COUNTRY
Serving Marine on St. Croix, Scandia, May Township
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 2016 VOL. 32 NO. 47 www.countrymessenger.com $.75
SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION: Public hearing held in response to petition. PAGE 7
Scandia beekeepers link colony collapse to insecticide BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@COUNTRYMESSENGER.COM
Marking the first time that any state has compensated beekeepers for losses linked to neonicotinoid-based insecticides, Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture has reimbursed two beekeepers with hives in Scandia for damages that occurred last year, the Star Tribune reported last week. The honeybee populations of Pam Arnold and Kristy Allen were devastated last spring when wind carried a neonicotinoid-laced dust from a field across the road – where a neighbor was planting corn coated with clothianidin – to Arnold’s Scandia property. Allen, founder of the Minneapolis-based honey company the Beez Kneez, kept hives in Arnold’s bee yard. For years beekeepers have suspected that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees, even when used correctly by farmers, but this is the first action by any state that acknowledges the losses, Senator Rick Hansen told the Tribune.
“Once you have a state compensating people for a loss, it’s real,” he said. The compensation was enabled by new legislation, 2014’s “Bee Kill Compensation Law,” and this is its first application. The law is designed to reimburse beekeepers at market value for losses from acute pesticide poisoning. In practice, such poisoning has been hard to prove. Of 10 complaints from beekeepers so far, the agriculture department found evidence of poisoning only at the hives in Arnold’s yard. Arnold and Allen are one piece of an ongoing debate over the danger of neonicotinoids to honeybees and other pollinators. The state Department of Agriculture and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are currently studying the broad effects of neonicotinoids. Bayer CropScience, which produces several neonicotinoid-based insecticides, initially disputed EPA findings SEE BEEKEEPERS, PAGE 2
COURTESY THE BEEZ KNEEZ
Kristy Allen collects dead and dying bees in Scandia with a member of the state Department of Agriculture last year. Allen and Scandia beekeeper Pam Arnold are two of the first beekeepers in the nation to receive monetary recognition of hive devastation caused by neonicotinoids.
Lost logs keep telling story of Marine Mill BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@COUNTRYMESSENGER.COM
Logan Ketterling had been looking for a good story. He knew it would be about wood, and Minnesota. But he couldn’t choose just any old story about logging, milling or building. He needed a story that was, in a sense, still alive. He needed to touch the wood, to carve it – and in so doing, add another layer to the story. “I’d been looking for an idea for a company for a bit,” said the 19-year-old Lakeville native. A history enthusiast with a creative streak, he came up with Urbain, a jewelry company that would design story-based accessories.
Appeal against BOLD BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@COUNTRYMESSENGER.COM
Parent and taxpayer group 834 VOICE filed a Petition for Certiorari with the Minnesota Court of Appeals Mon., March 21. It is the group’s first effort to reverse the Stillwater school board’s March 3 decision to close Marine, Withrow and Oak Park elementary schools. The suit challenges facts and data administrators used to support the BOLD consolidation plan, and cites public opposition to the proposal, including a survey conducted by the district that reported 57 percent of residents were opposed to BOLD prior to its passage. “This particular part of the challenge will have the Appeals Court look at the record the school board had in front of it and decide whether there was enough evidence in it to justify the decision,” said 834 VOICE attorney Fritz Knaak in a statement. “While the Appeals Court will defer to the school district if there is some reasonable doubt about the facts, there still must be sufficient good SUZANNE LINDGREN | COUNTRY MESSENGER
SEE LOGS, PAGE 2
Mike Tibbetts with two pieces of logging-era wood marked with end stamps.
SEE BOLD, PAGE 2
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