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At least one million bees reportedly died of poisoning in a wine region of South Africa.
Brendan Ashley-Cooper told the BBC that an insecticide used by winemakers, Fipronil, would have killed insects on his farm.
Other honey bee breeders in the Cape region have also been affected, but it is still unclear how many insects have died, he said.
Fipronil is at the origin of the death of millions of honey bees in Europe.
Activists say that fipronil is highly toxic to insects and that its use was restricted in Europe in 2013.
About 100 of his hives, or 35% to 40% of those he owned in the affected areas, were affected by the disaster, said Ashley-Cooper, vice president of the Western Cape Bee Industry Association. .
He estimated that this meant that 1 to 1.5 million bees had been killed.
It is unclear how many bees there are in South Africa, but deaths would not make much difference to their overall population, he said.
Fipronil was also at the center of an egg scandal in Europe this year.
Millions of eggs have been pulled from supermarket shelves in more than a dozen European countries, including the UK, after discovering that some of them had been contaminated by the ## 147 ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # 39; insecticide.
Fipronil is commonly used to get rid of fleas, lice and ticks, but its use is banned by the European Union for animals intended for human consumption, such as chickens.
Fipronil has long been used by wine growers in the Cape Region to control the ant population, but it was the first time this insecticide was suspected to have caused bee deaths, said Mr. Ashley-Cooper.
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