From MAILER-DAEMON Sat Feb 28 10:59:34 2009 Return-Path: <> X-Original-To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Delivered-To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Received: from listserv.albany.edu (unknown [169.226.1.24]) by metalab.unc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 071BC49092 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:21 -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 n1SFhrq0016524 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:17 -0500 From: "University at Albany LISTSERV Server (14.5)" Subject: File: "BEE-L LOG0707C" To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Message-ID: Content-Length: 256626 Lines: 5940 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2007 23:05:23 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Peter Dillon Subject: Special pollen treats toothache and other ailments MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Special pollen" in honey found to contain Morphine and Codeine Follow link: http://www.finanzas.com/id.9172745/noticias/noticia.htm Peter ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:14:42 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate Comments: To: james.fischer@gmail.com In-Reply-To: <002e01c7c68e$efff7360$0701000a@j> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello All, Brian said: Is there an emergency here (concerning CCD). It is sad to hear this hype from beekeepers. I do understand those out of the loop (not seeing problems in their hives) might feel that CCD is simply a big hoax. However those not directly involved need to realize most researchers and the larger beekeepers see a problem and trust their wisdom. Some updates: Denis Anderson ( Australia) is looking into CCD and visited the Dave Hackenberg experiment in the last couple weeks. The Ag corp with the pesticide treated seed paid for research (to prove their product is not the problem) and did not like the results so cancelled the funding. (source AHPA insider). Reports of hives crashing are increasing. Reports of drought are coming from parts of the Dakotas all the way to California putting stress on hives and in some areas a repeat of last fall. Beekeepers in areas of seed treated cotton and canola are reporting CCD type symptoms. Jim Fischer has raised some excellent points and is correct as to when we might expect some CCD funding from my contacts. I said last spring on BEE-L not to expect help this year from the government and another repeat of fall 2006 will have to happen before the problem gets fast funding. Sadly it appears the problem is happening again. Yes the almonds got pollinated but many out of state beekeepers are leary about shipping hives which are not strong and healthy. Time will tell if enough hives will be available for 2008 almonds. Remember it was only a few years ago there was not enough hives in almonds. Even 3 framers were sold into almonds. Jim said: Neither ABF & AHPA can claim to represent more than a fraction of the total of either hives or beekeepers" Sad but true *but* the larger players belong to one or the other. The commercial guys with 300-2000 hives is an area which rarely attends or belongs. I myself did not belong to national, state and local organizations for the first couple decades of beekeeping. I attended my first Midwestern Beekeepers meeting and did a program about commercial beekeeping in Florida and was voted president at the next meeting ( job I held for three years). Since then I have made many contacts in beekeeping I would not have made without belonging to beekeeping organizations and many beekeepers might have never heard of me. I can name many commercial beekeepers which do not belong to beekeeping organizations or belong and never (or hardly ever) attend. We need to all stand behind the effort to get research for the current problems. All beekeepers need to step into the picture and join beekeeping organizations. Even if you only own a single hive there is unity in numbers! bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 12:23:44 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "deknow@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Sena te Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit -- Bob Harrison wrote: Some updates: Denis Anderson ( Australia) is looking into CCD and visited the Dave Hackenberg experiment in the last couple weeks. >>>That sounds like a band..."the dave hackenberg experement" :) The Ag corp with the pesticide treated seed paid for research (to prove their product is not the problem) and did not like the results so cancelled the funding. (source AHPA insider). >>>i'd really like to see this documented, as we have heard this kind thing over and over with no data...if it's true, it would be good to have it docuemnted...otherwise it's only rumor. Yes the almonds got pollinated but many out of state beekeepers are leary about shipping hives which are not strong and healthy. >>>this is the comment that made me respond. should beekeepers _not_ be leary of shipping diseased colonies all over the country? should migratory beekeepers _not_ feel that that it isn't good for their business to keep weak colonies? imho, there should be all kinds of pressure (from farmers, from beekeepers, from the public and even perhaps from state line inspections that will force a whole truck back to where they came from) on beekeepers to not ship around weak and unhealthy hives. deknow ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 06:20:48 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: C Hooper Subject: Bee Venom Therapy Popular in Egypt MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Bee Venom Therapy Popular in Egypt A Sting is the Thing Sunday Mirror (UK), 7/15/2007 http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/07/bee-venom-therapy-popular-in-egypt.html Bee stings could be the future for alternative medicine. Pioneering doctor Haj Mohamed el-Minyawi says they can be used to treat a host of ailments. He keeps bee hives so he can carry out the bee sting therapy on patients in Egypt's capital, Cairo - by targeting treatment to problem areas… ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 11:55:52 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Native pollinators are the future of agriculture? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Steve Noble wrote: >At any rate, my question to you is, are any of the second two bulleted statements you have quoted untrue? >> You can help! Please contact your senator and let them know that native >pollinators are very important to the future of agriculture. This is just speculation and hyperbole. Personally, I don't suppose native bees are -- or ever will be -- abundant enough to have anything but a small effect on the present or the future of agriculture. I certainly don't think anyone has a clear idea of how many of them there are, or if this number can be significantly increased. If these numbers are unknown, the usefulness of native pollinators is also unknown. >> Why are native bees so helpful? Collectively, native bees are more >versatile than honey bees. Some species, such as mason bees, are active >when conditions are too cold or wet for honey bees. While this might be true, if they are not present in sufficient numbers it doesn't matter how "versatile" they are. Almond growers need over a million colonies. I doubt you are ever going to see numbers like these from native bees. Conspicuously absent from all this talk is the question: Could there ever be enough of these guys to make a real difference? Agriculture requires a reliable source of pollinators that can be managed to keep them healthy and viable. If natives actually became abundant then they too would be more vulnerable to pathogens. If a virulent pathogen got into a native population, there would be nothing you could do but watch them get wiped out. Personally, I find native wild bees to be immensely interesting but I believe that to try to link them to agriculture is a huge mistake. They are better off in wildlife conservation areas. The future of wild bees as well as birds and other wildlife is to have large areas where agriculture with its spraying and monoculture is simply not a factor. In other words, not only are native pollinators not in the future of agriculture -- agriculture is not in the future of native pollinators. They should be kept separate altogether. My opinions only, of course. -- Peter L. Borst Ithaca, NY USA http://picasaweb.google.com/peterlborst ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 12:09:21 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Brian Fredericksen wrote: > I'm not understanding the concern over emergency funding for CCD that history suggests has > happened before and only affected 5-8% of the nations hives. For emergency funding the whole of an industry does not have to be affected. Think floods, drought, fire and other disasters.They can affect only a small part of the industry and receive funding. I would think that it might be a good idea to find out what is happening to that much of an industry, if the funds are actually allocated for research, not just to get well. So far, that seems what is happening. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 12:20:36 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Native pollinators are the future of agriculture? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Steve Noble wrote: > At any rate, my question to you is, are any of the second two bulleted > statements you have quoted untrue, and if not then; A) How so? and B) If > those statements ARE true, what else would you expect from a group which > advocates for the well being of native pollinators?, and C) How does > stating the truth about native pollinators constitute a STATED GOAL on the > part of the advocates of native pollinators to COMPETE with beekeepers? In > other words how does it being “ad copy” make it anti beekeeping? Truth is truth but you certainly can twist it for whatever purpose you have in mind. Most NP are more efficient than honeybees, but that is about as far as it goes. They are not transportable in large numbers and they cannot pollinate large stands of crops even if they are stationary. The latter is because there are no additional nectar sources to sustain them after the crop is done flowering. Even NP like the leaf cutter bee do not give the farmer all that he needs so honeybees are brought in to supplement them. It all gets down to two simple facts that are omitted from any NP information. Numbers and transportable. Honeybees can supply both and the NP neither for large scale agriculture. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 10:02:38 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: Soybean pollination and honey production In-Reply-To: <469A4954.1030306@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Looked in the archives and found just a couple of references to bees utilizing soybeans. Bob Harrison commented that he believes that he has gotten a surpluse on soybeans and that the yield was increased because of bee pollination. Has there been any recent studies concerning this? Has anyone had any experience with honey yields seemingly from soybeans? Reason for the questions, I have a field of about twenty-four acres densely planted in soybeans, rows about four inches apart as apposed to about eighteen inches that I've always seen before. Mike in Lower Alabama --------------------------------- Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 12:13:36 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jim Young Subject: Bumblebees (Was Re: [BEE-L] Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate) In-Reply-To: <002e01c7c68e$efff7360$0701000a@j> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 10:19 PM 7/14/2007, James Fischer wrote: >It was USA NATIVE bumblebees, exported and reproduced ("bred") >overseas, and then shipped back to the USA that carried the >European nosema in, escaped from their greenhouses (which >happens a lot), and thereby wiped out two native species >of bumblebees. Bumblebees have disappeared in the McAlester, OK area. Previous to this year, bumblebees were plentiful in my garden pollinating okra and squash. Now, I don't see any bumblebees, only carpenterbees on vitex blossoms. I'm wondering if the disappearance of the bumblebee population is the result of the introduced European nosema as discussed by Jim Fischer or the severve 2006 drought in Oklahoma. Jim Young ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 13:29:41 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Bob_Harrison?= Subject: Pollinator protection Act introduced - Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello Deknow & All, The experiment ran by the USDA-ARS is important to most because of the size of the experiment (400 hives) and the complete experiment has been over seen by Jeff Pettis (head of Beltsville Bee Lab). Around the world many beekeepers are watching with interest. The information I received by phone from Australia last night was from an Australian commercial beekeeper which spoke at great length with Denis Anderson about his week researching, speaking with Hackenberg and the USDA- ARS team. For those on the list which may not know who Denis Anderson is ( hard to believe) I will say Denis has shocked beekeeping researchers around the beekeeping world with his discoveries about varroa and bees. Denis gave us the term varroa destructor. We in the U.S. are very lucky to get a researcher of Denis Anderson's caliber to take a look and give his opinion! Many of us are looking into the current problems but testing is not complete. Our recent testing of taking a hive going backwards and putting on new comb did not change the scenario ( as using radiation on the Hackenberg eguipment has done). So now some CCD effected beekeepers are doing queen replacement to see if the queen is effected in some way and a queen change will change the scenario. work in progress. >" shipping bees which are not strong and healthy" I think Deknow misses the point but only because he does not perhaps understand the way hives are moved in fall into Texas & California. There are two methods. 1. All hives which are queenright and seem healthy are moved.This method has an element of luck needed. 2. Only the strongest and the rest are depopulated. Works most of the time but failed last fall with the loads of bees of Lance Sundberg which really got my attention. Hives gone though ( Montana) and full of bees and two weeks later ( California) only a few bees and a box full of brood and larva, Since the "gold rush" to almonds many commercial beekeepers have moved to using number 1 ( risky but with record almond pollination prices some feel worth the risk). Then trying to rebuild or combine in California. Hives are being trucked which would not have been a decade ago. Renting into almonds is the big reason in my opinion. As example Richard Adee used to only keep 25% of his hives (BC article from 90's) and depopulate the rest as he needed the equipment to use again. Many of his hives were depopulated by Bell Honey in Florida and then the empty equipment sent to the operation in Mississippi( I was involved in this part). In those days after the honey flow in the Dakota's was over and *if* fifty percent were dead it was not cause for concern and only meant the deadouts were sent to Mississippi instead of Florida to be depopulated. Actually saved on trucking and cost in Florida of depopulation. The beekeeper in Florida at the time employed a much larger work force than the Adee operation ( has actually been larger at various times in beekeeping history) and was set up for depopulating the hives in a huge building setting. Said beekeeper is retired now ( rumors say silent partner in certain beekeeping operations ) and the plan does not really fit now since the Adee's are big into almond pollination and as I understand go now directly to California from the Dakota's in fall. The point I make is one my long time friend Jerry B. has trouble with. 50% losses seem ok with some beekeepers he seems not to understand. Unlike the hobby beekeeper (same actually give queens names) the commercial beekeeper decides on the number of hives he will run. As example say a 1000 hives and he requeens every year. So if he wants to requeen all he takes one strong hive and turn into four in spring he needs to depopulate 75% (750 hives using the above example) to have the equipment he needs in spring. He keeps the absolute best 250 and sends to the splitting area which in the case of the Adee's was Mississippi and for us is Texas. The commercial migratory beekeeper now has his 1000 hives back with new queens. A young queen pays instead of costs! Understanding the methods of the large beekeeping outfits is hard to understand unless you have been directly involved such as i have for many years. Not always do I have the time for a long explanation but understanding the methods migratory beekeepers use I think helps in understanding the problems they face. Beekeeping was so easy in the fifties and sixties! Complicated today! Still trying to retire after nine years! bob ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 11:23:33 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi All, My posts on this issue come in spurts, since I've been staging and moving bees the past two weeks. As I've said before, politics are not my forte, and I appreciate Jim's patience in educating myself and the List. Jim said: > A lot of opinions have presented AS "facts", but few of them have been documented to support your contentions. Thank you , Jim. This is exactly my point. You have continually expressed you OPINION that the native pollinator folk have hampered CCD funding, yet when I've asked you for FACTS to support your contention, you skip the question. For the benefit of the List, allow me to ask you again for what appears to me what would be the two "smoking gun" facts: 1. Between the Beltsville meeting in April, and your June 27 post blasting the native pollinator groups, could you please tell the List who made written requests for emergency funding, and to whom? Since these funds would have to be appropriated from existing agricultural budgets, am I correst in assuming that requests would have been directed to someone in Agriculture? 2. Can you document for the List specifically how native pollinator groups "hijacked" any specific requests listed above? The crux of your complaint against the NP folk is that they hampered immediate funding. If this is indeed true, it would have had to have happened during the time period above, and would have to have affected specific requests. Please document those FACTS for us. The first written request for emergency funding that I've seen is the AHPA/ABF letter to Secretary Johanns. You must be referring to earlier requests that I have not seen--please tell us what they were! > Funny how these "major players" never seem to have names. They have names all right, but I try not to quote without permission, and some are in a compromised position due to being on the receiving end of potential funding, and others do not wish to have you attacking them. > Support WHAT? Some new bill? Nothing said to either the House or Senate > has even mentioned ANY KIND of "immediate funding". And neither bill > calls for any sort of "immediate funding". My point exactly! If there was no immediate funding mentioned, how could the NP groups have hijacked it? The "major players" didn't just drop the ball, they forgot to BRING the ball altogether! You and I are in total agreement on this. > The USDA has to be directed to take money away from something else, don't > they? They only have so much money, and all of it is allocated for > specific purposes. Thank you for reiterating. I thought that I made this clear earlier. > Claims are made by each of two different organizations that they > represent "US beekeeping". These claims are false. The AHPA represents > a group of larger beekeepers, and the ABF represents a mixed bag of a few > commercial beekeepers, honey packers, and hobby beekeepers. Neither can > claim to represent more than a fraction of the total of either hives or > beekeepers. I'm in total agreement with you on this, too. I don't feel that my "niche" beekeeping business is well represented by anyone. But these organizations have at least hired lobbyists, and have some influence in Washington. As Bob suggested, we need to speak with a common voice, so these may be our only voice now. > But mention THE USDA-ARS PLAN!! > And offer up your own money (which the Honey Board took) to start. Thank you for the positive suggestions. I appreciate your insight on this. > Oh no, of course not. They all waited until AFTER the hearings on > purpose to ask for quick funding. No one said anything about the need > for short-fuse funding in the hearings on purpose. It is so much more > effective that way. :) Jim, you are confusing me! Again, if no one asked, how could the NP folk have hurt us???? > And puh-leeze... don't anybody try to claim that we have been helped at > all by groups that CONTINUE to try to make Honey Bees look like optional, > easy to get along without, perhaps even scary and undesirable insects. I'll leave it to the List to decide for themselves. The players that I've spoken to who have actually been working in Washington are unanimous in their gratitude for the support that the NP folk have given us. > I wouldn't be taking the time to type this stuff if I wasn't dead-certain > of the facts Jim, I've never been "dead-certain" of anything. I try not to close my mind. Why bother to post to a "discussion" group if one is "dead certain" from the start? By the way, Congressman Blumenauer did change his June 26 testimony in the record, and removed the erroneous claim that native pollinators were more important that honeybees in US agriculture. I'd be happy to forward anyone the pdf if they wish. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 15:03:20 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Chris Slade Subject: Re: USDA Announces Colony Collapse Disorder Research Action Plan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 14/07/2007 13:22:15 GMT Standard Time, bhfarms@SUSCOM-MAINE.NET writes: Peter L. Borst wrote: > *genetic engineering techniques* will be further > developed and used to transfer genes. > Hmmm. Now the subject of genes has been brought up, one reads that there isn't as much genetic variation in US bees as elsewhere through constant buying in queens from breeders. In studying CCD has the genetic history of the affected colonies been considered and compared with that of nearby unaffected hives? Chris ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 14:22:46 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate Comments: cc: Troy Fore , Danny Weaver MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi All, This is an OPINION from a friend who has been in Washington talking to senate staffers: "No way do legislators on the hill understand how hard a job it is to be beekeeper, to provide pollination services, and the challenges inside and outside the industry to keeping bees healthy.. no way. Iif the industry spent some time educating them, we would have all support we wanted.. "Fyi, [a senate leader important for our funding] actually thought it was possible that cell phones and Africanized bees were causing CCD because that is what has been in the papers.. " Again, it seems to me that we could sure use some effective lobbying on our behalf in D.C. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:49:57 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" Subject: Re: Pollinator protection Act introduced - Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bob Harrison wrote: >I think Deknow misses the point but only because he does not perhaps >understand the way hives are moved in fall into Texas & California. There >are two methods. > >1. All hives which are queenright and seem healthy are moved. This method >has an element of luck needed. > >2. Only the strongest and the rest are depopulated. Having been in the business since 1974 I have seen plenty of truckloads of bees and they don't all fall neatly into these two categories. In California, bees take a beating in the summer due to excessive temperatures, insecticides, etc. These bees are not strong and healthy, but they are moved to coastal areas to recuperate. After a while, they are strong enough to start splitting again. Similarly, I have seen bees in Upstate NY that are pretty well wrecked by the end of October due to mites, etc. These hives are hauled to Florida for treatment and recuperation. The way you write, it sounds like weak hives are blown out or just left behind. If it were a widespread practice, I believe I would have seen it. Other than that, I agree that hardly anyone outside the bee industry has a remote clue of what beekeepers do. pb ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:52:26 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Brian Fredericksen Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:14:42 -0500, Bob Harrison wrote: >Some updates: > >Reports of hives crashing are increasing. > >Reports of drought are coming from parts of the Dakotas all the way to >California putting stress on hives and in some areas a repeat of last >fall. > >Beekeepers in areas of seed treated cotton and canola are reporting CCD >type symptoms. > Nothing in the news, nothing in the bee mags, nothing online and FWIW nothing coming from regional beekeepers up here where I live to substantiate your claims. It did not happen up here last fall and its not happening now either. You'd think someone other then yourself would be reporting something on Bee-L or elsewhere if "reports of crashing hives are increasing" BTW what exactly is a CCD type symptom? I thought the bees were gone leaving brood with a queen and few workers. So what is it are they gone or not? Please clarify what "CCD type symptoms" means? If beeks were losing big this summer it would not take long for a journalist to do a story and it would be big news. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:31:58 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Josh Markle Subject: Emergency Queen Rearing? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I've found what appears to be a queen cell in one of my honey supers. It is in the middle of the frame and looks like a protruding peanut. There were no larvae in the second brood chamber, so it seems pretty clear that the hive is queenless. I haven't found any irregular brood patters that would suggest lots of workers are laying. Currently these bees are really packing honey away. The hive still seems strong. What are some possible scenarios to expect in terms of honey inspection? How can I make sure this queen is a success? Thanks for the help. Josh Oh, and I have some pretty good pictures if anybody would like to see them. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:55:27 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dee Lusby Subject: Will bees be included as part of this? In-Reply-To: <036901c7c726$4b02fc40$4fab5142@MyPC> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/wildlife_news/hws_announc.html Hey, will bees be included for handling as a part if this? Dee- ____________________________________________________________________________________ Choose the right car based on your needs. Check out Yahoo! Autos new Car Finder tool. http://autos.yahoo.com/carfinder/ ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:00:03 -0400 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Special pollen treats toothache and other ailments MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My Spanish may not be good enough for this, so help me out. 1) Is the "Wang's Bee Garden" honey accused of containing poppy pollen collected by foraging bees in the usual way, or are the humans accused of adding the poppy pollen? Or are they accused of adding something that is not pollen? 2) Does anyone but me find the phrase: "One of the main manufacturers of Chinese honey..." To be a very revealing turn of phrase? :) 3) Are the phrases "pollen of special bee" and "special pollen" meant to mean "special bees", "special pollen", or merely "pollen added to the honey"? But morphine and codeine? Wow, recall what happened when trace levels of chloramphenicol (a mere antibiotic) were found in honey from China. Morphine and codeine will get the DEA interested. [Cue the "Dragent" theme song.] Maybe they were trying to compete with these products: http://bee-quick.com/wall/robitussin.html ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:00:59 -0400 Reply-To: james.fischer@gmail.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Reports of hives crashing are increasing I'm not sure that anyone can say that either: a) the number of beekeeper reports b) the number of hives reported are "increasing", but the mere fact that NEW "cases showing classic CCD symptoms" continue to be reported is a grave concern, and is the primary reason to try to preserve (or establish!) a sense of urgency (not to be confused with a state of panic) about getting some short-fuse funding. > Beekeepers in areas of seed treated cotton and canola are > reporting CCD type symptoms. As are some in the great clover areas. Last I checked, no one offered treated clover seed. Correlation between CCD and bees working any set of "treated" crops simply has not been clearly established to my knowledge. Further, no one has seen any sort of "slight exposure" where some number of bees have the "shakes" (the usual indicator of a sub-lethal Imidacloprid dose). Without a mix of types of victims (unaffected, suffering slightly, dead/disappeared), I don't see how anyone could call CCD a "pesticide problem", as the overt symptoms do not include a mix of different symptoms indicating varying levels of exposure among the hive population. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:16:00 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Pollinator protection Act introduced - In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello Peter & All, > In California, bees take a beating in the summer due to excessive > temperatures, insecticides, etc. These bees are not strong and healthy, > but > they are moved to coastal areas to recuperate. After a while, they are > strong enough to start splitting again. I agree movement within a state all hives might be moved. However when you move a long way then things change. For the most part "dinks" ( hives which are in trouble are not worth the effort). > Similarly, I have seen bees in Upstate NY that are pretty well wrecked by > the end of October due to mites, etc. These hives are hauled to Florida > for > treatment and recuperation. Treatment & recuperation? Again hives over varroa threshold are a waste of time and money. Many ways to keep bees. i have watched many beekeepers spin their wheels trying to keep bees the way Peter speaks of. However not the way the largest outfits do. > The way you write, it sounds like weak hives are blown out or just left > behind. If it were a widespread practice, I believe I would have seen it. I have seen operations run as you describe but the outfits I am around do things as I describe. Rebuild from your best hives and new queens at regular intervals. One large outfit rebuilds several times a year . > Other than that, I agree that hardly anyone outside the bee industry has a > remote clue of what beekeepers do. Actually many hobby and sideline have little knowledge of commercial beekeeping methods other than the little they read about those methods on the internet. A few of those has helped us and said: "I can't believe you work your bees in the manor you do!" " just the opposite of what the books say!" Example: helpers say: "Bees really will go down into a lower box as easy as they will move up!" I use methods handed down from generations of beekeepers which they learned from trial and error. These methods are rarely in print or talked of at meetings. The successful beekeeper in my opinion has to have a system. Richard Adee has been a success in an industry filled with beekeeper failures because in my opinion he has a system for every part of his operation. Bell Honey always used systems worked out by Bell. His method of package introduction was different than i had ever seen but worked great. bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:33:00 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate Comments: To: james.fischer@gmail.com In-Reply-To: <004201c7c73c$64f484a0$0701000a@j> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello Jim & All, Without a mix of types of victims > (unaffected, suffering slightly, dead/disappeared), > I don't see how anyone could call CCD a "pesticide > problem", as the overt symptoms do not include a mix > of different symptoms indicating varying levels of > exposure among the hive population. > The classic CCD symptoms are exactly like a pesticide problem! Consider the way a hive collects pollen. If the hive needs pollen then say 10% goes to collect pollen. *If* those OLDER foragers do not return (whatever reason)then another 10% goes out. The scenario is repeated as the young larva need pollen until all you have left is a hive filled with sealed brood, larva , a few newly emerged bees and a queen. See pictures of CCD at the CCD information site. Why are the bees not returning? Don't know! a guess would be they are dying on the way back *or* the chemical in the pollen is throwing off their sense of direction. In Florida a beekeeper saw his hives depopulated as above and found all his bees either dead or dying in an area around 300 feet from his yard. bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:57:35 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lionel Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Dee & all, I have been removing bees from houses or whatever for several years by this method. I make a funnel of screen wire about 18' long and can remove from any type structure without any harm to the structure. Most people kill the pest when it is removed, that is not good. Takes about 8 to 10 weeks to do the job I do. When completed, I caulk the opening and bees cannot re-enter. If bees have been in there a long time it takes longer. If they are just a new swarm having been there only a few days, then it will not take but a week or so. Lionel Evans North AL. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:39:49 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Bob_Harrison?= Subject: Soybean and honey production Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello Mike & All, Soybeans are not dependable in my area so we do not locate next to soybeans only. My own observations: I have seen soybeans make crops over a hundred pounds in the river bottoms around Quincy, Illinois. I have seen soybeans make large crops in the Mississippi river bottoms on the border of Missouri. Also in the bootheel of Missouri area. No recent research In fact the only research I know of was done by Ericson years ago and published in ABJ. Many say the color of the flowers is the key with blue being the best for bees. others say its the variety. My opinion is its the soil,temp and humidity and bees will work soybeans when those are right. Also what Ericson came up with if I remember correctly. My observations: When working soybeans the bees enter the field between 10 and 2 PM. for the most part and enter the rows from the outside. Soybean honey in our area is top notch and similar as our "blue Vine" honey. In fact in my opinion most of what is sold in Missouri as Blue Vine IS soybean as its hard to find Blue Vine these days. Back when farmers used cultivators on corn Blue vine was in every field twisting around the corn stalks but burning off the fields with herbicides has killed off most the blue vine. Sincerely, Bob Harrison ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:43:18 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dee Lusby Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? In-Reply-To: <000701c7c74c$ae8f7e70$15ebbad8@D98T9541> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lionel writes: When completed, I caulk the opening and bees cannot re-enter. Reply: Then what happens to the old combs, and any stores left behind, contained therein? Doesn't this then create more problems later? Dee- ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search that gives answers, not web links. http://mobile.yahoo.com/mobileweb/onesearch?refer=1ONXIC ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:59:35 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: ALDEN MARSHALL Subject: Queen Rearing MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1; reply-type=original Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:28:31 -0400, Lloyd Spear wrote: >No brood in other frames. I have had success with frames of sealed and emerging brood = young bees. Alden Marshall Hudson, NH ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 23:31:24 -0400 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob offered: > The classic CCD symptoms are exactly like a pesticide problem! Consider > the way a hive collects pollen. If the hive needs pollen then say 10% > goes to collect pollen. *If* those OLDER foragers do not return (whatever > reason) then another 10% goes out. The scenario is repeated as the young > larva need pollen until all you have left is a hive filled with sealed > brood, larva , a few newly emerged bees and a queen. I disagree. Firmly. If the actual scenario were as you described, one would expect to find a hive that had run low on pollen, since pollen stores in the hive would be depleted significantly during the period where no foragers return, and successive waves of foragers leave and never return. To my knowledge, no one has ever reported that CCD-affected hives were low on pollen or nectar. As this would have been a very significant clue, it would have been noted and reported by multiple beekeepers and investigators. It hasn't been. In fact, the hives are said to be well-stocked with stores. Secondly, how could any pesticide kill 100% of bee foragers quickly, and on first contact, and not be well-known to be so toxic to honey bees? How could such a pesticide get approved by the EPA? If it were approved, how could it be so suddenly adopted by so many growers? Third, how could the same highly-toxic pesticide be used at so many locations at the same time within a local area? Bees always, always, always "hedge their bets", and forage on multiple sources at the same time, so it would be an amazing coincidence that the bees from any one hive, or group of hives, would only forage on blooms so poison to them. Fourth, it would take several days for these successive waves of foragers to make their fatal sorties. (Foragers would not return, a shortage of resources would have to be noticed, bees would take some amount of time to "shift gears" to take up foraging, and so on. What possible pesticide remains so toxic to kill bees at first contact, with absolutely no bees returning to the hive to die for days, maybe weeks? And if you are going to trot out the speculation about a fungicide somehow working in combination with a pesticide to make a more toxic "cocktail", you are going to have to be the first one to explain the chemistry at work, as no one has even come close to explaining the interaction, or explaining any sort of reaction between the two. (While one can mix sugar and salt, this does not result in any sort of new condiment.) The typical pesticide kill presents a "bell curve" of results, varying with exposure. Some bees are not exposed, and have no symptoms. Some are slightly exposed, and have "mild symptoms". Some are more exposed, and have acute symptoms. Some die right off the bat. So, where's the bell curve typically associated with exposure to the pesticide? I don't see one, and neither has anyone else. > In Florida a beekeeper saw his hives depopulated as above > and found all his bees either dead or dying in an area around > 300 feet from his yard. This is the first I've heard of this story. Were samples collected? These dead/dying bees would be very good things to toss into liquid nitrogen and save for some lab work. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:34:31 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi All, Jim questioned my statement: >> it's generally accepted that honeybees can disrupt ecosystems by >> pollinating exotic weeds, and by competing with native pollinators for >> resources. I'm not interested in digressing. I'm not a native pollinator lobbyist, but I certainly support them, and anyone else, who is working for sustaining biodiversity on this planet. I heard a presentation by Adrian Wenner about his part in restoration of the native flora on a Calif channel island. A key component was the removal of honeybees, since the pollinated the European weeds. I recently heard a presentation by Eric Mussen on native pollinators, in which he spoke of their temporary resurgence when feral honeybee populations were first decimated by varroa. I think that both of these points are easy to grasp, and hardly "counter intuitive." > By pollinating these "weeds", the honey bees assure that there will be > more of them, thus INCREASING the total number of pollen and nectar > sources for all pollinators, both honey bees and others. That may have an effect on the next year's crop, but competition for nectar and pollen might affect native species this year. > Sorry, the native pollinators are also opportunists, and will be happy > to gather nectar and pollen wherever they can, without regard to the > preferences of humans. Jim, I'm not a native pollinator expert. But my understanding is that native pollinators are often species specific, whereas honeybees are more generalists. > To go further, if honey bees could somehow be "competing for resources" > with native pollinators, the worst damage to the native pollinator > populations would have happened in the period between the 1600s and the > 1980s No doubt. I don't think that the resource competition thing is a big issue--the presence of honeybees is generally accepted, except in specific settings such as the channel island in Calif. However, if a native species in a limited range is threatened, some honeybee mitigation may well be indicated. > I'd be happy to walk through any suburb and bet some serious money what > a few hours wandering would yield in this area of inquiry. A recent study, which I can't find, found native pollinators to be thriving in a suburban area. Jim, I'm not understanding your point in this. I don't think anyone is calling for the elimination of honeybees! > And what happened to the claim that native pollinators are somehow "more > versatile"? Are you purposely trying to be obtuse? The versatility did not apply to an individual species, but all species as a group. Some work in cold weather, some in warm, some on certain flowers, some in odd ways. That kind of versatility. Honeybees are clearly the most versatile as a species. It seems that you're trying to produce and argument where none existed! Jim, I'm not at all interested in speaking for native pollinators. I believe that we're digressing from the issue at hand. I only got into this discussion when you blamed NP groups for short circuiting immediate funding for CCD research. This issue is about the political practices of people, not about the insects! If the PEOPLE did indeed hamper us, I'd be the first to write them to ask them to stop. If they didn't, I think that you owe them an apology for your criticism of them. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:01:43 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Peter Dillon Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate In-Reply-To: <1092.216.89.188.38.1184476482.squirrel@mail.discoverynet.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob, Would you be as so kind to explain why you considered the comment you wrote as found below was worthy of public airing: "The Ag corp with the pesticide treated seed paid for research (to prove their product is not the problem) and did not like the results so cancelled the funding. (source AHPA insider)." There is nothing solid there. It engenders the gearing up of rumours. It suggests that there are different levels of information and that which is getting out into the public domain may not be the whole truth. Regards, Peter ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:53:10 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Cushman Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? In-Reply-To: <000701c7c74c$ae8f7e70$15ebbad8@D98T9541> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Lionel > I make a funnel of screen wire about 18' long I hope this is a typo ! Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 06:14:00 -0400 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Jim questioned my statement: Questioned? No, demolished it. :) >> it's generally accepted that honeybees can >> disrupt ecosystems by pollinating exotic weeds, >> and by competing with native pollinators >> for resources. > > I'm not interested in digressing. You were interested enough to make the claim, and attach the phrase "generally accepted" to it, and I was interested enough to take the time to debunk yet another misleading claim about "pollinators" using nothing but the sort of general knowledge that anyone, certainly a beekeeper, might have. So, now that we have been backed into a corner, suddenly it is suddenly a "digression", eh? :) > That [pollination by honey bees resulting in > more blooms for all] may have an effect on the > next year's crop, but competition for nectar > and pollen might affect native species this year. But honey bees have had HUNDREDS of years to out-compete and force native pollinators into extinction. Howcome they haven't already, if they are even half the "threat" you want to make them out to be to native species? > I don't think that the resource competition > thing is a big issue Then why did you bring it up? And why, once I illustrate how it clearly is a NON-issue, would it be "generally accepted"? Wouldn't a non-issue be generally accepted as a non-issue? > However, if a native species in a limited range > is threatened, some honeybee mitigation may well > be indicated. Now wait just a second here. First it is "generally accepted", then it is "a digression", then you don't think it "is a big issue", but then you REPEAT the claim that somehow extinctions might result in a "limited range"! Which is it? Well, we have seen AHB out-compete EHB, and replace 100% of EHB colonies in some areas, so if there was any "threat", one would expect native pollinators to be driven out of all heavily-infested AHB areas. Has this happened? If so, you might then have a shred of fact upon which to hang all the speculation. Funny, I've never heard anyone mention this as a problem, even though AHB has spread over most of Mexico and a bunch of counties in the USA. > Jim, I'm not at all interested in speaking for > native pollinators. Sorry, I was directly addressing things you brought up in your softball "questions". Since it looked like a duck, and walked like a duck, then it seems fair to conclude that you were "speaking for native pollinators". Speaking for "non-native-pollinators", I think that all the requirements for full US citizenship have been met by the honey bee. They've been here long enough, worked hard enough, and been subjected to enough abuses. If I can be called a "US native" simply because I was born here, I think we can dispense with prejudice against useful creatures who have done no harm, and been a big fat help in feeding a nation, and a large swath of the rest of the planet. > This issue is about the political practices of > people, not about the insects! Ok, if you now want to say so, fine. So, not another word about the relative merits of one insect versus another from you. > If the PEOPLE did indeed hamper us, I'd be the > first to write them to ask them to stop. I'm sure that none of this was due to evil intent. In fact, I'm sure that only the best of intentions were behind the actions of all and sundry. And you know what the Road To Hell is paved with, dontcha? But it matters not a bit what anyone's intentions might have been. What happened was that an over-hyped tale of an exaggerated impact of CCD on "the beekeeping industry" was leveraged to justify conservation of native pollinators. That was just plain nonsense. Conservation need not be justified by any reward except the preservation of species itself. What also happened was that these same native pollinators were overtly offered up as if they were viable current replacements for honey bees, or somehow "more important to agriculture" as a result of the current problems of honey bees. That's not just nonsense, that's disingenuous. Then, an amazingly similar bill title was used and introduced as a Senate "companion bill" to a House bill that any beekeeper who has kept up with the legislation would consider "mission-critical". The bill was in no way a "companion". Now, all of what I have written about was done by people of good character, people who bore no ill will toward anyone, people who I am sure would be a lot of fun to hang out with. But they were so focused on their own goals, they neglected to consider what they were doing to the needs of beekeeping. Heck, we don't even yet know if we should shrug about CCD or panic - we certainly don't need anyone "helping us" to turn our agenda into part of a long-term multi-million-dollar program, when we need some quick work to at least triage this darned "CCD" thingy. I think it was self-centered deliberate interest. I assume that all involved have the mental capacity to think a few moves ahead, and I therefore DO make the accusation that the problems of honey bees were used as "leverage" with deliberate intent to justify a grand agenda. The grand agenda has existed for years in the mind of an individual who worked at the USDA for a time, and proposed similar moves, which the USDA rejected as impractical at the time. (You see, I do my homework, do my reading, and thereby know my history.) I don't like beekeepers staring bankruptcy in the face being used as unwilling poster children for someone else's agenda, as it moves focus away from THE BEEKEEPERS' problems. Problems that could become yours and mine. Maybe, maybe not. We just don't know. We have an agricultural issue to address. Nothing more. While environmental quality and wildlife are laudable issues to push, they have absolutely nothing to do with agriculture in this context. In fact, as I illustrated, making agricultural claims about native pollinators can only increase the exploitation of them, and thereby increase the risk of ADDITIONAL extinctions of native pollinators as a direct result of such exploitation. So, I'll say it yet again: Exploitation is neither conservation nor preservation. Native pollinators have been exploited. Beekeepers in trouble have been exploited. Congressmen have been misled, and Senate testimony has been designed to misinform. Don't expect us to stop until the native pollinator camp and the lawmakers they have influenced stand up and make clear and compelling statements in support of the need for quick funding for CCD, and makes it a prerequisite to their long-term program. So far, the ABF and the AHPA have been awakened from their slumber, a Congressman has gone back and changed a transcript (that no one will ever read), so we are making some after-the-fact progress here. My coffe cup is empty, so I'm done typing, but the next step is to get some focus on some funding that can get feet on the ground THIS year. It is just like cleaning supers, you have to keep scraping away at all the sticky gook. ("Have hive tool, will travel.") ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 07:06:34 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate In-Reply-To: <005101c7c759$c9e93870$0701000a@j> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >> In Florida a beekeeper saw his hives depopulated as above >> and found all his bees either dead or dying in an area around >> 300 feet from his yard. >> This is an indicator of high Varroa infestation and has been observer before. Bees actually crawl from the hive and are found in low places away from the hive. We get back to my concern of the observer/beekeeper as authority and reporting CCD when it is not. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:09:00 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Yoon_Sik_Kim?= Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bee Folks: As I follow this contentious debate regarding the “parasitic, hijacking of CCD funding,” I find, just as in any debate, lacking definitions of many crucial terms, such as “native” pollinators and “weed.” For example, what/who determines the term “native”? According to what and whose definition? When does a “foreign” species become native? How long does it take? Eons? When would honeybees, for instance, get a green card to work farmer Joe’s alfalfa fields albeit at minimum wage? The honeybees came ashore circa 1859 and they stayed put ever since in symbiotic coexistence with humans, not perhaps with “native pollinators.” My point is that whatever the harm they may have caused in American ecology has already been done, a primary example of arguing “after the fact.” The situation strikes me rather analogous to what happened to Native Americans; to a large extent, they are now protected and doing well, just as native pollinators—with their gambling casinos and tax-exempt status in pockets of American [bass!] woods. But the ugly fact is that they lost the war, pure and simple, against the immigrant species who outnumbered them, outfoxed them in all legal finesse, and outstripped their wealth and land and women. Now, can we say these immigrant species, mostly coming from Europe, like mellifera, are not native to this continent after so many generations of them have lived and changed flora and fauna? Such monocrops as alfalfa are NOT weeds or something despicable or an exotic invasive species at all; I enjoy beef stakes and so do you. So do American Indians. My point? What is the definition of “weed”? Who determines what is and what not, and according to what criteria? Worse, does the definition must undergo a periodic redefinition? If yes, when? Given the speed in global trafficking of any living organisms these days, I’d say by now American honeybees have gained the status of citizenship: they have become native in America. But how? Thanks to its ignorance about beekeeping and bee-biology, the public does not even know that honeybees are a non-native species. They do consider them as part of American ecology that includes the bumbles, masons, and carpenters, along with a host of others. What is wrong with such “biodiversity” particularly since honeybees have been here with us for so long and it will be impossible to rid of them? CCD, please correct me if I err, did not occur to these native species, or did it? CCD is a non-issue to them. CCD has occurred exclusively to honeybees, the focal point of this debate, the wheel that squeaked and needs to be greased. Period. Yoon YSK HONEY FARM Shawnee, OK ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:14:24 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Emergency Queen Rearing? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>I've found what appears to be a queen cell in one of my honey supers. The further from the nest center a queen cell is located, the more likely it's supercedure... The location on the frame is secondary and often insignificant. That's my theory. >>There were no larvae in the second brood chamber, so it seems pretty clear that the hive is queenless. Did you check in all the other hive bodies and supers? You'd really need to a 100% inspection to be sure there is no queen. An injured queen may not lay but may still put out her odor. Just take your time and take off one box at a time and it check it carefully frame by frame. Every time you do this sort of inspection you'll observe and learn a lot about nest structure, bee behavior etc. As you do this, postulate your own theories based on your observations and then challenge them. >>Currently these bees are really packing honey away. The hive still seems strong. Since its brood rearing is not a demand on resources, a de-queened hive with a strong work force will often put up record amounts of honey in a short period of time until attrition reduces its field force. >>How can I make sure this queen is a success? Either leave it alone or move the frame with the queen cell into a queenless nuc put together with frames from different hives 24 hours earlier. You can track a queen easier in a nuc. When she's laying you can introduce her with the nuc back into your original hive. >>I have some pretty good pictures if anybody would like to see them. Please feel free to send a couple to me. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:29:37 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Unusual request -CCD In-Reply-To: <03bb01c7c75a$39804480$4fab5142@MyPC> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I need to talk to the person who contacted me on Sunday about CCD. Since they read the list, this is the only way I have to contact them. Thanks, Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:47:56 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Bob_Harrison?= Subject: CCD (was Pollinator protection Act) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello All, This week is busy so only a few quick answers as going into yards early today . Jim: "To my knowledge, no one has ever reported that CCD-effected hives were low on pollen & nectar" Not one? Bell Hill Honey reported 500 on the CCD survey. I have read the same thing but is simply not so in MANY cases! All the hives which showed CCD symptoms in areas of drought were short on pollen and in many cases nectar. No wild flowers the bees turn to corn pollen. We tried to buy irridated pollen from the west last fall and the first container (600 cases) was already spoken for so we placed an order and waited for the next. Besides the use of irridated pollen ( been in use for around ten years) record amounts of pollen substitute and HFCS were sold into beekeeping in many areas. Many of us beekeepers are suprised by the reports that all the CCD effected hives were chock full of pollen & nectar. With the amount of brood shown left in the pictures at the CCD site the ring around the brood would need replaced almost daily. Consider: If CCD is traced to a pesticide problem then nothing to research for the most part. I toss out only as a thought as we all know researchers have got money and enough problems to research and the lure of millions in research funding would never enter the picture. Peter: "it suggests that there are different levels of information and that which is getting out into the public domain *may* not bee the whole truth" Must be a real shocker to many! Bill: Long way for bees to crawl and why would the bees all crawl in a certain direction? Also a huge number were found floating in the lake nearby. Strange to say the least. I certainly do not have the answers to CCD but try to always look for a simple answer first and then move to the complicated. Not look to the complicated and pass over the simple. Commercial beekeepers have always dealt with pesticide issues without any help from the government except for the old indemnity program which paid for a replacement package if the USDA decided the kill was by pesticides. Why was the program dropped around 1978? I have had many kills since then! Also many partial wipeouts which only left a weak hive which is weak and non productive ( dink). Consider: Systemic pesticide seed treatment is new to beekeeping and GMO corn is being planted in record levels. Land is coming out of CRP fast and turned into corn fields! Corn futures are down due to the predicted record production this year and now soybean futures are on the rise due to many farmers chasing corn prices! Other countries are increasing production on both. My opinion on the topic: ethanol will not stop our dependance on foreign oil. Big joke on the American people. Maybe a baby step in the right direction. When an alternate fuel comes on the scene what will those farmers raise? The solution in my humble opinion is to pass legislation to force every gas station to put in a hydrogen fuel pump and move away from gasoline. Have a nice day! bob ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:49:53 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: NP definitions In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Weed: A weed is any plant you do not want in your field/garden. There are great books about edible plants, most of which are or were "weeds". Native: From away. In Maine you can be born here but will still be "from away" if your parents moved here, even if that was 80 years ago. Both are terms that the speaker sets the definition. The only semi-valid argument the NP crowd might have is against the the migratory beekeeper when they bring in bees for pollination which 'displace" NP. Which also fits their animus against commercial, migratory beekeepers and Walmart. Only problem with that argument is the bees would not have to be brought in if the NPs did the job. Walmart:: an invasive weed which sprouts up only where honeybees are found. A obvious symbiotic relationship, since Walmart was not around when there were only NP. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:31:07 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lionel Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Dee & all, When removing bees from any structure, I place a hive with 1 frame of all stages of brood,eggs, pollen, honey and bees just under the screen funnel. The top of the hive top is raised just about 3/8 of an inch to allow bees to enter the back of the top. Bees leaving the old nest will, upon returning from the field, go into the new hive to take care of the brood. Do NOT put a queen in on the brood frame. She will more than apt be killed. They will raise a new one soon. You can re-queen later if desired. After all bees are out of the structure, leave hive there for about 2 weeks. Then remove the screen and the bees in the hive will go back into the old place an rob out the honey. The comb will be left but all stores will be removed. Some problems of wax may occur. Normally not bad enough to be of concern. If bees are sprayed with a pesticide, there will be problems. Such as honey running out, dead bees decaying and smelling very bad. Wax does not cause this problem. Lionel ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:38:04 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: CCD (was Pollinator protection Act) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>...except for the old indemnity program which paid for a replacement package if the USDA decided the kill was by pesticides. Why was the program dropped around 1978? I have had many kills since then! With a pesticide kill, is the pollen/nectar in the comb contaminated or can you re-use it? Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:03:45 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lionel Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, This was a typo........my first ..........Should have been.......18" long. This proves I am not perfect :>) Lionel ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:50:44 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Steve_Noble?= Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In the beginning Jim Fischer said: “The efforts of the "native pollinators" in this area of inquiry are cynical, self-serving, and fraudulent.” Now he says: “I'm sure that none of this was due to evil intent. In fact, I'm sure that only the best of intentions were behind the actions of all and sundry.” That’s progress Jim. You’re making progress. :>) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:00:06 -0400 Reply-To: james.fischer@gmail.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > "The efforts of the "native pollinators" in this area of inquiry > are cynical, self-serving, and fraudulent." Now he [Moi!] says: > "I'm sure that none of this was due to evil intent. In fact, I'm sure > that only the best of intentions were behind the actions of all and sundry." > > You're making progress. :>) Nice try Steve, but no cigar - there is no contradiction between the two statements. The "best of intentions" PROMPTED the cynical, self-serving, and fraudulent efforts. Of course they wouldn't consider themselves "evil", no one ever does. Not even me. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:05:13 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter said: > It suggests that there are different levels of information and that which is getting out into the public domain may not be the whole truth. I gotta go with Bob on this one, Peter. Your statement above is absolutely correct. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:06:35 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Maine still CCD free In-Reply-To: <468A5169.20108@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit No CCD was found in Maine before, during and after blueberry pollination by over 60,000 colonies. Lots of Varroa, Tracheal and other problems but not CCD. There were some CCD like symptoms, but CCD as a cause was eliminated because of observable factors or the way the colonies were transported. The key here is you had reports of CCD in Maine by beekeepers but after further close, hands-on inspection, the actual cause was determined. In Maine we have the best bee inspector in the US. I would trust his observations before any University Professor or even some other State inspectors. I have gone with him in the field and was more educated about what to look for in one hour than a year in books and my own inspections. If CCD does come back in the fall, can we re-look at the fact that the viruses associated with Varroa and Tracheal kill colonies in the cool and cold months of the year and what we are seeing is the viruses and not some new exotic problem? It all gets back, in my opinion, to mites. We are chasing a will-o-the-wisp when the real killer of bees is known to us and right in front of our noses. There are other instances when you have CCD symptoms and mites are not involved, but they are discrete, like transportation problems, drought and the like. The problem with CCD, and it is confirmed by what we see in Maine, is that you rely on the beekeeper's input, and from what I have seen with some beekeepers, that is asking for problems. Time in grade, in the US Navy, never signified competence, only that the officer lived long enough and kept out of trouble. Same for beekeepers, but in some cases, it is they use shop towels soaked with Amitraz and are delaying the inevitable. It is not their experience, but their reliance on every known pesticide, legal or not, to quell the problem. I have seen their colonies in the blueberry fields and consider myself about as competent as they are, which is a devastating indictment. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:46:25 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Brian Fredericksen Subject: Re: Maine still CCD free Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Nice post Bill We had 2 claims of CCD here in Mn but both were vauge about the symptoms. Bascially saying they moved them south in late Fall checked on them latter and the hives had crashed. Wow thats really convincing. A Mn state honey producers association board member said this spring he had heard of no confirmed cases of CCD here even though the two alleged victims are members. . Most of the nations corn is in Indiana, Iowa, eastern NE, northern MO, southern Wisco/Mn. Interesting how few if any CCD cases we have in the corn belt. Obviously CCD is real, what's in serious question is the scope of the problem. Undoubtedly we will hear claims of CCD during the now annual fall hive collapse that plays out every year. While CCD may or may not be history the claims and myths will live on for many many years. Each week we endure numerous inquiries of how are your bees? from the public at the farmers market. When I say I have not heard of any affected hives here in Mn sometimes the person says "well I have a friend or family member who has a few hives and they lost them last winter and they think its CCD" yah right.....some hobbyist has the where withall to identify a CCD loss. What a joke! My guess is there is only a very very very small percentage of people in the USA that might be able to discern a CCD loss from another more run of the mill loss. Meanwhile we have a much larger percentage of people running around who think they know what CCD looks like and what causes it and this includes people who don't even keep bees! ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:03:46 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Bob_Harrison?= Subject: Mite treatments Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello All, Kind of old news to many beekeepers but the Midwestern Beekeepers Assn. felt it was time for another program on mites. So I will give a presentation at 7:00 P.M. July 18th, 2007 meeting room #2 YMCA, 10301 E. 350 Highway Raytown, Missouri (Raytown is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri) All beekeepers and people interested in beekeeping are welcome and admission is free. Sincerely, Bob Harrison ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:51:25 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Zachary_Huang?= Subject: Varroa mites resistant to Apistan needed Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit It seems I run this email every year! This year I am doing this early to increase my chances of getting some... we are still studying the resistance mechanisms of varroa mite to Apistan (fluvalinate) and therefore need some that are resistant. If you have used Apistan for the last few years (say 3-5 years) and have mites showing up now and Apistan is failing to treat them, that would be the best. The 2nd best would be you are treating with Apistan and it is not working, but you did not use Apistan for that long (last year and this year only). The 3rd choice would be you used Apistan for many years, but still have mites now, but have not tried Apistan this year yet, so it is not clear if mites are resistant. Please email me back if you have them. Thanks. Zachary Huang Michigan State University ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:10:07 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Chris Slade Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 16/07/2007 03:44:23 GMT Standard Time, deelusbybeekeeper@YAHOO.COM writes: When completed, I caulk the opening and bees cannot re-enter. Try waiting until the queen is out and then put queen excluder over the hole. This enables the bees to rob out their own stores without the queen going back. Chris ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:29:15 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lionel Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Chris, I have never had a queen to come out of the wall that I have known about. Have you been doing this type of removal very long? When would the queen exit? Lionel ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:48:17 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Chris Slade Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I haven't done it myself but was told about it and shown a cine film by a chap who died some years ago. He did it for many years. He used a nuc box through which the bees had to pass and kept it stocked with brood. The theory as explained to me was that with no income, especially water, the queen would rapidly go off lay. The pheromenes of the brood in the nuc might be an attractant. Chris In a message dated 16/07/2007 23:31:15 GMT Standard Time, smoothevans@PCLNET.NET writes: I have never had a queen to come out of the wall that I have known about. Have you been doing this type of removal very long? When would the queen exit? ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:38:09 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate In-Reply-To: <1304.216.89.188.44.1184545980.squirrel@mail.discoverynet.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bob Harrison wrote: In Florida a beekeeper saw his hives depopulated as above and found all his bees either dead or dying in an area around 300 feet from his yard. Bob, Were samples taken from these bees to be sent in for analysis? Great opportunity missed if not. Mike in LA --------------------------------- Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection. Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:43:19 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: Bee removal In-Reply-To: <000701c7c74c$ae8f7e70$15ebbad8@D98T9541> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lionel wrote: I have been removing bees from houses ....... When completed, I caulk the opening and bees cannot re-enter. Lionel, Do you allow the bees to rob out the old colony after trapping the bees out? If not, what happens to all the honey inside the cavity? Mike in LA --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:49:58 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate In-Reply-To: <469AFBB7.7090003@mts.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit There are a lot of divergent discussions taking place here under the guise of "Pollinator Protection Act.....". It would be a simple matter to re-title the message to reflect to content. Most of the discussions now going on under the title of "Pollinator Protection Act......" have no relevance to the act. Please, re-title. Mike in LA --------------------------------- Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search that gives answers, not web links. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:57:17 -0500 Reply-To: Erik Whalen-Pedersen Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Erik Whalen-Pedersen Subject: Scale Hives MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Beekeepers, How many of you out there have scale hives? Well this season I have = finally established one, as part of my ambitions, but it has turned out = to be one of my renegade hives this year. That wasn't quite in the plan = but we all have this happen and re-queening is in progress. Please take a look at this initiative from Goddard Space Flight Center's = Beekeeping Club at http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.htm. On the = top/left of your screen, click on the map and it will show you the = locations of the hives now reporting. The website's description:=20 "HoneyBeeNet - A step toward a national network In Maryland and Delaware, over 25 beekeepers have volunteered to = collect scale hive records in 2007 in order to document the current = status of the regional nectar flows. These volunteers recognize the need = for the observations and have obtained their own scales to monitor their = own hives. We think this network will grow with time. There are over = 100,000 beekeepers in the US, and the average distribution is about 1 = hive per 2 square kilometers. Many science centers maintain an = observation colony of honey bees, and a "mother" colony for its = maintenance. Hives can be rented (millions are rented annually for = pollination), and/or maintained by local volunteers, and can be easily = converted to scale hives to produce valuable and highly informative data = on the timing of the local nectar flows. This "Honey Bee Net" web = interface, for collection and sharing of such records by volunteers, is = designed to enable easy comparison with satellite and other climate = records, and provide a useful insight into how climate change and land = use/land cover changes affect nectar flows." Think about it, Erik ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:48:20 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Peter Dillon Subject: Ag. funding into CCD investigation In-Reply-To: <040a01c7c7c3$18626440$4fab5142@MyPC> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob and Randy, I was trying gently to get an indication on what is the real status behind the comment that Bob made - to no avail ! Having been involved with pesticide problems in France and the work undertaken to rectify the situation, yes it is easy to fall into the "them and us" attitude regarding release of information. I feel that a situation is developing where mistrust is being generated between researchers and field beekeepers. If so, IMHO, this must be dealt with. Open access is essential to who, why, what is being done, discussed and debated. No point in feeding half truths to a critical sector especially if it is the one actually suffering. Ag. companies may want rumours to develop. We need genuine and wholesome facts. Which company funded what, if at all? - what was indicated, if anything? and if funding was pulled, why? Cut the smoke please! Regards to all, Peter ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:44:15 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: George Williams Subject: Re: Emergency Queen Rearing? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit You could just split the hive if the hive is strong enough and you want to establish another hive. Make sure there is only one queen cell in the hive usually there are several in superceding. Your bees may also be preparing to swarm. George Williams, hobbyist in FL ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:45:33 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>He used a nuc box through which the bees had to pass and kept it stocked with brood. ...with no income, especially water, the queen would rapidly go off lay. The pheromenes of the brood in the nuc might be an attractant. If I followed, this nuc had two holes. One hole would line up with the opening in the house/tree. The other one would have a screen funnel over it to one-way the bees out. Is that right? What kept the brood in the nuc going? Did he rotate in new frames with brood periodically? It's an interesting concept. I might try it one day. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:50:20 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" Subject: Re: Scale Hives Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >How many of you out there have scale hives? Of course, this is a great idea. When I was in Slovenia in 2003 for Apimondia, I saw a display on scale hives. Slovenia has a tightly knit beekeeping community that shares info. As I recall, some of these hives have radio transmitters so that beekeepers can be remotely alerted to significant changes in weight. Unfortunately, such a thing probably wouldn't catch on in the USA. Good producing honey locations are a closely guarded secret with many. One beekeeper reluctantly told me that his bees were getting alfalfa, but only on the condition that I wouldn't tell anyone else where they were. Years ago I was listening to beekeepers in San Diego complain about getting crowded. I made the naive suggestion that they all sit down with a map and show each other where their locations are. Hoo boy, that would never happen. "The other guy would find out where my bees are." So, how can you moan about crowding, if nobody knows you're there? pb -- Thinking cooperation is an acquired trait ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:33:48 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: George Fergusson Subject: Re: Scale Hives In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter L. Borst wrote: > > pb -- Thinking cooperation is an acquired trait And a recessive one at that. I suggested the same thing here in Maine. One beekeeper was pondering why his bees weren't producing any honey in an area that looked quite promising. He speculated that another large beekeeper probably had hives nearby. When I suggested everyone get together and discuss their hive placement he looked at me like I was crazy. I subsequently did, quite by accident, discover a yard of about 50 hives, quite well hidden, less than half a mile from the yard of the beekeeper I'd been talking to. I'm sure neither beekeeper makes much honey at those locations. Then again, they both pretty much just park their hives after blueberry pollination and hope they maintain until it's time to head south again. George- Whitefield, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:00:21 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: ROBERT RAUCH Subject: SCALE HIVE/SOYBEANS MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ascii I would not want to be without my scale hives. I use them to time my comb honey supering and in the later season to time additional supering. At this moment for instance we are experiencing a flow which I did not actually expect. Due to the Easter freeze disaster our flow was very late and short lived. I have had a 4 to 5 lb gain the last three days which I do not know what to attribute to except possibly soybeans. In the past ( maybe 10 years ago) I counted on soybeans for part of my crop at some locations. I assumed it was irratic as it may have depended on the type of bean planted in each area and the other various factors. I have not seen this flow in the past few years and assumed that the roundup ready beans were not nectar producers. Anyone have an opinion on roundup ready beans? Bob R. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:11:18 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruary Rudd Subject: Re: [SPAM] Re: [BEE-L] Will bees be included as part of this? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="Windows-1252"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Waldemar, I think you have it reversed the screen funnel is between the nuc and the opening in the house/tree, the other nucleus entrance ids to open air. Ruary ----- Original Message ----- From: "waldig@netzero.com" To: Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 12:45 PM Subject: [SPAM] Re: [BEE-L] Will bees be included as part of this? > > If I followed, this nuc had two holes. One hole would line up with > the opening in the house/tree. The other one would have a screen > funnel over it to one-way the bees out. Is that right? > Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:09:28 +0300 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?UTF-8?B?QXJpIFNlcHDDpGzDpA==?= Subject: Re: Scale Hives MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="UTF-8"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Scale hives are a good way to see when honey is coming and when crop is stopping. Those interested can find here data 2001 - 2007 from scale hives in Finland. 2005 and 2006 were much better than average, 2007 is going to be much lower. http://www.hunaja.net/mehilaishoitajille/vaakapesat_ja_tilastot/ Ari Seppälä Finland ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:56:21 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Funneling bees/queen out with a nuc... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>I think you have it reversed the screen funnel is between the nuc and the opening in the house/tree, the other nucleus entrance ids to open air. I see. So the funnel could be solid and used like a bee escape that's one-way into the nuc. I guess the end diameter of the funnel on the nuc side would have to be just large enough to let a queen pass through. I like this idea. Just about the only good way (other than trying to drum the bees out or drive the bees out with a bee propellant) to get the queen out of a tree nest. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:04:03 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Bob_Harrison?= Subject: SCALE HIVE/SOYBEANS Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello Bob R. & All, My yards border yours and yes we have been seeing a flow off soybeans in certain areas. We have observed the bees working the bloom. However with the change in weather this week (Wed/Thur.) we can only guess what might happen. My prediction might be that the rain (if we get the rain) will cause the soybeans to bloom again and the hot weather this weekend and first of next week could continue the flow or NOT. Soybeans are not dependable in our area. This weeks flow will hopefully get my comb honey sealed (drawn but not all sealed when I checked yesterday) and push my crop for this year from average to slightly above average for the state but way below the pounds I normally produce. Sincerely, Bob Harrison ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:25:17 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Bob_Harrison?= Subject: Ag.funding into CCD investigation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello Peter, I will contact you off list like we have done before. Looks like the pesticide treated seed issue is heading for the courts so I do not feel it wise to discuss in a public forum. The CCD hard fact is until funding is passed the research for the most part is stalled and the samples sit in a freezer. CCD research is important to many commercial beekeepers for a very simple reason. The CCD team lists four areas of possible cause of CCD. Number four being pesticide issues. We need research to narrow the field and eliminate from the list. As long as chemical companies can point to other things being the cause instead of their product ( like in France ) we have a problem. The research needed to fight in court pesticide treated seed might take several years and serious funding which the current bills in congress could fund. CCD research (independent of chemical co. paid for research) could prove pesticide treated seed is not harmful to bees etc. which would make the CCD team elminate one of the four possible causes off the list. To sum things up we need to narroa the list. bob ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 09:59:39 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Funneling bees/queen out with a nuc... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have used the funnel method several times (in fact I have one going currently). I've never observed that the queen ever comes out. Can anyone truly verify that the queen will actually leave the dwindling, starving cluster in the cavity, and transverse the distance from the combs to the entrance, out the funnel, and into a nuc? Seems highly unlikely to me. Randy Oliver ----- Original Message ----- From: "waldig@netzero.com" To: Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 7:56 AM Subject: Re: [BEE-L] Funneling bees/queen out with a nuc... >>I think you have it reversed the screen funnel is between the nuc and the opening in the house/tree, the other nucleus entrance ids to open air. I see. So the funnel could be solid and used like a bee escape that's one-way into the nuc. I guess the end diameter of the funnel on the nuc side would have to be just large enough to let a queen pass through. I like this idea. Just about the only good way (other than trying to drum the bees out or drive the bees out with a bee propellant) to get the queen out of a tree nest. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:46:16 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lionel Subject: Re: Bee removal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mike, If you will, e-mail me at smoothevan@aol.com Lionel ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:02:10 +0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Alastair A Botes Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? In-Reply-To: <007b01c7c7f8$bfb9a520$15ebbad8@D98T9541> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" In South Africa , we call it the 40 day method , 42 days is the longest its taken me for a queen to exit / 14 days the quickest . been doing these type of extractions for about 3 years on approx. 30 swarms . Alastair Botes Cape Town . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a PRIVATE message. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete without copying and kindly advise us by e-mail of the mistake in delivery. NOTE: Regardless of content, this e-mail shall not operate to bind CSC to any order or other contract unless pursuant to explicit written agreement or government initiative expressly permitting the use of e-mail for such purpose. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lionel Sent by: BEE-L 2007/07/17 12:29 AM Please respond to Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology To: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu cc: Subject: Re: [BEE-L] Will bees be included as part of this? Hi Chris, I have never had a queen to come out of the wall that I have known about. Have you been doing this type of removal very long? When would the queen exit? Lionel ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:27:03 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Saor Stetler Subject: Beepocalypse In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Better Planet: Beepocalypse 06.28.2007 Can we save honey bees from Colony Collapse Disorder? by Josie Glausiusz Normally, the announcement that yet another species is in danger does not trigger economic jitters and hyperbolic headlines—but there is nothing normal about the disappearance of honeybees. The die-off has been rapid and inexplicable. The first reports surfaced in October 2006; within months beekeepers in 27 states, from Florida to California, reported a serious decline in the insects, and similar troubles were showing up in Canada and Europe. And honeybees, or Apis mellifera, are big business: Bee pollination of agricultural crops—everything from almonds to apples to carrots—provides one-third of the U.S. diet, and the bees’ services are valued at $15 billion annually. If these six-legged laborers vanish, then many of the staples that we take for granted could be threatened—and a lot more expensive. By March 2007, Congressional hearings were under way to explore how Colony Collapse Disorder, as the bee syndrome has been dubbed, threatens America’s agricultural vitality and what can be done about it. There is no easy answer to the problem. Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, appears to differ significantly from previous bee maladies in that the bees simply fly away from the hive and never return, leaving behind only an egg-laying queen and a few young workers. Colony losses first seemed to be restricted to migratory beekeepers, merchants who transport hundreds of beehives from state to state, selling pollination services to farmers. Hypotheses proliferated: A brand-new disease is killing the insects. Pesticides are disrupting bees’ ability to navigate. Parasitic mites are weakening them. Mite-killing chemicals, sprayed into the hives, are building up in the wax and eliminating the bees instead. It’s a fungus. It’s a virus. Maybe vibrations in the trucks that transport bees across the country are driving the little buzzers insane. Overwhelming stress is making the bees vulnerable to disease. And some of these conjectures sound truly loopy. The British newspaper The Independent ran an article anxiously asking, “Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?” It floated a baseless theory—citing a study that was not, in fact, carried out—that radiation from cell phones was disorienting the bees. Further muddying matters, some researchers claim that the disorder is simply an extreme variant on an existing disease, pointing to similar, if smaller-scale, outbreaks of “disappearing disease” among bees that struck in the 1930s and 1970s, with equal lack of explanation. But everyone agrees that something peculiar is happening, and nobody knows exactly why. Nancy Ostiguy, an entomologist at Penn State University, sees signs that the culprit is a new pathogen. She notes that the abandoned colonies are filled with food. Normally, neighboring bees would swoop into forsaken hives and steal honey and pollen. Yet neither robber bees nor pests like wax moths and small hive beetles are entering the emptied bee boxes. “One of the working hypotheses is that there is a fungus that hasn’t been in the colonies before,” Ostiguy says. “The hypothesis is that this fungus, which either has killed the bees or come in later, is producing a toxin.” The toxin might be so repellent that the bees desert the hive. Axel Decourtye, an ecotoxicologist at the Association de Coordination Technique Agricole in Marcy l’Étoile, France, is looking instead at a chemical cause. He is focusing on a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids, and in particular imidacloprid, which is used to coat sunflower seeds and then suffuses the plants’ tissues as they grow. His studies have shown that imidacloprid can impair honeybee memory and their ability to learn new odors, which leads biologists to suspect that forager bees exposed to this pesticide might become lost and die far from the hive. Yet even after France banned imidacloprid in 1999, honey¬bee populations in France continued to plummet, according to Decourtye’s collaborator Nicolas Desneux of the University of Minnesota. “There are no experimental field data so far showing that these products are responsible for the global decline in bee populations,” Desneux says. Still, no one has shown that agricultural pesticides—and there are quite a lot of them—are not a cause of CCD. Amidst this perplexity, other researchers are searching for ways to save the bees before it is too late. One tactic is to boost the insects’ ability to defend themselves against parasites and pathogens. Since 1993 Marla Spivak, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, has been breeding a strain of honeybee that can smell the rotting odor of American foulbrood, a bacterial infection, as well as the yeasty whiff of chalkbrood, a fungal disease; they can also detect parasitic varroa mite infestations in young bee pupae. Spivak’s custom-bred worker bees can patrol the hive, pierce the cells in which affected offspring are growing, and remove them—and sometimes eat them—before disease or parasites have an opportunity to spread through the hive. Although such “hygienic bees” would eliminate the need for antibiotic applications in hives, Spivak admits that they are unlikely to provide a long-term solution to Colony Collapse Disorder. She believes its causes are multiple: mites and viruses, residues of chemical mite killers, cross-country transportation, nutritional stress from tainted corn-syrup feed or pollen supplements, and pesticide exposure. “In my mind those symptoms are not new. Abandoning the nest—many things would cause that.” Multiple causes could make it extremely difficult to stop the decline of the bees. If so, farmers may have to embrace a change in strategy and encourage the assistance of alternative pollinators like solitary wild bees and bumblebees. A promising study published last autumn by ecologists Sarah Greenleaf of the University of California at Davis and Claire Kremen of the University of California at Berkeley found that the presence of wild bees increases the efficiency of sunflower pollination fivefold. “You see these female bees with these huge loads of pollen on them, dive-bombing the honeybees on the flowers that the wild bees want to be on,” says Greenleaf. Being bumped off one flower seems to prompt the honeybees to move the pollen from the male plants over to the female plants—which is exactly where the farmer needs it to go. Greenleaf and Kremen counted 33 species of wild bee in the sunflower fields of Central Valley in California. These bees nest in underground tunnels or hollow twigs in nearby natural habitat—oak woodlands and chaparral, or dense shrubland. But such lands are under serious threat from giant single-crop farms. “These big giant monocultures pretty much hammer the bee habitat,” says Mace Vaughan, an entomologist and conservation director of the Xerces Society in Portland, Oregon, which promotes insect biodiversity. “If you go from the foothills of the coast range in California and go out into the heart of the Central Valley, the bee diversity and abundance just steadily drops off.” One solution is to enhance the habitat for native bees around farmland—by planting hedgerows, for example, or leaving some land uncultivated. Vaughan cites research that Canadian canola farmers who sow seeds on only 70 percent of their land (leaving the remainder as wild habitat for native bees) are more productive, and make more money, than those who plant the crop on all of their fields. Another approach is to encourage managers of semiartificial environments like golf courses to surround the greens with the types of plants, like sunflowers, lupines, and black-eyed susans, that attract native pollinators. Bees in the wild are under serious threat from agriculture: “These big giant monocultures pretty much hammer the bee habitat.” Jim Cane, an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Biology and Systematics Lab in Utah, is working on ways that wild bees could replace honey¬bees on some crops, rather than merely supplementing them. Bumblebees are already raised commercially for pollinating greenhouse tomatoes. Cane has successfully raised a range of native bees for other kinds of commercial use. Leaf-cutter bees and alkali bees pollinate alfalfa, the blue orchard bee pollinates fruit trees (especially almonds), wild bee species Osmia aglaia and O. bruneri pollinate raspberries and blackberries, and O. ribifloris is effective at tending to blueberries. In most cases, managing these bees means providing habitat in which they can nest, like drilled wooden boards or hole-studded stone blocks for cavity-nesting species like the blue orchard bee. Replacing honeybees with wild bees is not as simple as it sounds, however. Many wild species specialize on one or two crops, and they can be expensive to raise. By contrast, says Cane, “The honey¬bee is a jack-of-all-trades. You can plop them down in mustard, in apples, in blueberries, whatever crop, and they’ll visit and give you pollination. With honeybees, you can provide hundreds of thousands of foragers very cheaply—less than a penny a forager.” All the more reason, then, to be concerned about their disappearance. Yet Cane remains skeptical about the severity of CCD. “Clearly, some beekeepers have had some disasters this winter, and I do feel for them,” he says. “But the magnitude, extent, scale, and certainly cause are still open questions.” One big block in understanding what is happening to the bees is a lack of hard data: Many states in the past decades have dismantled their apiary inspection programs. “Bean counters said, ‘Well that one job, that’s a lot of money we could save in our budget, nobody’s clamoring for it, so let’s just jettison it,’ ” Cane says. Had inspectors had the opportunity to examine commercial hives across states, “we’d be six months ahead of where we are now.” Meanwhile, ordinary people can help keep pollinators abundant. For example, they can scatter hole-punched bee blocks in their gardens in which wild bees can nest. Vaughan of the Xerces Society encourages planting lots of backyard flowering plants that bloom year-round. “But the best thing for the average Joe to do is reduce or eliminate his or her use of pesticides around the house,” he says. “These kill more good pollinators than bad things.” ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:49:32 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" Subject: Re: Beepocalypse Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > As part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Biology and Systematics Lab, Cane is now advising almond growers on how to have "a more balanced portfolio of pollinators" that doesn't rely so heavily on honeybees. One promising alternative pollinator is the blue orchard bee, which has better almond pollination efficiency per bee than the honeybee and flies in cooler weather. > But Cane points out that no one knows how to raise blue orchard bees in the quantities that would be needed for large-scale pollination. Hmm. That could be a bit of a problem ... pb SEE: http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/10/the_honeybees_genome_could_be.php OR: http://tinyurl.com/34baka ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:40:12 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >Nancy Ostiguy, an entomologist at Penn State University, sees signs that the culprit is a new pathogen. She notes that the abandoned colonies are filled with food. If a new pathogen I think the pathogen would have turned up by now. Also many of those CCD deadouts were short on pollen. Food is a primitave statement for the general public. Not a term I would think Nancy would use. The article reads to me like the author read what has been published so far and put together an article. I would guess the author has never seen the inside of a bee hive close up. consider: If a new pathogen was killing the bees then why are the bees not dead in the hive like a normal large pathogen kill? >Yet even after France banned imidacloprid in 1999, honey¬bee populations in France continued to plummet, according to Decourtye's collaborator Nicolas Desneux of the University of Minnesota. I have been in contact with a commercial beekeeper in France since last fall and he says when imidacloprid was banned the problem returned to simply mites and weather etc.. I am working on getting French researchers/beekeepers to speak at the joint meeting of the ABF & AHPA. in January. Its common knowledge with French beekeepers that the seller of imidacloprid wants access to the French market again. Also a new report is soon to be released showing what pesticides was found in the CCD hives pollen I heard this week . Many pesticides was what I was told. *If* fact then pesticide issues might move from number four on their list to number one! bob ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:43:15 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="UTF-8"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > As part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Biology and Systematics Lab, Cane is now advising almond growers on how to have "a more balanced portfolio of pollinators" Not likely, with the total absence of other flowering plants in and around the almond orchard. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:31:46 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jerry Bromenshenk Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Regarding pollen samples from CCD hives, Bob indicated that a pesticide report was soon to be released and he also said: "Many pesticides was what I was told. *If* fact then pesticide issues might move from number four on their list to number one!" I'm afraid the last statement is speculation. I've not seen the detailed report from PSU, but I did receive a summary some weeks ago. As I remember, a variety of pesticide residues were found in CCD pollen samples. That's exactly what should have been seen. Every broad spectrum pesticide environmental sampling program for bees and pollen that I have seen (or conducted) since the 1960s has revealed traces of many pesticides in virtually all bee and pollen samples. And, its not just pesticides. For example, we've never found a bee sample that did not contain traces of PCBs - anywhere in the U.S., over 20+ years. If CCD hives had not displayed a variety of pesticide residues, that would have been a clear indication that the lab study lacked appropriate sensitivity for these chemicals of interest. So, the encouraging news is that the lab reportedly did find what one would expect it to find - traces of lots of pesticides in pollen samples. Pesticides leave residues, and many of pesticides are commonly used - from wide-spread crop applications to the little garden on the corner. In the 1980s, we found that in urban areas, the more affluent the neighborhood, the wider the diversity and the higher the concentrations of pesticides - presumably because rich folks can hire lawn and garden firms to spray everything on a regular and frequent basis. What I'm interested in seeing in the final pesticide report will be the concentrations of residues in pollen for each identified pesticide, and whether there is a common denominator among CCD colonies - i.e., same pesticide in all CCD samples. Also, was there any relationship between severity of observed CCD and the types/concentrations of pesticides seen. With pesticides, dose and duration of dose is important, not simply presence. So, it will remain to be seen whether pesticides move up on the list from number 4 to number 1 as Bob predicts -- and I might add, I don't think that the CCD Working Group has necessarily assigned a priority order to the list of 4 possible CCD causes - that's something others are reading into the USDA action plans, discussions. Jerry ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:35:28 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Paul Cherubini Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >> As part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Biology and Systematics >> Lab, Cane is now advising almond growers on how to have "a more balanced >> portfolio of pollinators" randy oliver wrote: > Not likely, with the total absence of other flowering plants in > and around the almond orchard. Randy, the long term objective of the native pollinator groups (and some university professors who have collaborated with them) may be to secure government funding via the new Farm Bill to plant and manage "conservation strips" on farms. Evidence: Dr. Rufus Isaacs, Department of Entomology, Michigan State University recently posted the following on a pollinator discussion list: "the UK and many other European countries have a government funding program to pay farmers to establish pollinator conservation strips on their farms. The US is lagging way behind in the research and in the practical information of how to get this done on farms, but the new Farm Bill may help change that in the next five years." Paul Cherubini El Dorado, Calif. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:36:20 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: House colony removal in Staten Island. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Is anyone in Staten Island here? Homeowners are looking to have a colony removed. Drop me a line. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:40:34 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Beepocalypse In-Reply-To: <07df01c7c973$e28fded0$4fab5142@MyPC> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit randy oliver wrote: > > Not likely, with the total absence of other flowering plants in and > around the almond orchard. Even worse than that. Check the economics to have the numbers needed to do the job and how to get those numbers from native pollinators. They do not spring out of the earth. Bob had an interesting post on his experiences. I really have trouble listening to some of these academics who never "worked" a day in their lives. They have no concept of profit and loss or how to run a business. I ran into this mind set when I took a graduate degree in business. The good profs were those who left for a while and entered the business world and found out it was not according to theory. They had to revise their thinking and teaching. They also went back to teach, since it paid more with less stress. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:41:04 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: John Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_Part_3501_19049753.1184802064794" ------=_Part_3501_19049753.1184802064794 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This email really illustrates the difference in our "Holstein" bees and the S. African stock. - John Edwards On Wed Jul 18 07:02:10 PDT 2007, Alastair A Botes wrote: > In South Africa , we call it the 40 day method , 42 days is the > longest its taken me for a queen to exit / 14 days the quickest . > Alastair Botes Cape Town . > > I have never had a queen to come out of the wall that I have > known about. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ------=_Part_3501_19049753.1184802064794-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:01:22 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: John Subject: Re: Beepocalypse Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_Part_3524_24453623.1184803282168" ------=_Part_3524_24453623.1184803282168 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Not that Jim Cane hasn't tried to develop a system! Maybe the bee community and national crop industries will finally start to recognize his (and the Logan lab's) decades of pioneering work, instead of shunning him when he suggests an approach using several bee species. If it was not for the dairy/alfalfa/clover industries' support, the Logan lab would have long ago been just a memory. - John Edwards (old fan of Bill Nye's photos, also) On Wed Jul 18 10:49:32 PDT 2007, "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" wrote: >> As part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Biology and >> Systematics > Lab, Cane is now advising almond growers on how to have "a more > balanced > portfolio of pollinators" > >> But Cane points out that no one knows how to raise blue orchard >> bees in > the quantities that would be needed for large-scale pollination. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ------=_Part_3524_24453623.1184803282168-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:40:59 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Larry Krengel Subject: Re: Funneling bees/queen out with a nuc... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I returned to one of my trapping jobs to find a pile of bees in the gutter of the house between the bee escape and the bait hive. To my surprise there was a queen in the pile. I have always assumed that this was a swarming attempt and not the queen trying to find the missing foragers.... but I suppose it is possible. I have no way of knowing if another queen hatched out in the wall of the house and died there. Larry Krengel Marengo, IL I've never observed that the queen ever comes out. Can anyone > truly verify that the queen will actually leave the dwindling, starving > cluster in the cavity, and transverse the distance from the combs to the > entrance, out the funnel, and into a nuc? Seems highly unlikely to me. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:20:40 +1200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Peter Bray Organization: Airborne Honey Subject: Re: Beepocalypse In-Reply-To: <004701c7c96b$141d59e0$28bc59d8@BusyBeeAcres> Bob Harrison wrote: > consider: > If a new pathogen was killing the bees then why are the bees not dead in > the hive like a normal large pathogen kill? Nosema apis infects the gut and and in a mild infection reduces the bee's ability to absorb food, leading to poor protein uptake and hence raw crude protein levels in the bee - in turn directly linked to longevity. So they only survive 3-4 weeks instead of 6. Just long enough to finish house duties and become a forager - and die in the field never to be seen as most workers ultimately do. It could be Nosema ceranae has a similar action - or another organism that affects the bee's longevity. Regards, Peter Bray_________________________________________________________ Airborne Honey Ltd., Pennington St, PO Box 28, Leeston, New Zealand Fax 64-3-324-3236, Phone 64-3-324-3569 http://www.airborne.co.nz peter@airborne.co.nz ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:06:04 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Paul wrote: > Randy, the long term objective of the native pollinator groups (and > some university professors who have collaborated with them) > may be to secure government funding via the new Farm Bill to > plant and manage "conservation strips" on farms. Thanks, Paul. I was speaking with a beekeeper who returned from a European vacation, so the info is third hand. His understanding was that in the country he visited (some northern European), agriculture was heavily subsidized. Farmers received credits toward their subsidies if they maintained a percentage of their land in a "natural" state. The system was totally voluntary, and the farmers loved it. Please don't start labelling me as a native pollinator advocate. I haven't even visited their websites. But I sure don't have any problem with them. My income depends upon the bare-earth monoculture of California almonds. But it does creep me out when I'm in the orchards, and you can count the total number of visible species of flora and fauna on one hand. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:08:55 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Paul Cherubini Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >> Cane is now advising almond growers on how to have >> "a more balanced portfolio of pollinators" randy oliver wrote: > Not likely, with the total absence of other flowering plants in > and around the almond orchard. Bill Truesdell wrote: > Even worse than that. Check the economics to have the > numbers needed to do the job and how to get those numbers > from native pollinators. > It all gets down to two simple facts that are omitted from any NP > information. Numbers and transportable. Honeybees can supply > both and the NP neither for large scale agriculture Randy & Bill, when the NP people talk to reporters, they make it sound like wild native bees could deliver a comparable degree of pollination if farmers supplied them with "flowering hedgerows, fallow land and crop diversification." Example: In a July 15 Seattle Times newspaper article, http://tinyurl.com/ys3fbw Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society told the reporter: "hundreds of species of native bees are available for crop pollination if only their habitat were properly managed. That means flowering hedgerows, fallow land, crop diversification." "Using a variety of bees for pollination means less threat to the food supply from a single mite, parasite or disease. "We need to diversify our portfolio of pollinators," Black says. Paul Cherubini El Dorado, Calif. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:54:34 +0300 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?iso-8859-1?B?QXJpIFNlcHDkbOQ=?= Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit randy wrote > His understanding was that in the country he visited (some northern > European), agriculture was heavily subsidized. Farmers received credits > toward their subsidies if they maintained a percentage of their land in a > "natural" state. The system was totally voluntary, and the farmers loved > it. > I can confirm this as I am one of the farmers who get these subsidies. The system is the same for almost all EU, but there are several ways to do this. For example farmers can leave some meters unfarmed along the rivers and streams and larger ditches along the fields. This grass area must be cut once a year. If farmer wants he can widen these strips to be 10 - 20 meters. Main reason is water protection, but it protects all natural diverstity as well. I get about 800 euro / hectar for this when combined with less fertilization and restrictions in herbiside and other spraying. Its voluntary, but the subsidity money is so essential for farmers income that almost everyone does is as it is a financial must. Also there is a payment for not farming part of the fields. Letting them be on grass and just cutting once a year. If these field are planted with wildlife forage the farmer gets a bit more. Ari Seppälä, beekeeping advicer, beekeeper, small farmer Finland ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:40:58 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Pollinator Protection Act of 2007 Introduced into the Senate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jim said: >What happened was that an over-hyped tale of an exaggerated impact of CCD on "the beekeeping industry" was leveraged to justify conservation of native pollinators. Again Jim, their agenda, the status report on pollinators, and national pollinator week were all in place BEFORE CCD! They have apparently been putting forth the message for biodiversity for some time. CCD just made their point. > we certainly don't need anyone "helping us" to turn our agenda into part of a long-term multi-million-dollar program, when we need some quick work to at least triage this darned "CCD" thingy.As you have made abundantly clear, by both your statements, and your lack of replies to my questions, the NP folk had nothing to do with our lack of proposals for emergency funding. We have only ourselves to blame for that. I don't understand your obsession with the NP folk. We beekeepers are competing with thousands of other agricultural interests for our place at the trough. At least the NP agenda overlaps ours on many issues. The multimillion dollar proposed programs are for long-term honeybee and pollinator issues, not just CCD. >We have an agricultural issue to address. Nothing more.I agree. And it will be decided by the market, not politics.Jim, since you clearly have "issues" with the NP people, and just as clearly are not going to be swayed by either fact or reason, I'd like to move on. >My coffe cup is empty, so I'm done typing, but the next step is to get some focus on some funding that can get feet on the ground THIS year. Wonderful, maybe we can work together at this! Yesterday I spoke with the Calif Almond board to get them to write a letter in support of emergency funding for CCD research. This morning I spoke with the Calif State Beekeepers to do the same. Tommorow I will be speaking to our State Farm Bureau. I've written letters to both my senators, my representative (for the appropriate bills), and to Sec of Ag Johanns. How are things going at your end? Got enough coffee?Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:09:08 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Paul wrote> Randy & Bill, when the NP people talk to reporters, they make > it sound like wild native bees could deliver a comparable degree of > pollination if farmers supplied them with "flowering hedgerows, > fallow land and crop diversification." Paul, this is likely true, but not for large scale agriculture as we know it. Small, organic farms probably. It will all depend upon the market--whatever is most cost effective. If all honeybees were to disappear tomorrow, farmers would be forced to adjust, yet agriculture would surely continue--so the NP agenda is not pure fantasy. However, honeybees are not likely to disappear, and farmers (read that, almond growers) have demonstrated that they will pay a handy fee to have pollinators trucked in. However, if someone could figure out a way to get some other bee to do the job at half price, the growers would dump beekeepers like a hot potato. I don't see that happening any time in the future, so for now, I'm more afraid of the products that you sell, than the threat of native pollinators to my livelihood. I don't mean that personally--I can't imagine large scale agriculture without pesticides. But it doesn't mean that I, or my bees, like them. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:13:24 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Question for Jerry B: Has anyone looked for a correlation between spraying for West Nile Virus and CCD? I had mystery colony decimations the last two years in areas where they sprayed ultralow fog, often during early morning flight hours. I went round and round with the vector control people, and am not sure whether it was the problem or not. Unlike CCD, there were many dead adult bees on the ground. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:58:39 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Russ Dean Subject: New webmaster MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hey all, I'm the new webmaster for the site listed below. I'm new at running a beekeepers web site. But take a look around the site and let me know if you have ideas. I'd like it to be nice looking and productive. I think it is but like it to be better. I have a few ideas myself. Russ Dean _WV Beekeepers Home Page_ (http://www.wvbeekeepers.org/) ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:42:07 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "deknow@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Beepocalypse Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit randy, respectfully, i might point out that your opinion (not having a problem with the np folks) might be a better informed one if you _did_ read their websites/litterature. deknow -- randy oliver wrote: Please don't start labelling me as a native pollinator advocate. I haven't even visited their websites. But I sure don't have any problem with them. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:37:01 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Nature's real natural pollinator In-Reply-To: <088601c7c9cb$51edee00$4fab5142@MyPC> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Most all of the world's food necessary to sustain life is wind pollinated (most grains like wheat, corn, and rice). Even many fruits and vegetables are 'self-pollinated". So even if all of the NPs touted by the NP group left the scene, there would be food, but not enough for the current population of the world. Lots of disease too, since there would be vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Pollinators can increase yields because the wind does not do that great a job. As the Canadian GM soybean studies showed, you can get up to 30% increase in yields with pollinators in a self-pollinated crop. So habitat, watershed, and other aspects of hedgerows are fine. But do not expect the added increase you get from honeybees, because it is not a sustainable habitat for NP unless you go small and diverse and have lots of habitat. But the NP crowd is mostly organic and that fits with what they want from agriculture. Only problem is, in that same study, it showed all the increase was in the GM soy and none with the organic (which was already pollinated). The GM crops yields were greater than the organic before pollination! The reason was plant damage from pests in the organic fields. Which says you can expect a 30% decrease in optimum yield from an organic field compared to a GM field. I have nothing against NPs, since I have many in my garden. I do have trouble with those who tout them as if they can solve all our problems. Especially with all the organic folk asking where they can get honeybees after Varroa hit and the NPs did not and do not do the job. They were getting free pollination from local honeybees. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:00:31 -0400 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > If all honeybees were to disappear tomorrow, farmers would > be forced to adjust, yet agriculture would surely continue-- > so the NP agenda is not pure fantasy. This sort of statement, like the "Beepocalypse" article itself, contains multiple rhetorical errors, false premises, and false choices, making it about as useful and productive as the famous statement "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." (G. W. Bush, 09/20/01) Let's break it down, and examine just how corrosive the impact of propaganda has been on even what is offered as Informed Discussion: > If all honeybees were to disappear tomorrow Clearly, an extreme scenario, not mentioned as a possibility by anyone except the authors of the more sensational press articles. Terms like "Beepocalypse" imply that this may be happening, but the premise is utterly false. > farmers would be forced to adjust As no mention is made of how they might "adjust", this phrase implies that they have other options that, irrespective of cost, would pollinate the same number of blooms in the same fields at the same level of density as currently done by honeybees. How would they do this? (Waiting...) (Looking at watch...) (Tapping foot impatiently...) > yet agriculture would surely continue Is this a statement of fact, or wishful thinking, given that I'm still waiting for an answer to the question above? > so the NP agenda is not pure fantasy Let's examine the alternatives offered by the article that started this thread, and see just where this scenario falls on the scale from "Hans Christian Andersen" to the journal "Nature", shall we? 1) Marla Spivak's hygienic bees Even the article admits that they are a non-sequitur in a discussion of CCD, mostly because we don't yet know what is behind CCD, so no one can say if "hygienic behavior" will have any impact. 2) Solitary Wild Bees We've discussed the short-term prospects for these bees, and I don't need to repeat what's been said. These bees are like recumbent bicycles - very few of them in use, in very few places, mostly in academia. Note that the oft-mentioned "Blue Orchard Bee" simply does not thrive well east of the Rockies, which is why a non-native species (Japanese Hornfaced Bee) was imported and tested by Dr. Batra of the USDA. But even this effort was tested for several decades without much in the way of large-scale uptake by growers and/or beekeepers. 3) Bumblebees Yes, these ARE useful in certain narrow-focus applications, like greenhouses, too bad that two entire species are now extinct due to the push by the self-described preservationists to justify preservation and conservation with exploitation in agriculture. At the current rate, there won't be any bumblebees left in the USA long before honey bees are considered "threatened" at the species level. So, the "adjustment" would be from honey bees to what? All of the above would put us closer to "Grimm's Fairy Tales" than to our current "norm" of stores well-stocked with every possible food we can imagine. The "adjustment" would be "grim" indeed. Now, let's examine the cultural changes suggested in the article: 4) "These big giant monocultures pretty much hammer the bee habitat". Yep, but don't criticize with your mouth full. The economies of scale inherent in the "giant monocultures" are exactly what result in such affordable and abundant food. Pull out your passport and go visit other places to see how expensive common food items are elsewhere. Then tell me that smaller-scale farming is what we need. 5) "One solution is to enhance the habitat for native bees around farmland-by planting hedgerows..." Wow! A "solution"! Hedgerows! Only one problem. If the fields are being sprayed with herbicides and pesticides, how does anything live in the "hedgerows"? If this approach had any value, beekeepers and growers would have figured this out by now, and placed honey bee colonies in these locations bordering fields so as to avoid pesticide kills. 6) "...or leaving some land uncultivated." Yes, the central premise of the current legislation. Set-asides. Well, if you are a farmer, which land will you take out of production? Easy - the land that is too eroded, too worn out from years of relentless farming, and otherwise useless. How will this wasteland support pollinators without being specifically restored so that it can grow plants to support native pollinators? Is this land anywhere near active cropland, or close enough that the native pollinators can reach the cultivated crops? None of this is explained, so it does not seem like anything more than a pure "habitat preservation" program, where the "habitat" presents about the same desirable qualities as a vacant lot in downtown Detroit. 7) "Another approach is to encourage managers of semi artificial environments like golf courses to surround the greens with the types of plants..." While this would clearly have no direct impact on agriculture, it is also laughable in the extreme. Golf courses certainly have made massive strides in becoming more environmentally friendly, but they are among the most excessive users of pesticides, herbicides, and other "lawn chemicals". Golf courses are dead zones. So, we have yet another article that offers up "alternatives" that are false choices, and offers "practices" that may enhance native pollinator populations, but would offer no tangible advantage at all to practical agriculture. I feel that preservation and conservation do NOT need to be justified on the (false) premise that there will be any agricultural advantage gained as a result. No other threatened species need to provide any specific benefit for man, so why should these pollinators be forced to do so? Think of wolves, eagles, spotted owls, snail-darters. Any of them have any tangible advantage for agriculture? Nope, but they are still worth saving on their own merits, aren't they? Why these native pollinator folks want to exploit, rather than preserve these species remains a mystery to me. Exploitation is neither preservation nor conservation. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:02:29 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Beepocalypse Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>In the 1980s, we found that in urban areas, the more affluent the neighborhood, the wider the diversity and the higher the concentrations of pesticides... Jerry, were the pesticide levels in pollen from these areas dangerously high for human consuption of such pollen? I'd hope that the sprays used now are more benign than those used in the 80's. Someone mentioned to me that dormant oil spray is now in common use on trees in the suburbs. If pesticides are present in the wax, does melting wax combs in solar wax melters disintegrate them? I read that exposure to sun and heat causes many chemical compounds to break down. Thanks, Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:18:21 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > farmers would be forced to adjust > As no mention is made of how they might "adjust", this phrase implies > that they have other options that, irrespective of cost, would pollinate > the same number > of blooms in the same fields at the same level of density as currently > done by honeybees. > (Tapping foot impatiently...) Sorry to make you wait, Jim. I have to catch a little sleep from time to time. That phrase in no way "implies" anything of the sort! Farmers adjust all the time to crop failure, changing markets, contamination scares that leave their crops unsellable, the weather, etc. The adjustments are often quite painful to both the farmer and the consumer. When honeybees collapsed here in Calif when varroa first hit, it was nearly impossible to grow cucumbers, since there were not enough native squash bees. I think that I've made it clear to most that I accept that the current agribusiness large farm model is what we have. Also, that I make my living servicing it with honeybees. But that doesn't mean that there aren't other possible models (again, please don't pigeonhole me--I'm not promoting or denigrating other models--this is a DISCUSSION group). Whether other models come to be is going to depend upon the market, just as organic farming in Calif is shifting from niche toward mainstream. In a free enterprise society, farmers are in the position of deciding what crop to grow, and how to grow it most profitably, in light of the variables of climate, soil, market demand, supply by others, logistics of transport, etc. The end result of the free enterprise system is to produce the greatest profit to the farmer. Our government steps in with social engineering through regulation, tax breaks, and subsidies to effect certain goals, such as producing reserves of commodity foodstuffs, but mainly to ensure that farm state congressmen get reelected. As far as I'm concerned, the NP folk can make any claim they want, just as the pesticide folk, fertilizer folk, or tractor folk can. The market will decide what works in reality. >> yet agriculture would surely continue > > Is this a statement of fact, or wishful thinking, given > that I'm still waiting for an answer to the question above? Well, at least you're not waiting for the first any more. It's a statement of fact. Agriculture is resilient. As long as there is sunlight and water, and demand for food, agriculture will continue. Without the honeybee, it would certainly be in a different form, and fruit and nut crops would greatly suffer UNTIL THE FARMERS FIGURED OUT A REPLACEMENT. Farmers could grow almonds today without honeybees, by either planting self pollinating cultivars, or by hand pollinating. At the current time, however, it is more cost effective for them to rent bees, although as rental rates increase, they are certainly looking more seriously at other options. In many of the orchards I pollinate, growers use huge fans to attempt to blow pollen from one row of trees to another. Farmers are an ingenious lot. Agriculture will continue. Fact. > 4) "These big giant monocultures pretty much hammer the bee habitat". Yep, but don't criticize with your mouth full. ...tell me that smaller-scale farming is what we need. I never told you that, even with my full mouth. Jim, you sure have a way of putting words into other people's mouths! Big monoculture hammers bee habitat. Fact, not criticism. It's a cheap shot to try to paint everyone who has a different opinion than yours as a wild-eyed dreamer! Obviously, there are plenty of wild-eyed dreamers out there, but to paint anyone who supports biodiversity as such indicates that you are using too wide a brush. The fact that they suggested conserving pollinator habitat around golf courses doesn't mean that they think that's going to affect agriculture miles away. > Why these native pollinator folks want to exploit, rather than preserve > these species remains a mystery to me. Jim, have you changed brands of coffee lately? Your posts used to be much more reasoned and logical. Or maybe you're not used to all the sugar in your Honey Maid Bees! Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:31:20 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Beepocalypse and pesticides In-Reply-To: <20070719.080229.16311.1@webmail18.dca.untd.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit waldig@netzero.com wrote: > Jerry, were the pesticide levels in pollen from these areas > dangerously high for human consuption of such pollen? > If it was not strong enough to kill the bees, then you are safe.The state of science now is we no longer look at ppm or ppb but can get further down than that with some measuring equipment. It is like a drop of whatever in a swimming pool. Not very toxic. Remember, Jerry said that he has found pesticide residue in most all bee colonies, so you and I have it also, especially if you have neighbors within two miles. Check the lawn and garden section of any store and the stuff on the shelves is scary, especially since the buyer does not need a pesticide license. I feel my bees would be safer on a farm than in suburbia. > I read that exposure to sun and heat > causes many chemical compounds to break down. Usually water is as, or more, important. More often than we would like, some of the breakdown products can actually be worse than the original compound. As in all things chemical, gotta look it up to see what happens. That will also tell you the half-life of the pesticide and the conditions needed for different breakdown times. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:55:57 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jerry Bromenshenk Subject: Pesticides MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit All As others have pointed out, a pesticide dose that would harm a human would almost certainly kill any bees. Remember, the dose is proportional to body size. Reason that x amount of a pesticide won't harm a large bumblebee, may kill some honey bees, and wipes out leaf cutter bees. Of course, there may also be differences in susceptibility by species. Mosquito spraying can be a source of bee kills - best thing to do here is to work with the mosquito control folks -- I addressed their national association a few years ago. They want to spray when they get maximum contact (when fogging). They were interested in seeing our bee counter data that showed that bees mainly fly in daylight hours - during the warmest hours. Some districts spray during the day, because their employees want to be home at night. Good districts spray based on the biology/activity of the target species. Properly done, the control folks would get better success and reduced risk to bees by proper timing of applications. As per factors contributing to risk to bees, residual times of pesticides, etc. -- the best overview for a broad audience is the book on Pollinator Protection, A Bee and Pesticide Handbook, by Carl A. Johansen and Daniel F. Mayer. Bit dated, doesn't address neonicotinics, but the principles hold. And, one final note -- we've looked at pesticides and bees from the early 1970s through the 1980s and 1990s, with our last major, broad spectrum work done on the east coast in the late 90s, early 2000s. For that study, we have 8 years of data from 100s of colonies, thousands of chemical analyses - pesticides, industrial, organic, inorganic, radioactive, etc. Jerry ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:16:46 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Jerry: > It's not just pesticides. For example, we've never found a bee sample that did not contain traces of PCBs - anywhere in the U.S., over 20+ years. Bill: > Remember, Jerry said that he has found pesticide residue in most all bee colonies, so you and I have it also, especially if you have neighbors within two miles. Peter: There is no distance limit for this stuff. In fact, farther away from the source may be worse. This is from a story written in 1996: A Climatic Trick Dumps Chemicals from afar on people and animals in the far north Their language may have 30 different words for "snow" but it doesn't have one for "contamination". So it is hard to explain to the Inuit people of the remote and pristine Broughton Island in the Canadian Arctic that - thanks to a strange and newly discovered trick of natural systems - they are more polluted by some of the world's most toxic chemicals than any other people on earth. And yet research shows that the bodies of the 450 people of the small island, thousands of miles awy from the source of the pollution have the highest levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) ever found, except in victims of industrial accidents. The chemicals are increasingly suspected of causing cancer, suppressing fertility and damaging the immune system. source: http://www.pmac.net/arctic.htm ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:43:31 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Ladd Subject: News story about CCD MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/43163/story.htm ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:01:30 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jim Smith Subject: Re: Beepocalypse In-Reply-To: <088d01c7c9cb$ea841fe0$4fab5142@MyPC> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Has anyone looked for a correlation between spraying for West Nile Virus and CCD? Randy Oliver Anyone know what part of the day or night mosquitoes fly...Seems to be a very common activity with vector control to spray when its convenient for their staff? However, I don't want to insinuate that they are not serious professionals tasked with an almost impossible job either! Jim Land of Mosquitoes (not Alaska though) Klamath Basin ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:21:49 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Yoon_Sik_Kim?= Subject: Re: News story about CCD Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Said article claims that “For a long time Higes and his colleagues thought a parasite called nosema apis, common in wet weather, was killing the bees” and "We saw the spores, but the symptoms were very different and it was happening in dry weather too." In Oklahoma we are having a record-breaking *wet* season this year since the low front, wich should have moved to east toward Arkansas and drought- stricken regions such as Georgia, got arrested over our head, dumping a bucketful of water daily; in fact, we’ve had regular rain for thirty days nonstop, precipitation reaching over thirty inches all over the State. This wetness prolonged the nectar flow for weeks longer than usual. Yet not a single hive of mine has collapsed by this alleged “nosema apis.” Go in fear about this type of "certainty" in “science.” Yoon YSK HONEY FARM ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:35:01 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Beepocalypse MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jim Smith said: Seems to be a very common activity with vector control to spray when its convenient for their staff? In one of my summer areas, vector control sprays the ditches where my bees get water during the hot summer. They spray right after morning coffee--just when the bees are getting their morning drink! Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:48:40 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Scot McPherson Organization: McPherson Family Farms Subject: Re: Nature's real natural pollinator In-Reply-To: <469F5AED.1020302@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maybe I am out of line here, but I think the accepted rate of increase for pollinators on soy beans hovers around 16% increase in productivity vs. no cultivated pollinator activity. I believe it has a lot to do with the flowers not being very visible for the bees since the flowers occur below the leaf canopy of the soy fields. Again, I may be out of line... --- Scot McPherson McPherson Family Farms Davenport, IA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:33:30 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Brian Fredericksen Subject: Re: Pesticides Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:55:57 EDT, Jerry Bromenshenk wrote: >And, one final note -- we've looked at pesticides and bees from the early >1970s through the 1980s and 1990s, with our last major, broad spectrum work done > on the east coast in the late 90s, early 2000s. > >For that study, we have 8 years of data from 100s of colonies, thousands of >chemical analyses - pesticides, industrial, organic, inorganic, radioactive, >etc. > Is this published work that we can access? sounds like some interesting data. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:10:57 -0400 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: News story about CCD MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'll agree with Yoon (as I so often do) that Nosema ceranae is pretty much a non-issue, even though it may have seemed scary a few months ago. Let me explain. What I type below is from memory, but I have a pretty good one. At the USDA-ARS CCD meeting that was held in Beltsville MD, we got a mini-presentation on why Nosema ceranae was NOT a likely suspect as a proximate cause of CCD: 1) It has been in the USA for years. 2) Nearly all the Nosema we have all seen for roughly the past decade or so turns out to have been either: 2a) Nosema ceranae itself 2b) A variant/mutation of Nosema ceranae that seems to be much more "successful" than the original Nosema ceranae in infesting European Honey Bees. Eric Mussen offered that he is (now) very sure that he saw Nosema ceranae years ago, but at the time, he dismissed his own "speculation" at the time. When several sites who keep samples for long periods looked at their "library" samples of Nosema, they got a surprise. They found that it has all been Nosema ceranae for quite some time. They were hard pressed to find an authentic example of "traditional" Nosema apis. So, we are left with one or more of the following: a) Nosema ceranae is not the rapid and brutal killer of EHB it was thought to be b) Nosema ceranae somehow changed somewhere along the way from Asia to here, and became much less virulent a killer of EHB as a result. c) We are looking at a hitherto unknown variant of Nosema, that may LOOK like Nosema ceranae, but is nowhere near as deadly to EHB colonies it infests as Nosema ceranae was said to be. And the best news of all - Fumagillin stops it cold, just like it stopped "traditional Nosema" cold. Note that the appearance of the two different "paramecia" (ok, ok, "microsporidia" under the new classification scheme...) that one sees under a microscope when examining a bee midgut are very very very similar. Everyone missed it, or shrugged off the physical differences. It was only when doing fancy analysis that the difference was detected. (I don't remember what kind of test revealed the difference.) The above is what I heard at the meeting in Beltsville. Now, I get to comment in my own voice: There is an obvious, yet unanswered question. How did it get here? In live bees, of course. That's the best way to get a pest or disease of bees across an ocean or two. How did live bees get here from Asia, when Asia may not export bees to the USA or Canada? To answer that question, my guess would be that you may want to look at how many ships move between Asia and certain countries that Canada turned to for package bees when it closed its border to bees from the USA over a decade ago. Canada was still welcome during that time to export bees to the USA, and many Northern beekeepers liked the "Canadian" stock, thinking that they were somehow able to survive winters better (evincing a complete lack of understanding of the concept of "regression to the mean", and holding some perhaps confused beliefs reminisient of Lysenkoism). Naw, that couldn't be it - it had to be the bee disease gremlins, who travel in the wheel wells of 747s and 767s. :) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:00:46 +1000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: queenbee Subject: Pollination of soy beans MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Scott wrote > I believe it has a lot to do with the flowers not being very visible for > the > bees since the flowers occur below the leaf canopy of the soy fields. Here in Australia I believe it depends on the variety of soy bean. Up until about 10 years ago, we had soy beans growing around us but there was never any noticeable extra nectar in the hives when it flowered. Then about 10 years ago I suddenly had a good shake that had to be soy bean honey. I wondered why. Talking with the farmer it turned out that he had changed variety and this was a new variety which the bees were collecting excess nectar from. It stayed that way for a few years but nothing of late as soy bean have not been planted due to the drought. I don't think it had anything to with the presentation of the flowers as the plants looked the same with the flowers within the leaves. Maybe soy bean is a bit like lucerne (sorry alfalfa for those in the USA) were the variety makes a big difference to the amount of nectar secreted. Trevor Weatherhead AUSTRALIA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 07:24:35 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Diversity is good In-Reply-To: <469F9FE8.7060100@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Interesting that what is noted is diversity but those Cornell Profs are stuck on promiscuity.College life. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July07/beesPromiscuity.sl.html Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:26:30 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: C Hooper Subject: New Medicinal Honey Product Launched in UK MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII New Medicinal Honey Product Launched in UK http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/07/new-medicinal-honey-product-launched-in.html A news medicinal honey product, called "Life Mel Honey," has been launched in the United Kingdom. According to the product website: "Life Mel Honey is produced by bees fed on a special food mixture which enables them to make a unique form of honey with all the beneficial properties of the therapeutic herbs and natural ingredients. . .Life Mel Honey uses nectar derived from therapeutic herbs including Siberian Ginseng, Echinacea and Uncaria Tomentosa, combined with a selection of natural ingredients including iron, protein and vitamins.". . . The technique for producing Life Mel Honey seems to be based on the "express" method of honey production developed in Russia by N. Yoirish. SEE: http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/05/online-excerpts-from-russian-apitherapy.html ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:33:41 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Pesticides Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>we've looked at pesticides and bees from the early 1970s through the 1980s and 1990s, with our last major, broad spectrum work done on the east coast in the late 90s, early 2000s. That's data spanning decades. Great! What has been the trend? Have the pesticide levels and types increases or decrease or remained the same? Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:47:22 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jerry Bromenshenk Subject: Re: Pesticides MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In response to Waldemar's questions: The diversity of pesticide residues has been about the same. The types of chemicals change a bit with the years and regions. We still see residues of DDT, DDD, and DDE, although these are very slowly dropping off. A few weeks ago, I sent the following to our colleagues on the CCD Working Group: CCD Working Group: I managed to free up a few minutes and looked up some of our previous pesticide work, as well as those of some of our colleagues. We collected hundreds of bee and pollen samples at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and at off-site areas north of Baltimore in the late 1990s, early 2000s. We found 4,4'-DDT, 4,4'DDE, 4,4'-DDD, aldrin, gamma-chlorodane dieldrin, alpha-BHC, beta-BHC, delta-BHC, gamma-BHC (lindane), endosulfan sulfate, endrin, endrin aldehyde, heptachlor, heptachlor epoxide, and various PCBs (aroclor 1260, 1248, 1254). I should note: Anderson, J.F.; Wojtas, M.A. (1986) also found PCBs in bees, as well as lots of other pesticides in samples from Connecticut counties. More often than not, in the Aberdeen/Baltimore area, we found detectable levels of pesticides in most bee samples, and sometimes in pollen. Heptachlor was seen in both bees and pollen and was often the highest concentration (ug/kg dry weight). 299+ 360. PCB concentrations often exceeded those of pesticides. In fact, over the last 20 years, we have been unable to find a bee sample that does not contain readily detectable levels of PCBs. Not surprisingly, DDT and its breakdown products remain readily detectable in many soils. In Europe, the Italians have conducted some long-term and wide area sampling for pesticides. Porrini et al., in a four-year pesticide monitoring study (1983-86), found 70.8% of the samples tested positive for Dithiocarbamates, 15.3% for dimethoate, 14.7% for parathion, 11.9% for azinphos-methyl, 11% for carbaryl, 10.4% for methyl parathion, 7.2% for endosulfan, 7.2% for omethoate, and 2.4% for methamidophos. The Italians noted that the dithocarbamates, used as fungicides, are considered to be of low toxicity to bees, however, they were the most widespread chemicals in dead bees in cultivated fields. In recent litigation concerning pesticides and bees in the U.S., for which we consulted to several different beekeepers, sevin xlr and furadan were allegedly involved in several severe bee kills. The residue levels that we've seen would indicate poisoning events by these chemicals in the cases that we saw. Finally, we've had some recent correspondence with USGS that indicates that pyrethroid usage is on the increase in California, and is showing up in more and more water samples. Finally, whereas pesticide residues are common in bees, our work has shown that other environmental chemicals occur in bee colonies, sometimes at toxic levels. For example, heavy metals and fluoride in industrial regions. Among the volatile and semi-volatile organics, chemicals like benzene and styrene stand out in terms of concentrations and/or prevalence. We look forward to learning how the PSU/USDA results compare with these studies. Jerry ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:15:15 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Pesticides Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Thank you, Jerry, for the information. Would you say there has been an increase or decrease in the pesticide levels overall? It seems that some of the older types may be decreasing? Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:57:29 +0100 Reply-To: pencaemawr@f2s.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: John Burgess Subject: Re: New Medicinal Honey Product Launched in UK In-Reply-To: <20070720052630.84d281a5f2f7df0ef38485a84124037d.2af28678fc.wbe@email.secureserver.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit C Hooper wrote: > New Medicinal Honey Product Launched in UK > http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/07/new-medicinal-honey-product-launched-in.html > Lifemel honey costs Ł40 for 113g. Is this a new record? John B ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:03:50 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jerry Bromenshenk wrote: > Finally, we've had some recent correspondence with USGS that indicates > that pyrethroid usage is on the increase in California, and is showing up in > more and more water samples. Generally associated with organic use, which tracks with a shift to more organic acreage, especially in California. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:37:06 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jerry Bromenshenk Subject: Role of Pollinators in Carbon Sequestering MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit All I am addressing a large meeting next Monday in Boulder, CO. The meeting is an NSF and Dept. of Energy program, with scientists from national labs and universities. I'm giving an overview of the importance of pollinators, ccd, and some of our unique work. I'm looking for good examples of the role that pollinators play in carbon sequestering. Obviously, I'm thinking about the importance of insects to the PLANTS that photosynthesize. I'm looking for a few bullets - ones with references as to the source of the information. Best are those that would startle the audience -- show just how critical these insects are. I remember my surprise a few years ago when an EPA advisory group (composed mainly of wildlife scientists) commented that bees kept a few weeds around, AND bees have some use in croplands -- implying no functional value in natural habitats. So, if you've got some good facts that I can share with this audience, please send them to me. Thanks Jerry beeresearch@aol.com ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:10:12 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Information request--middle East Coast readers only MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I want to make up a temperature-based thymol treatment window graph for somewhere in the middle East Coast. Can someone please send me your nearest city, zip code, and approx dates that your honey supers go on and off. City: Zip: Supers on date: Supers off date: Thanks, Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:02:09 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Wayne Young Subject: Queen Bee MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Hi Bob ,and All, I have a strange question.I made a split maybe three weeks ago.When I made the split I felt that I knew where the queen was,so without looking for her made my split.A few days later I noticed that the girls were bringing more pollen into where I thought that there was no queen.I checked the super out ,and found the queen. At this point I had not ordered a new queen,and assumed that the other three supers had no queen.Around a week later I checked the supers,and found no queen. A few days later I put a new queen in the queen less supers.I gave the bees adequate time to accept her then released her.In a few days I found her dead on the ground in front of the hive. A week ago today, on Friday the 13th I placed a new queen in cage in the center of the bottom deep super between frames where I had taken 1 frame out.Today a week later I pulled two large pieces of burr comb out from where the frame had been taken from. I pushed the frames back together,and released the queen hopefully being accepted.After closing the hive I looked over the burr comb,and found a queen cell that I hadn`t noticed. I just looked in it with my magnifying glass,and do see a white larval stage pupa or whatever in it.The other cells on both burr combs are completely empty. My big question is will a queen less hive be desperate enough to have a laying worker lay an egg,and then build a queen cell ,and try to create a queen from an egg that is going to be a drone? This doesn`t seem possible ,sounds like a stupid question,but thought I would ask .I really would have to assume that there was a second queen in it when I made the split. Wayne Young ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:43:56 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Coleene Davidson Subject: Climate shift or ? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi, Normally I just lurk but with the way things are going here-central = lower Michigan-I was wondering if what I am seeing is just here or = elsewhere as well. =20 Today is July 20 and I am seeing Goldenrod starting to bloom and = Knapweed is in full bloom. The Milkweed is done,the Asters are ready to = pop and there is a local farmer that is getting ready to harvest corn! = Everything is about 4 weeks early. I ran into this a couple years ago = and somewhat last year as well. By August and September everything is = dried up and the bees are using their winter stores to survive the = summer unless fed leaving starving colonies in the winter. Coleene ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:36:06 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Almer's Apiary Subject: Re: Pollination of soy beans In-Reply-To: <008d01c7caa4$157d77e0$ad92453d@new1> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Trevor wrote: >Here in Australia I believe it depends on the variety of soy bean. Based on my observation ONLY, nothing scientific: Alabama farmers plant two "crop length" soy beans. One is a short season crop that is commonly used as a "double crop" following winter wheat. Before GM it had a white flower from which I have rarely if ever had surplus honey. The other is a long season crop that is planted in the spring about the same time as cotton. Before GM it had a blue / purple or some similar shade flower and I do get surplus honey from it. I include the reference to Gm because as this plant is altered who knows what changes might take place such that flower color may not be a possible guide assuming that it is now. Bob Fanning North Alabama USA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:31:43 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jim Smith Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: <46A0C0C6.4070605@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [BEE-L] Pesticides >pyrethroid usage is on the increase in California, and is showing up in > more and more water samples. >Generally associated with organic use, which tracks with a shift to more >organic acreage, especially in California. I think that pyrethrums are associated with organics not pyrethroids--pyrethroids are looked at as safer compounds in agriculture use situations than our soon to be totally eliminated organo-phophates and carbamates because they have lowered toxicity to man and animals (not insects or bees), and have shorter residuals in general. Jim Smith State of Jefferson USA Klamath Basin ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:40:16 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Steve_Noble?= Subject: Queen Bee Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Wayne and all, Let me take a stab at this and if I am off base the other more experienced folks on this list will correct me. You seem kind of vague on the times which makes it a little difficult. First I don’t think the total amount of time you are talking about is enough to get the workers to start laying especially if there were eggs and brood in the queenless chambers, which brings me to point two. Presumably there were some eggs and larvae in the chamber that wound up not having a queen. You would know. If there was, and the first queen you introduced died for whatever reason, then the colony would begin raising emergency queens pretty quick if they hadn't already. Actually, since the queen cell was on the burr comb, that queen probably laid that egg before she died. Your main concern now is whether the new queen has been accepted and starts laying. If the workers had started laying, your latest queen would almost surely be toast. Check for eggs in three or four days. What I am not sure about is how much more difficult it is to get a queen accepted once emergency cells have begun being raised. Steve Noble ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:33:54 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dee Lusby Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: <002501c7cb3f$474bda00$2e01a8c0@osud157j2y9m54> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Jim Smith writes: because they have lowered toxicity to man and animals (not insects or bees), Reply: So since when have insects or bees not been considered animals for lowered toxicity to man and animals, not that to me it it certainly does seem to effect our bees more! Dee ____________________________________________________________________________________ Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more. http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:42:37 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dee Lusby Subject: Re: Queen Bee In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20070720181138.043ed590@incoming.verizon.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Wayne Young: Laying workers do lay viable eggs in queen cells, though not in large ratio. It is a backup solution bees use, in emergency situation for new queens, though not fully recognized by most beekeepers. It is also a trait found in past in most all races/strains of honeybees. Dee ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/index.php ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:25:54 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" Subject: Re: Queen Bee Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >Laying workers do lay viable eggs in queen cells, though >not in large ratio. It is a backup solution bees use, in >emergency situation for new queens, though not fully >recognized by most beekeepers. You mean: not recognized at all by most beekeepers. pb ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:38:01 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" Subject: Re: Queen Bee Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Drs. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman of the ARS Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, Tucson, Ariz., and Stanley S. Schneider of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte showed that African honey bees exhibit a greater degree of thelytokous parthenogenesis than do European honey bees. In general, there are two kinds of parthenogenesis, the development of an individual from an unfertilized egg, found in insects. The most common for honey bees is "arrhenotokous parthenogenesis", where females arise from fertilized eggs and males from those that are not fertilized. This is the case for the majority of races or subspecies (ecotypes) of Apis mellifera. Mr. Flottum suggested that experience shows that Africanized honey bees in the Americas are notoriously difficult to requeen. A reason for this, according to the study, is that very quickly (within a week) after the queen is removed, Africanized worker bees are capable of activating their ovaries to produce viable female eggs. European worker bees' ovaries, on the other hand, don’t start producing eggs until the queen has been missing for at least three weeks. And these eggs typically produce male offspring. The Africanized workers' faster, one-week response to queenlessness, however, combined with the ability to produce females, works against what most beekeepers know about requeening European honey bee colonies. from APIS Volume 18, Number 6, June 2000 ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:37:00 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dee Lusby Subject: Re: Queen Bee In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Peter Borst: Sorry to disagree with your writing of Dr Hoffman's views. But too much info is available with trait noted in most all other races/strains, and written early on by likes of Mackenson and others, so that I think that what is supposed today, by USDA, is just only current political correctness for current needs, rather then what actually occurs and has for centuries. Dee A. Lusby ____________________________________________________________________________________ Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more. http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:40:08 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dee Lusby Subject: Re: Queen Bee In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Peter writes: You mean: not recognized at all by most beekeepers. Reply: Exactly, for you gotta be taught to recognize it just like other traits beekeepers are taught to recognize and do! Then you have to be taught how to work with it to advantage, for the trait would not be there if of no usage to the bees in times of severe stress and need. Dee A. Lusby ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/ ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 04:38:38 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: C Hooper Subject: Honey Bees Left Off New US "Pollination" Stamps MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Honey Bees Left Off New US "Pollination" Stamps http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/07/honey-bees-left-off-new-us-pollination.html On June 29, 2007, Post Offices will be abuzz with the release of the Pollination stamps. The 20-stamp booklet consists of four stamps arranged in two alternate and interlocking blocks of four. The intricate design of these four beautiful stamps emphasizes the ecological relationship between pollinators and plants and suggests the biodiversity necessary to ensure the viability of that relationship. Depicted on the Pollination stamps are four wildflowers and four pollinators. The common and scientific names of the featured flowers are purple nightshade, also known as chaparral nightshade (Solanum xanti); hummingbird trumpet (Epilobium canum); saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) and prairie ironweed, also known as common ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata). The common and scientific names of the featured animal pollinators are Morrison's bumblebee (Bombus morrisoni); calliope hummingbird (Stellula calliope); lesser long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae) and Southern dogface butterfly (Colias cesonia)... ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 08:11:47 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: <002501c7cb3f$474bda00$2e01a8c0@osud157j2y9m54> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jim Smith wrote: > I think that pyrethrums are associated with organics not > pyrethroids-- Both are. The only issue is synthetic or natural. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:53:14 -0400 Reply-To: Rick Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Rick Subject: Canadian Study Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A friend of mine mentioned a recent Canadian study that figured out the cost of producing a pound of honey in Canada. Does anyone have easy access to this information? ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:40:19 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jim Smith Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: <184285.39511.qm@web51610.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dee wrote: So since when have insects or bees not been considered animals for lowered toxicity to man and animals, not that to me it it certainly does seem to effect our bees more! No argument here, but pyrethroids are insecticides... Jim Smith ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:44:07 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jim Smith Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: <46A1F803.7070707@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bill Truesdell wrote: Both are. The only issue is synthetic or natural. Thanks Bill--spend to much time with labels in hand... Jim Smith Klamath Basin State of Jefferson ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:55:04 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dee Lusby Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: <000701c7cbbe$358c9960$2e01a8c0@osud157j2y9m54> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Jim Smith writes: No argument here, but pyrethroids are insecticides... Reply: And so you saying that pyrethroids are not also pesticides? So what are we doing now, making class distinction between treatments by so-called names though each class certainly kills bees. Also, since you say pyrethroids, and class II are really stronger to me, working to negative in colder temps, that most beekeepers aren't aware of, making them worse for putting upon our honeybees, then why aren't they considered worse then pesticides for handling, especially for overwintering?...like apistan here for instance, not that I would single that one out!!!! Dee A. Lusby ____________________________________________________________________________________ Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 16:49:05 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Pesticides MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Before we go too far on this poor horse, let's make it very clear: a pesticide is any *substance* that is used to kill *pests*. This would include sugar and detergent, as well as stuff like pyrethroids and DDT. All pesticides are not created equal and not all are "bad". But they should fit into an IPM plan. An IPM system is designed around six basic components: 1. Acceptable pest levels. We can't eliminate pests. 2. Preventive cultural practice. This could include breeding for resistance. 3. Monitoring. You don't need the pesticides, if you don't have the pests. 4. Mechanical controls. Traps, barriers, etc. 5. Biological controls. This would include pathogens that kill pests. 6. Chemical control. As a last resort, you reach for chemicals. There are three technical words used on pesticide labels that are important to check. 1. Caution: mildly toxic, more than an ounce would be a lethal dose for a human (less for children). 2. Warning: more toxic, a teaspoon to a tablespoon is a lethal dose for an adult. 3. Danger: (accompanied by the symbol of the skull and crossbones), highly toxic - a minute amount can kill an adult. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 17:02:03 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: <972799.13745.qm@web51605.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dee Lusby wrote: > Jim Smith writes: > No argument here, but pyrethroids are insecticides... > > Reply: > And so you saying that pyrethroids are not also pesticides? > > > So what are we doing now, making class distinction between > treatments by so-called names though each class certainly > kills bees. Insecticides are a subset of pesticides. Pesticides can also include herbicides and fungicides, for example. If you look to see the most used pesticides in the US, they are mostly herbicides, like roundup, not bug killers. Pesticides like weed and fungus killers do not necessarily kill bees (but some can). Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:42:58 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dee Lusby Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: <46A2744B.3040704@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bill: Good for you, for they are insecticides and pesticides both with the main umbrella pesticides. But still, most all no matter the breakout, still kill our honeybees though some slower then others, or in different ways then we are used to, no matter the subclass. but who's looking really for the benefit of our honeybees? Are you? Dee A. Lusby ____________________________________________________________________________________ Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us. http://surveylink.yahoo.com/gmrs/yahoo_panel_invite.asp?a=7 ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:50:54 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dee Lusby Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Peter writes: But they should fit into an IPM plan. Reply: aaah, here we keep going and going, and going! We will never solve our problems as outlined until the IPM is thrown away and zero tolerance is used for treatments, and we come to accept that all animals, including insects interrelate/co-exist in life and are there in balanced mixes, that we/ourselves are the ones interrupting. So who treats us? Dee A. Lusby ____________________________________________________________________________________ Luggage? GPS? Comic books? Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=graduation+gifts&cs=bz ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 01:23:58 +0200 Reply-To: olda.vancata@quicknet.se Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Olda Vancata Subject: Re: Pesticides In-Reply-To: <20070721225054.25835.qmail@web51603.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > aaah, here we keep going and going, and going! We will > never solve our problems as outlined until the IPM is > thrown away and zero tolerance is used for treatments, and > we come to accept that all animals, including insects > interrelate/co-exist in life and are there in balanced > mixes, that we/ourselves are the ones interrupting. So who > treats us? physician ? \vov ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:31:21 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Scot McPherson Organization: McPherson Family Farms Subject: Re: Will bees be included as part of this? In-Reply-To: <16116419.1184802064838.JavaMail.root@m43> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > In South Africa , we call it the 40 day method , 42 days is the > longest its taken me for a queen to exit / 14 days the quickest . > Alastair Botes Cape Town . This email really illustrates the difference in our "Holstein" bees and the S. African stock. - John Edwards -----Scot's Reply---- No it does. If you place a hive literally sealed over the entrance, then the queen doesn't have "light" to avoid, the entrance is no much further than it was and there is not reason for the queen to not enter the NUC since it is now part of her nest. I have done this in the past also with success more than a few times when I did swarm/colony removals quite frequently. If there was no urgency to get the bees the "heck" out of there, then this is exactly how I did it, with a makeshift hive body built to fit against the opening, and I used that blue picture gunk that you use to paste poster to a wall for sealant. Worked wonders. The queen would move in (and just as likely move back again) because the trap literally becomes part of the colony in the wall. But if I came and she was in the hive body, I could pull it away from the wall or tree or whatever, and move the combs into a regular hive body. Put the hive back in place nearly the same, except now leave space for bees to get in behind the hive to the old hive. The bees will quickly rob it out and you may need to come and harvest some honey so they can keep robbing it out. Then when but on a couple of bees go in or out in a minute's time, you can seal it up, preferably with wall insulation foam to fill the space up. It doesn't require frequent visits either because there is no cone trap to check and unclog perhaps...just come back when is convenient and see if she is in there, if not put it back come back when is next convenient. Scot McPherson McPherson Family Farms Davenport, IA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 23:28:50 -0400 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Pesticides MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit While Peter offers some fine points, I don't know why the beekeeping version of IPM remains so unlike any other application of IPM in any other segment of agriculture. Things like cultural practices, mechanical controls, and biological controls are choices, not really a required part of an IPM program. Making them seem like a requirement takes the focus away from the primary message of IPM, which is to measure and track pest levels in a consistent and meaningful way, so that treatment decisions can be made based upon hard data, rather than guesswork or habit. I've joked in my talks on the subject that one could have a perfectly acceptable IPM program even if the sole control methodology available was the use of short-range battlefield tactical nuclear weapons. The use of such a "harsh" control would certainly focus attention on good decision making and prudent use of the "pest control", wouldn't it? One of the problems in getting beekeepers to embrace and adopt IPM methodologies is that it is hard to teach the basics if one is "preaching at them" about the use of additional equipment (traps), labor-intensive tasks (drone brood removal and sugar dusting), and not-ready-for-prime-time schemes (biological controls). I've sat in such workshops, and the sound of eyes rolling becomes deafening. The speaker's credibility is undercut by the preaching. So, let's just admit that the smallest treatable unit in beekeeping is not the individual hive, but the yard of hives, due to the way that pests of bees can "drift" and "reinfest" previously treated hives from untreated hives. And let's also admit that economics of the business dictate that most of the "softer" protocols are too time consuming and labor intensive to "scale up" beyond a hundred hives or so without becoming too costly to implement. So, let's focus on measurement, as one cannot control that which they do not measure. Step one would be to admit that there never were, and never will be any magic bullets. (That darn fugus seemed too good to be true, and sure enough, it was.) I'm ready for the next guy who comes along offering magic bullets - with a rope! :) Step two would be to admit that "thresholds" are a sign of a delusional state. If one had a fixed number of plants or acres of plants, then a threshold makes sense, in that a single measurement can yield a snapshot of pests/plants or pests/per acre. But when both the pest and bee population levels vary, a single measurement "threshold" approach prompts one to treat the strongest hives, that, if properly measured would have the lower pest/bee ratios, and, worse yet, prompts one to not treat the weakest hives, those with the higher pest/bee ratios. What matters is the slope of the curve of points plotted as a result of taking multiple measurements. When the pest count starts to "go exponential", you are in trouble. If the pest count grows slowly, you aren't. You can't have a curve with a single point plotted, so it is clear that you need to view "monitoring" as implying that you should look more than once. Step three would be to admit that "chemicals" are not a "last resort", as there are limits on the effectiveness of all the treatment options, and the trick is to pick the option that will work when treatment is required, meaning that seasons and weather dictate which of the many controls is most appropriate. The newer "softer" controls, such as formic acid and thymol proved to be very frustrating as direct replacements for Apistan, as they simply are not effective under the same weather/seasonal conditions as Apistan. There are times when "chemicals" may be the only viable choice. Don't position them as a "last resort" when the supposed "first resort" would be a waste of time due to weather (mostly temperature). So, those who teach should avoid trying to preach. IPM is all about data and decisions based upon consistently collected data. Choices of treatments are just that - choices. Funny, my artist friends never get into long-winded discussions of what brand of brushes they use. They just talk about art. My beekeeper friends seem to be willing to tolerate a wide range of variation in choices of hive tools, yet any discussion of pest management focuses on specific control substances. Some beekeeper meetings consist of very little actual talk about actual beekeeping as a result. Beekeeping is more than pest and disease control. I think one of the cheapest, easiest to use, and safest varroa control tools is the $3.00 plastic push-in queen cage, a very effective enhancement to nearly any treatment approach if used intelligently. Every time I say that, I hear the sound of jaws hitting the floor, proof that we have all stopped being beekeepers somewhere along the way, and have turned into exterminators. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************