Is the Orange County Vector Control District poisoning our local honey bees?

Did the reliably lame Orange County Vector Control District screw up and poison our local honey bees?

One of our readers, David Marder, is a beekeeper, and he runs a bee control company here in Orange County, called Bee Busters.  In fact he is the one who took care of the Africanized honey bees that killed three dogs in Santa Ana lost week.

Marder and his colleagues started noticing earlier in this month (with a huge spike right around the weekend of the 7-8th of March) unusual numbers of people calling about swarms and colonies of bees which upon their arrival they found to be dying from apparent pesticide exposure. So they immediately called the offices of the Orange County Vector Control District, because they seemed like the most plausible cause of bee deaths all over the county.

The Vector Control bureaucrats immediately began to evade – first the said they hadn’t been spraying anything – just putting mosquito fish in pools and some kind of brickettes.

A week or so later Marder and company were pulling their hair out because the been were still dying, when one of his guys found a recent “application map.”

Marder called Vector Control again, talked to their overpaid District Manager and again they denied spraying anything until the beekeeper asked “what about this map,” whereupon the District Manager said “oh, yeah, that,” and then he finally admitted that the Vector Control District had been applying an insecticide called Sumithrin. No bueno!  Sumithrin is highly toxic to bees.

How did the OC Vector Control District forget that they had been spraying a poisonous chemical that kills bees – until they were cornered and had to fess up?

Marder has requested their application logs multiple times but most of a month has gone by without them coming through on that.  He believes that the Vector Control District got the dosage or application method wrong and now they’re covering up what they did!

If only their screw-up ended there – but as it turns out Sumithrin is even more toxic to fish!

It is apparent that the OC Vector Control District has caused an ecological disaster here in Orange County and they know the kind of trouble they’d be in if it came out.  By now most folks know that if you kill off the honey bees then there will be no pollination of local fruits and vegetables, not to mention flowers.  It will start a chain reaction that will devastate our local plant life – and all the critters and people who depend on these plants.

Obviously mosquitos have to be controlled but it doesn’t usually result in this kind of bee kill which is why Marder is certain that the OC Vector Control District did something wrong.

Remember that we stopped the OC Vector Control District, last year, from spraying dangerous chemicals into the backyards of homes in Santa Ana’s poorest neighborhoods.  They were at the time trying to scare us about the West Nile Virus, which is spread by mosquitoes.  However what we found out was that the people getting sick were mostly the homeless, who live outside and don’t have shelter.  What they needed was mosquito repellent!

The OC Vector Control District takes money from all of us via property taxes.  They have to scare the population periodically in order to beg for more tax revenue.  You should see how much these people get paid – and what kind of benefits they are earning, including huge pensions!  You would expect that they would know what they are doing – but apparently that is not the case.

We have been saying this for some time – the O.C. Supervisors should dissolve the OC Vector Control District and subcontract out any necessary spraying to professionals who actually know what they are doing, not the overpaid empty suits at the OC Vector Control District!

Please contact your local politicians and let them know that you are not happy about what the OC Vector Control District is doing to our honey bees!

• Michael Hearst, OC Vector Control District Manager – Email. (714) 971-2421, Ext. 129.
• Chairman of the OC Board of Supervisors Todd Spitzer – Email.  (714) 834-3330.
• Supervisor Andrew Do – Email.  (714) 834.3110.  (Represents Santa Ana – and he serves on the OC Vector Control Board)
• Supervisor Shawn Nelson – Email.  (714) 834-3440.
• Supervisor Michelle Steel – Email.  (714) 834-3220.
• Supervisor Lisa Bartlett – Email.  (714) 834-3550
• The Santa Ana City Council.  Email them here.
• Santa Ana Councilwoman Michele Martinez, Ward 2.  Email her here and here.  Call her at (714) 887-9845.
• Santa Ana Councilman David Benavides, Ward 4.  Email him here and here.  Call him at (714) 475-1630.
• Santa Ana Councilman Sal Tinajero, Ward 6.  Email him here and here.  Call him at (714) 552-2800.
• Santa Ana Councilman Roman Reyna, Ward 5.  Email him here.  Call him at 714-647-6900.  (He also represents Santa Ana on the OC Vector Control Board)
• Santa Ana Mayor Pro Tem Vince Sarmiento, Ward 1.  Email him here.  Call him at 714-647-6900.
• Santa Ana Councilwoman Angie Amezcua, Ward 3.  Email her here.  Call her at 714-647-6900.
• Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido. Email him here.  Call him at 714-647-6900.
• Santa Ana City Manager David Cavazos.  Email him here.  Call him at  (714) 647-5200.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has oversight over the spraying of insecticides.  Their Director in Southern California is Steven Leonido-John – Email.  (213) 244-1804.

Art Pedroza Editor

Our Editor, Art Pedroza, worked at the O.C. Register and the OC Weekly and studied journalism at CSUF and UCI. He has lived in Santa Ana for over 30 years and has served on several city and county commissions. When he is not writing or editing Pedroza specializes in risk control and occupational safety. He also teaches part time at Cerritos College and CSUF. Pedroza has an MBA from Keller University.

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