From MAILER-DAEMON Sat Feb 28 07:40:14 2009 Return-Path: <> X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.8 (2007-02-13) on industrial X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-85.3 required=2.4 tests=ADVANCE_FEE_1,ALL_NATURAL, AWL,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,SARE_FRAUD_X3,SPF_HELO_PASS,USER_IN_WHITELIST autolearn=disabled version=3.1.8 X-Original-To: adamf@METALAB.UNC.EDU Delivered-To: adamf@METALAB.UNC.EDU Received: from listserv.albany.edu (unknown [169.226.1.24]) by metalab.unc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0B17149075 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 07:28:41 -0500 (EST) Received: from listserv.albany.edu (listserv.albany.edu [169.226.1.24]) by listserv.albany.edu (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n1SCP3sI010167 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 07:28:40 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 07:28:39 -0500 From: "University at Albany LISTSERV Server (14.5)" Subject: File: "BEE-L LOG0212A" To: adamf@METALAB.UNC.EDU Message-ID: Content-Length: 195548 Lines: 4140 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 05:30:08 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Robert Brenchley Subject: Re: Illegal Antibiotics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://www.chinahoney.net/newshoney/yahoo.html I believe the problem is that either streptomycin or a related drug is the main defence against TB, which is on the increase over here, and if the disease became resistant the consequences could be extremely serious. Regards, Robert Brenchley RSBrenchley@aol.com Birmingham UK ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 22:29:31 -0900 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Keith Malone Subject: Small Hive beetle-organic control MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi David & All, You stated; > use some natural size combs > Can you please tell me more how you use some natural size combs? Some on one hive or some in many, not in all? What size cells are they and what is your results of their use? How long have you been using natural size combs? Keith Malone ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 14:29:43 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Karen Oland Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle In-Reply-To: <000901c29687$ca17bd60$11ac58d8@BusyBeeAcres> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Perhaps the grower might have paid a little higher price (there are many other pollinators out there) if he had went with someone that properly treated and/or voluntarily quarantined his infected stock. But not gone without. Just because you cannot stop the eventual, slow spread of a pest does not mean you simplify its spread. Look at the difference in spread of AHB versus SHB -- any movement of an AHB hive is illegal across all states and most states outlaw keeping such a hive. So, AHB is spread mostly by natural growth of swarms and by occasional movement in a plane, railcar or truck (which is immediately destroyed in much of the US). With SHB, the offical position is "oh well" (pretty much the attitude of the TN spreader of this pest -- although he could have stopped the spread with treatment of his hives at the inital detection point, or at least not continued moving infected bees across the state, where mountain ranges provided natural barriers to natural spreading of the pest). > -----Original Message----- > From: Bob Harrison > On one end you have got a grower which will not get a crop and possibly go > bankrupt without pollination. On the other end you have got a > beekeeper with > bees which possibly carry the shb. The USDA does not see a way to stop the > spread of the SHB (nor do I). The beekeeper is given a permit to go > pollinate. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 12:22:36 -0500 Reply-To: "jfischer@supercollider.com" Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Patterns in microbial border crossing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yoon Sik Kim, Ph.D. said: > We are talking about regularly administering antibiotics for every disease > in the book: pimples, colds, diarrhea, indigestion, etc. Why not? "They > are available and they work wonders." "Regularly administering antibiotics" is clearly something that is not advisable with bees, humans, or any creature. "Regularly administering" anything is foolhardy. First you test. Then you decide if you need to treat. But nearly everyone whines that "testing" is too difficult, too expensive, or too time-consuming. The larger the beekeeper, the more shrill the whining. > This process have already resulted in genetically modified bee strands > fit for the Garden of Eden, caught inside the bubble of human medication. This is completely incorrect. Use of medications has not changed the genetic structure of bees at all. What might have "changed" the genetic makeup of bees would have been to NOT use any medications at all. This would have meant loss of the majority of all colonies, and re-stocking from the small number of survivor colonies, if any. But even this might do nothing more than force re-stocking from LUCKY colonies, and not result in any better success with the problem at hand. I have not been "sick" in decades, but I assure you that my genes are no "better" than anyone else's. I'm just lucky, or stubborn. This does not imply that my descendents will be "resistant" to any disease. The concept of "resistance" does not even really apply to subjects like SHB, since the standard model of "resistance" is a very bad fit for parasite problems. "Breeding for resistance" pre-supposes that some EXISTING and known mechanism can overcome the problem, as the immuno defense system (white blood cells, et al) can overcome infection. But when the problem is a pest, such as SHB, tracheal mites, or varroa mites, one is trying to develop a "new behavior" that did not exist before, or only exists in another, very different species of bee. This is likely only possible via overt breeding and lots of testing, such as Sue Colby's breeding efforts. But these efforts result in queens that cost more, and come with trade-offs like lower production. Beekeepers seem to prefer bees that "make lots of honey", and are clearly not willing to pay more for queens with "better survival traits". Again, the larger the beekeeper, the more shrill the whining. > They need to be taken out and exposed to bee-microbes. If microbes were the only problems we faced, I'd agree. But microbes are not the major problem. The major problems take the form of exotic invasive pests from the other side of the planet that moved from other species of bees to Apis mellifera, and then moved "here" from "there" via various human-created transportation paths. > This kind of exposure to poison or pathogens will strengthen our bees, my > whole point. "Pathogens" are not a major problem in the first place, and such "strengthening" would be at the price of a complete collapse of beekeeping during the "transition", with no guarantee that there will be survivors. You see, sometimes there are NO survivors, and no pre-existing trait that exists to "save" some small faction of the population from this or that. Perhaps mapping the DNA of bees will yield some clues, or even result in some tangible progress. But even this approach has potential drawbacks. a) The phrase "loss of hybrid vigor" comes up often when one talks about seeds. It has implications for any cross-breeding or DNA-manipulation program. b) A very astute friend of mine posed an interesting question. He asked: "Will genetically-modified bees be viewed as making 'genetically-modified' honey?" The subject is a real tarbaby. While there are many good reasons why this would not be the case, one would end up adopting many of the same arguments offered by the purveyors of genetically-modified crops. jim ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 07:22:19 -0900 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Keith Malone Subject: Patterns in microbial border crossing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Bob & All, > To sum things up other than chemicals there has been no PROVEN alternative! > You know the chemicals have not yet been proven either, they only work for a short TIME. There are beekeeper with the pudding of prove in their success but just because they are not researchers or scientist their success is negated, what a shame. Even though there are beekeepers using alternatives just why have the alternatives not been proven and/or disproved? If a beekeeper can keep around 800 colonies alive with no treatments what else is there to prove? If it is the race of bee and not the non treatment then why not use the race like is being attempted with other races? What is so wrong with the success of keeping bees with no treatments? When are the researchers going to do the needed research to disprove or prove these no treatment methods? The industry is running out of TIME!! > They are marked for spring requeening . > Smoke does not mellow those gals and seems to only make the situation worse. > Lift the lid and they fly right at your face. Work the hive next to theirs > and they react. Maybe they are of AHb decent? > Or maybe they are simply an aggressive hive which some are trying to pass off as AHB. Are these bees in AHB territory? . .. c(((([ Keith Malone ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 07:29:48 -0900 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Keith Malone Subject: Patterns in microbial border crossing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Bill & All, > All medication is intermediate and necessarily stop gap and not a > solution. But to not use the tools given us and just let bees die seems > a bit foolish. > When are you going to use the tools given you or are you just going to let your bees suffer? There are tools out there for you to try and it is also a bit foolish if you do not try them. Have you tried small cells or is trying a few colonies on small cells to much trouble? . .. c(((([ Keith Malone ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 15:20:04 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Karen Oland Subject: Re: Patterns in microbial border crossing In-Reply-To: <200211301353.gAUDfZUq002246@listserv.albany.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > From: Humdinger > > My original thought in the thread was that by treating bees, for whatever > diseases they suffer from, we are doing, in a way, “a Selective Breeding” > of an isolated EHB species that cannot and will not survive on their own— > without human intervention. There are several problems with your proposed solution to the problem of mites and SHB in managed honey bee colonies. Leaving aside your analogies between parasitic pests (mites, beetles) and microbes (mostly viruses, but you included bacteria, which are the only ones treatable with antibiotics), the main fallacy in your reasoning is that there is some guarantee that managed honey bees (apis mellifera in this discussion) will survive their encounter with these new pests. Certainly, there is no evidence that they have done so in the past (ie, there are no native apis mellifera in the "native" ranges of the varroa mite, although there are now, due to introduction by man). It is true that no parasite benefits from killing all of a host species. But, when a parasite transfers to a new host, there are four possibilities: 1) The parasite is unable to properly reproduce or grow on the new host and remains a very minor problem or even eventually dies out, with only new transferrals being found in the new host population. 2) The new host provides essentially the same environment as the original hosts and a balanced relationship is created. This state could also be achieved through selective breeding (natural or artificial), providing there is some genetic characteristic that is available in the host). 3) The parasite kills most of the host population, but not all. This could eventually lead to achievement of the same balance as in case 2, starting with a vastly depleted population (which would then most likely be more vulnerable to another pest later on, due to reduction of genetic diversity) or could lead to small pockets of the host existing despite the parasite, with waves of parasite infestations decimating these in turn. The end result could be hives of bees that survive, but do so due to characteristics that make them useless for pollination and honey production (for example, if the survival characterstic is extreme aggression or small population or constant absconding, then the resulting bee may not be useful). 4) The parasite kills 100% of the host population. Given enough spread of the parasite to the new host (either due to natural or artificial spread), this results in extinction of the host. When you look at native ranges of different Apis species, this type of selection _could_ have been responsible for the absence of some species from areas where you might otherwise expect them to live (and it may not, without some evidence one way or the other, why certain species are found only in certain areas is pure speculation). With "microbes" (mostly viruses), the same general principles can apply as to spread within the population and possible consequences of the encounter (bees could shrug them off, live with them well or badly or the virus could win and the bee become extinct). Evolution does imply that survivors will pass on their survivor genes, resulting in some type of balance; however, there is no guarantee there will be any survivors or that the survivors will be from a particular species (look at the many thousands of extinct species that did not adapt to changing conditions throughout history). > By religiously treating bees with expensive chemicals that often lose its > efficacy incrementally, we are trying desperately to delay the eventuality > of the contact forever while weakening the bees even further. If there were some guarantee that honey bees will survive their encounters with these new pests, then this would be absolutely right on. Any treatment would not only delay the survivor genes from becoming dominant, it would also allow faster spread of the pest (whether parasite or microb) to further populations. However, if there is little chance of the bee surviving such an encounter (and 100% death rates in non-treated apiaries would tend to support that view), then treatment either allows time in which to engineer a survivor capable bee or enables the bee to survive period (with no end to treatment withought some genetic change to the bee). Unfortunately, the only way to test for new survival genes is to stop treating and see how many die -- a project best suited for research and not those depending on bees for survival. Just as movement among human populations now enables a virus to decimate worldwide in very little time, movement of bees enables a pest to spread much more rapidly than evolution's usual time period for exposure (contrast the spread of the flu in 1918 to the spread rates in the middle ages, when most men traveled less than a few miles from their homes in their entire lives or today's Ebola spread in a village that travels on foot versus one that's members travel in cars or planes) > I suggest we accelerate the eventuality by not treating them at all or > bringing in whichever bee species that had learned to live with such > pathogens—-a reason I had, in the first place, asked to hear from for > those who have not treated the bees for a while. AHB seems promising, > especially since by the time they spread into most of the southern states, > their super-aggressiveness will have thinned out. >From what I have read, there has been very little change in the aggressiveness of AHB as it has spread (although there has been less panic spreading press). AHB seems to tolerate varroa -- but their very agressiveness may be the reason why. Or their practice of absconding (which leaves behind the population of larva that is infested, carrying only adult mites to the new location). SHB may be unable to survive the desert conditions of the southwest (due to extreme low humidity) at more than minimal levels. So, you might end up with a balanced population of AHB and the current pests of mites and SHB in the desert southwest regions. But, taking AHB from the southwest that deal with both varroa and SHB well, may result only in a bunch of ill tempered bees that are overwhelmed by SHB in more humid areas and that produce little honey or pollination value due to their tendency to swarm. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 21:18:09 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: george seferiadis Subject: the genetics of insecticide pesticide resistance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable It is common for pesticide to work well for several years, but then = loose their effectiveness, because insects evolve resistance to these = poisons. Professor Wilson and his colleagues conducted research on a = global populations of fruit flies.Wilson and his team investigated the = insect resistance that has arisen to DDT. Insect's resistance to = pesticides revolves around the DDT-R gene.DDT-R produces a metabolic = enzyme known P450, which is the agent responsible for breaking down DDT = and other poisons. Normally these metabolic enzymes, found in all living = organisms from bacteria to humans are present in low amounts. However = Wilson and his colleagues found that when insects become resistant to = pesticides, there is a dramatic increase in the amount of one of these = enzymes due to the overexpression of the DDT-R gene. This occurs because the DDT-R gene becomes mutated by insertion of = another piece of the fly's DNA known as a jumping gene, into the = controlling sequence of the gene.This insertion messes up the normal = expression of DDT-R, leading to over production of its product, the = cytochrome P450 metabolic enzyme. The result is that as soon as an = pesticide enters the body of the insect, it is broken down so = efficiently that the poisons never reach their target tissue to cause = death. Let me give you an example of how a resistance genetic = mutation can spread so quickly. If a farmer has a field with 17 billion = pest insects and uses a new pesticide, 16.9 billion are immediately = susceptible and are killed. The resistant ones survive and pass on the = resistance gene to the next generation. Now the resistant group makes up = a larger percentage of the whole. The farmer sprays later in the = growing season and again kills pests, but primarily susceptible ones. = After a few more times using the pesticide, there is an increasingly = larger percentage of the population that is resistant. One has to understand that you cannot win with using pesticide = or insecticide for your bees george ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 17:30:45 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: CSlade777@AOL.COM Subject: Re: BEES BUZZ ELEPHANTS MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit That is the headline of an article in the New Scientist magazine dated 16th November 2002. It is about an observation that in Kenya, where elephants are becoming a nuisance by destroying trees, they avoid trees with beehives hung in them, and to a lesser extent, trees with dummy hives. The article refers to Apis mellifera africana. Has anybody heard of this sub-species? Chris ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 21:43:36 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: the genetics of insecticide pesticide resistance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello George & All, George wrote: > After a few more times using the pesticide, there is an increasingly >larger percentage of the population that is resistant. > One has to understand that you cannot win with using pesticide >or insecticide for your bees The scenario George writes about is exactly what happened with Fluvalinate in both Europe and the U.S. The scenario above would have been quite different if we had had another 98% control chemical (of a completely different chemical makeup) to alternate with Apistan would it not George? Be honest. How long in your estimation would Fluvalinate taken to become ineffective if alternated with another 98% control chemical ( we did have two completely different chemicals available at the start of varroa mite treatment in the U.S. - Coumaphos & Fluvalinate) ? Bob ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 08:01:19 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: the genetics of insecticide pesticide resistance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit george seferiadis wrote: > One has to understand that you cannot win with using pesticide or insecticide for your bees > > > That is true only in a steady state universe. It assumes that other treatments will not replace the ones that have become less effective because of resistance. It also assumes that a mix of treatments will not controll the pest. Karen's post was excellent. I would only add that resistance is not necessarily a permanent trait. If the pesticide is removed, the pest can as easily revert to their prior state, if it is beneficial for them to do so, and it seems that this is often the case. So it can be treated with the same pesticide later. One problem we have as beekeepers is the nature of our livestock. Shift to a larger more individually valuable animal (such as a horse or cow) and the whole issue of using antibiotics, pesticides and the like suddenly disappears, even in the organic world. When it costs you a big hit in the pocketbook, then you treat. The same can be said when comparing the hobby beekeeper's advice compared to the commercial beekeeper's reality. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 08:08:05 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: allen dick Subject: Re: the genetics of insecticide pesticide resistance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > One has to understand that you cannot win with using pesticide or insecticide for your bees. Winning isn't the goal. Staying in business is. Having said that, the best use of pesticides is to buy time until better measures can be developed. Too many of us forget that, get hooked on chemicals, and forget they are a temporary measure. allen ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 07:35:17 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Blane White Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Everyone, An interesting exchange here but I would like to try to make one point clear given part of the exchange below: Better, had he not moved infected hives from GA (in violation of state >law, but with no real punishment defined), the entire state might still be >clear. Or at least, have a few more years before the beetle spread >naturally. Bob replied in part: "It would be impossible to certify a semi load of bees coming from a known area of shb to be small hive beetle free. Hell the inspection service can't even keep the SHb out of packages. Temporary quarantines were set up at times but movement of bees with beetles has never been stopped to my knowledge. The USDA sees the spread of the small hive beetle as unstoppable. The hobby beekeepers in TN and KY might as you say have had a few more years before infestation but the need for pollination won out and the bee hives were released to move into orchards. On one end you have got a grower which will not get a crop and possibly go bankrupt without pollination. On the other end you have got a beekeeper with bees which possibly carry the shb. The USDA does not see a way to stop the spread of the SHB (nor do I). The beekeeper is given a permit to go pollinate." Hold it a minute Bob. Did you notice the beekeeper moved the bees illegally? No loads were certified and permitted for movement the guy just loaded the known infested colonies on the truck and moved them in violation of Georgia law and in violation of TN and KY laws. This is not a case of someone trying to do things right but someone who thinks they can do whatever they want and they don't care what it costs the other beekeepers around them. This is exactly how shb was brought to MN a few years ago - the beekeeper knew he had the beetles and didn't want to the treatment and reinspection required by GA to legally move the bees so he just illegally brought them here to MN. You know I don't have problems with legal movement of honey bees but this illegal movement is causing the whole beekeeping industry problems. Much of the anti-migratory sentiment in the US is due to this kind of total disregard to the long term health of beekeeping displayed by those who just load up their problems and spread them around. Now this is not just an issue here with beekeeping but is also occuring in other areas of agriculture where people are moving pests and diseases around and causing problems for other producers in the area. The common good quickly gets trampled in the rush. FWIW blane ****************************************** Blane White MN Dept of Agriculture blane.white@state.mn.us ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 13:36:26 +0000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Kilty Subject: Re: Patterns in microbial border crossing In-Reply-To: <3DE8F90D.8070702@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 In message <3DE8F90D.8070702@suscom-maine.net>, Bill Truesdell writes >Take this to its logical conclusion and it says to do away with all >medicine and return to primitive conditions so only the strong survive. >Just let nature take its course. I find it hard to let this one pass. The requirement on anyone not accepting the prevailing wisdom is to improve health by every means possible. >We do not have a cure for Aids, but we treat anyway, nor cancer, nor.... Aids may well be man-made via the attempt to eradicate smallpox and the method of producing the vaccine. Cancer may well be a result of long term medication and denial of natural healthy processes. Ask a homoeopath about the different model they use and about the effects of repeatedly using antiopathic approaches accumulating over a lifetime. >All medication is intermediate and necessarily stop gap and not a >solution. But to not use the tools given us and just let bees die seems >a bit foolish. I agree with this. I consider helping the bees survive and selecting for survivability is the way forward, with just sufficient support for this to be worked at long term with the least toxic approach available. For me this year means using Apiguard (thymol based) and treating only colonies getting near threshold levels (taken to be 2500 mites in a normal sized colony for this country). >Just like not letting your child have antibiotics and see if they >survive on their own. You can go to jail for that. Mine does, with 2 exceptions only, when we were actually tardy in contacting our homoeopath. Previously all conditions were worked through without medical intervention successfully including one that seemed serious enough to go to the doc's urgently, only to find the light sensitivity and temperature gone within 20' of the remedy. I demand the freedom to make my own decision based on reading all the evidence I can muster. Informed choice. There is enormous pressure to conform and no recognition of there being different models. We have a publication in the UK called What Doctors Don't tell You and its web site http://www.wddty.co.uk (I think). It's worth a read. Also how about a look at your own http://www.glycoscience.com. My problem is to apply the principles to bees and beekeeping. FWIW I have gathered a small gang of willing souls to attempt to select and breed for varroa tolerance throughout the peninsula I live on selecting for grooming damage and low mite numbers with the support and encouragement o Jack Griffes and John Dews. John has almost got to the magic figure of 60% damage found by Wallner of Austria with Carnican bees with his own melliferan bees. We don't have SHB and almost no AFB. EFB is rare and it seems possible to get on top of it even in our erratic conditions. I am hopeful our breeding programme might either circumvent virus susceptibility by breeding for low varroa numbers or include resistance as a worthy trait. We'll see what a bunch of amateurs can do. At least we are trying. -- James Kilty ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 10:00:00 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Aaron Morris Subject: Moving pests and diseases, willy-nilly (Was: Small Hive Beetle) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Blane.White@STATE.MN.US wrote: > ... this kind of total > disregard to the long term health of beekeeping displayed by those who > just load up their problems and spread them around... The common good > quickly gets trampled in the rush. Speaking of which, what was the decision regrading comment period and proposed APHIS policy changes? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 11:35:30 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mark Walker Subject: Russian/Buckfast/SMR Bee's... With all the talk lately on Bee-L in regard to the apparent "hopeless" circumstances facing beekeepers relative to mites and other assorted pests, I was wondering just what has become of these "superbees" that people have been breeding (ie. Russian's in particular). I haven't heard much about the Russian bees and their success in North America against Varroa,etc. since their introduction. Could those keepers that have integrated Russian Queens into their apiaries, or completely converted, please comment on their levels of satisfaction, vis-a-vie the colonies fight against varroa and any other considerations of note! I would also like to hear from people in regard to what bee strains/species, keepers are having the most success with. I've heard good things about the Buckfast bee, but would like more feedback...! Cheers, Mark Walker Vancouver, BC Canada ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 11:23:23 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lloyd Spear Subject: Moving pests Everything Blane said about moving SHB regardless of restrictions is correct, but the point remains that commercial beekeepers are willing to break laws and there is no enforcement teeth. Moreover, I know of one instance where the head of the state regulatory agency has stated that he "cannot think of any circumstances that that would cause him to bring an enforcement action". In this instance, he is trying to get an inspection program made a regular budget item, rather than depend on legislative largess, and in the meantime does not want to 'rock the boat' by adverse publicity. Perhaps this selfish attitude on the part of some commercial beekeepers started back when there was a quarantine on movement due to varroa infestation and one commercial beekeeper said 'to hell with it', and moved his bees regardless. There was not only no enforcement action, but the guy was subsequently elected President of ABF! This same guy is now spreading SHB throughout the Northeast and is not particularly bashful about saying he knows his hives are infested, so nearby beekeepers should 'be prepared'. What this amounts to is that one business risk (quarantine) has been removed. Lloyd Lloyd Spear, Owner of Ross Rounds, manufacturer of comb honey equipment for beekeepers and Sundance pollen traps. http://www.rossrounds.com Lloyd@rossrounds.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 14:02:15 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Bob replied in part: > "It would be impossible to certify a semi load of bees coming from a > known area of shb to be small hive beetle free. All those loads held by Georgia were released after awhile and certified free of SHB. Not I nor you could honestly put our name on a certificate saying there were not a male and female small hive beetle hiding out on the semi load. Yet they did and SHB *WAS MOVED* on those loads. Those BEE-L members from Florida (with SHB) will tell you the task would be impossible. Inspectors only random check anyway. Maybe we should insist on each frame being taken out and the MT box examined when coming out of those areas. Whats to pervent a couple SHB flying in a already inspected hive while the inspector is looking at the other 450 of the load? Yet Blane those semi loads were certified SHb free and left Georgia did they not? I have found as you go up the chain of command sooner or later you find the person which sees the big picture (or with enough guts to sign the certificate and get those bees moving). > Hold it a minute Bob. Did you notice the beekeeper moved the bees > illegally? No loads were certified and permitted for movement the guy > just loaded the known infested colonies on the truck and moved them in violation of Georgia law and in violation of TN and KY laws. I quess I missed that fact. The USDA will never be able to legislate away the small hive beetle, varroa or the tracheal mite. Perhaps let a few hobby beekeepers go a couple years longer without pests but at what costs to our economy. I locked horns with apiary inspectors in Illinios last year about getting inspected and permits to move from county to county. The only person in the meeting that thought getting inspected and a permit to move from one county to the next was a good idea was the state bee inspector. County to county inspections in Illinois makes for outlaw beekeepers. Bob ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 15:53:34 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Blane White Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Bob and Everyone, Bob asked: "Yet Blane those semi loads were certified SHb free and left Georgia did they not?" No the beekeeper in the MN case loaded the truck and moved the bees illegally without any certificate from GA. He would have to had treated the bees for shb and had a reinspection but didn't want to bother doing that. That is my point - much of the movement of these pests has involved illegal movement of the bees. I do agree that even if the beekeeper had treated and been reinspected with no beetles found on the second inspection there may have been beetles in the hives but the infestation level would have been considerably reduced at least and the beekeeper would have done what he could to reduce the spread of the beetles from his colonies. FWIW blane ****************************************** Blane White MN Dept of Agriculture blane.white@state.mn.us ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 23:08:20 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Arne Haugaard Subject: small hive beetle - treatment ideas anyone ? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Does anybody have any idea as to how the bee hives can be treated to = reduce the beetle ? I=B4ve heard from Canada that freezing( - 20 degrees celsius) should do = the trick, how ever I have a hard time imagining a bee hive with frames at minus 20 celsius = unless all bees are already dead. Then we have people on this site have opinions that contradict this = freezing treatment, yet they have no other idea as to how this beetle is fought !!! Has anybody experimented with reading of tempertures inside the hives in = hard frost ? We know the "cluster" is about 35 degrees celsius - but what about the = close surroundings ? I find the debate about how the beelte is spread very sad, we should be = thinking about how we can treat our bees not fight ourselves as to how we=B4re moving = bee hives eg. There=B4s always going to be people who=B4ll not think about deseases or = the things beekeepers=20 can do to minimize spread of them - and it will always be annother = who=B4s guilty ..... in the hope of a more sober, cool and informative debate ;-) Arnie Ps. I presume that larvas eg. are killed when wax is melted. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 17:33:28 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Barry Birkey Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > I do agree that even if the > beekeeper had treated and been reinspected with no beetles found on the > second inspection there may have been beetles in the hives Which proves one of the points being made and that is, making laws and inspections does not stop critters from moving about our country. You make it too strict for beekeepers where it hurts their pocket book and they will find a way around the regulations. It's no different in my line of work when it comes to city and county regulations and permits regarding construction. If our government would set reasonable laws and regulations in these areas, more people would be willing to play by the rules. Regards, Barry ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 12:18:06 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mark Hubbard Subject: Blue Orchard Bee MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I just read a brief article about the Blue Orchard Bee (Osmia lignaria) in the magazine American Fruit Grower. It apparently is a very efficient pollinator native to North America. Anyone know anything about this bee? I assume that since they are solitary they don't produce a lot (or any) honey? A flyer is available from: http://www.sare.org/htdocs/bobflyer.htm Curious, Mark Hubbard ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 08:32:39 -0900 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Keith Malone Subject: the genetics of insecticide pesticide resistance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob H. wrote in response to what Geroge posted; The scenario above would have been quite different if we had had another 98% control chemical (of a completely different chemical makeup) to alternate with Apistan would it not George? Be honest. How long in your estimation would Fluvalinate taken to become ineffective if alternated with another 98% control chemical ( we did have two completely different chemicals available at the start of varroa mite treatment in the U.S. - Coumaphos & Fluvalinate) ? George wrote in an earlier post; The result is that as soon as an pesticide enters the body of the insect, it is broken down so efficiently that the poisons never reach their target tissue to cause death. My reply if I may; Bob, considering what George stated, in my opinion, it would not have helped to have a another 98% control chemical (of a completely different chemical makeup) to alternate with Apistan. Why, because of this that George wrote earlier assuming he was correct; "This occurs because the DDT-R gene becomes mutated by insertion of another piece of the fly's DNA known as a jumping gene, into the controlling sequence of the gene.This insertion messes up the normal expression of DDT-R, leading to over production of its product, the cytochrome P450 metabolic enzyme." It would have happened anyway with either poison even if used alternated. It was not hard for me to figure that poisons did not belong in a bee hive unless you want them to eventually die. Even though I never have used poisons in my hives my bees needed help controlling Varroa. With the mentoring of Dee & Ed Lusby I feel I am on the right path now. You can take my opinion as a grain of salt, at least I am not poisoning my bees. . .. c(((([ Keith Malone Chugiak, Alaska USA ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 15:58:21 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "adrian m. wenner" Subject: Re: Patterns in microbial border crossing Comments: cc: paulc@silcom.com, crs@west.net In-Reply-To: <200211281513.gASEq1Uo011624@listserv.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Humdinger (from People's Republic of Oklahoma) started quite a bit of exchange on the problem of pesticide use against mites. On the 28th he wrote: >Untreated colonies, I understand, will perish in two years or so; however, >the experiment of non-treatment, in my view, merits a periodical >verification, especially for those non-commercial beekeepers. I would >like to hear from those who have not treated for awhile. Others chimed in, with general (it seems to me) recognition that chemical treatment of colonies is stop-gap. Keeping colonies alive by the use of pesticides results in the maintenance of weaker bee strains. Allowing mites free reign, by contrast, can eventually result in stronger, mite-resistant strains. Of course, commercial beekeepers cannot allow death of most of their colonies. In the September 1999 issue of the AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL I published a letter that outlined what Paul Cronshaw and I have been doing on a small scale in Santa Barbara. Paul has collected swarms and bee colonies from trees and houses that have never been treated for any pestilence and that have not been escaped swarms from beekeeping operations. For details one can read that account. In short, the colonies in that remote yard (to which they had been moved) continue to survive without ANY treatment (nosema, AFB, tracheal mites, varroa mites, etc.). As I wrote in 1999, "While many might favor the conclusion that feral bee colonies in this area may have become resistant to varroa mites, one can consider another hypothesis - milder mites." Unfortunately, we now have Africanized honey bees in our area, so it is only a matter of time before cessation of our experiment. However, others who have large remote areas nearby could conduct a similar experiment and perhaps end up with a stronger strain of bees. Adrian -- Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home office phone) 967 Garcia Road wenner@lifesci.ucsb.edu Santa Barbara, CA 93103 www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm **************************************************************************** * * "T'is the majority [...that] prevails. Assent, and you are sane * Demur, you're straightway dangerous, and handled with a chain." * * Emily Dickinson, 1862 * **************************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 14:49:44 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lloyd Spear Subject: Comb Honey I have a need for someone to produce 3,000-5,000 Ross Round sections a year, for a single customer. Beginning in 2003. Must be someone now producing at least 1,000 a year. Interested beekeepers please contact me offline. Lloyd Lloyd Spear, Owner of Ross Rounds, manufacturer of comb honey equipment for beekeepers and Sundance pollen traps. http://www.rossrounds.com Lloyd@rossrounds.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 18:05:27 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Lloyd, > Perhaps this selfish attitude on the part of some commercial >beekeepers started back when there was a quarantine on movement >due to varroa infestation and one commercial beekeeper said 'to hell >with it', and moved his bees regardless. In defense of the migratory beekeeper: When we look back at the efforts of the USDA to stop varroa, tracheal mite, AHB or the small hive beetle with quarantines. Has any of the quarantines worked? NO! A million hives are used in Almonds alone each year. A bee truck driver told me he counted 62 semi loads of bees headed into California on his return trip a week ago. The world of the migratory beekeeper is on a very fast pace. The inspection system is on a slow pace. A recent example was a semi load at a California inspection station in which most of the hives died from the heat ( sat loaded in the heat for four days) while a couple ants were sent for testing. The ants turned out not to be fire ants (story told to me in person by the owner of the bees so I only recieved one side of the story). The beekeeper lost two thirds of the hives, lost the Almond pollination fees and had to pay trucking both ways. Did the inspection service pay for the damage. Nope! WHY THE FOUR DAY WAIT ! Couldn't the inspection service have been able to id the ants within a few hours? >There was not only no enforcement action, but the guy was >subsequently elected President of ABF! You must be talking about my friend D.H.. Bob Ps. I will be out west till the 11th. and will respond to the trouble I am in for standing up for the migratory beekeepers on my return. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 21:26:22 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ed Costanza Subject: Re: Blue Orchard Bee MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Karen Strickler has done extensive studies on the Blue Orchard Bee. You can reach her at: karens@w-idaho.net Ed ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 22:49:47 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Kathleen Darrell Subject: Re: Russian/Buckfast/SMR Bee's... In-Reply-To: <200212021635.gB2Esh85009888@listserv.albany.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v481) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Monday, December 2, 2002, at 11:35 AM, Mark Walker wrote: > I would also like to hear from people in regard to what bee > strains/species, keepers are having the most success with. I've heard > good > things about the Buckfast bee, but would like more feedback... Check presentation by G Wilson at Joint Canada / USA Apiculture meetings in Niagara Falls Ontario this week. His topic is "Evaluation of Russian honeybee stocks for Varroa resistance and Economic traits". Bob Darrell Caledon Ontario Canada 44N80W ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 08:06:28 -0500 Reply-To: "jfischer@supercollider.com" Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lloyd Spear said: > Perhaps this selfish attitude on the part of some commercial beekeepers > started back when there was a quarantine on movement due to varroa > infestation and one commercial beekeeper said 'to hell with it', and moved > his bees regardless. There was not only no enforcement action, but the guy > was subsequently elected President of ABF! This same guy is now spreading > SHB throughout the Northeast and is not particularly bashful about saying he > knows his hives are infested, so nearby beekeepers should 'be prepared'. Bob Harrison replied: > In defense of the migratory beekeeper: > When we look back at the efforts of the USDA to stop varroa, tracheal mite, > AHB or the small hive beetle with quarantines. Has any of the quarantines > worked? NO! Fair warning - I'll be providing covering fire for Bob in the event that this turns into a knife fight. :) Lloyd's right. What's one to do with a rouge beekeeper who clearly cannot be bothered to take even minimal prudent steps to protect his own investment, let alone the investments of others? At what point does he become a public nuisance? Quarantines or not, the lack of a minimal set of standards and the complete lack of a "code of ethics" endangers the future of the guild. And yeah, we are a guild, like it or not. We just have not agreed to any groundrules, and this is one major reason why our numbers keep shrinking. But Bob's even MORE right. The history of bee-related quarantines in the US is a set of textbook examples of how NOT to implement quarantines. Quarantines are very difficult to implement, moreso when the pest (for example, SHB and AHB) is able to move considerable distances on its own. From my point of view, the only quarantine that might have stopped SHB would have involved the use of defoliants in a 20-mile swath along the edges of the infected areas, to eliminate habitat for SHB trying to fly out of the infected zone. No one would tolerate such draconian practices "for the good of beekeeping", even if the alternative was the complete elimination of beekeeping. Bob's also right that the migratory beekeeper bears unacceptable costs and risks to loads as a result of inspection and quarantine programs, like California's attempt to control fire ants. His only recourse in the event of the loss of a load of bees is a lawsuit, since no government authority who plans a quarantine program would ever admit that beekeepers losses are to be expected when one stops a truck at a border point for "inspection". But it should be clear that such losses are inevitable, unless inspections are planned with intelligence, for example allowing bees to be moved to an exsiting holding yard for inspection. So, what to do? 1) Don't expect beekeepers to beg to be inspected and quarantined. The larger beekeepers tend to be elected to offices in beekeeping organizations, since they are often the only ones willing to give the time and effort required to serve. Non-migratory beekeepers could elect their own slate of candidates any time they wanted to join the various organizations (most don't), attend meetings (few do), and give of their time (fewer still). Is it any wonder that the "voice" of beekeeping represents the view of the majority of hives, but the minority of beekeepers? Recall that "democracy" includes the case of two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner, and make your choice. "Freedom" would require the sheep to pack some serious firepower. 2) Large migratory beekeepers are somehow viewed as more knowledgeable and "better" beekeepers, even though their mass-production approaches and migratory models inherently imply that much of the actual hands-on beekeeping is done by hired hands, many of them part-time and temporary. But smaller beekeepers have found that diseases and pests are not something that can be completely prevented with mere better attention to a smaller number of hives. There are no "solutions" known to the problems posed by exotic invasive pests and diseases that are merely too labor-intensive to be used by the largest beekeepers. 3) "Enforcement" is clearly a touchy subject, given that an overly aggressive bee inspector would be subjected to pressure from beekeeping groups [see point (1)]. Fair enforcement would be even more difficult, since it would be easy to point out that many cases of "migratory distribution of pests and diseases" are known to have been due to the smaller beekeepers moving a "few" hives, for example in the classic chess move from "Gallberry to Sourwood" between the coastal plain of Georgia and the Blue Ridge Mountains. How can any US quarantine be truly enforced without 24-hour checkpoints on EVERY road, manned by the national guard? The problem is that there appears to be no middle ground between "irradiation" programs, like USDA APHIS' program (or should I say "progrom"?) to eliminate "citrus canker" in Florida, and what we have, which is nothing more than counting the casulties and tracking the results of our own lack of organization, focus, and willpower. It is interesting to note that no one anywhere has ever really "won" a fight against an invasive pest or disease, and that no model or approach has been shown to be effective in even preventing the spread of these invasives. Large bodies of water and other natural barriers were effective, but the WTO is working hard to eliminate even these barriers to the worldwide and universal introduction of every possible pest and disease. Living in an area not on the migratory routes, and sparsely populated by beekeepers, I am "safer" than most, but even that is not an "answer". Anyone have an actual solution to suggest? I'm fresh out. jim ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 09:20:21 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Todd Subject: Re: the genetics of insecticide pesticide resistance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > The scenario above would have been quite different if we had had another 98% > control chemical (of a completely different chemical makeup) to alternate > with Apistan would it not George? Be honest. > > How long in your estimation would Fluvalinate taken to become ineffective if > alternated with another 98% control chemical ( we did have two completely > different chemicals available at the start of varroa mite treatment in the > U.S. - Coumaphos & Fluvalinate) ? > > Bob > There is an alternative scenario never discussed among conventional Western farmers and others in agriculture. The underlying assumption behind wholesale use of pesticides is a desire to achieve a nearly 100% control over pests (desirable, but not practical). The long term costs for such control efforts is now obvious - greatly increased resistance. One of the principle tenets in sustainable agriculture is the assumption of loss - that is, that you will not get a 100% marketable crop (or survivable hives?) An assumption among many organic farmers is a loss factor (around 20%, sometimes less). When a farmer plans on such losses, and uses pesticides only when absolutely necessary (usually spot treatments), the probability of resistance is greatly lowered. This, in fact, is one of the great fears among organic farmers - the widespread use of BT bio-engineered foods is likely to eliminate BT's usefulness over time, thereby eliminating a powerful ally against pests. This mode of thinking inserts some thorny questions into the fray. If, for instance, beekeepers deliberately withheld treatment for about 20% of their hives, it is likely that resistance would be, at worst, put off for a considerable amount of time, and, at best, prevented entirely. The assumption here, of course, is that commercial beekeepers would be expected to sacrifice up to 20% of their stock to prevent resistance, which, of course, would drive honey prices up. I would suggest that it all boils down to short term vs. long term costs - a debate in which Western agriculture has never willingly participated. Regards, Todd. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 09:10:41 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: Blue Orchard Bee In-Reply-To: <200212030500.gB34hB1R002162@listserv.albany.edu> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In reference to the blue orchard bee I looked on Google and got ten pages of hits. I just looked at the first page and it was composed entirely of references to just the blue orchard bee, not orchards, or bees, or some other related subject. It seems there is not dearth of info on the bee. Mike Stoops Located 1/2 way between Montgomery and Mobile in Alabama ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 09:32:07 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Barry Birkey Subject: FW: hive rental? In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Please contact me directly for Vivian Miller's email address if you are interested. -Barry ---------- From: "Miller, Vivian " Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 12:37:29 -0400 To: "'info@beesource.com'" Subject: hive rental? Hi - I'm a back yard gardener, and I'd like to have a hive of bees, but I don't have time or skills to manage them. Are you aware of any resources in northern New Jersey who rent hives? I want them only for pollination, the person who rents the hive would keep the honey and bees. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 12:13:35 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit James Fischer wrote: > > >Anyone have an actual solution to suggest? >I'm fresh out. > When Tracheal first came into being as a pest and then Varroa there were many calls for closing the borders. Tony Jadczak, the State Bee Inspector in Maine, recognized that this would be counterproductive and set up a joint inspection program with the states involved with migratory beekeepers coming to Maine. It has worked well, especially since the growers recognize that pests hurt their profits since weak colonies will not give the same pollination as a strong colony. Tony can use that as leverage. Yes, varroa still comes in but is caught and treated. Same with SHB, AFB, EFB, SB, CB, etc. With over 60,000 colonies coming into the State every year, what is most amazing is that most all go along with the rules. In today's moral morass it is heartening to know that so many obey the rules. There is always the exception, but fortunately, they are the exception. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 12:45:54 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Hanlin, Steve" Subject: Blue Orchard Bee MIME-Version: 1.0 I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have about the blue orchard bee. We use it at the north central plant introduction station here in Ames Iowa. The bee is related to alfalfa leaf cutter bees except that it works very well in the cooler fall temperatures of spring (65 F.) We use it to pollinate Brassica plants (kale, mustards, broccoli, etc.) and some on fruit trees (apple, pear, cherry). The bee does not produce any honey for collection, so is not beneficial in this way. One of the requirements is a good supply of mud, for it makes it's larval compartments with it. A disadvantage with this bee is that by mid-July, it goes into a diapause state forced on it by the weather (temperatures of 80 F.). Most people use wooden domiciles or blocks of wood with specific size holes drilled in them, however, we use pieces of 2" PVC pipe filled with cardboard straws as the domiciles. This kind of gives you only a quick over view of this bee, but I would be happy to answer any more specific questions you may have. Steve J. Hanlin Entomologist - Controlled Pollination USDA; ARS North Central Regional Plant Introdution Station State Ave. & Mortensen Rd. Ames, IA 50011 Phone - 515-294-1936 Fax - 515-294-1903 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 09:52:33 -0900 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Keith Malone Subject: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Jim & All, > It is interesting to note that no one anywhere has ever really "won" a fight against > an invasive pest or disease, and that no model or approach has been shown to be > effective in even preventing the spread of these invasives. Anyone have an actual solution to suggest? > I'm fresh out. > > jim Small cell, The Lusby,s and several beekeepers in the USA and Europe have done just as you have suggested above using small cells. Though their hard work and results are negated. When is a caring and honest researcher going to research small cell methods correctly and completely? Really there has been no great strides made in the transportation industry in the past one hundred years. Nothing has changed in our modes of transporting goods around the world, we only use boats, trains, trucks, and planes. It's really only been in the last three or four decades that this spread of pest and disease has occurred in honey bees. Nothing has changed in our modes of transportation's in the past one hundred years, so maybe something has changed in the industry of beekeeping? Worker cell size has changed in the beekeeping industry in the past one hundred years. It has only taken a bit of time for beekeepers mistakes to finally catch up and bite them in the rear. Somebody has to be able to put two and two together to figure this simple equation out. This is not Rocket Science and you do not need a Ph.D. to figure it out. What do honey bees do to combat SHB in it's place of origin, they immobilize the beetle by propolising it. But in it's place of origin honey bees are kept on small cells, therefore they have a greater division of labor and are not overwhelmed by the extra duty of invasive pest removal or immobilization. Also no chemicals are used to mess up the bees memory and motor functions either, so the bees remain smarter and can maneuver easier to complete their duties of dealing with these pest. Albeit this is only my opinion and is an anecdotal conclusion so I really do not expect the highly educated beekeeper to except my opinion but this is my take on it. The father of American beekeeping, Langstroth, was not an Etymologist but was a mathematician with only a few colonies of honey bees in the beginning and was responsible for devising a method of beekeeping that allowed for beekeepers to be able to manage larger numbers of colonies than would have been possible before his time. The answers to today's problems in beekeeping may come from an individual that is not schooled in etymology or scientific methods. The answers may come from a simple beekeeper who desires to be able to manage his/her colonies without the use of chemicals and therefore be able to manage more colonies than would have normally been possible. We should be exploring even methods devised by beekeepers who are not necessarily of the scientific community but even someone that is simply a beekeeper. It was exploration that found America even though most people thought that the explorers would die when they fell over the end of the earth. Explore, test, try, trial different methods but do not ridicule someone else's unproven methods unless you have tried it first. . .. c(((([ Keith Malone Chugiak, Alaska USA ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 09:39:07 -0500 Reply-To: "jfischer@supercollider.com" Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Moving pests and diseases, willy-nilly (Was: Small Hive Beetle) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aaron asked: > Speaking of which, what was the decision regrading comment > period and proposed APHIS policy changes? The short answer is that the "comment period" was not extended. As mentioned in "Bee Culture", the "American Bee Journal", and a number of state newsletters, one can read about the current situation, with updates provided in real-time, here: http://www.beeculture.com/imports ("When news breaks, it is likely our fault.") Be sure to check out the "Ministry of Truth" section, as it will provide some needed comic relief. I do not expect any changes to anything until the newly-elected Congress starts up in January. ...and as far as "Comment Periods" go in general, the NY Times did a great job of explaining exactly how the game is really played in an article published on Nov 17th: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/weekinreview/17SEEL.html?pagewanted=print (Which is pasted below for those who don't want to "register" at the Times website) November 17, 2002 Flooded With Comments, Officials Plug Their Ears By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE Copyright The New York Times Company WASHINGTON OVER the last several years, the Interior Department has proposed a number of controversial ideas, like reintroducing wolves in Yellowstone, that have generated lots of mail during a public comment period. But few proposals have flooded the department with more mail - paper and electronic - than the one by the Bush administration to keep snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Last week, Interior Department officials said they had received 360,000 comments on the matter, the most ever on any question related to the national parks. The verdict? Ban the machines. Fully 80 percent of the writers wanted snowmobiles barred from the parks, just as the Clinton administration had proposed. Yet even as officials of the National Park Service acknowledged the results of the comment period, they proposed to do just the opposite. They not only would allow the use of snowmobiles to continue in Yellowstone and Grand Teton and on a part of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway that connects them, but they would also allow for a 35 percent increase in the numbers, up to 1,100 a day from an average of 840 a day. How did such overwhelming opposition to snowmobiles result in such a snowmobile-friendly decision? Officials said that there would be more snowmobiles, but that they would be newer, cleaner and quieter and that therefore any environmental damage would be reduced. Beyond that, officials say the sheer volume of public comment is not a determining factor. "It was not a vote," said Steve Iobst, assistant superintendent of Grand Teton. The point of the comment period, he said, is to yield substantive, informed letters that alert park officials to something they might have missed in reaching their conclusion. In fact, the public comment period has become a widely discredited measure of public sentiment because it has been susceptible to what critics call AstroTurf campaigns, the opposite of real grass-roots efforts, in which advocacy groups encourage their members to sign their names on form letters. This is especially true since the emergence of e-mail. Mr. Iobst said that over the three-day Memorial Day weekend alone, the Park Service received 45,000 e-mail messages on snowmobiles. He said the agency considered those comments in its decision, "but not at face value." A court decision in 1987 gave officials clearance to ignore mass mailings. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a ruling written by then Judge Kenneth W. Starr, said that a determination of a clean-water issue should not be based on the number of comments, most urging the Environmental Protection Agency to allow them to discharge pollutants into the water. "The substantial-evidence standard has never been taken to mean that an agency rule-making is a democratic process by which the majority of commenters prevail by sheer weight of numbers," Judge Starr wrote. Has a comment period ever truly influenced a decision? Chris Wood, a senior adviser to the Forest Service chief in the Clinton administration, said that typical agency behavior is to "develop the plan you want, announce a public comment period and then do what you want to do." But, he said, the Forest Service actually relied on public comment when it developed its "roadless rule," intended to protect 58 million acres of undeveloped national forest from most commercial logging and road building. It drew 1.6 million comments, the most ever in the history of federal rule-making. Almost all the comments - 95 percent - supported the protections but wanted the plan to go even further, which it eventually did. But the Bush administration delayed putting the rule into effect and sought more comments, receiving 726,000. Of those, it said that only 52,000, or 7 percent, were "original," meaning that the administration discounted 93 percent of the comments. The rule is now being challenged in court. Bush administration officials still say they value public opinion. In a speech in July, John Graham, head of the office of regulatory affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, said he was actively seeking public comment on various regulations and making an electronic comment form available. Although the snowmobilers won their battle, the groups representing them say that the public comment period should be abolished. "What this outcome shows is that these huge hate-mail campaigns are not effective now and won't be in the future," said Clark Collins, executive director of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, an industry-backed lobbying group based in Idaho. If the public comment periods ceased, he said, both sides could save a lot of time. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 01:47:06 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mark Walker Subject: Re: Blue Orchard Bee Sounds very similar in behaviour to the Orchard Mason Bee that is used in Canada (ie. Pacific Northwest)...! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 00:13:51 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Keith Benson Subject: Re: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Keith Malone wrote: > Small cell, The Lusby,s and several beekeepers in the USA and Europe have > done just as you have suggested above using small cells. Though their hard > work and results are negated. When is a caring and honest researcher going > to research small cell methods correctly and completely? Perhaps when A) one gets interested, B) one becomes convinced that it is credible as a thory and it is fiscally responsible to spend the tax payers money on it or C) one of the adherants to the small cell philosophy buck up and sink the time or money into it. Just because some might want small cell to be a panacea (and it would be nice it is turns out to be) doesn't mean that anyone else has to devote time and resources to ivestgating it. It would be nice, but it appears that at this time the resource allocators (is that a word??) disagree and are unwilling to sink the cash into a project. Me - I will be trying it this spring, but I am willing to fiddle, and if I think they do better than my bigger bees, I will say so, but alwways with appropriate caveats that seem missing from much of the small cell cant. > Really there has been no great strides made in the transportation industry > in the past one hundred years. Sure there has - in magnitude if not basic mode - but even those modes have changed dramatically. > Nothing has changed in our modes of > transporting goods around the world, we only use boats, trains, trucks, and > planes. They are faster and larger - and there are many many many more of them. Many times more goods and people are moved. This has changed the way disease spreads in every species, not just honeybees. >It's really only been in the last three or four decades that this > spread of pest and disease has occurred in honey bees. Nothing has changed > in our modes of transportation's in the past one hundred years, so maybe > something has changed in the industry of beekeeping? Maybe it has simply become more practical to move the bees around. Surely you see that one can overnight packages in todays world that would have taken weeks in the past, even 20 years ago. Todays jetliner is lightyears ahead of what happened 50 or 100 years ago - and there are loads more of them! To say the transportation industry is relatively unchanged it a misrepresentation of the situation. > Worker cell size has > changed in the beekeeping industry in the past one hundred years. It has > only taken a bit of time for beekeepers mistakes to finally catch up and > bite them in the rear. Somebody has to be able to put two and two together > to figure this simple equation out. This is not Rocket Science and you do > not need a Ph.D. to figure it out. At this point there has not been a direct causal relation ship determined between larger cell size and the woes of the beekeeping industry. There is considerable anectdotal, and valuable information to suggest there may be a role, but it is not as simple as putting two and two together. You are right, one does not need a PhD to figure this out, a simple basic science class would do. > What do honey bees do to combat SHB in it's place of origin, they immobilize > the beetle by propolising it. But in it's place of origin honey bees are > kept on small cells, therefore they have a greater division of labor and are > not overwhelmed by the extra duty of invasive pest removal or > immobilization. Maybe. > Also no chemicals are used to mess up the bees memory and > motor functions either, so the bees remain smarter and can maneuver easier > to complete their duties of dealing with these pest. Maybe. > Albeit this is only my > opinion and is an anecdotal conclusion so I really do not expect the highly > educated beekeeper to except my opinion but this is my take on it. Oddly enough, many will. > The father of American beekeeping, Langstroth, was not an Etymologist but > was a mathematician with only a few colonies of honey bees in the beginning > and was responsible for devising a method of beekeeping that allowed for > beekeepers to be able to manage larger numbers of colonies than would have > been possible before his time. And mess around in those colonies, sometimes for good, and sometimes not. > The answers to today's problems in beekeeping > may come from an individual that is not schooled in etymology or scientific > methods. The answers may come from a simple beekeeper who desires to be able > to manage his/her colonies without the use of chemicals and therefore be > able to manage more colonies than would have normally been possible. We > should be exploring even methods devised by beekeepers who are not > necessarily of the scientific community but even someone that is simply a > beekeeper. No one has ever suggested that this is not the case, it could very well happen that way. What is interesting to me is that there is a very vocal, but small group that rails against the scientific community because it does not devote time, energy, and money to what this group feels is an appropriate research avenue. Maybe it is time for the small-cell folk to poney up and fund a real study? When such a thing is suggested, what I have heard is "why should I fund anything, I already know it works". Sometimes I wonder it if is not a comfort to some that the research is not done, gives them the right to say - "but you haven't proven my theory wrong - so it must be right!" Keith ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 23:16:12 -0500 Reply-To: "jfischer@supercollider.com" Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Blane White said: >> I do agree that even if the beekeeper had treated and been reinspected >> with no beetles found on the second inspection there may have been >> beetles in the hives and Barry Birkey said: > Which proves one of the points being made and that is, making laws and > inspections does not stop critters from moving about our country. There is a world of difference between "MAY be" (after treatments and reinspection) and "KNOWN to be", without any treatments. With "may", the risk of spreading the pest is a statistical probability. With "known", it is an absolute certainty. >You make it too strict for beekeepers where it hurts their pocket book and > they will find a way around the regulations. It's no different in my line of work > when it comes to city and county regulations and permits regarding construction. HA!!!! Your city/county likely adopted BOCA (the nationwide building code standard, for those who live outside the US) long ago, and I know that any building and zoning department both can and will order even the smallest "code violation" fixed, or condemn the entire building. That's a very big stick, and it has sharp pointy spikes still dripping with the blood of architects, PEs, and contractors who tried to "find a way around" the regs. (It should be explained that I have designed and built several houses under my own engineer's seal, and been forced to explain at length things like why cantilevered beams for lofts do not require a support post at the far end to building and zoning officials that could not even spell "cantilever".) > If our government would set reasonable laws and regulations in these areas, > more people would be willing to play by the rules. Yes, but I know of no "unreasonable" rules in place now (but Bob's description of what was going on in Illinois may be an exception). No one else has asked, so I'll ask Blaine. Blaine - why didn't the state of MN fine the heck out of the beekeeper who flaunted your laws? Why wasn't he told to never return? The only thing worse than an "unreasonable" law is one that is toothless or inconsistent. jim ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 07:34:17 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Humdinger Subject: Re: Patterns in microbial border crossing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Village Elders and Folks, Allow me then to piggyback on Dr. Wenner’s astute observations—-as to how he and his eminent colleague were able to sustain swarm-capture colonies without medicating them at all, a pet project I have been planning on dong all along after removing the mother of all feral colonies I found in someone’s barn wall this summer. The gargantuan feral colony was so humongous that I had to use not one but two deep brood boxes, with ten frames in each, to house the bees alone. Using light smoke—-not to scare off the queen—-and a crowbar, I began to detach the siding off the wall, as thousands of bees in tornadic whirl winds hovered around me, some kamikaze-banging against my veil while others hitting the back of my shoulder like pellets. It took about half a day to take off the siding. When done, I felt as if I were peeking into God’s closet. The bees have created a grand world of their own, a microcosmic universe of insect kind, including the nursery, the cops, the workers, the boys club, and not one but two queens, side by side, although they did not seem to be in swarming mode. Dark drones were easily the size of fat grapes to use a hyperbole. I found eight slabs of approximately 6' x 2' combs stacked one after another like a bee-catsle. The girls were mean and nasty, too—-this particular trait may have something to do with their longevity. At one point during the removal, the elderly lady then came out to take a peek at what I was doing [rubber-banding the combs onto empty frames, etc.]—-only to get stung on her head a few times for a quick retreat. The owner, a gracefully-aging elderly lady, alleged that the bees had been there for the last twelve years even before her husband passed away ten years ago: I could not find any dead-outs nor any sign of reinfestation although I had no way to verify her statement. The bees did not bother the people around the house so they left them alone at the barn-wall until one day her son got stung. He happened to be deadly allergic. Although fully recovered thanks to quick hospitalization, his son, now in his 30’s, could not visit his mother any more fearing the bees, a reason why she hollered me on a Sunday. Since the lady wanted to taste the wild honey, I made cut-combs, a la carte, from a slab. Mixed fifty/fifty between Italians and Carniolans, the girls gave me about a bucketful of wild honey, the typical amber elixir common in the plains of Oklahoma. For me this and other feral bees I had saved, albeit anecdotal, were a proof positive that something was going on in nature that I did not think possible. In light of such findings, it just may be possible to keep bees without treating them or without having to harangue them with tantric positioning or without driving them nuts in an attempt to downsize their apartment to squeeze out the rats. Let me then suggest a few ways in which we can procure such invaluable wild stocks available for our non-treatment experiment worldwide, the very experiment Dr. Wenner speaks of in the previous thread. Other than listing your name in county/state Extension Offices, exterminators’ outfits, and police/fire stations, another possible way to “monopolize swarm-capture” in your local area is to write an article about bee-issues and publish it in the local newspaper *at the onset of your swarm season.* [Since most of the old-timers quit due to mites, there aren’t many beekeepers, I found, in my area] Mine starts from early April and lasts till late June. Not only will such an article educate the mass about the current predicament of our bees—-it is every beekeeper’s duty to heighten the awareness about the important roles our bees play in the ecology—-but it will also help you get most of the swarm calls in your area: the local readership will at least remember your picture in the paper. In my case, people did not remember my foreign-sounding name [Yoon Sik Kim]; yet they did remember that I worked at a local university. Most of them remembered “the bee guy at St.Greg,” for instance. Of course, you can also give bee-talks at local schools: i.e. you become “the man” when they need someone to call about bees. [They would now call you about every stinging insect in the book—-ground hornets, wasps, bumblebees, and carpenter bees, etc] Only when strangers started to call me did I truly realize the power of my media exposure. During the swarm season, the excitement of chasing swarms often kept me awake at night and whenever my body sensed moisture in the warm air during the swarm season, I could predict that there would be a swarm call on that day, and sure enough, there was one and sometimes two. I became so in-tuned with nature then as I tried to think like bees in swarm-mode although I captured one crazy bunch when the outside temperature was a little above 40 F! In 2001, I was able to collect only three swarms on my own; however, this year I was able to harvest as many as eight because I appeared on a local paper when I was removing a wall-colony using the funnel method, an event that eventually led to expose me further to a local TV station [Channel Five in OKC] later. Call the local newspaper when/if you plan to remove, say, a wall-colony or a swarm: they are dying to feature any *sensational* news. Sensationalism sells. In fact, the Channel Five people and I agreed to do a “Swarm-Chaser” come next spring in lieu of the ubiquitous “Storm-Chaser,” common in Oklahoma during our two tornado seasons. Interestingly, these exposures made me venture into removing bees during summer when I have time to kill. Of course, the extra pocket-money enabled me to purchase more bee-equipment to house new captures. Chasing and capturing the swarms were exciting; however, meeting and talking to people about bees, we all know, were the best part in working bees. Enthralled, people are just dying to listen to a beekeeper talk, especially when he shows off a few scientific-sounding facts and figures about the bees. [Turn them around to be your loyal customers later by selling them your best local honey] The swarm-chasing experience still bring flood of memory about my first swarm collecting—the awe and the mystery always associated with a simple swarm, as the child in me refuses to grow old. We are, we must realize, a fortunate bunch, working with these precious little creatures in nature, often listening to our own heavy-breathing under the veil, often in the wild where there’s nobody around, soaked in our own sweat, and drowned in maddening silence. We have become bees ourselves. Respectfully, http://intranet.sgc.edu/people/faculty/yskim/ Yoon Sik Kim ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 17:04:42 -0500 Reply-To: "jfischer@supercollider.com" Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: the genetics of insecticide pesticide resistance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob Harrison said: > The scenario above would have been quite different if we had another 98% > control chemical (of a completely different chemical makeup) to alternate > with Apistan would it not George? Be honest. > How long in your estimation would Fluvalinate taken to become ineffective if > alternated with another 98% control chemical Well, here's what may soon be "another 98% control", but its not a "chemical", and it clearly works differently from both Coumaphos and Fluvalinate. Yes, there may soon be a FUNGUS among us! :) ========================================================== Varroa Control with Fungal Pathogens may be an Option Soon >From News for South Carolina Beekeepers, Nov. 2002, Vol. 13, No. 3 The honey bee is of great economic importance to agriculture not only for honey production, but also for crop pollination. Currently, a parasitic mite, Varroa destructor, is the most serious threat to beekeeping because it causes weight loss, malformation, and a shortened life-span in honey bees and serves as a vector of diseases. Without adequate control measures, bee mortality approaches 100% in hives infested with the mites and colonies can perish within a few months. This destructive mite is now distributed across the United States and most of North America. Apistan (tau-fluvalinate) and Check-Mite (coumaphos) strips are the most widely used Varroa controls in the United States and Canada. Other synthetic Varroa treatments are labor-intensive, expensive, or leave toxic residues in honey and wax. Mites throughout Europe and North America are evolving resistance to miticides, threatening the bee industry. As a result, there is an urgent need for alternative control strategies that are cost effective, environmentally friendly, and safe for human consumption. As such, microbial control of Varroa mites with fungi offers promising new avenues for the beekeeping industry. Unlike bacteria and viruses, these fungi do not have to be ingested to cause infection, but penetrate the host cuticle directly. This characteristic makes fungi potentially easier to apply than other pathogens. We screened several isolates of the fungi Hirsutella thompsonii and Metarhisium anisopliae, and found strains of both that were highly pathogenic to Varroa at temperatures similar to that maintained by honey bees in a colony. The infection time (the time it took for 90% cumulative mortality of mites) ranged from 4 to 5 days. Treating observation hives with H. thompsonii resulted in a significant mite mortality that was sustained over 42 days. Peaks in mortality occurred 3-4 days after the spores were applied. Similarly, in Weslaco, TX, we tested applications of Metarhizium anisopliae spores using both dusts and strips coated with the fungus. Both applications methods resulted in satisfactory control of mite populations in honey bee colonies, and these fungal treatments were as effective as Apistan, even 42 days after application. In addition, the fungal pathogens had no harmful effects in the honey bees and did not affect the fecundity of the queen. At the end of the trial (42 days posttreatment), when Apistan strips were replaced by coumaphos for two weeks, the daily mite-fall counts were similar to those recorded with Apistan during the trial, suggesting that the mite populations were equally susceptible to both Apistan and coumaphos. The mite mortality observed was highly correlated with the number of spores we were able to recover from the bees that we sampled at different time intervals. Because workers and drones drift between hives, the adult bees were found to spread the fungus between hives in the apiary. We were also able to recover the fungus from inside the dead mites, confirmation that the fungus was infecting and killing the mites. In addition, the pathogen was found to reproduce on the mites. We have now established a cooperative research agreement with Sylvan Bioproducts, Inc. which will assist us in developing methods for producing and formulating the fungi for Varroa control. Currently, our research aims at developing more efficient application technology to reduce the time required per application, and make the treatments economically viable for beekeepers. Overall, these fungi show good potential for serving as effective biological control agents against the Varroa mite. We hope to be able to offer beekeepers this new avenue of control in the near future. Footnote: Mention of a commercial product does not constitute endorsement by the USDA. Source: Lambert H. B. Kanga, USDA, ARS, Beneficial Insects Research Unit, Weslaco, TX and Rosalind R. James, USDA, ARS Bee Biology & Systematics Laboratory, Utah State University, Logan, UT ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 15:36:47 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Hanlin, Steve" Subject: Outside syrup tanks MIME-Version: 1.0 Dear beeliners: We are trying to determine how to construct an outside tank for storage of high fructose corn syrup. Presently we store approximately 40 fifty gallon barrels in a shop, however they do take up a large amount of space and we have a somewhat sticky mess year round between the barrels. Our original plans were to place a poly tank in the shop, however, it was determined that the floor was not built to support a 2000 gallon tank filled with syrup. So this forced us to look at putting the tank outside the building. We have thought about having the pump portion inside the shop and piping coming in through a wall. I am writing to find out if anyone presently uses or knows of anyone who uses a tank which is kept outside of a building and if so what kind of precautionary measures they use to prevent such things as sugaring of the syrup in the tank or freezing of the contents during the winter. Another question we have is would it be beneficial to build a protective building or walls around the tank to help prevent freezing during the winter months. We are also curious of how the syrup is piped or pumped into feed containers for distribution. We have checked with several suppliers here in Iowa and in near by states and have been informed that we would probably have to have a double walled metal tank and circulate either hot water or steam to prevent the product from freezing. Because we are not dealing with individuals who know about storage of corn syrup, they are basing this information on either chemical storage or other feed stuff (human or livestock). Any information that would clear up any of these questions or if anyone could direct me to either a supplier or other individuals who may have diagrams showing a layout or deal with syrup tanks it would be appreciated. Sincerely, Steve J. Hanlin Entomologist - Controlled Pollination USDA; ARS North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station State St. & Mortenson Rd. Ames, IA 50011 Phone - 515-294-1936 Fax - 515-294-1903 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 14:20:23 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dennis Murrell Subject: Re: Patterns in microbial border crossing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Yoon Sik Kim and Everyone, What a hugh colony! Did you get a chance to photograph It? I would sure be interested in seeing it and I bet the bee mags would print it for all to see. I have been looking at why small cell colonies do so well and my observations indicate that the structure and seasonal use of the comb can effect colony health and behavior. Do you have any observations concerning this colony? Could the size of the cells from the interior portion of the original broodness be determined? What about the orientation of the comb itself. Any deformed bees or visible varroa? What a neat opportunity! I would like to remove such a colony but haven't been able to locate any. I think I will use some of the techniques for becoming more visible in the community. Best Wishes Dennis ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 14:02:25 -0500 Reply-To: "jfischer@supercollider.com" Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Keith Malone said: > Small cell, The Lusbys and several beekeepers in the USA and > Europe have done just as you have suggested above using small cells. Done what? While the approach is claimed to eliminate the need for chemicals, I've yet to see anyone present any records to show that: a) They have used no chemicals b) Their colony losses have been minimal c) They have produced reasonable marketable crops, or pollinated But since the process of "downsizing" takes time, I will be more patient. > Though their hard work and results are negated. What results? "Small cell" has been claimed to possibly be the solution to nearly every beekeeping problem known, but tangible results have not been forthcoming. (Again, it takes time, so we must wait...) > When is a caring and honest researcher going to research small cell > methods correctly and completely? "Caring" and "Honest"? As if researchers are neither? [Allow me a moment to change the setting on my Palm Pilot from "Stun" to "Puree"...] :) A "caring and honest" researcher has better avenues of inquiry to explore. He/she HONESTLY considers what is known about "small cell", and CARES enough to not waste time and money that could be better used to examine something else that stands a chance of yielding some tangible results of value. Research exists, but it appears that the research done to date has not supported the claims made for "small cell". It would be a very unfortunate mistake to think that the researchers who do this work are neither "caring" nor "honest". I know of the following: 1) Message, D and L.S. Goncalves. 1995. "Effect of the size of worker brood cells of Africanised honey bees on infestation and reproduction of the ectoparasitic mite Varroa jacobsoni Oud". Apidologie 26:381-386 2) The book "Mites of the Honey Bee" by Webster & Delaplane quotes a study by Ramon & Van Laere discussed in the book "Asian Apiculture" by Wicwas Press, and says: "The smaller cells of AHB, along with the fact these bees have fewer mites than European bees within the same setting has led to the conclusion that possibly a small cell size would limit mite reproduction. Just the opposite seems to be true. Larger cells have fewer mites." 3) An April 2001 progress report "Can the Reduction of Cell Size Reduce the Impact of Varroa?, Sustainable Farming Quarterly Progress Report, HortResearch Client Report No: 2001/291" by M.A. Taylor and R.M Goodwin was quoted on Bee-L here: http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0107D&L=bee-l&P=R1042&D=0&H=0&O=T&T=1 There appears to have been no further reports from this study, so I have sent an e-mail to Dr. Goodwin asking about the status of the project. I suspect that things went very badly, and the project was abandoned, but I'll let him tell us. (More later) > Really there has been no great strides made in the transportation industry > in the past one hundred years. Nothing has changed in our modes of > transporting goods around the world, we only use boats, trains, trucks, and > planes. EVERYTHING has changed in transportation. The past 30 years alone have seen increases in both the speed and the volume of international shipments at a rate that can only be described as exponential. Go to an airport and count the planes coming and going. Go to a seaport and TRY to count the multi-mode containers coming and going. Realize that I got a package just this Monday from Hong Kong that they did not ship until Saturday afternoon their time. My wife baked bread for her brother in October, and sent it to him in Sardinia. It arrived fresh. I can click a little icon on my Palm Pilot, and a window will pop up showing me the status of UPS and Fed-X shipments sent from here or destined to arrive here. Most of the status updates are only hours old, and the reports track every single package, planet-wide. (In contrast, I still can't find the keys to a 1964 MGB that a friend asked me to give a new clutch...) > It's really only been in the last three or four decades that this spread of pest > and disease has occurred in honey bees. There is a direct and tangible cause-and-effect link between the increase in the number of international shipments of bulk commodities (where the little beasties can hide), the speed with which these shipments are delivered (which means that the beasties arrive alive), and the appearance of invasive exotic pests and diseases planet-wide. > Nothing has changed in our modes of transportation's in > the past one hundred years, See above. To repeat, everything has changed. > so maybe something has changed in the industry of beekeeping? > Worker cell size has changed in the beekeeping industry in the > past one hundred years. There is no support for this claim. In fact, bees allowed to build comb on "strips" or on non-embossed wax sheets have shown no general tendency to build smaller cell sizes, and even feral hives have not been shown to have smaller cell sizes. The only bees shown to build smaller cells are different, smaller bees, such as AHB, and bees that are "forced" into smaller cell sizes. Yes, there were repeated efforts to use "drone comb" as honey super foundation, in hopes of easing extraction or reducing the wax-to-honey ratio in a filled super, but this had nothing to do with brood comb. > It has only taken a bit of time for beekeepers mistakes to finally > catch up and bite them in the rear. What specific "mistake" did everyone make? If the claim is that beekeepers and/or foundation makers enlarged cell sizes, everyone still awaits any factual support for the claim to contradict what information we do have. > Somebody has to be able to put two and two together to figure > this simple equation out. There is a great deal of difference between wanting something to be "true" "easy", and "simple", and the actual state of reality. Admitting that there is no single "simple" answer to the problems posed by pests and diseases is the first step on the road to staying a beekeeper for more than a season or two. The truth is that one needs a more complex toolkit to deal with the more complex environment our bees must survive. It is not "simple", and it is not "easy". It is hard work. Just like beekeeping always has been. Now it is harder. It saddens me to see the effect of "true believers", since most not only get discouraged and give up beekeeping after a season or two of frustration, but their initial enthusiasm drags many neophyte beekeepers down the tubes with them. One can see this in analysis of subscriber lists to beekeeping magazines, mailing lists for beekeeping catalogs, and one might be able to see the effect in the backups of the subscription list of this mailing list. The sad dirty little secret about fashionable nonsense as applied to beekeeping is that it turns relatively new beekeepers into ex-beekeepers at an alarming rate. It threatens the industry itself, since equipment suppliers, magazines, and breeders all need a minimum number of beekeeper customers to exist to stay in business, and without such vendors and services, beekeeping would be impractical for most. > This is not Rocket Science and you do not need a Ph.D. to figure it out. Yes it is, and yes it is. That's what's different about beekeeping now. We have all these exotic invasives to deal with. They kill colonies. Voodo and crystals don't save coloines. Science does. OK, a Ph.D. is not really required, but a great deal of technical skill is required to even do simple things like merely DETECT the diseases and pests that are claimed to be somehow "defeated" by small cell foundation. Quick, how many of these could YOU test for and detect? Viruses Paralysis Sacbrood Acute Paralysis and Kashmir Virus Deformed Wing & Egyptian Bee Virus Slow Paralysis Virus Black Queen Cell Virus Filamentous Virus Y Virus Bee Virus "X" Cloudy Wing Virus Apris iridescent virus Akansas Bee Virus Bacteria American Foulbrood European Foulbrood Septicemia Powdery Scale Disease Spiroplasmas Rickettsial Disease Protozoa Nosema Amoeba Disease Gregarines Flagellates Fungi Chalkbrood Bettsia Alvei Stonebrood Melanosis Trichoderma lignorum Mucor mucedo Aspergillus niger Claviceps (Only genus known for this one) Nematodes Agamomermis Pest Insects Greater Wax Moth Lesser Wax Moth Driedfruit Moth Braula coeca Other Braulidae Asilidae Phoridae Calliphoridae Pollenia Conopidae Phoridae Sarcophagidae Tachinidae Mites Non-phoretic Mites Acarus siro Acarus immoblis Tyrophagus putrescentiae Tyrophagus longior Tyrophagus palmarum Tyrolichus casei Oudemans Carpoglyphus lactis Suidasia pontifica Phoretic Mites Neocypholaelaps (in general) Neocypholaelaps indica Neocypholaelaps favus Afrocypholaelaps (in general) Afrocypholaelaps africana Edbarellus (in general) Tropilaelaps Tarsonemus Pseudacarapis indoapis Parasitic Mites Varroa jacobsoni Varroa destructor Varroa underwoodi Euvarroa sinhai Euvarroa wongsiri Tropolaelaps clareae Tropolaelaps koenigerum Acarapis externus Acarapis dorsalis Acarapis woodi Pyemotes ventricosus cohort Parasitengona of the suborder Prostigmata Erythraeidae: Leptus You can't deal with diseases and pests you can't detect, and you can't detect many of the above without a serious investment of time, effort, and cash for toys. The good news is that anyone on the planet can send samples to the USDA ARS at Beltsville and get free analysis of anything they'd like with a simple "please". (Thanks to Mark and his gang in Beltsville!) The bad news is that there have been no "small cell" beekeepers sending samples to Beltsville for tests, something that might help to support the claims being tossed about. > The father of American beekeeping, Langstroth, was not an > Etymologist but was a mathematician Yes, any educated person can think clearly even if working outside his field of specific education. But even "education" does not insure that one thinks clearly. Non-fuzzy thinking is a science in its own right. > The answers to today's problems in beekeeping may come from an > individual that is not schooled in etymology or scientific methods. How true - "Etymology" is a big problem in this regard. :) The proponents of alternative approaches are using far to many words and terms incorrectly, indicating a need to master ETYMOLOGY (the study of words), but they are doing far too little actual ENTOMOLOGY (the study of insects) to provide more than unsupported claims. This leads us down the path of getting into EPISTEMOLOGY, where we are forced to address "how we know what we think we know". We end up stalled and out of gas at a dead end in "OLOGY", where we get way off-topic in "the study of" everything and anything. (I should not poke a simple typo so hard, but the typo was very revealing of a basic problem in the discussion!!) Regardless, without a minimum of "scientific method", an "answer" cannot be shown to be an actual "answer". A trip to any public library or a few web searches can equip anyone with more than enough knowledge to gain a practical grasp of "scientific method" sufficient to design a decent "study". There is no excuse for not learning such things if one wants to do even simple things, like keep good records of observations on how one's hives are doing. The only investment required is a buck twenty-nine for a spiral notebook in which to keep one's notes. > The answers may come from a simple beekeeper who desires to be able > to manage his/her colonies without the use of chemicals and therefore be > able to manage more colonies than would have normally been possible. Until the colonies die off, which appears to be what happens at present to most beekeepers who try to do this. It is sad, but it appears to be true. One simply never hears from most proponents of alternative treatments and approaches after their initial and highly speculative statements. > We should be exploring even methods devised by beekeepers who are not > necessarily of the scientific community but even someone that is simply a > beekeeper. You appear to be doing so. Good! Please keep us advised. This list hears many impassioned statements from beekeepers who become convinced that an alternative approach will work, but we hear very little in the way of follow-up reports from people who use these alternative approaches for multiple seasons. The obvious conclusion is that time and experience is a harsh mistress. I remain certain that even minor successes will be trumpeted from the rooftops, but the silence has been deafening. > It was exploration that found America even though most people thought > that the explorers would die when they fell over the end of the earth. That was a fairy tale told by Washington Irving, who wrote the original myth about Christopher Columbus and his "discovery" of the "New World": In fact, Plato offered the first known comment that the Earth was spherical. The first known recorded observational proof of this suggestion was Aristotle's writing that the shadow cast by the Earth on the Moon was circular. Further, Erathosthenes (276-196 B.C.E.), who is credited with coining the term "geography", was able to measure the circumference of the Earth with excellent accuracy using only a well, a shadow, and some clear thinking. (A measurement of a "circumference" clearly implies that something is understood to be round. The greeks knew all about circles and spheres.) The point here is that "science" is much more an incremental process than one might expect. Rarely are "discoveries" not preceded by hints and clues that make the "discovery" little more than verification and proof that the clues were correct. If you want to make progress, first look for clues, and then try and take things one step further. Or, put more simply: Anyone wanting to "do science" first needs to get a clue. :) > Explore, test, try, trial different methods but do not ridicule > someone else's unproven methods unless you have tried it first. OK, but when someone presents a mix of random claims and fuzzy reasoning as a basis for diverting the tiny amount of funding available to "bee research" into their pet theory du jour about bee management practices, please understand that nothing is being "ridiculed". What is being REFUTED is not the basic idea, but the complete lack of any rigor in the arguments offered in support of the idea, and a complete lack of any tangible evidence to support the claims made. Trust that any hint of a promising avenue of inquiry will interest multiple qualified researchers enough to result in good-quality research. These folks truly ARE concerned about the basic survival of the industry, and they are both "caring" and "honest" Anyone else who calls a group of scientists by insulting names can expect another Norse Saga like this one in reply. jim ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 10:21:16 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Blane White Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle Comments: To: jfischer@supercollider.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Everyone, Jim asked: "Blaine - why didn't the state of MN fine the heck out of the beekeeper who flaunted your laws? Why wasn't he told to never return?" Guess I should answer. The beekeeper in this case got the joy of taking the time and paying the expense of removing the bees from the state of MN without any honey crop being collected. The bees were ordered to be returned to the state of origin - with full knowledge of the inspection service in that state. They were removed from MN and not taken to neighboring states. Why not fine you also ask. Simply that the issuing of fines etc takes time and the quicker things can be removed the less risk of the pest spreading. Sometimes more is accomplished by threats. Also fines are limited in size etc so sometimes it is actually profitable to pay the fine and argue about it for a while so the bees make a crop before they get moved. On another item. Quarantines are never designed to even attempt to prevent natural spread of a pest but to reduce or stop man assisted movement of the pest. So the objective of a quarantine is not to forever prevent the spread of a pest into an area but to slow it down to its natural rate of spread and buy some time for producers in areas where the pest has not spread to yet. There are several quarantines in place but USDA the one most familiar to beekeepers is probably the red imported fire ant quarantine but some others are the gypsy moth and Japanese beetle. And yes these have greatly slowed the spread of these important pests but not totally prevented their spread into new areas. Pests spread much faster and farther on a truck than when left to their own methods. So again quarantines can't stop the spread of pests they only slow them down and buy some producers some time. Hopefully, in that time better management methods can be found for dealing with the pest. The USDA only deals with honey bees coming across the border from other countries. All regulations regarding movement of honey bees within the country are state regulations. This makes it very difficult to have meaningful quarantines dealing with honey bees since different states have different regulations. Beekeeping is different in each state and what works in MN may not work in VA and vice versa. Individual states can enact quarantines but they only apply to that individual state. An interesting discussion. FWIW blane ****************************************** Blane White MN Dept of Agriculture blane.white@state.mn.us ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 14:57:06 +0900 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: shafqat saeed Subject: Re: Blue Orchard Bee Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html

Are blue orcherd bees do buzz pollination (Sonication)?

Could you please inform that except bumble bees which are the other bees which could do buzz pollination.

thanks

Shafqat Saeed


Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 22:53:15 -0500 Reply-To: "jfischer@supercollider.com" Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Outside syrup tanks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Steve Hanlin said: > We are trying to determine how to construct an outside tank for storage of > high fructose corn syrup. > I am writing to find out if anyone presently uses or knows of anyone who uses > a tank which is kept outside of a building and if so what kind of precautionary > measures they use... I must admit that it sounds cheaper to stick with 55-gallon drums, since they can be stored anywhere, moved around and heated with a simple band heater to restore them to liquid form. > Presently we store approximately 40 fifty gallon barrels in a shop, however > they do take up a large amount of space and we have a somewhat sticky > mess year round between the barrels. Is this really cost-effective? Why not buy on an "as-needed" basis and reduce or eliminate the "inventory"? There are several sources of wholesale HFCS near you, and two in Minnesota that specialize in supplying beekeepers. Yes, you may pay a little more for smaller shipments, but the storage costs and hassles become zero, so the payback on a "tank" just to keep your bulk price on HFCS would look very poor. If you must have a tank, Iowa State has a perfectly good engineering program, so wander over and ask them to design you an underground tank installation. If you explain the characteristics of HFCS, they will be able to work it out. I keep 2000 gallons of #2 fuel oil in an underground tank, and I know first-hand of several very similar installations near you (Muscatine IA, Omaha, NB, and Cedar Rapids IA). These are fuel tanks for heating plants and emergency generators that kick in when power is lost. You don't want the fuel oil to "gel", and it can sit for months or years before it is needed. When it is needed, it needs to be pumped within seconds, so the design challenges are very similar to yours. I can offer a few educated guesses (but check with your local engineers before you take any of this as "correct" for your application): If you bury the tank, you get cheap physical support for the tank. If you bury it well below the frost line, you have a fairly constant temperature. Putting the highest point about 8 feet deep and filling the 8-foot hole with a better insulator than earth would be a good idea. Dirt is heavy, which increases structural load and costs, and it is not a great insulator. (But your water table depth or bedrock depth may be shallow, consult a soils engineer or geologist.) > Another question we have is would it be beneficial to build a protective > building or walls around the tank to help prevent freezing during the winter > months. Expensive. But insulation around the buried tank, wrapped in a vapor barrier with a surrounding French drain to draw water away from the buried tank would be a good idea. > ...have been informed that we would probably have to have a double walled > metal tank and circulate either hot water or steam to prevent the product > from freezing. Wow. Talk about overkill. Live steam? They must be joking. Imagine the pressure rating of the "heat exchanger" that would be required. But an internal heat exchanger of the "warm water" variety might be a nice last-ditch option to liquefy the tank contents in the event of a "solid lump scenario". Better to install the vent inside the building, to keep the vent air warm, and install two pipes to your pump, also inside. Then you can run the pump to pull syrup out the bottom, perhaps heat it in an off-the-shelf, propane-powered "instantaneous tankless water-heater" of the sort used in energy-conserving homes (turned down real low), and pump it back into the top of the tank via the second pipe. Periodic "stirring" alone might be enough to keep crystallization down. But, in the event of a worse case scenario of goo, if you don't have an internal heat exchanger, you open up the fill tube (assumed to be both outside, and at the top of the tank, and lower a heater coil down into the tank to heat up the tank contents to the point where the stuff can be pumped. But I'd simply buy less at one time, and keep the "inventory" to a minimum. jim ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 16:35:30 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: george seferiadis Subject: Fungi as a biological control of mites MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable The possibility of Metarhizium anisopliae fungi to erraticate the mites = is real . Researcher at the New York Botanical Garden is investigating = the potential use of a commonly found species of microscopic fungus as a = biological control of the northeastern tick, which causes the Lyme = disease. The researcher found that a strain of the fungus Metarhizium = anisopliae destroyed 80% of the northeastern tick. Different strains of = this fungus are already used in several countries for pest control, = including in the United States where the strain ESFI is used = commercially against cockroaches. Insecticidal fungi like Metarhizium = anisopliae kill certain insects by invading the body and multiplying = throughout. The insect dies from tissue destruction caused by the = proliferation of the fungus and the production of fungal toxins.. The = fungus then emerges from the body in the form of spore- producing = filaments.. Scattered by the wind and rain, the spores spread the = infection to other ticks. Because of the danger of the fungal toxins = contaminating the environment ,I wonder if Sylvan Bioproducts who will = be producing and formulating this fungi are well aware of that these = toxins could contaminate the brood section. george ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 16:25:44 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Karen Oland Subject: Re: Moving pests In-Reply-To: <3DED8F0F.8010001@mindspring.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I believe one of the members of the list located in Africa has previously stated that bees deal with SHB in the native range by a combination of absconding (due to migration of african honey bees across long distances) and hive death due to infiltration by the Cape bee. Published reports in the ABJ show that honey bees will propolise the SHB into small cages and then feed them (as prisoners), rather than killing them off. Seems an odd behavior. > Keith Malone wrote: > > What do honey bees do to combat SHB in it's place of origin, they immobilize > the beetle by propolising it. But in it's place of origin honey bees are > kept on small cells, therefore they have a greater division of labor and are > not overwhelmed by the extra duty of invasive pest removal or immobilization. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 12:03:48 -0900 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Keith Malone Subject: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Jim & all who care to continue, > A "caring and honest" researcher has better avenues of inquiry > to explore. He/she HONESTLY considers what is known about > "small cell", and CARES enough to not waste time and money > that could be better used to examine something else that stands > a chance of yielding some tangible results of value. > This is one of the problems, small cell beekeeping only stands to have value for beekeepers and not for chemical companies wanting to patent a new treat. Please do not take the words caring and honest wrong, I realize their are caring and honest researchers out there. When I said a caring researcher, all I meant was one of many who love bees as you and I do. When I said an honest researcher I meant one of many capable of doing the work and spend the three to five years required to study small cell methods correctly. Small cell methods can not be studied with a short term experiment. A short term experiment would not prove much. Like you said "it takes time, so we must wait", so the researcher must look at the research as a long term experiment. This as, far as I know, has not been done by a researcher. > 3) An April 2001 progress report "Can the Reduction of Cell Size > Reduce the Impact of Varroa?, Sustainable Farming Quarterly > Progress Report, HortResearch Client Report No: 2001/291" by > M.A. Taylor and R.M Goodwin was quoted on Bee-L here: > > http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0107D&L=bee-l&P=R1042&D=0&H =0&O=T&T=1 > > There appears to have been no further reports from this study, so I > have sent an e-mail to Dr. Goodwin asking about the status of the > project. I suspect that things went very badly, and the project was > abandoned, but I'll let him tell us. (More later) > Or possibly they did not follow small cell methodology correctly but really who knows. > EVERYTHING has changed in transportation. The past 30 years alone have > seen increases in both the speed and the volume of international shipments > at a rate that can only be described as exponential. But really no great strides. If it were exponential then we would be we would be in hyperdrive or beaming stuff around like Scotty in Star Trek. d:~)> So we can get things half way around the world in two days instead of three days to a week. > See above. To repeat, everything has changed. > Not as much as you would like to think. I was talking the modes not the logistics. > There is no support for this claim. In fact, bees allowed to > build comb on "strips" or on non-embossed wax sheets have shown > no general tendency to build smaller cell sizes, and even feral > hives have not been shown to have smaller cell sizes. The only > bees shown to build smaller cells are different, smaller bees, > such as AHB, and bees that are "forced" into smaller cell sizes. > This is not true, just the other day someone on the biobee list told of finding a feral colony in UK that had these smaller cells. Also you can not expect larger bees to take wax strips and make any other size cells than the cells they were born on. They have a memory. When bees were sized down they were forced down with a progression of foundation just like small cell beekeepers do to regress bees to a smaller cell size. It happens a little at a time. Large cell bees were not enlarged over night let alone one year. So far nobody has been able to answer a question I have regarding the cell size of the Primorsky bees in Primorsky. Does anybody know? > What specific "mistake" did everyone make? I did not say everyone only beekeepers and when I say beekeepers not all beekeepers. Most beekeepers only have to live with and make due with the mistakes of some beekeepers. Well if there were no mistakes and there were no problems there would not be any talk on Bee-l would there? First mistake was probably putting them in our man made hives just so we could see what was going on. Second we made a copy of their comb by making a foundation we hoped would be a size they would like. Then according to my older bee books it seems some beekeepers thought bigger bees would be a better bee, and it went that route for a lot of beekeepers. Albeit there are some beekeepers still today that keep smaller bees on the 900 series foundation. Not all beekeepers went so for up in size as others. Some beekeepers even went as far up as 5.6mm to 5.8mm cell size. We as beekeepers in the past mongrelized the bees real good where some beekeepers wish they were not so mongrelized at present. I know pollination is important but this is how a lot of these pest are getting around. Some would say this is a problem while others would say this is a necessary evil. AHB's is one mistake that lots of beekeepers wish never started, but we must live with it. I say we should use it, and work with it. It's really useless to eradicate it, which also may be a mistake. While a lot of things seem to be a wash, here is a bee at our back door that seems to thrive. What a terrible rotten bee. If I had more time I could probably think of more mistakes or so called mistakes. If all is ok with beekeeping to you this is a good thing. Maybe other beekeepers would like to add to my list of mistakes or so called mistakes. d:~)> > There is a great deal of difference between wanting something to > be "true" "easy", and "simple", and the actual state of reality. > Admitting that there is no single "simple" answer to the problems > posed by pests and diseases is the first step on the road to staying > a beekeeper for more than a season or two. The truth is that one > needs a more complex toolkit to deal with the more complex environment > our bees must survive. It is not "simple", and it is not "easy". > It is hard work. Just like beekeeping always has been. Now it is harder. > Small cell methodology and small cell beekeeping is not easy or everyone might give it a try. The truth is it is not easy. There is a lot more to small cell beekeeping than just small cells but you would know this already from reading all the material on small cell methods. You are right there is no single "simple" answer to the problems posed by pests and diseases. You Admitting that there is no single "simple" answer to the problems must mean your just about ready to put the hard work into sizing down some bees and giving smaller cells a good go for the honey. > It saddens me to see the effect of "true believers", since most not only get > discouraged and give up beekeeping after a season or two of frustration, > but their initial enthusiasm drags many neophyte beekeepers down the tubes > with them. One can see this in analysis of subscriber lists to beekeeping > magazines, mailing lists for beekeeping catalogs, and one might be able to > see the effect in the backups of the subscription list of this mailing list. > The sad dirty little secret about fashionable nonsense as applied to beekeeping > is that it turns relatively new beekeepers into ex-beekeepers at an alarming rate. > One of the most fashionable things applied to beekeeping right now is chemical treats and a lot of older beekeepers left the craft because they did not want to treat their bees. Neophytes do not even want to get into beekeeping because they change their minds when they realize all the problems that come with the craft. Are you calling Small cell beekeepers "true believers"? You can't blame them for all the woes of Magazines and email lists. Small cell beekeeping is not the dirty little fashionable nonsense you would like it to be. Somewhere you are missing something and you need to look deeper to find the truth, but I would imagine you have not the time to find the truth out about what you so readily ridicule. Look at some of the other list that are discussing and sharing information on Small cell beekeeping and you will see for yourself that there are beekeepers who are breaking away from treats for bees. If you would have me not discuss this issue on this list tell me point blank and I will stop but I would bet that there are those even on this list that would not mind hearing more but do not want to be laughed at for their inquiries. You can hand it to me, if you wish, for I know the horse laughs. Yuck! yuck! yuck! Look at this small cell beekeeper doing what I know can't be done, just who does he think he is discussing small cells on this prestigious list? > It threatens the industry itself, since equipment suppliers, magazines, and > breeders all need a minimum number of beekeeper customers to exist to stay > in business, and without such vendors and services, beekeeping would be > impractical for most. > So I am a threat to the industry, there must not be much there to begin with if I and beekeepers like me, who only have a need to keep bees without treats, are a threat to the industry. I wish not to threaten nobody if I am truly a threat you better let me know everybody. Email me privately like you have Jim and let me know how you feel. Am I a threat to you, am I the fool on the hill, or are you just into it for the laugh? Well the woes of beekeeping today are not a very funny subject to most beekeepers I know and my close beekeeping friends are doing something about it. > > This is not Rocket Science and you do not need a Ph.D. to figure it out. > > Yes it is, and yes it is. > That's what's different about beekeeping now. > We have all these exotic invasives to deal with. > They kill colonies. > Voodo and crystals don't save coloines. > Science does. > I hope you noticed your misspelled word above. Not as much as you would like it to be, all you need to be is a real beekeeper. Not implying your not a real beekeeper. d:~)> Actually some are using acid crystals to treat mites. > Quick, how many of these could YOU test for and detect? > Most of on the list does not even exist in the USA much less here in Alaska, so that is not a fair question. So tell me how would you do with your inquirer. Any on the list that we have up here I could see. So what's you point. > The bad news is that there have been no "small cell" beekeepers > sending samples to Beltsville for tests, something that might help > to support the claims being tossed about. > Perhaps they don't need to. Most doing small cells are not neophytes. Maybe the USDA should go to them. By the way, the USDA did go and visit my friend in Alabama, Bill Gafford of Bolling Bee Co., and inspected his apiaries. Bill is on small cells and has sold me package bees and queens. Most beekeepers in his area lost numerous colonies last winter but Bill only lost two out of 500 colonies. I spoke with him two weeks ago and he told me after the USDA finished inspecting his Apiaries they told him his apiaries are exemplary and later sent him a letter with heading stating this to him for his records. So even the USDA knows of the benefits of small cell methods. Bill said he would send me a copy of this letter from the USDA and I asked him if I could post it on a page at my web site and he agreed to me doing so. All will be able to read for themselves what is in the letter. > The proponents of alternative approaches are using far to many > words and terms incorrectly, indicating a need to master > ETYMOLOGY (the study of words), but they are doing far too little > actual ENTOMOLOGY (the study of insects) to provide more than > unsupported claims. > > This leads us down the path of getting into EPISTEMOLOGY, where > we are forced to address "how we know what we think we know". > > We end up stalled and out of gas at a dead end in "OLOGY", where > we get way off-topic in "the study of" everything and anything. > > (I should not poke a simple typo so hard, but the typo > was very revealing of a basic problem in the discussion!!) > I have no strong points as big as my weakest ability to spell correctly, I am sure you never misspell any for I am sure you are an Epistemologist. d:~)> So what is the basic problem in the discussion, your ability to use your degree in epistemology? Maybe I am not worthy to discuss anything with yours. Some would even think that the sentence in parentheses above would be flaming me. You are going to fault me for not spelling a word correctly when I see this all the time on this list and others. Shame on you. Most readers would have corrected this mistake in their minds and went on not making a big deal out of it. > One simply never hears from most proponents of alternative > treatments and approaches after their initial and highly speculative > statements. > I wonder why? Look how your treating me. A real example I am and so are you. > I remain certain that even minor successes will be > trumpeted from the rooftops, but the silence has been deafening. > It is not silent you are just in a chemical cloud. d:~)> Things get a little fuzzy in there. Every now and then you have a person from Wyoming tell of his small cell beekeeping even on this list, for sure on others. > OK, but when someone presents a mix of random claims and fuzzy reasoning > as a basis for diverting the tiny amount of funding available to "bee > research" into their pet theory du jour about bee management practices, > please understand that nothing is being "ridiculed". What is being REFUTED > is not the basic idea, but the complete lack of any rigor in the arguments > offered in support of the idea, and a complete lack of any tangible evidence > to support the claims made. > This is your take on it and do not be surprised if things do not turn around real soon. Remember my statement in my earlier post that what I wrote was my take on it. You have your opinion and I have mine. I my be in the minority now but................... > Anyone else who calls a group of scientists by insulting > names can expect another Norse Saga like this one in reply. > I did not call any scientist an insulting name, as a matter of truth I called some caring and honest. Do not try and put words in my mouth. By the way anybody trying to insult me with such ramblings such as this dragged out episode can expect the same in reply. Another dragged out episode. If this post makes it to the list it will be because of your episode that was allowed for some reason. . .. c(((([ Keith Malone Chugiak, Alaska USA kdmalone@ideafamilies.org http://takeoff.to/alaskahoney http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Norlandbeekeepers/ Check out current weather in my area and 5 day forecast; http://www.wx.com/myweather.cfm?ZIP=99654 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 10:33:31 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "adrian m. wenner" Subject: Blue Orchard Bee In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" On pages 145-147 in the #3 2002 issue of BEE WORLD one can find information about blue orchard bees: the nest box, cleaning the bees, and managing the bees. Included therein is a diagram with complete dimensions on how to build a nest box for those bees. I have already constructed one for use this coming season. Adrian -- Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home office phone) 967 Garcia Road wenner@lifesci.ucsb.edu Santa Barbara, CA 93103 www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm **************************************************************************** * * "T'is the majority [...that] prevails. Assent, and you are sane * Demur, you're straightway dangerous, and handled with a chain." * * Emily Dickinson, 1862 * **************************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 07:10:10 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Tooley Subject: The Fungusamungus In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I believe the Brits have been researching this also for some time,but maybe a bit slower to release results.Still waiting for the silver bullet... --Mike ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 10:08:44 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Todd Subject: Re: Outside syrup tanks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Steve, Forgive me for asking such an obvious question, but wouldn't it be simpler and cheaper to simply build a small heated addition to your building to house a simple tank system? It would seem that the tricky prospects of keeping the syrup from freezing, not to mention fuel costs, specialized tanks, machinery, etc., would most likely be far more cost prohibitive than a simple insulated pole structure. Just thinking out loud. Regards, Todd. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 18:17:41 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: allen dick Subject: Re: Outside syrup tanks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > We are trying to determine how to construct an outside tank for storage of > high fructose corn syrup. We went thru that and we now just use 1250 imperial gallon poly water tanks designed for agriculture use. They sit on the ground outside anywhere we fell like putting them. They are cheap and UV resistant. We add 10% of the expected volume in water in advance of receiving HFCS syrup and it mixes adequately when filling into the tank to ensure no granulation problem later. We use city water because it is reasonably sterile. Over months, if ambient temperatures are warm, there can be some risk of fermentation, so syrup must be watched. Starting with clean tanks and clean water is a good idea. If the syrup is not diluted below 67% solids, any fermentation should be very slow and action can be taken to save the syrup. More dilute syrup will ferment more quickly. We currently have one tank (diluted to 67%) left over that we have kept since spring 2002 and it is fine. We had 30 to 40 degree C days for weeks this summer. You can read more at my diary site. Sorry. I don't have time to look to see exactly where, but pictures and discussion are available there. We usually get syrup in April/May and in October. March 31st, 2000, Oct 1, 2002 and April 9, 2001 are some dates I found, but there are more and better pages somewhere in the diary. allen http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/Diary/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 22:26:05 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Scott Jeffreys Subject: Re: Blue Orchard Bee MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Adrian Wenner, I have purchased Blue Orchard from Torchio Enterprises in Utah. Phillip is straight ahead, an expert in his field, and, from what I have gathered, provides the best bang for your buck. Phil sells a simple cardboard "condominium" for hobbyists and novices but I wish I had just bought the straws filled with these pollinating dynamos. Organic situations favor these pollinators and, indeed, our family has an organic almond orchard where, 5 years after their introduction, we notice their peculiar presence. To anybody @ BEE-L, just enter Blue Orchard, Osmia lignaria, Torchio Enterprises or Orchard Mason in your favorite search engine ( e.g. Google.com etc.) and there is all kinds of good info out there. Regards, Scott Jeffreys Lecturer and Campus Beekeeper sjeffreys@calpoly.com or scottco6789@AOL.com office: 805-756-2224 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 21:35:25 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Scott Jeffreys Subject: Re: Blue Orchard Bee MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Walker et al, Blue Orchard and Orchard Mason are both Osmia lignaria and it is from the family Megachilidae (honeybee - Apidae). The alfalfa leaf cutter bee is also a Megachilid. They are all "buzz pollinators" - that is when they pollinate by vibrating the ventral portion of their body over the flower. The Megachilidae carry their pollen on the underside of their abdomen and this "buzz pollination" has been clearly documented to be more efficient than our honey (- by the - barrel) counterparts. This was the topic of our lecture today in the Beekeeping class, Fruit Science 123 at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA. We are interested in all aspects of pollination and economic entomology. Scott Jeffreys Lecturer and Campus Beekeeper ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 18:25:46 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Barry Birkey Subject: Re: Moving pests In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi all - >> Research exists, but it appears that the research done to date >> has not supported the claims made for "small cell". That's because there is actually none out there. What has been done is fairly lame and very narrow in scope. We just got yet another attempt at cell size research from NZ: VARROA DESTRUCTOR NOT THWARTED BY SMALLER SIZED CELLS, STUDY FINDS .... and if you were to read how they went about conducting the test, well, I'd be embarrassed to have my name on it. Bad science in my opinion. We've yet to see any study that deals with the whole issue. Most are just one little speck from the whole. >> There is no support for this claim. In fact, bees allowed to >> build comb on "strips" or on non-embossed wax sheets have shown >> no general tendency to build smaller cell sizes, and even feral >> hives have not been shown to have smaller cell sizes. The only >> bees shown to build smaller cells are different, smaller bees, >> such as AHB, and bees that are "forced" into smaller cell sizes. Jim, I have seen just the opposite in the real world. I did a cut-out this year from a roof eave that had a first year swarm in it. The core brood cells measured 4.9mm and got bigger in size the further away they were from the core. Not AHB and no forcing. They built it all from nothing. >> The bad news is that there have been no "small cell" beekeepers >> sending samples to Beltsville for tests, something that might help >> to support the claims being tossed about. Why would these beekeepers need to do this? If the labs are at all interested in seeing what is going on, there are a lot of people with bees on small cell they could get bees from. They do have phones don't they? >> One simply never hears from most proponents of alternative >> treatments and approaches after their initial and highly speculative >> statements. >> > > I wonder why? Look how your treating me. A real example I am and so are you. Jim gives us a very clear example as to why HE never hears from those with alternative views. They can expect to get a rambling saga in return, much based on his own bias without any first-hand experience. There are other places where people actually discuss and share insightful observations and ask pondering questions from those actually doing the work that is being discussed. >> I remain certain that even minor successes will be >> trumpeted from the rooftops, but the silence has been deafening. >> > It is not silent you are just in a chemical cloud. d:~)> Things get a little > fuzzy in there. Every now and then you have a person from Wyoming tell of > his small cell beekeeping even on this list, for sure on others. Yes, there is anything but silence on other forums. You just happen to not be a part of them. I think you know how to find them if you want to. You are now officially invited. Regards, Barry ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 15:28:41 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "adrian m. wenner" Subject: Blue Orchard Bee In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" I forgot to mention the comprehensive article on blue orchard bees that appeared in the 2002 July issue of THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL (pages 501-503). (I guess I thought everyone had read it already.) One can find therein a very complete description of those bees and how to care for them. You can also access the web site: www.loganbeelab.usu.edu for more information. Adrian -- Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home office phone) 967 Garcia Road wenner@lifesci.ucsb.edu Santa Barbara, CA 93103 www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm **************************************************************************** * * "T'is the majority [...that] prevails. Assent, and you are sane * Demur, you're straightway dangerous, and handled with a chain." * * Emily Dickinson, 1862 * **************************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 00:38:23 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Barry Birkey Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle In-Reply-To: <01C29B21.F946D4B0.jfischer@supercollider.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit >> Which proves one of the points being made and that is, making laws and >> inspections does not stop critters from moving about our country. > > There is a world of difference between "MAY be" (after treatments and > reinspection) and "KNOWN to be", without any treatments. Hi Jim - Ah, it's a numbers game. I'll stick to what I said. You are the one making an issue between "may be" and "known to be." I simply stated that "maybe be" doesn't stop the movement of insects. Perhaps we are saying the same thing. I'm not sure. >> You make it too strict for beekeepers where it hurts their pocket book and >> they will find a way around the regulations. It's no different in my line of >> work when it comes to city and county regulations and permits regarding >> construction. > I know that any building and zoning > department both can and will order even the smallest "code violation" fixed, > or condemn > the entire building. That's a very big stick, and it has sharp pointy spikes > still dripping > with the blood of architects, PEs, and contractors who tried to "find a way > around" the regs. [and now shows us the dichotomy] > and been forced to explain at length things > zoning officials that could not even spell "cantilever".) Thank you for making this clearer. It's ironic that our livelihood can be so impacted by those authorities trying to "protect" us when some lack the common sense. In spite of the pointy spikes you speak of, people still find a way around a system that is over powering. I won't go into details as to how it's done, but in my line of work, it happens. Regards, Barry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 08:09:34 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Blue Orchard Bee MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit There were some trials in Maine of BO bees in blueberry fields. I attended discussions of the results by the researcher- who was a strong proponent of solitary bees- and my conclusion was they are good pollinators but only for small scale pollination. They cost a lot more per acre to maintain, especially if you are a large operation. Often, in studies like the one I heard, costs are all relegated to material without figuring in labor, the real driver of costs. I figured in labor and numbers of solitary bees to cover a large operation and it gets expensive quickly. For a small operation, BO or Mason bees are great, especially for apples. They do a better job on them (and several other fruit trees) than do honey bees. But, one hive of honeybees trumps the BO bees just by sheer numbers. That is what was shown in the trials in Maine. The did a great job on the blueberries, but to cover hundreds of acres you had to have honeybees. The cost difference made it no contest. And for someone like me, with fruit trees and vegetables (pollination was the reason I started beekeeping), there is no good reason to create a solitary bee presence, first since it is already there and second, that my bees do an excellent, albeit inefficient, job of pollinating all I grow. I was responsible for the upkeep of USN ships in the Pacific. It was interesting that we paid the same for a job in a yard that would use five men as for the same work in another country which used one. Labor costs canceled out any benefit. The quality was the same. But the other benefits were not. Sailors liked the inefficient yard better because their own paychecks bought more in the country. Great liberty port. But back to bees. For honeybees, the benefit is honey, which makes any desire to shift moot, since it is an income generator, pays for the bees and sweetens my cereal. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 14:53:04 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dennis Murrell Subject: Re: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Everyone, It seems that when a man watches for clouds he will never plant. The proof of anything is not in its source but in one's own experience. The criteria for successful test of small cell effects keeps changing. First infected colonies had to survive 2 or 3 years without treatment. It's been done. Then it had to be done without AHB. It's been done. Now the hives must produce an economic surplus as well! I personally would like to add a few more. Maybe in Wyoming, during the 5th year of extreme drought and with the average low price of honey over the last 10 years. Now if someone only would do this I would take all my money out of the bank, invest it in bees and throw away that email from Nigeria :>} Did anyone apply this criteria before inserting all those strips. I think not. The only real criteria was the mites were killed and the bees survived. A great characteristic of a good scientist is an innate curiosity coupled with a desire to understand new, often unexplained phenomena. That is to "boldly go where no man.....", er.... :>) I think that's why many of the greatest discoveries are often made by those outside their professional training. Many inside the profession spend most of their time and energy memorizing that which has been already proven. I know that if a mite control method focusing on treatment is proposed, the chemical, oil, extract or mineral is readily sought by a large number of beekeepers. And that product will be dripped, fumed or feed into a lot more hives than is commonly believed. I would think that an approach that requires a new, deeper look into bee behavior would find it's greatest acceptance on this list. After all the most informed beekeepers surely must understand how little we really know about the bees. Sharing on this list should inspire others to watch and observe their bees more closely. And then again sharing those observations with other helps them find their own proof. Dennis The small cell guy in Wyoming ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 09:28:26 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Green Subject: Re: Blue Orchard Bee MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: "Bill Truesdell" > They cost a lot more per acre to maintain, especially if you are a large > operation. Bill introduces a point that I think a lot of the solitary bee proponents miss, that is that they have their own problems, one of which is the high labor cost. They are likewise subject to their own set of parasites, predators and diseases, which of course can become much more significant when they are concentrated for managed pollination. And when concentrated for several years, they also tend, inexplicably, to dwindle. There probably are more pathogens than known. In the context of modern monoculture (which I don't forsee reverting to polyculture anytime soon), the advocates of these bees, are often guilty of hype. We probably err when we speak of them as "alternative pollinators," which suggest that they can replace honeybees. We would be wiser to speak of "supplemenetal pollinators." One of the points I have tried to make with my web page is that pollinators are not interchangeable. Each has strengths and weakness, and each varies in appropriateness for a particular task. Often the best pollinator is a mix of pollinators. Please understand that I am NOT dissing blue orchard bees, or orchard mason bees, or whatever you may call them. I have long been an advocate of their study and development of their use for pollination. I am only suggesting some reasonable caution in promoting them as a panacea for our pollination problems. We need to focus a great deal more attention on ALL our pollinators. Did you know there is a firm that markets blowflies for pollination? I have seen cucumbers nicely pollinated entirely by bombyliid flies. This helps us understand that different plant species have different pollination mechanisms. Some are quite adaptable and generalist pollinators can function quite well. A few plant species are so highly adapted that there is only one pollinator, and its loss will mean the loss of that species of plant. The bickering that is sometimes seen between solitary bee proponents and pollinating honeybeekeepers is not a good thing. Both groups are natural allies, and should be working together, to build better pollination management for our food crops, as well as to promote healthy biodiversity wherever possible. Dave Green SC USA The Pollination Home Page: http://pollinator.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 13:11:17 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dick Allen Subject: Greedy chemical companies Beekeepers: Some remarks are (again} being made on this and other groups about greedy chemical companies thwarting research for the 4.9ers. How much money is actually being made from treatments by chemical companies for honey bees? I'd imagine it doesn't run into the billions, does it? Regards, Dick Allen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 11:19:41 -0500 Reply-To: "jfischer@supercollider.com" Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Barry Birkey said: > Jim, I have seen just the opposite in the real world. I did a cut-out this > year from a roof eave that had a first year swarm in it. The core brood > cells measured 4.9mm and got bigger in size the further away they were from > the core. Not AHB and no forcing. They built it all from nothing. If this is true, it would be a first. Anyone who found such unusual comb after so many reported finding only larger-celled comb would be well-advised take steps that would build support for "small cell" - send the comb and some bees in for examination, so independent and qualified parties (USDA or university) can verify this. Like I said: >> The bad news is that there have been no "small cell" beekeepers >> sending samples to Beltsville for tests... But the "small cell" stance dodges and weaves even on this simple and obvious step, saying: > Why would these beekeepers need to do this? To move "small cell" away from where it currently sits, over in the corner with Feng Shui, Crystal Therapy, Aromatherapy, I Ching, Runes, Past-Life Regression, Reiki, Biorhythms, Astrology, Tarot, Auras, UFOs, Numerology, and Scientology. In short, to provide something more than unsupported claims. > Jim gives us a very clear example as to why HE never hears from > those with alternative views. The entire WORLD never hears from them. We all read lots of postings filled with speculation, but none that might help support the speculation. And when research is done, it is dismissed as "wrong", "narrow", or "incomplete": >> Research exists, but it appears that the research done to date >> has not supported the claims made for "small cell". > That's because there is actually none out there. What has been > done is fairly lame and very narrow in scope. Then give the world the favor of something to go on that might help someone to design a decent study. Any "lameness" is directly connected to the complete lack of any sort of coherent explanation of the "small cell method". The world awaits an explanation, 'cause we've had a bellyful of random claims and excuses that everyone who sees no results did something "wrong". > We've yet to see any study that deals with the whole issue. > Most are just one little speck from the whole. Then document the "whole issue", so an impartial party can try to reproduce the results. Publish a list of people who are claiming success, and have them send in samples of bees, comb, and honey for analysis to prove that chemicals are not being used on the sly. The "problem" with "small cell" is not the theory itself. The "problem" is 100% fact-free posts in "support" of small cell that only have the effect of undercutting the credibility of the theory. If "small cell" resulted in even only half the advantages claimed, the world would beat a path to the door of the person who could simply write down "how to do it". jim ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 07:20:59 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: TNT Apiaries Subject: Re: Outside syrup tanks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit GO FOR IT STEVE. You'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner. Outside storage of HFCS or liquid sucrose is very common on the Canadian Prairies. I know of everything from 150 to 7000 imperial gallon tanks. It just depends what your needs are. Our own tank holds 5600 imp.gal and can be used for honey & syrup. It was made by a company that makes hopper bottom grain bins. Others use liquid fertilizer tanks/ polytanks, etc. Freezing is not the problem here, so it shouldn't be there. We send you your weather. We've had syrup in the tank (and barrels for that matter) at 50 below. No bursting or torquing. Sugaring is more a problem and can be solved by circulating the contents in late fall or early spring. We have a 3/4 line spaced 6" o/c in the cone, but this is more for the honey. The line uses hot water and it must be blown out before freeze up. 2" & 3" water pumps with gas engines are commonly used. Many have one attached to the tank on the truck. It can be easily plumped to mix or pump on or off. You can get suction hose from 1" to 3" in diameter. Polypropylene camlock fittings are cheap and allow for quick changes in new situations or cleaning. For pumping off into inside feeders or pails in the yard, use 1" rad hose or 1" fuel hose which can be easily coiled or reeled up. Agriculture stores will have all this stuff. Farmers use them for livestock and chemical application. A friend has almost what you describe for syrup only. He uses two 1250 imp. gal poly tanks. These are round (about 8' dia) with a 2" outlet at the bottom edge and a manhole on top at the side. They are overall about 6' high. Up here there seems to be a 100 different manufacturers. They run about 500. C$ at agriculture outlets. He has them beside his building with a small roof overhead to shelter them from the summer sun and the winter snow sliding off the shop roof. The tanks sit on a slight grade towards the outlets which face each other. A 2" line runs down between them and each tank is tied in with a valve. One end of the line extends out to the road and the other goes into his shop. He can mix inside or pump directly onto his truck tank. He has room to add more tanks as needed. Kitec line (pipe used in underslab heating) is coiled in the bottom of each tank. This pipe has a metal layer and thus holds its spacing by itself on the floor of the tank (Again this must be blown out before freeze up). Circulating hot water makes for easier pumping in late fall and early spring. Hope this helps Dave Ardmore, AB. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 09:13:01 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Les Roberts Subject: ISBA Journal, Dec 2002 In-Reply-To: <200212060500.gB64Kr2d004663@listserv.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed The December issue of the ISBA Journal, published by the Indiana State Beekeepers Association, is available for free download from http://hoosierbuzz.com/document/i0212.pdf This issue contains news of interest to beekeepers everywhere, including a report on the varroa machine mentioned on Paul Harvey News last month, James Fischer's article on undesirable bees, and information on the ISBA. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 18:25:01 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Garrett M Martin Subject: Re: Outside syrup tanks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit One idea that has been floating around in my head, for storing syrup, is to use a bulk tank. I am referring to the type used by dairy farms. This tank is insulated with cooling tubes in the walls and bottom these tubes could be used to circulate warm water through to keep it warm. This could easily be stored in doors in the same place as your drums. If raised off the floor the valve at the bottom would work for filling 5gal buckets. While we are on this subject has anyone tried to use a fertilizer pump to move syrup and is there an alternative pump that can be used to pump honey other than the high dollar ones that are sold commercially? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 00:53:54 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dick Allen Subject: Re: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Beekeepers: Are the small cell histrionics going to begin again? Personally, I’m not convinced about the small cell thing either, but I do have a couple of hives on them. They weren’t given any Apistan, Terramycin, or Fumidil. It remains to be seen how they do. Some on the list may recognize this quote: “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance–that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” ----Herbert Spencer I don’t give a damn how idiotic it sounds, if it works I’ll use it and that includes treating with garlic. Taking beekeeping one day at a time. Dick Allen ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 10:13:28 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Moving pests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dick Allen wrote: >Personally, I m not convinced about the small cell thing either, but I do >have a couple of hives on them. They weren t given any Apistan, Terramycin, >or Fumidil. It remains to be seen how they do. >snip >I don t give a damn how idiotic it sounds, if it works I ll use it and that >includes treating with garlic. > > > Which is what most of us are waiting to see. The problem with most of the new stuff is that it is not very well researched and can lead to disaster, a common result. we both have been around long enough on this list to see the cycle of sure-fire solutions to many problems. I will await your results, after about four years on small cell and no treatment and with varroa present in the yards. I will be doing the same but on one hive. Not scientific but will satisfy my curiosity. Actually, I have both a hope and suspicion that it might work, but I am not that much of a gambling man to bet the farm. Nor are you with a "couple of hives". That is a disciplined and common sense approach. The problem with most adherents to "new" and "natural" techniques is as has been said many times on this list for "informed" beekeeping is the lack of a good, honest trial that proves the technique works. And when one appears that shows it not to work, as is often the case, it is discounted by the adherents. You have called as many times as I for trials and proof and got the same response. There was even an instance when there was supposed scientific proof, but when trialled independently, it was shown to be a sham. I often wonder why adherents to a cause ask us to join and risk all without much proof other than anecdotal. But, if anyone on this list is interested I have a PROVEN, sure fire method of no-loss beekeeping, ALL NATURAL and I personally guarantee you will NEVER LOSE ANOTHER HIVE if you follow my simple directions. Plus, in the first year you MAKE MONEY! In addition it will rid you of every bee pest and disease. It will save your back! It will reduce your yearly expenses to zero! It has been scientifically trialled in HUNDREDS OF DOCUMENTED CASES and proven to work every time. I normally charge thousands for telling you this exceptional ALL NATURAL method. But for you, since you are a member of this list ...here is my sure fire, all natural method of care free beekeeping. Sell everything. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 09:54:27 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Carol Palmer Subject: Small cell question-sorry, folks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I get the impression that you cannot simply pop 10 frames of 4.9 foundation into a hive body, and expect that the bees will draw it out into 4.9 cells. Is this correct? What will they do to 4.9 foundation? What is the correct procedure to follow to get the bees to make 4.9 cells on 4.9 foundation? Carol Palmer Massachusetts ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 09:34:11 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Blue Orchard Bee MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dave Green wrote: > > > In the context of modern monoculture (which I don't forsee reverting to >polyculture anytime soon), the advocates of these bees, are often guilty of >hype. We probably err when we speak of them as "alternative pollinators," >which suggest that they can replace honeybees. We would be wiser to speak of >"supplemenetal pollinators." > > One of the points I have tried to make with my web page is that >pollinators are not interchangeable. Each has strengths and weakness, and >each varies in appropriateness for a particular task. Often the best >pollinator is a mix of pollinators. > >(snip) > The bickering that is sometimes seen between solitary bee proponents and >pollinating honeybeekeepers is not a good thing. Both groups are natural >allies, and should be working together, > Which is why we invited the researcher to speak to the Maine State Beekeepers. I think it helped the researcher as much as it informed us. There was a bit of the hype that Dave mentioned (today blueberries, tomorrow the world) as well as some "us vs them" and it helped them get another perspective (and us too). We both learned. I had a major problem with the research. It did show better pollination by solitary bees (most studies do), but the test area was in a blueberry field that was also being pollinated by honeybees! Talk about contamination of a trial. Plus, as I mentioned, there was no real cost comparison. That I did on my own. One factor that is often omitted is long term upkeep. In essence, the grower either hires someone to manage the solitary bees or contracts for the service. The going rate for migratory honeybee colonies pollinating blueberries is about $50 per hive or about $150-200 per acre for about 60-80,000+ pollinators. What little literature I have seen shows the equivalent number of mason bees is about 7,000- 10,000 per acre. At a price of $30-50 for 100 solitary bees that equates to $200- $500 per acre and does not include all the equipment needed to house them, the labor in setting up the "houses" and upkeep. The actual cost per acre is near $1000. That is just startup. You run into the same cost differential in maintaining them compare to honeybee colonies - if you were going to maintain them on site, difficult in both cases because of monoculture. (Many migratory beekeepers move from blueberries to raspberries to get surplus (and premium honey). Too often you can go onto a blueberry field heavier than you come out.) But you do not need to maintain honeybees, just contract for them once a year. Solitary beekeeping is even more difficult when you see all the additional variables connected to maintaining large colonies of Mason Bees in Maine. If you think we have it rough, honeybees are much more forgiving than Mason Bees. Tilt a Mason Bee nest slightly off the horizontal and you could lose the lot. Have a few days of damp, cold weather, a normal condition in Maine in the spring, and you get near to no pollination not just for those days but for the whole bloom period because the bees emergence is either delayed or numbers emerging are cut back or both! Some areas, with mild winters, may be more appropriate for solitary bees and give a cost advantage. I have read that may be the case with cherries in Washington State. But I do not have enough information to make that judgment (since State researchers were involved which means "free" labor). The only thing discussed was yield and how much better it was than with honeybees, the same as the results in the blueberry fields in Maine. But that could also have been because they did not have the optimum number of hives per acre, something still being looked at here in Maine. Even in a small orchard, when honeybees disappeared because of Varroa and solitary bees were the main pollinator, I got lots of calls for honeybee pollination (you put in a hive and we will let you keep the honey) from apple growers and, after a disastrous year when they leaned they had been getting free pollination services from local beekeepers, squash and pumpkin growers. (Even this year I heard from many that it had been a "bad year" for squash, while I had no problems at all. Just look in a squash or pumpkin flower at the number of bees that try to crowd into them.) It is interesting that with the onset of Varroa in Maine, the number of Apple orchards has decreased considerably. Some of it may be foreign competition, but I think much is also the lack of "free" pollination by honeybees because of the loss of local beekeepers. (Too many "bad" years of reduced crops. I know I got fair crops of apples every year before I started beekeeping, but since then they are bumper crops. I have a nice mix of honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees ( as well as flies) that do a good job of pollinating everything. When Varroa struck and drove many local beekeepers out of keeping bees, I got many calls about different "bees" (or "flies"- which often were solitary bees) that people noticed for the first time, pollinating their flowers or vegetables. They were so use to seeing honeybees that they totally missed all the other pollinators. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 14:51:01 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Arne Haugaard Subject: Pesticide resistant Varroa mites MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello everybody, Does USA have any problem with pesticide resistant Varroa mites ? There's reports(1999) indicating a spread of fluvalinate-resistant = Varroa throughout Europe Best regards Arnie(Danish beekeeper) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 15:38:20 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Barry Birkey Subject: Re: Moving pests In-Reply-To: <01C29D19.5F93CC20.jfischer@supercollider.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > Barry Birkey said: > >> I did a cut-out this >> year from a roof eave that had a first year swarm in it. The core brood >> cells measured 4.9mm and got bigger in size the further away they were from >> the core. > > If this is true, it would be a first. Certainly not a first for me. I have talked with numerous beekeepers that have shared the same experience. I have comb sitting next to me on my desk that a beekeeper sent me a few weeks ago that came out of a bee tree that measures the same. I will be scanning and posting the photos soon, on that other list of course. You see, I am so interested in this aspect of beekeeping that I'm looking, searching, asking others, investigating, questioning, etc. I have found that when the desire is there to learn and to be open to seeing things in a different light, it usually happens. Anyone who's married knows what I'm talking about in dealings with our spouse. Once we see these things (small cells in the center of a feral broodnest), then we have to take the next step and ask the "why" questions and try to further understand the dynamics. > Anyone who found such unusual comb after so many reported finding only > larger-celled comb would be well-advised take steps that would build > support for "small cell" - send the comb and some bees in for examination, > so independent and qualified parties (USDA or university) can verify this. It's apparent you feel that only "qualified" people are capable of measuring comb and reporting truthfully. I disagree completely. With as much skepticism and distaste for this topic that is displayed on this list by those with some sort of science background, it's no wonder why there is a lack of wanting to give any helping hand to those in similar standings (USDA or university). Let those wanting "official reports" do what it takes to get them. I'm not holding out for any. If SC works for me, I'll be happy, the bees will be happy, end of story. I should say right here that I am NOT trying to "build support" for small cell. That would be a futile exercise. The tendency is for anyone who comments on SC, gets the unfortunate ride of being thrown in to "that group" and gets a unique treatment. What Keith wrote was his own thoughts and words, not mine. Likewise when Dee, Clay, Dennis and others write. While we may agree on some things, I'm sure there are some differences too. Jim said: > The bad news is that there have been no "small cell" beekeepers > sending samples to Beltsville for tests... The "bad news" is that Beltsville has never asked or even indicated that they would be interested in such samples. Your protocol is out of order. They did however, according to Keith, visit Bolling Bee and write a follow-up letter. That's a good first step I guess. >> Why would these beekeepers need to do this? > > To move "small cell" away from where it currently sits, over in the corner > In short, to provide something more than unsupported claims. I have no desire to move this cell size issue out of the corner on this forum. It can stay there for all I care. I will reply at times when things are said that I have found not to be true, or offer another viewpoint. > And when research is done, it is dismissed as "wrong", "narrow", > or "incomplete": Yep. Here, have a read for yourself and then tell us in your view, how well the study was done and exactly what solid facts are proven that we can take away from it. http://www.bee-l.com/biobeefiles/pav/scstudy.htm > Then give the world the favor of something to go on that might help > someone to design a decent study. Any "lameness" is directly > connected to the complete lack of any sort of coherent explanation > of the "small cell method". If I was a swearing man, I'd make an appropriate comment here, but I'm not. I'm nobodies water boy (except perhaps to my kids). You design a study. I give plenty of myself and resources to various causes and expect nothing in return. Maybe others have a desire to "make you believe" in SC, but I've taken the position that it will have to stand on its own and I will merely do what I can to give it a platform in which to be discussed. There is so much to go on right now that all our labs could each be studying a unique aspect of SC for several years without duplicating anything. I don't NEED a study to help me decide what to do. A study would be nice to possibly help explain some of it, or rule some things out, but it won't change things I can see with my own eyes as I work with SC in my own hives. > The world awaits an explanation, 'cause we've had a bellyful of > random claims and excuses that everyone who sees no results > did something "wrong". Grandstanding and using generalities as this only creates more fog. Please give specifics. Who is everyone? Results from what? Have you given equal energy to critique those who have claimed no results, or is it just a given with you that their word is enough without knowing all the details? I see a lack of consistency. >> We've yet to see any study that deals with the whole issue. >> Most are just one little speck from the whole. > > Then document the "whole issue", so an impartial party can try > to reproduce the results. Publish a list of people who are claiming > success, and have them send in samples of bees, comb, and > honey for analysis to prove that chemicals are not being used > on the sly. Are you offering your lab and testing facilities to do such a test? First of all, I alone can't document the "whole story." I can only share with you what is happening with my bees, in my area, with my management style. The whole issue needs to come from more than one source. I have neither the time or resources to do what you want done. > If "small cell" resulted in even only half the advantages claimed, > the world would beat a path to the door of the person who could > simply write down "how to do it". It doesn't surprise me that this is what you desire or need, a point-by-point, step-by-step, well laid out manual on how to succeed with SC, as reading over some of your posts to this list, they are written in the same fashion. Maybe someday after it has been tested more and we get a better understanding as to what all the dynamics are that SC create, someone will be able to write such a report. Until then, the topics of discussion here will most likely be those things that have already been proven. On the other hand, the people that are "beat[ing] a path to the door" now are seen as kooks and fanatics. Ah, I've been called worse, but I have a goal and will keep at it till it's reached. BTW, perhaps you would consider trying SC in your hives and report back what you find. Of course this would require you to try something that hasn't been backed up scientifically so there is a risk involved. :) Regards, Barry ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 14:28:42 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ian Subject: Commercial treatment methods The vorroa mite has moved into and spread across Canada for a little while now. Signs of chemical resistance is showing up across the praries. We are going through the same problems and treatment procedures that the southern state beekeepers had gone through a long while ago. Just this summer my neighbouring beekeeper had accedently found a tolerance/resistance to his fluvalinate treatment in his hives. It was on some of his donated test hives, so he luckly found his problem before it got too far out of hand and is now treating his hives with checkmite. This has opened my eyes a little. I have mites in my hives and have not found resistance yet, but likely soon. It is just a matter of time before treatments will not be effective in my hives. My question to you southerners is, Now that the mites are tolerant to your treatments (Apistan, Checkmite), how do you manage the mites in your hives? I don't mean hobby beekeeper mite treatment methods, but want to know how you larger commercial opperators handle the problem. Ian ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 13:48:27 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ian Subject: Re: Greedy chemical companies We come down on chemical companies too hard. We must remember that they have vested interest in these products and are in business to make a profit. They find a problem, spend money on reasearch and testing of the problem, and sell us a product to help combat the problem. I think government funded research would solve the problems of focused research, but it looks like government is stepping back from it. The problem is that the return on beekeeping related products is too small for large research and development investment. Ian