How To Report Pesticide Kills

If you find a large pile of dead or twitching and shaking bees in front of your hive, they likely have encountered pesticides. It may or may not kill the entire colony, but it’s important to report it and request an investigation.

The Georgia Department of Agriculture has procedures in place to process your report and send an inspector to your apiary to investigate. 

1. Fill out this online form: https://gdaforms.wufoo.com/forms/pesticide-incident-form/

2. Within one business day you will be contacted by the Pesticide Complaint Coordinator who will schedule an inspector to come to your apiary. The inspectors understand that it’s important to get there as soon as possible. You can help by making yourself as available as you can to meet them. 

3. DO NOT COLLECT YOUR OWN SAMPLES. The samples must be collected by the inspector. It can be difficult for some beekeepers to leave their colony in distress. You may still care for any bees that weren’t killed, but don’t disturb the dead bees. The inspectors can not take any samples that they didn’t collect themselves.

4. Do take photos and videos if applicable. The coordinator will let you know how to send those in. 

• Please limit videos to 45 seconds. Otherwise the files are too large to transmit. 

• If you see your neighbor spraying for mosquitos, a video or photo of this can be very helpful.

• Don’t send multiple photos of the same thing, or blurry images that are hard to see.  

For more information you may reach out to AgPest@agr.georgia.gov