This family breeds millions of insects to help farmers choose predators over pesticides
CBC
You can smell the bees before you see them.
Mixed between honey and pollen, the scent is overwhelmingly sweet as it wafts through the door in a shed placed on a rural piece of property in Amherstburg, Ont.
When the door is opened that's when you hear them — thousands of bumblebees angry with the light and noise.
The bees are waiting to be purchased by local greenhouses that will use them for pollination.
"Pollination is how much fruit you're going to get, so for a farmer, they're not going to play around with their pollination," said Meshal Mustafa, who helps run the family business, Growliv.
Mustafa's parents, both entomologists, started the company in 2014 with a single bug.
The company now breeds 17 species of bugs, which equates to the production of hundreds of millions of insects a week. They believe it's the largest bug breeding farm in North America with about 36,000 square feet of laboratory space and annual sales of $3.5 million.
"I am known as the bug lady among my friends for sure," chuckled Mustafa.
Most of the insect species on the farm don't pollinate, they're used more as a defence mechanism — bred to eat the unwanted bugs that invade certain crops. It's a process called biocontrol.
White flies, for example, can stunt the production of tomatoes but green lacewing larvae, an insect Growliv breeds, will feed on them.
Mustafa said the greenhouses usually make arrangements to buy the bugs before growing any crops.
"It's a natural way to control pests without having to spray their crops with pesticides, this is like the first line of defence now," said Mustafa.
On top of pesticide use potentially having harmful environmental impacts, particularly when a pesticide moves outside of the intended application site, Mustafa said pesticides can also stop working, similar to the way humans can develop a resistance to antibiotics if taken too often and for long periods of time.
"It's a similar case for pesticides," she said.
This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.
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