This article examines the debates that surrounded incidents of honeybee poisoning in the southern Great Lakes region in the 1880s and 1890s. Drawing upon the records of beekeepers and allied entomologists from Ontario and neighboring states, it analyzes the history of insecticide use, knowledge development, and risk calculation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here, beekeepers emerge as an important and largely overlooked collective voice in the history of insecticide controversies, contributing as they did to legislation, education, and advocacy efforts on both sides of the US-Canadian border. Their actions in response to a cogent threat to their livelihoods mark them as early advocates for environmental protection. Deeply familiar with the amenities and threats of surrounding land uses for their honey crop, late nineteenth-century beekeepers pressed for prudent insecticide use and “bee-friendly” horticultural practices more than half a century before the more familiar insecticide controversies of the postwar period. By the turn of the century, these efforts had borne some success in reducing incidents of honeybee poisoning. As the frequency, quantity, and toxicity of insecticides increased in the early twentieth century, however, powerful fruit-grower interests left Great Lakes beekeepers (and their bees) to shoulder the risks of an increasingly toxic countryside or to fold their operations, as many chose to do. For environmental historians, their fight presents an early example of the effects of agricultural industrialization, and its associated environmental consequences, on minority producers and the animals they kept.

中文翻译：

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大湖区的早期杀虫剂争论和养蜂人倡导

本文考察了围绕1880年代和1890年代南部大湖区蜜蜂中毒事件的辩论。利用安大略省和邻近州的养蜂人和相关昆虫学家的记录，它分析了19世纪末和20世纪初的杀虫剂使用，知识发展和风险计算的历史。在这里，养蜂人在杀虫剂争论的历史中成为重要且被广泛忽视的集体代言人，他们为美加边境的立法，教育和宣传工作做出了贡献。他们对生计提出的有力威胁的反应使他们成为环境保护的早期倡导者。深深地了解其蜂蜜农作物的土地利用带来的便利和威胁，19世纪末，养蜂人迫切要求谨慎使用杀虫剂和“养蜂”的园艺习惯，这是半个多世纪以前的事，而战后时期则是更为熟悉的杀虫剂争论。到世纪之交，这些努力已在减少蜜蜂中毒事件方面取得了一些成功。然而，随着二十世纪初期杀虫剂的频率，数量和毒性的增加，大果农的浓厚兴趣使大湖区的养蜂人（和他们的养蜂人）承担着日益剧毒的农村地区的风险或放弃其经营活动，选择做。对于环境历史学家而言，他们的斗争是农业工业化及其相关环境后果对少数群体生产者及其饲养的动物的早期影响的例子。