I'm a resident of  Piermont, NY, a small village on the Hudson River, and I'm also one of many backyard beekeepers in the area.

I'm asking NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo to stop the state's plan to spray herbicides known as glyphosates in nearby Piermont Marsh in a misguided attempt to eradicate an invasive plant called phragmites. This marsh is part of a fragile ecosystem that provides food and forage for my bees, as well as native pollinators and animals.

There's significant scientific research to link colony collapse disorder and honeybee deaths to Monsanto's Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide. Monsanto makes an aquatic version of Roundup, the glyphosate-based Rodeo, which is one of the herbicides the DEC may directly spray into the 600-acre marsh. This marsh directly flows into the Hudson River just 12 miles north of New York City.

I'm not a scientist, but I do carefully tend my two hives and on the occasions when I've found thousands of dead and dying bees around my hives I've walked the village and found signs that Roundup, which contains glyphosate, has been freshly sprayed on a lawn. Colonies survive cold northern winters by having a critical mass of bees, so that by early spring they still have the numbers to warm their queen and brood, and forage for the earliest food supplies. 

A massive die-off in summer almost guarantees that a colony is doomed to a winter death and multiple sprayings will doom my hives. In addition, bees that survive an encounter with herbicides like Roundup carry traces of the chemical into the hive, and I begin to see aborted larvae in a matter of days.

Most of my neighbors have been wonderful about abandoning the practice of spraying herbicides in Piermont, and in fact, I chose to live here because of a ban on herbicide spraying by the village.

The Netherlands, France, Bermuda, Sri Lanka, Brazil, South Africa -- these countries have either banned Roundup or are limiting its use, and the outcry against this dangerous chemical is only growing. 

It's just inconceivable to me that in 2015, with abundant information about honeybee deaths and the dangers of glyphosate and herbicides like Roundup, that Monsanto and the other big chemical companies still have a grip on New York State's DEC and that this Byzantine plan is actually about to be put into action.

This is bad public policy and the spraying of glyphosate by the state must be banned.

Gov. Cuomo, I hope you will defer this death sentence on my bees and all the other local pollinators not only in the interest of science but also out of respect to Pope Francis, whose brave encyclical urges all of us to stop manmade degradation of our environment. 

Bees are my passion, not a business. It's great to be able to give gifts of honey to my neighbors. I have neighbors whose kids suffer terribly from seasonal allergies, and they improve tremendously when they can have a spoonful of my bees' honey every day. But that will all stop and my bees most certainly will not survive if glyphosate is sprayed by the state of New York near my home. 

Please stop this project and ban the spraying of chemicals, including Monsanto's lethal Roundup and Rodeo, into Piermont Marsh and our beautiful Hudson River.