The Grand Traverse Butterfly House opened last weekend – a couple of weeks later than planned. When the first group of butterflies was introduced to the garden, they were killed by plants that contained a deadly chemical.
Now the owner of the butterfly house is concerned that local home gardeners may be unknowingly killing butterflies with the same chemical.
Cyndie Bobier says it was a chemical in the flowers she had planted that caused the first group of butterflies to die.
“They do a very scary twitching behavior," says Bobier. "It’s a neurological effect so first their tongues – what’s called a proboscis – is paralyzed so they can’t eat. So they slowly starve to death and twitch with neurological effects as they die.”
A mass killer of bees and butterflies
The culprit is a chemical called a “neonicotinoid.” If that word sounds familiar, you’ve probably heard it in relation to honeybees. Studies have linked the use of these pesticides to “colony collapse disorder” – a condition that causes honeybees to abandon their hives and die.
They’re deadly to butterflies, too – something that Bobier was well aware of when she got her plants from a commercial greenhouse in Ohio. She asked the greenhouse specifically if its products contained neonicotinoids.
“The answer was ‘no,'" says Bobier. "The answer was ‘we use foliar sprays. Don’t be worried. We see bees and butterflies in our greenhouses all the time. You shouldn’t be concerned.’”
Bobier says the whole ordeal cost her about $10,000. But her biggest concern is that greenhouses are selling these products to an unwitting public.
“Grandma Jones goes to her local box store to buy her garden and wants to plant a butterfly garden and ends up buying these plants that have been treated systemically with neonicotinoids," she says. "In essence, she’s putting a butterfly garden out there to kill butterflies and bees.”
Do gardeners know what they're buying?
"If a homeowner was to use an imidicloprid product on a plant like a butterfly bush, it's going to kill the butterflies, the very insects that they are wanting to see"
Eric McCumber is an inspector with the Michigan Department of Agriculture. He’s assisting the Ohio Department of Agriculture in an investigation of the greenhouse Bobier used. McCumber says Bobier’s plants were treated with a very common type of theses pesticides. It’s called “imidicloprid.”
“If a homeowner was to use an imidicloprid product on a plant like a butterfly bush, it’s going to kill the butterflies, the very insects that they are wanting to see," says McCumber. "The imidicloprid would be deadly to those butterflies.”
McCumber says imidicloprid is the most common insecticide in the world. It was developed in the late 1980s as an alternative to insecticides that were harmful to people and animals. These days, most greenhouses – including big box stores – carry products with imidicloprid.
Some of them are taking steps to make sure their customers are informed about the dangers. Last month, the home improvement chain Lowe’s announced it would phase out imidicloprid by 2019.
Look at the label
The Environmental Protection Agency has a new law requiring the labeling of the chemical. McCumber says the problem is that most people buying garden products from their local nursery have no idea what they should be looking for.
“What the users need to do is look at that product label," says McCumber. "On the very front panel, it’s going to give you an ingredient statement. And if you see imidicloprid on there, then you know you’ve got imidicloprid.”
Because of the pending investigation – and the possibility of a lawsuit – McCumber and Bobier are not naming the Ohio greenhouse that sold the plants.
Bobier says the death of her butterflies was heart-wrenching but … she’s choosing to move on.
“I’m a very spiritual person," she says. "I’m a God-fearing person and I feel that God puts obstacles in your place for a reason and I’m just trying to chalk this up to a learning lesson so that others past me learn from it. I don’t want other people to go through what I went through. And I want people to be more educated so they make better decisions for our bees and our butterflies.”