundation and Nature Canada, have called for a total ban on the pesticides in
Canada.

In 2018, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency announced a three-to-five-year

period to phase out some neonics. The OBA and others say this measure is insufficient and will
allow the use of ecologically harmful neonics to continue until at least 2022-2023, maybe
longer.

The European Union enacted a comprehensive ban on neonics that entered into force in
December 2018.
 What You Can Do

Concerned gardeners can take steps to help ensure

the plants they purchase in garden centers and
nurseries are free of neonics:

 Watch this CTV News video:

https://barrie.ctvnews.ca/eco-group-warns-
neonicotinoids-in-common-garden-centre-plants-
1.1926834
 Check the labels on plants to see whether
they are marked neonic free. If no such information
can be found, ask staff. If staff can’t answer your
question, ask to speak to the outlet’s manager and
register with him/her your concern about neonics
and ask that your concern be relayed to suppliers.
 Tell your neighbours and friends about neonics so they too can become advocates for a
neonics-free environment.

Photos: Greg White