One Oregon woman is planning to hold a memorial in a Target parking lot — where a majority of 50,000 bumble bees buzzed their last two weeks ago.
Rozzell Medina, the organizer of the memorial, stated on the Facebook page that the event will “memorialize these fallen lifeforms and talk about the plight of the bees and their importance to life on Earth.”
“As you may know, this is a very crucial moment for bees, as they are dying in the millions, unnaturally, worldwide,” she wrote. “Their unnatural deaths are being caused by humans applying chemical pesticides to the earth and its plants.”
Medina’s advocacy for bees — and her criticism of the use of chemical pesticides — was heightened after the Oregon Department of Agriculture confirmed a few days after the ‘catastroph-bee’ that it was linked to an insecticide named Safari, which had been sprayed on 55 linden trees in the Target parking lot, reports The Oregonian.
Dale Mitchell, the pesticide compliance program manager for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, told The Oregonian that that the state is currently investigating the event to see if there was any violation of pesticide laws. He added that the death of the bumble bees may play a role in how the future use of the insecticide Safari will be regulated.
The memorial event is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Sunday, and Medina has said that she will bring food that relies on bees for pollination.
“I thought it would be a good opportunity for people to see that this is not just a news item,” Medina told The Oregonian, before adding that with events like these “people become scared to feel them.”
