From MAILER-DAEMON Sat Feb 28 10:53:57 2009 Return-Path: <> X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.8 (2007-02-13) on industrial X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-85.9 required=2.4 tests=ADVANCE_FEE_1,ALL_NATURAL, AWL,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,MILLION_USD,NO_OBLIGATION,SPF_HELO_PASS, USER_IN_WHITELIST autolearn=disabled version=3.1.8 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 F3EC149081 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:20 -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 n1SFhrpm016524 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:20 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:18 -0500 From: "University at Albany LISTSERV Server (14.5)" Subject: File: "BEE-L LOG0711A" To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Message-ID: Content-Length: 189433 Lines: 4257 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:35:12 -0300 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Juanse Barros Subject: Re: Candy Boards In-Reply-To: <7eb65cc10710311926s4947a6d4n75a233132017d2d8@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I been asking my colleagues in Chile about their colony winter mortalities. > Most of us increase by 3 to 4 fold last winter. How ever those that kept > under the 15% line have in common the use of : > > a.- polen feeding in autum (from their own colonies collected in spring) > b .- the adition of 5 cc of glacial acetic acid per litre of syrup each > time they feed. > > could acetic acid be the answer instead of tartar? > could we change acetic acid per bleach ? > > > Juanse > Temuco-Chile > > -- > Juanse Barros J. > APIZUR S.A. > Carrera 695 > Gorbea - CHILE > +56-45-271693 > 08-3613310 > http://apiaraucania.blogspot.com/ > juanseapi@gmail.com > ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:33:55 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Late season feeding question MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello John & All, >I am tempted to rob down real real low-right , but I am concerned about building the winter stores up quickly enough to get them through till spring. if I do this. Surely you have got plenty of days to apply feed in North Alabama. I like to open feed my bees from barrels, but am concerned that temps (anticipated highs in the mid 60's for awhile) might not provide adequate conditions for proper evaporation of the syrup. If you feed 2 to 1 the bees need only store in cells and cluster over. Takes 70 F. for bees to draw wax. Does not need sealed. All you need is the syrup in the cells. Kelly used to sell a syrup feeder ( John might remember but you youngsters might not) which you simply pulled the empty frame and dunked the frame into and filled the cells with syrup. I saved many a hive in winter with the one I had. However at times if the syrup was not warm to hot you would get air in the cells which is why in my opinion the item was dropped at Kelley. >I should be feeding mostly sucrose. After Pamela Gregory's talks (AHPA & ABF) and my article about the two poison sugars in HFCS. Also the bees in her tests living half as long on HFCS as sucrose most the industry has switched to sucrose. I am now using sucrose. I have not really noticed a difference in my bees by switching to sucrose but the USDA-ARS research was sound and was identical to research from the Mid seventies which had the same conclusion. 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: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:33:55 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: 3/4 spacers (was Candy Boards) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > I'll make my next batch from fresh lumber. Despite the risks which really was more of a minor pain cutting from bee boxes for me made the most sense. The boxes were sound, Had been copper namphed, glued corners, primed and two coats of paint. Once ripped I was done. One about every minute. I started from the bottom and if the bottom spacer was not to my liking it got tossed in the burn barrel. I would never had pulled cleats to make a spacer. I hate trying to get cleats off. Only in a few cases did I hit a nail (working up from the bottom of the box) and only once in a while did I need to had a staple. I tossed a couple I brought back yesterday but because the spacers are painted etc. I leave on a skid outside with a migratory lid on top until needed again. Taking the time for a suitable joint, gluing and painting is why I chose cutting from bee boxes. I replaced most my bee boxes over the last several years so I have got plenty of fairly decent old boxes to cut spacers from or I would have used ne wood. I am picky about my bee boxes. I cull many others would never think of culling. Time is money and if I think a box repair will take too long or that the repair will only last a season or two the box is culled to the "sell to guys not as picky stack!". 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: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 17:34:32 +1000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: queenbee Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter posted > * I don't get the part about not clipping the queen's wing. They do > recommend requeening colonies to "rejuvenate" them As I understand it, it is supposed to be "natural". That is the hive should not be requeened but should be allowed to requeen itself. This is the "rejuvenate" bit. If you clip the wing, then the hive cannot swarm if that is their "nature" to do so. I cannot see where this comes into the product being organic. After all they allow all those chemicals in the "organic" honey. Even sugar feeding is allowed albeit that it must be "organic". Trevor Weatherhead AUSTRALIA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 07:24:01 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Candy Boards In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dick Allen wrote: > studies by Bailey in England as far back as 1966 showed that such use can reduce the > life of honeybees if natural nectar is not coming in when the treated syrup is fed.? > That was the first one, and it includes comparisons with HFCS, boiled syrup and Cream of Tartar. It was an excellent study and has been supported in later studies. However, it is still recommended in many bee books including my edition of "The Hive and the Honey Bee". Canadian beekeepers get the best of it since sugar is cheap for use as a winter feed. US price supports make HFCS the preferred feed, but it is not as good as sugar. The increase winter mortality from Tartaric Acid is low ( I recall about 5-10% loss in a colony) but has the most impact in cold winters. It slows down spring buildup because of the reduced number of bees. It is one of those things that, if you use it across the board for winter feed, you see no impact since all colonies are equally affected. Hence, there is no problem. There are a lot of things like this that lull one into thinking they are doing well when their beekeeping neighbor seems to do better. They think it must be location or some other factor when it is actually practice. There was a discussion on this in the archives as well as a lot of heat on winter feeds, so please take a look there before posting since they would only add to Jim and my CCD posts which have lead to a major increase the entropy of the universe. I have applied for carbon credits. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 07:35:15 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Tim Arheit Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited In-Reply-To: <002901c81c59$a761ca10$7c91453d@new1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:34 AM 11/1/2007, you wrote: > If you clip the wing, then the hive cannot swarm if that is their "nature" to do so. I cannot see where this comes into the product being organic. Many parts of it I don't agree with, are confusing, vague or contradictory. -Queens may be marked apparently, but not clipped. Apparently for natural queen renewal, not a great way to ensure a 'robust' strain. -You must requeen often, but only 10% can be from non-organic queens (never have seen that advertised anywhere, is it different over there?). -It's ok to immediately convert bees to 'organic' if it's only 10% of your stock. I can just see a large producer acting as a handler converting packages to organic status, 10% of his hives at a time and then selling them and repeating several times in a season. -What exactly is 'considerable input of agrochemicals'? There is no mention of a threshold. -Your hives become non-organic every time you have a dearth. -It's ok put your bees on the crops with 'considerable input of agrochemicals', you can't sell honey from it as organic. But move them a week later to something else and you can sell that honey as organic. -It's preferable to dump chemicals in the hive instead of drone removal. -Prophylactic treatments are allowed, just so long as the chemical is natural. -What exactly does a 1 year conversion time accomplish? A couple months should be all that is needed to 'renew' the bees themselves. Contaminates in wax and other parts of the hive won't go anywhere in a year by themselves. and the list goes on. -Tim ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 08:10:14 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: CCD and media In-Reply-To: <000f01c81bf1$2e35b880$0201000a@j> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit James Fischer wrote: > I don't have a count for you, but like Dick Marron, I can say that > I have seen the problem with my own eyes in multiple operations. > You may recall that I am slightly more skeptical than most, so > I have also taken the time to read, talk with people, ask pointed > questions, and think about what is known versus what is not. > > So please don't keep expecting updates on the salinity of the > water when the problem is that beekeepers are drowning. Most of these discussions seem to go full circle. My original post was on the hype around CCD and how universal it is.After all, we have numbers out there that range from 2-80% of bees, at least in the Eastern US that have succumbed to CCD. Most media latch on to the upper numbers. You say that beekeepers are drowning, but is that all beekeepers, most beekeepers, some beekeepers, or just a few? You have seen the problem close up and are involved, but many of us have not seen the problem at all and know few or none who have experienced what is portrayed as a universal problem. Add to that that, some who I do know (several commercial operations) thought they had it but it was not CCD. I understand that major losses have been suffered by some commercial beekeepers. When it happens to you or to a friend, it is a tragedy but when you are not effected, a statistic. But statistics do give those separate from the problem an idea of the extent of the problem. Right now, because there is no quantification of the extent of CCD, there can be hype and hysteria. I am back to where I began. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 08:22:06 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I do not know if the Honey Organic standards for the US have been approved, but there are standards out there, just they are semi-official but can get "organic" on the label per the USDA. Also, I believe that the EU document is a guideline and each Nation has their own particular standards, some stringent and some not. That situation is not unlike what we have here in the US, but we seem to be on the stringent side. Many of us could be organic beekeepers in some EU countries with little additional effort. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 09:46:59 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Rip Bechmann Subject: oops! & C of T MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Another reason to never edit your own email; >>regardless of the ratio of the the syrup, you get<< Between the "the's" was supposed to be the words "sugars in" Sorry, Rip PS I assume most everyone realizes that if the ratio of sugars and the = preparation temperatures are controlled "cream-of-tartar" and other = additives becomes redundant and as Jim is fond of saying, "KISS it", = i.e. Keep It Simple Stupid. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 23:55:18 +1000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: queenbee Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tim posted > -You must requeen often, but only 10% can be from non-organic queens > (never have seen that advertised anywhere, is it different over there?). You can have queens that are "not organically raised" but the first extraction from the hive, after introduction, is not "organic'. Not sure how it suddenly becomes "organic" after one extraction or why the queen, in the first place, has "contaminated" the honey so it is "not organic". Trevor Weatherhead AUSTRALIA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 09:28:03 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: John & Christy Horton Subject: Late season feeding question-thanks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob, Thanks for your helpful coments. I listen carefully when you and R. Oliver and others speak. Although i may go through this forum w/a weedeater at times, I have come across some choice nuggets. I have only been keeping bees about 7 years now....I dont know how far back the Walter kelly sryrp feeder dates. I will repeat that the help I have recieved from this forum and some in the local beekeepers have knocked years off the learning curve. For that I am grateful. Best to all John ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 10:37:08 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dick Marron Subject: CCD and Media MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bill wrote: >>> But statistics do give those separate from the problem an idea of the extent of the problem. Right now, because there is no quantification of the extent of CCD, there can be hype and hysteria.<<< The number I heard that makes sense is 25% of all losses last year were CCD. I'll check the source again. I asked a 'keeper with about 20,000 colonies if he had had any trouble with CCD. His answer was telling. "I wouldn't tell you if I did!" He wasn't just being obtuse. Telling someone your bee troubles is a lot like giving out a financial statement. These guys rely on recurring contracts and there is competition. How nervous would a grower be if he knew his primary contractor had CCD? A 'keeper scrambling around to buy or rent bees to cover those contracts doesn't want to look like his back is to the wall. Then there are those who just don't want the trouble of an official inspection. Just hiding the homemade pesticide delivery systems would take a lot of time. And of course beekeepers are an independent lot anyway. It's a small wonder that investigators keep silent on their sources. Add to that the fact that if you have SOME bees you can split and force other splits with feed, making up losses. "Almonds were covered," doesn't say how. I think what your circle brings you to is that the facts will always be unknowable. Investigators promised some secrecy and others don't report. Dick Marron ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:52:35 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Richard_Ashton?= Subject: Small Hive Bettle Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Here is a link to a study by the USDA/ARS of the Small Hive Bettle: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2007/071101.htm . This was released today November 1, 2007. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 15:25:14 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Steve_Noble?= Subject: CCD and Media Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dick Marron: “His answer was telling. "I wouldn't tell you if I did (have ccd)!" He wasn't just being obtuse.” This really doesn’t paint a very pretty picture of the large scale migratory bee business does it? It seems that these folks are so close to the edge of disaster all the time that it brings out some less than altruistic behavior in them. I’m glad I am not part of that kind of system. Considering the potential impact a guy like this could have on other people’s beekeeping operations I am surprised that keeping secret something as significant as massive dead outs from what ever cause, is even an option in this day and age. Maybe the growers and the pollinators should get together and form a consortium that could provide some kind of safety net so that if one beekeeper was hit by something like ccd he would not have to hide the fact thereby perhaps putting other unsuspecting bystanders at greater risk. Then maybe he could become part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. Steve Noble ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 16:04:22 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.net" Subject: Re: Late season feeding question Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>Kelly used to sell a syrup feeder ( John might remember but you youngsters might not) which you simply pulled the empty frame and dunked the frame into and filled the cells with syrup. I find that I can pour syrup directly into the cells. If you do it slowly enough you can get a quart of syrup into a deep frame without spilling. Best way to feed when temp drop a bit. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 20:07:49 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?windows-1252?Q?J._Waggle?=" Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit queenbee wrote: … If you clip the wing, then the hive cannot swarm if that >is their "nature" to do so. I cannot see where this comes into the product >being organic. I’m not sure about what the “law” defines as “organic”. But I believe the relationship between the natural environment and the bees should be maintained and encouraged as much as possible. We take so much from the environment and expect so much from our bees, while giving back so very little. IMPOV Organic beekeeping is a partnership with nature, and the allowing of a swarm escaping now and then is a part of this partnership—giving back to the natural eco system that we take so much from. The cutting of wings is the cutting of the bond that must exist between organic beekeeping and the environment. Best Wishes, Joe Waggle http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/HistoricalHoneybeeArticles ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 20:17:19 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?UTF-8?Q?Peter_Borst?= Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bill Truesdell wrote: >I do not know if the Honey Organic standards for the US have been >approved, but there are standards out there, just they are semi-official >but can get "organic" on the label per the USDA. Right, "semi-official standards" means you can say what you like and nobody is going to call you on it. Not the same as the European system at all. Without uniform standards and some form of oversight, it just boils down to the same thing as putting the words "all natural" on a can of soda pop. pb ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 08:00:56 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?UTF-8?Q?Peter_Borst?= Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit As an example of how organic farming could be overseen, one could follow the example of Kosher food certification: > After the State of Israel, New York is the world’s largest manufacturer and consumer of kosher foods. With more than 82,000 different Kosher certified products on market shelves, the Department continues to be vigilant in assuring consumers that food products offered for sale as Kosher, are indeed Kosher. In 2002, the Department conducted 7,500 inspections in New York State. > Senator Martin J. Golden said, "The implementation of New York State's Kosher Law Protection Act greatly strengthens consumer protections against false or misleading representations of foods sold or offered for sale as 'kosher'. By requiring vendors to disclose the basis for their representation that such foods are kosher, we have taken a crucial step in restoring the confidence of the kosher consuming public in the food purchases made. It was necessary to afford kosher consumers this protection." ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 08:23:04 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter Borst wrote: > Right, "semi-official standards" means you can say what you like and nobody > is going to call you on it. USDA is the one which has authorized certain companies to be the organic certifiers. You are in violation of the law if you use the organic certified label. Check out health/natural food stores. There will be organic honey with the certification on the label. If you see otherwise, give the USDA a call. The USDA has not approved national organic standard for some products, and honey seems to be a major sticking point.The USDA looks for consensus and with the divide between commercial operations and hobby purists (who have power through State organic associations, Maine being the foremost), they have not, to my knowledge, settled on a nationwide standard, but have authorized certain companies and State Associations to certify honey as organic. There are several on this list who sell organic honey with the certification. It is actually more stringent than the EU. It looks like the EU took ours and made it more realistic and allowed some flexibility. The stringent organic standards started right here in Maine with MOGFA and and an idiot beekeeper. Doubt if they are still keeping bees. Some of us tried to change it but that is hard when you are arguing with the purer than pure and ignorance abounds. Lots of nuts among the berries. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 05:28:36 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: C Hooper Subject: Anti-Inflammatory Effect of Bee Venom Explained MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Anti-Inflammatory Effect of Bee Venom Explained Research findings from Chonnam National University, College of Veterinary Medicine Drug Week, 11/2/2007 http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/11/anti-inflammatory-effect-of-bee-venom.html …The researchers concluded: "These results indicate that BV-induced activation of the contralateral LC-descending noradrenergic pathway increased the activity of SPNs that project to the adrenal medulla and this pathway is necessary for BVAI."… ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 05:45:12 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: George Tamas Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited In-Reply-To: <472B16A8.1080201@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Hi All, Can you help me understanding the difference between "ORGANIC" AND "BIO"? Thank you George ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 18:07:44 -0000 Reply-To: rrudd@eircom.net Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruary Rudd Subject: Re: Candy boards In-Reply-To: <472730FC.3030406@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am sorry for the late response but have been away from the computer for a week. Candy recipe is 5 parts sugar to 1 part water (by weight) raised to 234 degrees F. Ruary -----Original Message----- From: Bill Truesdell Bob Harrison wrote: From memory, candy is syrup (pint of water to 5 lb sugar- really only moistens it) raised to 242F and poured on cookie sheets to cool. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 18:19:44 -0000 Reply-To: rrudd@eircom.net Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruary Rudd Subject: Re: Candy Boards In-Reply-To: <000a01c81be0$0b397bc0$0201000a@j> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Honey Bee pathology by L. Bailey & B.v.Ball for one source Ruary -----Original Message----- > Cream of Tartar is implicated in increased bee mortality. It has been? By who? Well, if the recipe is not followed, I guess it would be possible for some or even most of the cream of tartar to not react with the sucrose, but if you have the right temperature and enough mixing, I can't see how any would remain unreacted in the final mix. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 15:40:52 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Bill writes: > USDA is the one which has authorized certain companies to be the organic certifiers. You are in violation of the law if you use the organic certified label. Check out health/natural food stores. There will be organic honey with the certification on the label. In order to obtain the USDA label, you have to be certified by an organization such as (name deleted). In order to obtain certification you must fill out the paperwork and pay a fee. How much? "A fee schedule is provided with the application for organic certification; however, the actual single fixed fee is determined upon review of each application." A brief perusal of the forms reveals that whoever wrote them knows next to nothing about beekeeping. For example, say bees forage out for about 3 miles. This is an area of about 30 square miles, or about 20,000 acres. You are expected to know who all the property owners are and what they are doing there? If you have more than a few apiaries, that's hundreds of square miles! * * * Apiary Operation Forms COLONY HEALTH PROFILE (CHP) For each colony maintained, please complete the following information. A. Colony Identification (e.g. name, number): __________________________ B. Colony Description: Species Number of Hives Colony Size Hive Materials C. Colony Health Management - Please include all medical treatments and food supplements you plan to use on bees that are under your organic management: Type of Treatment or Food Supplement Brand Name or Source of Product Reason for Use Do you have verification that this treatment is NOP compliant? YES NO * * * INDIVIDUAL FORAGE ZONE PROFILE (IFZP) For EACH forage area, please complete the following information. A. Forage Area ID (i.e. name or location) B. Owner / Custodian of the Land Used for Forage C. Total Number of Acres for this area D. Please provide the estimated date(s) of forage TO (begin) (end) E. Please Attach an Area Map. F. Please provide the following information for the forage plants grown in this area: Type of Plant (e.g. orange tree, cactus) Status of Plant (Conventional, Wild, Organic) Percentage of Area covered by this plant Plant Bloom Dates ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 15:52:51 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Candy boards In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ruary Rudd wrote: > Candy recipe is 5 parts sugar to 1 part water (by weight) > raised to 234 degrees F. I did go back and check it - Hive and Honey Bee, 1992 edition, page 637- 242F which is the upper end of the soft ball stage. They do use glucose and cream of tartar also. 234F is the top end of "thread" and bottom end of soft ball.So it gets into what degree of softness is desired. No big deal. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 20:14:09 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Tim Arheit Subject: Re: Organic Beekeeping, Revisited In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:40 PM 11/2/2007, you wrote: >A. Forage Area ID (i.e. name or location), >B. Owner / Custodian of the Land Used for Forage >C. Total Number of Acres for this area >D. Please provide the estimated date(s) of forage TO (begin) (end) >E. Please Attach an Area Map. >F. Please provide the following information for the forage plants >grown in this area: Not a problem. Please see the attached map of the Allen county; database of 50,000 parcels with owners, contact information, acreage and land use; average daytime temperatures for our area to determine estimated forage dates and the publication 'Bee plants in Ohio' from OSU. I've got all the info right here on my computer ready to go, or can within an hour (seriously). Just hope they'll accept it in digital form. I can't afford all the paper and toner it will take to print it out. But seriously. This is a problem with all the organic standards for honey I've seen. It's written either from an outsider's perspective, or a purist. In either case neither have a clue what it take to keep good healthy hives, breed queens and in some cases even the basics of beekeeping. The general public is interested in what 'organic' means to the end product. Not clipping wings has no impact on the honey or even the health and well being of the bees, and spreading swarms because it's 'natural' will only result in unkept 'wild' hives spreading disease or taking up residence in your neighbors house and is not good for anyone, including the bees. -Tim ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 23:21:08 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dick Allen Subject: Re: Candy boards Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Making bee candy really soft, I think, is another of those things that beekeepers do to make themselves feel all warm and fuzzy over helping their bees. When I’ve made candy it’s been the, previously mentioned, 1 pound of water mixed with 5 pounds of sugar, and then heated to 234º F, also referred to by many as the 1-234-5 procedure. Generally, it’s cooled a bit, then stirred with an electric mixer for a moment or two before pouring it into molds. Usually, it sets up like a heavy fudge. Not fondant, for sure, but also not rock hard either. The bees like it just fine. Besides, it’s fed in winter, and what else are they going to do in the hive to amuse themselves if they don’t have something to munch away on. They don’t go skiing like I do. Candy softness is just not that important as I’ve seen. It seems to be another of those things to ponder over simlar to wondering whether mixing 1:1 and 2:1 syrup should done by weight or volume. Regards, Dick Allen ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 08:06:41 -0000 Reply-To: rrudd@eircom.net Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruary Rudd Subject: Re: Candy boards In-Reply-To: <472B8013.2030703@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 234 makes an easy to remember formula 1 part water raised to 234 containing 5 parts sugar = 1,2,3,4,5. Ruary -----Original Message----- 234F is the top end of "thread" and bottom end of soft ball.So it gets into what degree of softness is desired. No big deal. Bill Truesdell ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 18:16:35 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Glen Lawson Subject: Re: CCD and media In-Reply-To: <47289A8C.4020809@suscom-maine.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On 10/31/07, Bill Truesdell wrote: > > Well, I watched the PBS special on CCD, which was really about honeybees > disappearing world wide. So, according to them, by 2035 we will have no > more honeybees if the current trend continues. I have no idea what they > based that on. While that slightly off-quoted quote makes an attention grabber, it is taken slightly out of context. The actual quote I believe is: "Even before CCD came to light, our committee estimated that, if honey bee numbers continue to decline at the rates documented from 1989 to 1996, managed honey bees will cease to exist by 2035." The quote is about pollinator decline in testimony given before a congressional sub-committee for the Farm Bill on March 29, 2007 by May Berenbaum who is president of the Xerces Society and professor at University of Illinois. I recognized this because my 5th grade son is doing a Social Science fair project about the economic impact of CCD. Glen Lawson Gainesville, GA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 17:40:30 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "carimona@GMAIL.COM" Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >"carimona@GMAIL.COM" wrote: "no other ag related industry in the nation allows this kind of uncontrolled movement" On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:22:36 -0700, Mike Rossander wrote: > To the contrary, they almost all allow that kind of movement. You'd have better luck building a list of restrictions than building the list of unrestricted activities. > really..... while I am no livestock expert I am certain that if hoof and mouth disease or avian flu struck our poultry or livestock industry there would not be the mass movement of animals like we see every fall and winter with almonds and honeybees. in fact infected animals would be likely be killed. how can anyone defend the willy nilly unregulated movement of bees when there is the risk of spreading the dreaded CCD? or maybe CCD is no big deal at all and that's why mass movement goes on unimpeded? from the outside of the bee world looking in it would appear to make little to no sense at all. it would appear no one gave a darn about the bees and only cared about the pot O' money at the end of the almond rainbow. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 18:25:36 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?UTF-8?Q?Peter_Borst?= Subject: Re: Candy boards Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Fri, 2 Nov 2007 23:21:08 -0400, Dick Allen wrote: > It seems to be another of those things to ponder over simlar to wondering whether mixing 1:1 and 2:1 syrup should done by weight or volume. Yes, well, they say "a pint's a pound, the world around" In the case of white sugar and water, it's true. Not so honey, of course. Pete ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 19:15:58 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "carimona@GMAIL.COM" Subject: IAPV in USA since at least 2002 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit according to a letter submitted to the ABJ on 10/29/2007 from Y. Chen & J. Evans at the USDA ARS Beltsville Lab, IAPV was found in archived samples of bees from 3 locations (MD, PA, CA) in the USA going back to at least 2002. since its a pdf file i have no way of pasting any quotes. email me for pdf file if interested. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 18:36:20 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit "carimona@GMAIL.COM" wrote: >"carimona@GMAIL.COM" wrote: "no other ag related industry in the nation allows this kind of uncontrolled movement" On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:22:36 -0700, Mike Rossander wrote: > To the contrary, they almost all allow that kind of movement. You'd have better luck building a list of restrictions than building the list of unrestricted activities. > how can anyone defend the willy nilly unregulated movement of bees when there is the risk of spreading the dreaded CCD? or maybe CCD is no big deal at all and that's why mass movement goes on unimpeded? It's called inertia. It has been done like this for years, and unless there is a MAJOR push to change things, it will continue as before. By the way, I don't see this push happening. Just be thankful that the bees are more resilliant than the beekeepers that keep them. Mike in LA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 01:54:46 +0000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Gavin Ramsay Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > while I am no livestock expert I am certain that if hoof and mouth disease or avian flu struck > our poultry or livestock industry there would not be the mass movement of animals like we > see every fall and winter with almonds and honeybees. in fact infected animals would be > likely be killed. Guess that the UK attitude reflects that approach. The first thing that happens with an EFB outbreak in my neck of the woods is a 5km cordon around an infection, where all hives are located and sampled and no movement allowed until everything is clear again. A new find triggers a new zone. Infected colonies are destroyed or treated by an appropriate means. AFB infections are only destroyed. Most serious infections are treated this way, and if CCD (or as we used to call it Marie Celeste) is clearly shown to be due to a single contagious agent, then I guess that may get the same treatment. Gavin ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 23:44:22 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "carimona@GMAIL.COM" Subject: Re: IAPV in USA since at least 2002 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit some one kindly emailed me a text file. Historical presence of IAPV in the U.S. by Yanping Chen and Jay D. Evans USDA-ARS, Bee Research Laboratory, Beltsville, MD 20705 Submitted to American Bee Journal 10/29/07 Abstract: High bee colony losses in the U.S. this past year can be attributed in part to an unresolved syndrome termed CCD. An extensive genetic survey found one virus, IAPV, to be strongly associated with CCD. Using DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analyses, we provide evidence that IAPV was present in U.S. bees collected several years prior to CCD, and prior to the recent importation into the U.S. of bees from Australia and New Zealand. While downplaying the importance of bee importation for the appearance of CCD, these results indicate an urgent need to test specific strains of IAPV for their disease impacts. Bees are of great agricultural importance in the U.S. and worldwide (Morse and Calderone, 2000), and are continu- ally threatened by parasites and pathogens. During the winter of 2006-2007, a rare and extreme syndrome of bee losses was observed. This syndrome, labeled CCD, is defined by a rapid depopulation of adult bees in colonies, often leaving a substantial standing brood of healthy larvae. Survey evidence suggests that roughly 25% of bee- keepers have suffered the effects of CCD, as defined by characteristic traits and colony losses of >50% (van Engelsdorp et al., 2007). Many beekeepers lost sub- stantially more than 50% of their operations. While events similar to CCD have occurred in past decades (Wilson and Menapace, 1979), the severity of this event has caused appropriate concern nationally and inter- nationally. Recently, an unprecedented ‘metagenomic’ approach was used to detect parasites and pathogens in bees associated with CCD and controls (Cox-Foster et al., 2007). This study described numerous microbes from bees, some known as pathogens and others that had not been seen prior in bees. One striking result was the tight correlation between IAPV, an unclassified Dicistroviridae virus, and CCD. IAPV was detected in 25 of 30 (83 %) CCD-affected colonies but only once in 21 healthy colonies (Cox-Foster et al., 2007). This virus was also found in package bees imported from Australia and isolates of royal jelly imported from China. The identification of IAPV as a newly described virus for the U.S., it’s association with an important disease, and implications for both bee management and trade issues, have all led to intensive efforts to study this virus. These efforts are focused on past and present worldwide distributions IAPV, on determining mechanisms by which this and related viruses can cause disease, and on determining whether IAPV strains differ substantially in their impacts on bees. To help address these questions, we screened bee samples collected in California, Maryland and Pennsylvania from 2002 to 2007 for the presence of IAPV. The genetic relation- ships of different IAPV strains were studied by sequencing one section (the 5’UTR) from the IAPV genome for isolates collected from 33 U.S. bees (out of several hundred screened bees). The results from this survey indicate that IAPV has been circulating in U.S. bee populations since at least 2002, and forms a world- wide species that is greatly diverged from the related Kashmir Bee Virus (KBV). Specifically, IAPV isolates from this study can be split into four distinct clusters supported with bootstrap statistical values > 55%. These clusters reflect collections from California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Israel. CA, and PA isolates each formed separate lineages with strong bootstrap support, while the Maryland and Israeli lineages were less well defined. Israeli samples, including the strain first named as IAPV, are not distinct from the U.S. isolates as a group. We also sequenced the entire genomes of IAPV isolates from California, Maryland and a Pennsylvania apiary with a history of Australian importation and CCD symptoms, using a combination of long-template RT-PCR, primer walking, and Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends (RACE) methods (protocols available from Y. Chen). These three complete genomes, when compared to the definitive (Israeli) IAPV genome sequence, show 4.2 – 4.7% divergence at the RNA level, while all IAPV strains showed >25% divergence from KBV. Genetic heterogeneity across the studied 5’ region is interesting in that this region is involved in the initiation of protein translation, and genetic variability of this region may lead to different pathogenicities. Further analyses are needed to explore the implications of these and other genome sequences for virulence traits of IAPV. Our results show that IAPV in the U.S. predates both the latest incarnation of CCD and the importation of Australian packages. Nevertheless, we caution that much work is still needed to absolve or implicate this virus, or specific imports, in CCD. Most importantly, experimental studies are ongoing to determine the relative virulence of imported or domestic IAPV strains, and such studies will provide the best evidence for making importation and management choices. Viruses with minimal genome sequence differences can show greatly different levels of virulence, and all isolates of IAPV we studied showed at least some sequence variation. Given its observed association with CCD, this virus remains an important candidate for bee disease. Figure Legend. Phylogenetic tree based on 450 nt of the 5’-UTR region of 33 IAPV isolates from CA, MD, PA, and Israel. Sequences were aligned with MegAlign (DNASTAR Lasergene) and the tree was generated using a heuristic Maximum Parsimony algorithm (PAUP 4.03; Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA). The strength of branch relationships was assessed by bootstrap replication (N=1000 replicates). Sequences deposited in Genbank by the senior author. Acknowledgements: We gratefully acknowledge Jeff Pettis for guidance, Haim Efrat for Israeli bee samples, Michele Hamilton and Dawn Lopez for laboratory assistance. References: Cox-Foster, D.L., Conlan, S., Holmes, E., Palacios, G., Evans, J.D., Moran, N.A., Quan, P.L., Briese, T., Hornig, M., Geiser, D.M., Martinson, V., van Engelsdorp, D., Kalkstein, A.L., Drysdale, A., Hui, J., Zhai, J., Cui, L., Hutchison, S.K., Simons, J. F., Egholm, M., Pettis, J. S., Lipkin W. I. (2007). A metagenomic survey of microbes in CCD. Science. 318(5848): 283-287. Morse, R. A. and Calderone, N. W. (2000) The value of bee polli- nation in the U.S. Bee Culture 128: 1-15. van Engelsdorp, D., Underwood, R., Caron, D., Hayes, Jr., J (2007) An estimate of managed colony losses in the winter of 2006 - 2007: A report commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America, American Bee Journal 147: 599-603. Wilson, W.T., and D.M. Menapace, 1979. Disappearing disease of bees: a survey of the U.S. American Bee Journal 119: 118-119, 184-186, 217.] ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 03:59:38 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Chris Slade Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 04/11/2007 00:30:05 GMT Standard Time, carimona@GMAIL.COM writes: the pot O' money at the end of the almond rainbow. My understanding from reading this list is that no other vegetation is tolerated in almond plantations. Is this so and, if so, why? I could understand that maybe almonds are a poor source of forage for bees as here in the UK a well managed apple orchard will have its dandelions mown out at flowering time, but at other times it would appear to be poor husbandry to eliminate other plants. They create and retain topsoil and provide a ready source of moisture retaining mulch for the almonds. They would also enable bees to be kept there all year round! Chris ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 04:01:46 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Chris Slade Subject: Re: Candy boards MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 04/11/2007 00:30:49 GMT Standard Time, peterlborst@GMAIL.COM writes: Yes, well, they say "a pint's a pound, the world around" In the case of white sugar and water, it's true. Not so honey, of course. I think that this may be true only in America where your pints are smaller. Chris ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 08:20:54 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?UTF-8?Q?Peter_Borst?= Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Mike Stoops wrote: >how can anyone defend the willy nilly unregulated movement of bees when there is the risk of spreading the dreaded CCD? First of all, no one knows what CCD is and IF the bees carry it. It might be factors in the environment, in which case it makes no different if the bees are moved. Second, if it is already present in most states, it equally makes no difference if the bees are moved. Which would kill the bee industry quicker? A disorder that has not been identified, or quarantines that prevent the beekeepers from earning a living by pollinating crops? Which would kill the industries that depend upon the bees for pollination? More apples from China, anyone? You have heard the expression: "the cure is worse than he disease". To restrict beekeepers from moving about the would probably do nothing to solve the problem, would make a huge headache for the highway patrols trying to enforce and would no doubt bankrupt most large scale bee operations. History shows that honey bee quarantines don't work anyway, so a lot of money gets spent and a lot people get hurt for nothing. As I have said in the past, it behooves us as beekeepers discussing beekeeping to include all beekeepers in the equation and not work up scenarios that pit "us" against "them". Also, consider the growers that need the bees and the people that eat the fruit. It's really all "us". pb ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 10:32:51 -0500 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: IAPV in USA since at least 2002 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm surprised that someone "leaked" the full text of the paper, in violation of the very simple and minimal requests made by the authors that I am sure accompanied every pre-print. But given that it is out, I will translate from "Paper" into "Beekeeper" below, as it is important to know the difference between what the data says, and what the paper tries to say, despite the data. Paper: "Recently, an unprecedented 'metagenomic' approach was used to detect parasites and pathogens in bees associated with CCD... One striking result was the tight correlation between Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), an unclassified Dicistroviridae virus, and CCD." Beekeeper: But our 'tight correlation' is blown out of the water by the years of apparently healthy colonies with IAPV, 10% of what we sampled. But we have an strategy - position this as a minor finding, speculate even further to avoid retracting anything, and publish in ABJ, which is read by about 0% of those who read "Science". In short, 'bury' the contradictory results. Paper: "IAPV isolates. can be split into four distinct clusters supported with bootstrap statistical values > 55%" Beekeeper: We found very minor differences between US samples. Paper: "Israeli samples, including the strain first named as IAPV, are not distinct from the U.S. isolates as a group." Beekeeper: Israeli Versions of IAPV aren't at all different from US versions, so we can't explain why IAPV killed bees and brood in mere days in Israel, but not in the US. Paper: "These three complete genomes, when compared to the definitive (Israeli) IAPV genome sequence, show 4.2 -4.7% divergence at the RNA level." Beekeeper: We have no idea of the implications of a 4.2% difference, if any, but 4.7% is a bigger number, and might have even bigger implications. Paper: "Genetic heterogeneity across the studied 5' region is interesting in that this region is involved in the initiation of protein translation, and genetic variability of this region may lead to different pathogenicities." Beekeeper: We looked at the 'prelude' section of the gene, before the gene settles down and does any actual coding, and speculate that differences here MIGHT explain how Israel's version of IAPV can be more virulent than the US version, but the US version can cause CCD when the Israeli version does not. WE COULD also speculate that freckled people might be vampires, using the same sound, rational approach of 'different could be deadly'. We are hoping that the reader won't glance back to where we said that Israeli samples are NOT distinct from the US isolates as a group, as we are now speculating that there are significant differences, and that they matter. Paper: "Nevertheless, we caution that much work is still needed to absolve or implicate this virus, or specific imports, in CCD." Beekeeper: Rather than honestly admitting that too much speculation about too little data was done in the last paper on CCD, we will speculate our way even further out on a limb, in an attempt to explain away these new findings rather than admit to speculating the first time. Paper: "Further analyses are needed to explore the implications of these and other genome sequences for virulence traits of IAPV." Beekeeper: We will also seek additional funding to look for other reasons to not change our initial highly speculative theory in light of this new, compelling, and very surprising evidence. Now that we've wiped the lipstick off the pig, we can look at implications. Long story short, every claim made in the much-ballyhooed paper in "Science" about CCD appears to have been wrong. 1) IAPV is clearly not "a significant marker" for CCD. In 2002-2005, neither CCD nor any other unusual symptoms were observed, yet IAPV had infected roughly 10% of the bees sampled in those years. 2) IAPV was claimed to have been found in bees imported from Australia, which were "tested as potential sources of pathogens". It was also noted that CCD appeared only after Australian bees were imported to the US. The finding of IAPV in years prior to the first bee imports indicate that Australian bees may have been wrongly accused of being "sources" of pathogens. 2a) But Australia is not out of the equation just yet. IAPV in the USA was explained in Bee Culture's October issue as being something that could have easily come via Canada during the "border closure" days. http://bee-quick.com/reprints/world.pdf 3) But IAPV may or may not have anything at all to do with CCD, given all those years that US bees had IAPV without showing CCD symptoms, which is the important message that the authors of this new paper go to even further speculative lengths to avoid admitting. 4) The claim that the work leading to the first paper was a "model to establish a strategy for investigating epidemics of unexplained infectious disease" is called into question. The work clearly suffered from the small number of samples, due to the high cost per sample for this new technology. So, claims were made and inferences were drawn beyond those firmly supported by the limited sample set. Ironically, the samples from years well before CCD appeared in the US would have made excellent "controls", and were readily available. Jay did a nice job of doing his best to soft-pedal the findings, but I'm not the only one who know things like what the 5' end of a gene is, so the attempt was partly based upon the assumption that no one would notice something published in ABJ, and may have also been based upon the assumption that beekeepers would not see the misdirection. But make no mistake, this data is a retraction of the "Science" paper as a whole. Not a single assertion made in the first paper survives this. ...and "IAPV in the USA" should be sung to the tune of the John Cougar Melencamp classic "R.O.C.K. in he USA". ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 09:37:29 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?UTF-8?Q?Peter_Borst?= Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Chris Slade wrote: >My understanding from reading this list is that no other vegetation is >tolerated in almond plantations. Check out this photo: http://tinyurl.com/ytcvdj pb ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 13:06:41 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Chris Slade Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 04/11/2007 15:10:49 GMT Standard Time, peterlborst@GMAIL.COM writes: Check out this photo: http://tinyurl.com/ytcvdj Wow! That's horrifying and completely unsustainable. Are they trying to create a desert? Chris ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 13:40:28 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Re: IAPV in USA since at least 2002 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline James Fischer wrote: >I'm surprised that someone "leaked" the full text of the paper According to the Central Beekeepers Alliance: > "Historical presence of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus in the United States" will appear in the December 2007 issue of the American Bee Journal. With the cooperation of the Journal, however, Chen and Evans are making their report public now. This is done in the interests of putting the new information before the eyes of scientists and legislators in a timely manner, as it may have implications for regulations governing the importing of bees, as well as for future directions of research. http://cba.stonehavenlife.com/ http://www.in.gov/dnr/entomolo/apiary/apiarynews.htm ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 14:08:16 -0500 Reply-To: lloyd@rossrounds.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lloyd Spear Subject: Vegetation in Orchards MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Before anyone gets too excited about the 'lack' of vegetation in Almond orchards, please keep in mind that there is also little to no extraneous vegetation in modern Apple orchards or vineyards. My understanding is that the vegetation 'steals' water and nutrients and the lack of such vegetation does no harm to the crops. The vegetation also provides a place for rodents to hide, and requires mowing or some other control to keep woody items out. Most farmers I know who run apple orchards and vineyards would be happy if they could eliminate vegetation with two spraying of Roundup a year. But they cannot, so sometime in the late summer they let the vegetation grow and in a few weeks one would never know that the earth was bare during the spring and most of the summer. For all I know orchards of peach, necetarine, plums, cherries, etc. are the same. They are not grown around here, so I am not familar with them. Brambles and strawberries are very subseptible to Roundup, and weed control is the biggest challenge and most expensive item in growing them. Lloyd -- Lloyd Spear Owner Ross Rounds, Inc. Manufacture of equipment for round comb honey sections, Sundance Pollen Traps, and producer of Sundance custom labels. Contact your dealer or www.RossRounds.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 18:46:41 -0500 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: CCD and media MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I warned about the long-term impact of the hype of "National Pollinator Week" last spring here on Bee-L, maybe the "Nature" program on PBS is a good example of this, as it certainly was at least 80% hype. >> ...about honeybees disappearing world wide. So, according to them, by 2035 >> we will have no more honeybees if the current trend continues. I have no >> idea what they based that on. > The quote is about pollinator decline in testimony given before a > congressional sub-committee for the Farm Bill on March 29, 2007 by May > Berenbaum who is president of the Xerces Society and professor at > University of Illinois. So, it was "The Secret Death Of Bees". Could they all be suffering from "Hepatitis bee"? May was clearly speaking through her hat, as her "model" was a primitive steady-state trend-line analysis, taking the estimated number of US hives, and subtracting every year some number of hives "lost" to CCD. First off, there is no accurate estimate of the number of "managed hives" even in the USA, let alone planet-wide. The witnesses in the same hearings said as much when they bemoaned the lack of accurate data on beekeeping. Second, if the number of managed hives go down, there is an immediate and massive financial incentive for survivors to be split, coddled with care, and generally used to maximize the personal financial gain of those lucky enough to avoid the fickle finger of financial failure inherent in CCD. (Beekeeping, under to bee veils, is pure classical economics, nothing more.) Third, she ignored imports as being a potential source of not only exotic invasive diseases and pests of hives, but also (only with proper port-of-entry tests and inspections), healthy replacement queens and packages, that while economically inadvisable, would at least be available to replace dead-outs. Unless she was predicting utter extinction of Apis mellifera, which would be utter nonsense. In summary, it was in May's best interest to paint as dark and gloomy a picture of the future of honey bees as she could, as her goal was clearly to justify expanded funding for "alternative pollinator research", when these "alternative pollinators" have only limited applications in real-world agriculture. As a direct result, the actual work on at least finding a cause of CCD still remains unfunded, months later, and there is a very dangerous mis-perception even among lawmakers that even if every honey bee on the planet dies tomorrow, that "native pollinators" are some sort of viable replacements for honey bees over the short term on all crops in all situations. Talk about over-selling! So, this was the unfounded claim of a political lobbyist, wrapped up in the white lab coat of science, and presented to an "Environmental Protection" Senate subcommittee, rather than a Senate Agriculture subcommittee. Thusly, a simple bill introduced in the House, requesting funding for CCD work only, was "expanded" over on the Senate side to also fund R&D on "native pollinators". The two bills don't match. They need to be negotiated into a "compromise version". No one cares to do this, as the Senate and House have other things to do, things that they rightly see as more pressing. Honey bees were merely mentioned to bolster the case for "native pollinator research", even though attempts to utilize "native pollinators" in agriculture (greenhouse bumblebees) have resulted in the extinction of two species of US bumblebees so far, going on three. http://www.xerces.org/Pollinator_Red_List/Bees/Bombus_Bombus.pdf Somehow, exploitation does not result in preservation. The native pollinator types don't seem to grock that. Or maybe they just don't care, as long as they get funding to study the extinctions. I covered all this before in my "Pollinator Protection Racket" rants: http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0706d&L=bee-l&T=0&I=-3& P=2876 http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0706E&L=BEE-L&P=R2&D=0& I=-3&T=0 I was roundly booed at the time for daring to critique the self-interest of people who appear to only want to hype and leverage our problem for their own agenda, so, lets see... HR1709 is still stuck in committee. S.1694 (the Senate companion bill to HR1709) is, um... ALSO still stuck in committee. Neither measure has even made it "to the floor" yet. Not even a committee vote yet. Looks like the "sense of urgency" I warned would be lost in the process was lost. No one has a dime as a result of all the shenanigans. Congress isn't stupid. But the hype level went way up with unfounded drama-queen statements like the one quoted. And as the hype level went up, the "personal payoff" in prestige associated with "fixing" CCD went up. Which made it far too easy for many people to confuse their personal "competitive" agenda with the stated goal of cooperating as a team to solve a problem. And here we are, forced to admit that we allowed a single team to hog all the CCD samples just so that they could publish a high-profile paper in "Science" magazine, before the other team that made the actual discovery and announced their admittedly preliminary results back in April to the entire "Working Group" could publish anywhere. Cutting off the supply of samples to the April team assured the September team that the April team would be unable to verify their preliminary findings, and not have enough samples to produce "publishable" results. But to find only a month later that slightly older samples likely stored in the SAME DARN FREEZER at USDA Beltsville completely refuted every claim they made, and every conclusion they drew in the September paper that we waited on all summer is just the ultimate irony. Instant Karma. And now, we have to wait for everyone to go through a "proposal process" and hope to be awarded some fraction of $4 million allocated by USDA for CCD work. Watch the same (September) team defy the laws of Karma, get the lion's share of the money, and use it merely to attempt to defend the speculation they should have refrained from in the first place, rather than admit that we are no further along than we were in April 2007. You may note some irritation in my tone. Recall that, back in April, all these people said that they would work as a team. http://www.beetography.com/gallery/2758754#146733652 So, while there is no "I" in "team", we must admit that there was "me" in team for some, at least until it turned around and bit them. (Proving that there is "meat" in "team"? Where's that Vince Lombardi tape of his "Winning is a Habit" speech when I need it?) New Rule - the next paper to be published that does not include the names of EVERYONE in the above photo (except me, 'cause I don't give a darn) as an author becomes grounds for that person or team to be kicked off the project, denied further funding, and to be shunned by the beekeeping community. If they can't play nice with others, we, the anxious customers for their output, will simply have force them to do so. So remember, samples of bees and comb go only to people who can play nice with others, and only with their >>>written<<< assurance that they will share with everyone else, samples, data, conclusions, and credit. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 15:19:23 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "carimona@GMAIL.COM" Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Sat, 3 Nov 2007 18:36:20 -0700, Mike Stoops wrote: Just be thankful that the bees are more resilliant than the beekeepers that keep them. > Are they? Is that why people are claiming the sky is falling and over time we have less and less colonies? Pettis, Mussen and Spivak all seem to be saying that we've reached a breaking point for honeybees with a combination of stresses poor nutrition from monocrop pollination reduced genetic pool contaminated combs mite treatments frequent long movements increased exposure to pesticides loss of habitat etc. my whole point of this thread is that the negative effects of migratory beekeeping are spilling over to the stationary folks. what baffles me is the obvious disregard for honeybee health with the unregulated movement of colonies regardless of what issues like CCD are present. basic animal health principles like quarantine in time of disease are being ignored for the sake of a relatively small number of beekeepers who move their hives for pollination. the vast majority of beekeepers are being negatively affected by this sorry state of affairs. this new breed of long distance bee movers is portrayed as heroes and victims of some kind by the industry. the reality is that migratory beekeeping is now at THE CORE of the PROBLEM by being a major source of stress, potential incubator of viruses and rapid dissemination of disease and pests. migratory beekeeping spreads problems they created themselves to potentially healthy stationary colonies. unless we regulate the movement of bees on a national level in this country nothing is going to change. in the meanwhile the problems grow and the industry acts like more research money is the answer and that the Ag chem industry is their big problem.,..........we're looking at massive denial and your post Mike on resilient bees appears to me to be a form of that denial. think about it........ almost every bee related problem we've had since the 1980's can be traced back to the movement of bees. that is the world we live in but we have not adopted regulations to reflect that change. i'm not saying we stop migratory beekeeping, I'm saying we should recongnize the risks and try to mitigate them. something needs to CHANGE IMO every package or hive moved interstate should be charged a surchage - the money should be used to manage a national honeybee program which includes inspections and mitigation plans to slow the spread of unwanted disease and pests. hives that are moved should be listed in a database with GPS locations. bee movers should be prohibited to move hives near stationary hives. the priority of the program should be to insure the health of bees owned by the majority of beekeepers NOT giving the upper hand to the few beekeepers or bee movers who have the most hives. in this kind of a system we would at least have some idea of where bees have been in time of a supposed crisis like CCD. where do we want our priorities to lie? the short term for pollination or the long term to insure a healthy population of honeybees? i'm not implying I have all the answers - i'm trying to get people to think about what we are doing in this country and where do we want to bee......in the future. cause the present situation is not pretty. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 20:13:25 -0500 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: IAPV in USA since at least 2002 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Without even the slightest apology to John Cougar Mellencamp, we present the complete lyrics to what is sure to become the new anthem of several beekeeping organizations: "I.A.P.V. in the U.S.A." ===================================== They come from the cities and they come from the smaller towns. Beat up trucks hittin' smokers with hive tools - wack, boom, bam. {Refrain} I.A.P.V. in the U.S.A. I.A.P.V. in the U.S.A. I.A.P.V. in the U.S.A., yeah, yeah Beekeepin' in the U.S.A. Well, they said goodbye to their families, said goodbye to their friends. With their pipedreams in their heads and very little money in their hands. Some are black and some are white, none too proud to sleep on your floor tonight. With the blind faith in Almonds, you know that they just might - Bee-keepin' in the U.S.A. {Refrain} Pesticides from everywhere and trade from the foreign towns - Filled our hives full of pests, and turned our world upside down. There was Acarapis woodi, Varroa destructor, Aethina tumida (they were rockin'!) Neonicitinoids, Carbamates, Organophosphates (they were rockin'!) Synthetic pyrethroids, let's dont forget Chloronicotines! Beekeepin' in the U.S.A. - hey! I.A.P.V. in the U.S.A. (Repeat to fade, or until thrown out of the bar) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 18:34:05 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Carimona, I have been on the road and just returned and playing catch-up! To try and refute all your points takes needless time so will simply make a few comments. First 60 minutes and the nature program led watchers to believe CCD is happening right now! It is not! Period! We do have some SSDD but no CCD from what I have been able to gather from members of the North & South Dakota beekeepers meetings ( personal conversation with those in attendance) and reported in my December ABJ article. I attended the fall meeting of the Kansas Honey Producers and asked if any of the members were seeing CCD symptoms. The answer was no! The same question was asked at the fall meeting of the Missouri State beekeepers assn. which I just returned from. Not one person except for Dr. Caron which said he lost 11 of his 12 hives last winter to CCD. (SSDD many of us thought). Hardly enough for the industry to get excited. My article on my trip to the Dakotas looking for CCD is in the December American Bee Journal. Best bees in years were the comments from those with Australian bees and those running U.S. bees. Look at the pictures. No CCD here! The VAST majority of hives in the U.S. are owned by the large migratory beekeepers. By far! The best hives I look at are always in these operations! Without exception. The idea these guys are a dumb --- bunch of box movers which do not know what they are doing is very stupid! IAPV clearly did not enter the U.S. first with the Australian import as I got some of those bees and they did fine! Still around. Even did not need treatment for varroa the first year! I find it interesting that an author for BC wrote all about the Australian bees without ever seeing his first import bee. He did get hold of a thrown away shipment paper. He has never taken the time to read my articles about the many ways I consider the Australian import service superior to the U.S.. For starters they have got Denis Anderson! He knocked the USDA-ARS on their heels with the discovery of varroa destructor. The USDA now says n. ceranae has been in the U.S. over ten years. Wow! They now say IAPV dates back to at *least* 2002. Wow! They were called to California in 2005/2006 and said they had no idea what killed those bees but needed to know what a normal hive looked like! Wow! Is it any wonder that some large migratory beekeepers get their information from sources outside the U.S. such as the U.K., Germany, New Zealand, Australia and others? I am through arguing with others on BEE-L. Post your opinions and we will let the list decide who is right! I say to the CCD group. Quit looking through deadouts and showing slides of black trachea and blown out tubules and go to the beekeepers which have got the best bees in years and find out why they are not seeing CCD problems! Many on the list know I am not into speaking at bee meetings. Have turned down EAS, HAS and many others. Bee groups are saying they are sick and tired of getting researchers showing slides of black trachea and blown out tubules and want speakers which will share the way they are successfully keeping bees! Sadly most beekeepers running thousands of hives have little time for speaking at meetings or even reading bee magazines! I interview a few of those in my December article. One of those commercial migratory beekeepers is running around 6000 hives and all are Australian. Listen to what he has to say and see the pictures he sent for publication. He fights varroa all the time but has seen no CCD. Sincerely, Bob Harrison -- 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, 4 Nov 2007 17:28:56 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: Misquote & Out of Context In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Peter Borst wrote: Mike Stoops wrote: >how can anyone defend the willy nilly unregulated movement of bees when there is the risk of spreading the dreaded CCD? I did NOT write the above quote. I responded to the above quote. Peter must be related to a newspaper correspondant. Mike in LA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 22:12:48 -0500 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob said: > 60 minutes and the nature program led watchers > to believe CCD is happening right now! > It is not! Period! No need to wear out your exclamation point key. Samples are being sent in, they will be analyzed, and we shall see what we shall see. As I have pointed out before, there are multiple very valid reasons for beekeepers to deny that they have any problem at all if they have serious problems, so I would not expect your "public questions" approach to yield anything but negative responses. > I find it interesting that an author for BC wrote all about > the Australian bees without ever seeing his first import bee. > He did get hold of a thrown away shipment paper. Even if this were true, which it clearly isn't, please explain why I had to be the first to notice the inherent problem with the export certification versus what was required of exporters in the APHIS "Import Rules". > He has never taken the time to read my articles Does anyone? > about the many ways I consider the Australian import service > superior to the U.S.. All are entitled to their own opinions, but facts tend to back up some views, rather than others. I've documented very specific and narrow critiques of BOTH the Aussie AQUIS and the US APHIS programs with specific facts, and I have not presumed to make value judgments about their relative merits. In brief, APHIS has yet to do anything at all about inspecting live bee imports, and AQUIS has yet to be anything more than a paper tiger. I can't say which is "worse". It is irrelevant. > For starters they have got Denis Anderson! He knocked the > USDA-ARS on their heels with the discovery of varroa destructor. Dennis is a good man. So is Jeff Pettis. Funny how they can be in direct disagreement over an issue without engaging in personal attacks. I don't see any reason why I should be subjected to them either. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 22:28:38 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?UTF-8?Q?Peter_Borst?= Subject: Re: Misquote & Out of Context Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Mike Stoops: >>how can anyone defend the willy nilly unregulated movement of bees when there is the risk of spreading the dreaded CCD? > > >I did NOT write the above quote. I responded to the above quote. Peter must be related to a newspaper correspondant. I am sorry if I misunderstood who was quoting whom. Upon re-reading the message you sent (the one I replied to) I saw that you did not place the statement in quotes of any kind, so I must have assumed the words were yours. It doesn't matter though. The statement is foolish, no matter who said it. So much the better if it wasn't you. pb ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 22:57:31 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Darrell Subject: Re: Candy boards In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 4-Nov-07, at 4:01 AM, Chris Slade wrote: > > > I think that this may be true only in America where your pints are > smaller. Hi Chris and all In Canada, white sugar is sold in 2kg bags. If you pour the contents of the bag into a 2 litre measuring cup, it fills it exactly. Because 2 litres of water weighs 2 kg, a 2:1 syrup recipe would consist of 2 2kg bags of white sugar mixed into 2 litres of water yielding 6 kg of syrup. My point is that water and white sugar are of equal mass regardless of the measuring system used. Bob Darrell Caledon Ontario Canada 80W44N ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 03:28:04 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruth Rosin Subject: Frisch (1937). The language of bees. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline We know that shortly after WWII v. Frisch published his amazing "discovery" of the of the honeybee "dance language", whereby honeybee-recruits "instinctively" obtain and use spatial information, contained in foragers'-dances, about the location of their foragers' food-site, to help them find the source on their own. The "discovery" soon became a revered ruling paradigm, which earned v. Frisch world wide fame, including numerous prestigious prizes, and finally also the Nobel Prize, in 1973; a full 6 years after Wenner & his team had already discovered, and published in 1967, that honeybee-recruits use only odor, and were "rewarded" by being quickly turned into pariahs. The free weekly online Science News e-Letter has an interesting practice. In its Timeline it always includes items published in Science News during the same week 70 years ago. The Timeline for Oct. 5, 2007, thus reproduces verbatim the report on v. Frisch's honeybee-research, as published in Science News of Oct. 2, 1937. The report is a bit fuzzy, and provides no reference. (They apparently did not bother about such matters then.) But examining the article by Frisch (1937). The language of bees. *Science Progress*, 32(125): 29-37, makes it quite clear that the report could only have been based on that article, that was in turn based on a guest lecture v. Frisch had delivered at the University College of London, in 1937, on all his honeybee-research. The article by Frisch (1937) clearly shows that v. Frisch's pre-WWII studies on honeybee-recruitment, had already led him to conclude that honeybee recruits use only odoir; that the conclusion was fully justified; and that his results already grossly contradicted his post-WWII "dance language". After the "discovery" of his post WWII "dance language", he suppressed his pre-WWII results, which discredited the "discovery". No wonder, in spite of 60 years of almost endless attempts, by scientists all over the world, no one has yet been able to experimentally confirm the existence of v. Frisch's post-WWII "dance language". Wenner & his team, did not realize that they were being punished for having unknowingly rediscovered and published in 1967, what v. Frisch had already discovered and published much earlier, (with a very extensive German summary actually published in 1923), until I accidentally stumbled on a reprint of Frisch (1937) in *The 1939 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution*, and published the find in vol. 84 of *J. theoret. Biol*. of 1980. The reprint was later cited in the 1990 book by Wenner & wells; Anatomy of a Controversy: The Question of a "Language" Among bees. Another reprint of Frisch (1937) was then published, (with an introduction by Wenner), in *Bee World* in 1993. The honeybee "dance language" controversy actually concerns the very foundations of the whole field of behavioral science, i.e. the problem of the existence of "instincts". aunch "dance language" supporters, nonetheless, still persist in ignoring the article by Frisch (1937). It is, therefore, pleasing to find that the "ghost of that publication has now arisen to still haunt and taunt" them. -- Sincerely, Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear") ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 07:20:01 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: The Almonds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Chris writes: > Wow! That's horrifying and completely unsustainable. Are they trying to create a desert? California IS mostly a desert, supplied by a monumental irrigation system, which pipes water from as far away as the Rocky Mountains. (see: www.biogeographer.com/F53.gif ) The fact that almonds do well in the Big Valley should be a tip off. The climate is much like central Spain, which is second only to California in almond production; followed by Syria, Italy, Iran, and Morocco. The need for honey bees to pollinate California almonds is currently almost 1.5 million colonies. According to the Almond Board of California, the number may top 2 million in four years. It is estimated that beekeepers in California have 500,000 beehive colonies to pollinate California's almond acreage. This means more than half of the necessary bees must be brought from out of state. California's Central Valley has a hot Mediterranean climate. It is hot and dry during the summer and cool and damp in winter. Summer temperatures reach into the mid to upper 90s°F (30s°C), and occasional heat waves might bring temperatures well over 100°F (38°C), with some locations topping out at around 115°F (46°C). Winter and spring comprise the rainy season. The northern half of the Central Valley (the Sacramento Valley) has more precipitation than the dryer southern San Joaquin Valley. Annual precipitation totals 15 inches in parts of the Sacramento Valley and to less than 8 inches over most of the San Joaquin Valley. * * * >From the LA Times, July 13, 2007: > IF YOU LIKE IT hot and dry and live in Southern California, you could be in luck. Our combination of an arid winter, scorching summer and host of wildfires may not be a short-term aberration. Consider the possibility of decades of dry, hot weather, stretching from Southern California to the headwaters of the Sacramento and Colorado river systems -- the lifelines that allow us to flourish in our arid to semi-arid landscape. That is the nature of a "perfect drought," and new research regarding a past episode of climate warming tells us we could be on the brink of a new one. > Historical climate records show that such prolonged droughts can and do occur. The last one began in the late 1980s and ended in the early 1990s. California dried at the same time that the flow of the Colorado River declined by almost 40%. Oceanic and atmospheric measurements tell us that this blast of hyper-aridity was associated with depressed temperatures in the eastern Pacific, sort of a persistent La Niña condition. In 1992, the rain and snow returned. However, during 1990 and 1991 alone, the drought cost California an estimated $2 billion in agriculture losses, increased energy costs and damage to the environment. ( Glen M. MacDonald, professor of geography and ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA ) -- Peter ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 06:53:39 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Jim & All, The last point I will make is one I made at the start of the import. If any further inspection needs done then Aphis has always had the right to send an inspector to Australia to see that our interests are protected. Without a doubt the best way. The first Browns Bees pallet to arrive cost Bell Hill Honey forty plus thousand dollars. Those bees belonged to Bell Hill Honey upon arrival. At times it takes needless hours to get the package bees released from the airport/customs. You need a broker and several beekeepers have said they had to use cash to get the process done. Package bees are fragile and need installed on arrival. In Sidney before shipment they are kept in a airport cooled area. Cooled in the airplane cargo hold enroute. When at the airport on arrival they are fragile. Sit on a hot dock area. They belong at that point to the beekeeper! There is no insurance! There is no insurance. Did you understand that the pallet/pallets belong to the beekeeper and not covered for loss by the airline or shipper. However Terry brown has made good on overheated loads when the problem has happened but is not required to in the agreement. Aphis understands the issue but has not felt the need to send a USDA inspector to Australia. *If* Jim feels the process is not to his liking then he needs to understand the issue and push for APHIS to send an inspector to Australia during the package season. End of problem! I personally will lead the fight to stop end arrival airport inspections and holdups. APHIS has always had the right to inspect after the package bees leave the airport and are in the field. However most beekeepers work all night installing the packages to prevent drift and get the bees into hives (see pictures in several of my articles ). I think Jim if the moderators felt I was attacking your character the post would have not went through! I would not attack your character but maybe your ego! I do feel you can't write about a subject you are not involved with which is the reason you can always tell the bee article written by freelance authors which only research on the net or prior writings. Bee books have been written by authors which have never seen the inside of a bee hive such as the "garden way" series. Australia & New Zealand have got the best (my opinion) bee inspection people and the most pest free populations of bees. News flash! We have been trying for a long time to export queens through the Australian queen import system but U.S. queens are banned for entry into Australia because we have no way of certifying U.S. genetics are AHB free. We have tried to use the USDA-ARS systems to prove those queens are AHB free but Australia has strict guidelines. Will not accept the USDA-ARS method of certify those queens are AHB free I believe the gene pool in the U.S. needs new genetics to help build our bees immune systems. We have already seen improvement in our bees with the Australian genetics of Browns Bees. We have been able to import genetics into the U.S. which originated in the U.K. (buckfast), varroa tolerant (Italy) and the best of the Australian line. Already here so even if the import was stopped we have got those genetics and you will see in the pictures in my December ABJ the result of those genetics. Hybrid vigor has been easy. My breeder queens this spring will be Australian. Poor brood viability is common from many U.S. queen producers bees ( certainly not all!). " Beekeeping for the 21st. Century" was an ABJ article of mine from years ago and I dreamed of new genetics back then. Now we have got the genetics and are seeing the result! Sincerely, Bob Harrison -- 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: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 08:30:25 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?UTF-8?Q?Peter_Borst?= Subject: Re: Frisch (1937). The language of bees. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit A lot of new information has been accumulated since 1937. See: "Behavioral and neural analysis of associative learning in the honeybee: a taste from the magic well" by Martin Giurfa. In "Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology". Volume 193, Number 8 / August, 2007. > Von Frisch liked to describe honeybees as a "magic well" for discoveries in biology because the more is drawn from it, the more is to draw. He expressed his view on the plasticity underlying honeybee behavior in the following way: "The brain of a bee is the size of a grass seed and is not made for thinking. The actions of bees are mainly governed by instinct". > Certainly, von Frisch expressed this view in relation to communication behavior but it is nevertheless striking that a tendency to dismiss the cognitive capacities of bees -- and of insects in general -- has been perpetuated throughout different centuries. > Despite this prolonged skepticism, in the last three decades honeybees have become a useful model for the study of learning and memory. More recently they have also acquired a new reputation in the framework of studies addressing higher-order cognitive capacities that for long time seemed to be the exclusive patrimony of some vertebrates such as monkeys, pigeons or dolphins, which are reputed for their good learning abilities. > As learning in honeybees can be compared to that of vertebrates in many senses, the honeybee may serve as a model system for understanding intermediate levels of complexity of cognitive functions and their neural substrates. The mini-brain of the honeybee, with its 960,000 neurons, has not yet revealed all its potential. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 11:27:16 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruth Rosin Subject: Re: Frisch (1937). The language of bees. In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Sorry, but as a disciple of Shneirla's School in Behavior, (which is based on a synthesis of (a)Morgan's Canon, and all the ideas that led Lloyd C. Morgan to formulate his well known canon, and (b) the conclusion that all individual traits, including behavioral traits, of all living organism, develop in the individual organism, under inseparable effects of both genes & environment), I consider all the amazing claims you site, pure nonsense. Learning in insects can not serve as a model for learning in higher organisms. Schneirla had already discovered very long ago, in a comparative study on maze learning in ants, and rats, that the process is not only quantitatively different (in terms of the number of repetitions required to mask the task), but also qualitatively different in the two species. It is qualitatively on a far lower psychic level in ants, than it is in rats. And it goes without saying, that it is on a higher psychic level in humans, than it is in rats. But the experts you cite completely ignore that. Humans are the only living organisms capable of the qualitatively complexity of human cognition. Where is the honeybee, pigeon, dolphin, or chimp that are capable of any cognition that involves human art, science, etc.? But the experts you cite insist on ignoring that. Any one who believes he can know what goes on in the mind of animals of another species, especially a species that is very distant from us in terms of the psychic level of the group to which it belongs (in terms of Morgan's ladder, where different groups are organized on a ladder of distinct rungs, according to the highest psychic level members of each group can achieve), is completely misguided, and only deluding himself. -- Sincerely, Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear") ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 12:07:01 -0500 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob continued to puzzle us, showing great concern for bee exporter/importer profits, but none at all for US biosecurity: > Aphis has always had the right to send an inspector > to Australia to see that our interests are protected. > Without a doubt the best way. Is this a joke? What is needed is lab tests, not someone sent to the other side of the planet with only whatever he can pack in a suitcase and get through Homeland Security Theater. Anyone traveling with any lab gear is nearly certain to get at least a free colonoscopy, and might end up spending some time at a subtropical island beachfront paradise, like the no-star resort at Guantanamo Bay. > At times it takes needless hours to get the package bees > released from the airport/customs. > When at the airport on arrival they are fragile. > Sit on a hot dock area. This clearly illustrates the need to start treating the imports like what they are, live animals, rather than how they are currently handled (apparently, like plants). > They belong at that point to the beekeeper! Better contracts are clearly needed. Yes, the exporter has no control over APHIS and customs, but somehow, the same sort of liability issue does not arise when UPS or DHL are the carriers of things I order from overseas. If my package is not delivered in good condition to my door, I am not liable for a cent. But getting bees out from under the "plants" division of the "Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service" is an important prerequisite to getting bees some of the respect and attention they deserve. > understand the issue and push for APHIS to send > an inspector to Australia during the package season. Not unless several lab techs and a shipping container full of gear can go with him. But that's silly. AUSTRALIA is supposed to be doing tests of this sort using their own inspectors, techs, and lab gear. They aren't, and they apparently never have. That's negligent in the extreme. Regardless of what the Aussies do, we should do our own sampling and tests on the actual bees shipped with our own inspectors, lab techs and gear on this end, as we want to be able to operate INDEPENDENTLY of vague concepts like "trust". We need mutually-assured checks and balances. Think of how easy it would have been to settle any questions about IAPV and Aussie bees if both exporting and importing nations had their own sample libraries. It would have been far, far cheaper than the work that had to be done to go scramble and try to play catch up. Far quicker, too. And best of all, zero flack from gadflies who don't see that sampling would have been in everyone's best interest. Samples can be taken when the bees arrive, and this "special task" will get the pallets of bees the sort of priority attention that will result in quicker release. > I personally will lead the fight to stop end arrival > airport inspections and holdups. The good news is that this is a scientific issue, not a "fight", and that all concerned are truly interested in finding some facts upon which decisions can be based. So "fighting" won't change facts, but if you need the exercise, it might be excellent cardio, moreso if you do a lot of shouting. But what's your stake in any of this, Bob? Is it that you think you will need constant replacement packages so early due to ongoing losses? Have you checked with the exporters to verify that they feel that you are helping, rather than hurting their interests? Or are you merely engaging in self-aggrandizement by engaging in "debate" about a "hot" issue? > APHIS has always had the right to inspect after the package > bees leave the airport and are in the field. Uh, no they haven't, and no they don't. :) There is no federal regulation to allow an APHIS employee to enter a beeyard, open a hive, or take as much as a single bee. It is also not possible for a State-level apiarist or bee inspector to regulate these imported bees, as the imports are exempt from the usual interstate bee movement regulations and controls. So, while the beekeeper might PERMIT samples to be taken once the bees are hived, he/she is under no obligation to do so, and therefore, APHIS does not have "the right". I explained the problem in detail back in 2005, in the very appropriately-titled article "Where Are We Going, And What's With This Handbasket?" http://bee-quick.com/reprints/regs.pdf > We have tried to use the USDA-ARS systems to prove > those queens are AHB free but Australia has strict > guidelines. Will not accept the USDA-ARS method of > certify those queens are AHB free. Funny how when the shoe is on the other foot, Australia seems to be able to reject the detailed lab work of the USDA-ARS itself as "unacceptable" to assure them that bees THEY might import are safe, yet we are expected to accept Australia's mere "visual inspection" by some random bee inspector as our ONLY assurance that their bees are disease and pest-free. I don't really care about sending genetics to Australia. Why should the US spend even a dime or lift a finger to provide any other country with our genetics if they want to make it difficult for us? Quick, name a bee breed since "Buckfast" worth getting that was developed outside the US. Looks like we've got R&D that they want, and that's a bargaining chip. > the gene pool in the U.S. needs new genetics to help > build our bees immune systems. Again, misleading and/or misinformed. Diversity is good, but diversity simply means that some bees might survive while others die from any specific threat. No "building" of immune systems results. Let's not confuse bee biology with those ads for herbal supplements, shall we? > originated in the U.K. (Buckfast), Yeah, I mentioned Buckfast. Too bad we have to go to Canada if we want Buckfast bees that are "true to breed", as all he US producers have allowed the breed to drift. > varroa tolerant (Italy) And how are those working out for you? :) I haven't heard the praises of this effort being sung from the rooftops, and if the effort was even a partial success, choirs of beekeepers would have spontaneously formed at bee meetings across the land. > and the best of the Australian line. Which is, what, exactly? They certainly are not "resistant" to anything, because Australia claims to be free of everything. They certainly can't include any of the new-fangled genetics you mentioned above, due to their "strict import controls", just like the ones we used to have before they demanded we abandon them for the sole personal profit of a handful of Australian beekeepers and their apparently ethically-challenged collaborators here in the US. So, the only thing that these bees have going for them is that they are "available early", and carry the false promise of being something that can be built up in time for almonds. That trick didn't work, to the chagrin of a few people. Growers don't pay full rates for packages dumped into boxes 90 days before Almond bloom, do they? If Aussie bees were truly superior bees, then the Canadians would not have been so desperate about re-opening their border to US imports. They would have been happy with what they could buy. Instead, some beekeepers engaged in smuggling to get US bees, and a few got caught while the border was closed to US packages and queens. When people are willing to break the law, risking fines and jail time to buy a product, this is the sort of endorsement that overshadows any claims you might make. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 14:27:09 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Chris Slade Subject: Re: The Almonds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 05/11/2007 13:04:18 GMT Standard Time, peterlborst@GMAIL.COM writes: The climate is much like central Spain, which is second only to California in almond production; followed by Syria, Italy, Iran, and Morocco. Peter, You confirm my impression that much of the US is uninhabitable. How do the other countries you list manage their almond pollination? Chris ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 15:39:04 -0500 Reply-To: james.fischer@gmail.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Mark Winston answers the question "Is the Bee Virus Bunk?" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Winston seems to be slightly, ummm, skeptical. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071103.BEES03/EmailTP Story/ ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 12:47:55 -0800 Reply-To: Kathy Kellison Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Kathy Kellison Subject: almonds Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Chris, I don't think we need to write off all the almond country in California as uninhabitable... A recent study released compared wild colonies in the deserts of Africa with France and Germany. The deserts of Africa were found to support 4 to 6 colonies of apis mellifera per square mile. They gathered their data from DCA's (drone collection areas) to verify distinction of colonies. We need to work for incentives to growers to provide pollinator forage as is done in Europe. Best, Kathy ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 15:53:29 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Chris Slade Subject: Re: Candy boards MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 05/11/2007 11:23:37 GMT Standard Time, bobbee@INTERLOG.COM writes: My point is that water and white sugar are of equal mass regardless of the measuring system used. Bob, while equal mass equals equal mass in that a pound of water weighs the same as a pound of sugar they are not of equal relative density as sugar sinks to the bottom of water. Therefore a given volume of sugar should weigh more than the same volume of water. However I guess that all the air gaps between the sugar grains even out the difference making your method good enough for rough and ready use. Chris ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 13:58:57 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Carrington Subject: where do I send the invoice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Come on, gentlemen. You continuing to argue about things that we are = allowing to happen. Yes, the United States is allowing the importation = of bees from foreign countries that some of you don't think is up to = standards.=20 Well, have it fixed. Don't bash other countries for doing what we're = allowing them to do. Change our own system. The other countries are = doing nothing illegal. If we don't want their issues in our bee = community, it's incumbent on us to change our system...not theirs. =20 Ya' think you have control over their system? Don't be foolish. If you = don't like it, I say again, change OUR system to filter out what we will = import and what we don't. =20 Why do you think we would have any better success at running their = countries than we do our own? Mike Carrington ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 14:50:11 -0500 Reply-To: "Keith B. Forsyth" Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Keith B. Forsyth" Organization: Keith B. Forsyth Subject: Fw: Ontario Beekeepers Meet Comments: To: EAS BOD MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable My apologies for the wrong dates. The meeting is November 16, 17. Again my apologies. Thanks to Aaron for bringing this to my attention. ----- Original Message -----=20 From: Keith B. Forsyth=20 To: EAS BOD ; Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology=20 Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 1:04 PM Subject: Ontario Beekeepers Meet The annual meeting of the Ontario Beekeepers' Association will be held = October 16-17, 2007. The convention will be held in Cornwall Ontario. The scheduled keynote speaker is Ingemar Fries, PhD - Professor, = Department of Entomology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Further details www.ontariobee.com All are welcome! ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 21:54:28 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Steve_Noble?= Subject: Re: Frisch (1937). The language of bees. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit “In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes, if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development.” C. Loyd Morgan Right, so it becomes a matter of interpretation of what you are observing, doesn’t it? There are always lots of ways to explain things. Since all behavior exists on a continuum from simple to complex, any point along that continuum can be instructive of any other point. In other words bee behavior, which is not exactly simple, can provide some measure of insight into behavior in higher forms and visa versa, especially when examined at the physiological level. As a whole the psychology of Human behavior may be orders of magnitude more complex than that of the next “highest” animal, but there are mechanisms in operation at the lowest level that are just as complex, or just as simple if you will, as similar mechanisms in humans. These mechanisms (please don’t ask me to name any ;>)) are building blocks of more complex behavior mechanisms and the more complex they are the more potential they hold for analogies to aspects of human behavior. There is an assumption in some circles that the behavioral characteristics of humans, their psychological and intellectual capacities; those things which distinguish them from all other organisms, somehow make them superior to all other forms in some God-like manner. I read the news and I am not convinced. We are all made of the same stuff. So lets not kid ourselves by assuming in a dogmatic fashion, what “disciples” of Morgan would have us assume, that there is no human analogous psychological phenomenon going on in the rest of the animal world. That would be an interpretation which, if taken as undisputable fact, could become dogma in the wrong hands, and might lead to something like hubris in science. Steve Noble (Fuzzy peach) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 07:02:12 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: One of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentieth century MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit * Not only is the honey bee dance language accepted by the majority of biologists, its discovery is regarded as a major milestone of scientific knowledge. > Von Frisch's realization that dances carry spatial information was surely one of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentieth century. The elucidation of the dance language opened our eyes to the sophistication and complexity of animal behavior and helped establish the study of behavior as a rigorous empirical science. Furthermore, experimental studies of dance language have provided a window to the subjective world of the honey bee. This window has provided an unusually clear view not only of what it is like to be a bee, but more generally of what it is like to be an insect. * It is an amazing fact that honey bees can indicate where they have been using a simple dance. But beyond that, they use this same dance to indicate *where they will go* > Migrating colonies of both A. dorsata and A. mellifera scutellata depart directly from the natal nest on a long flight in the migratory direction. The migratory dances begin a few days before colony movement, and by the time the colony takes off, dozens of bees perform dances. These dances signal the compass direction in which the colony ultimately departs, and hence resemble nest-site dances on reproductive or absconding swarms. They differ in interesting ways, however. > First, whereas dances on swarms contain accurate information about both the direction and the distance of the new nest site, the migratory dances are accurate only with respect to direction. Migratory dances are much more variable with respect to the distance signal than are dances to discrete resources. > Furthermore, the average duration of the waggling run is extremely long, corresponding to flight distances of many tens or hundreds of kilometers. Such distances are well beyond the flight distances that bees could be expected to travel from the nest. > Finally, observations in the early morning showed that migration dances begin before any bees leave the nest, suggesting that the bees do not base the signal on spatial information gathered on a trip just preceding the dance. These dances could be based on information gathered during flights on previous days, but this behavior still differs dramatically from that observed in dances to discrete resources. > In short, the migration dances reflect the emergence of a colony-wide consensus about the direction that the colony should travel, but they do not signal actual locations sampled by the dancers. Nothing is known about how migratory directions are chosen or how the consensus is reached. Source: Fred C. Dyer, in "The Biology of the Dance Language". Annu. Rev. Entomol. 2002. 47:917–49. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 05:06:46 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: C Hooper Subject: Free 'Bee-Friendly' Seeds Offered in CCD Public Service Announcement MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Free 'Bee-Friendly' Seeds Offered in CCD Public Service Announcement Burt's Bees Sets Out to Rescue Its Own Burt's Bees Partners with NAPPC to Raise Awareness of Colony Collapse Disorder http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/11/bee-friendly-seeds-offered-in-ccd.html The mysterious disappearance of bees, called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), is a growing threat to honey bees, the mainstay of pollination services in agriculture. Bee-friendly, natural personal care company Burt's Bees is addressing this environmental issue by developing a campaign with co-founder Burt Shavitz that will raise consumer awareness through PSA distribution, online marketing and consumer sampling efforts… ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 23:17:35 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > If my package is not delivered in good condition to my door, I am not liable for a cent. Not true with Australian package bees. Airlines are not willing to stand good for the loss. > AUSTRALIA is supposed to be doing tests of this sort using their own inspectors, techs, and lab gear. The hold up on the first import was because APHIS had not sent the information listing the things to check for. Australia has always checked for the things on the list. Always! >They aren't, and they apparently never have. That's negligent in the extreme. I don't know the source of your information (if any other than Jim's inmagination!) but as usual you have not got a clue about the way the system works! Could you provide the source of your information? Is the word apparently mean you *think* they never have? < as we want to be able to operate INDEPENDENTLY of vague concepts like "trust". We? Who is we? Jim Fischer beekeeper (and song writer) wants carry little weight. >We need mutually-assured checks and balances. Again the power of one lone beekeeper. >Samples can be taken when the bees arrive, and this "special task" will get the pallets of bees the sort of priority attention that will result in quicker release. The opinion of Jim again! I know better than you how the system works and waiting for an inspector at LAX is not acceptable. Bees get too hot. Aphis trusts the Australian system (even if lone beekeeper Jim Fischer does not). Aphis has never been at the airport when a shipment has arrived! So what's your stake in any of this, Bob? Clearly explained in my articles. I see the long term need for the genetics> Plus getting beekeepers the packages they need at a time when none others are available. We approached Hawaii about gearing up for packages but they declined. Australia was the last option and one we explained to queen and package producers in the U.S. before hand! > Is it that you think you will need constant replacement packages so early due to ongoing losses? My articles explain the reasons why some of us need the packages. Almond growers bought the first packages sent into the U.S. for Bell Hill Honey. >Have you checked with the exporters to verify that they feel that you are helping, rather than hurting their interests? I talk to Australia once a week.( actually about an hour ago!) Your phony baseless misinformed BC articles hurt their interests. My efforts to help you understand are met with other misinformed answers from you. >Or are you merely engaging in self-aggrandizement by engaging in "debate" about a "hot" issue? This is only a hot issue in your mind. I think you have to be making up your information as some of your information is so off the wall. Please give me your source for the information you used in the BC article pertaining to the Australian inspection service. Maybe the name of the Australian inspector you contacted. Have you ever contacted Australia or is the information and cartoon in BC simply slander? > APHIS has always had the right to inspect after the package > bees leave the airport and are in the field. Uh, no they haven't, and no they don't. :) Maybe there is no rule but the understanding with Aphis ( conversation with Wayne directly) has always been they could check bees later if they felt the need. Despite what you say there is nothing in Australia we have not got here. Australia (I spoke with tonight) spoke with Dave Hackenberg (also tonight) and Dave said the USDA_ ARS has traced IAPV even farther back than what is being published in the December ABJ. Denis Anderson is a virologist. In fact in my opinion and many others the worlds leading expert on bee virus. Doubt he would have missed IAPV! >There is no federal regulation to allow an APHIS employee to enter a beeyard, open a hive, or take as much as a single bee. APHIS has the word of the importers that they will get access to the package bees if they feel the need. I know first hand as I was involved from the start. APHIS knows holding a shipment at an airport is problematic. Especially when the 10 things listed on the Australian inspection were already in the U.S. and would not stop the import shipment even if found which is as Paul Harvey would say" The rest of the story". >It is also not possible for a State-level apiarist or bee inspector to regulate these imported bees, as the imports are exempt from the usual interstate bee movement regulations and controls. Hey I move bees into and out of California. Others might believe you but I don't. California inspectors can inspect any hives they want with or without the owners permission. Once the bees are hived ( like I said earlier) they are under the California inspection service jurisdiction. They are no longer in transit. And yes Australian package bees have been looked at by the USDA-ARS and California before. >Funny how when the shoe is on the other foot, Australia seems to be able to reject the detailed lab work of the USDA-ARS itself as "unacceptable" Detailed lab work? Having did and article on the USDA-ARS AHB process and actually did the computer process myself I see the process could have serious errors. Denis Anderson made the decision to stop our export until the U.S. can come up with a better process to assure AHB genetics do not enter Australia. I don't agree with the ban but repect Denis Andersons opinion. AHB genetics are widespread in the U.S.. Lack of USDA controls is one of the reasons. Both queens and packages have been for years sent from areas of AHB. Surely you don't deny this? > yet we are expected to accept Australia's mere "visual inspection" by some random bee inspector as our ONLY assurance that their bees are disease and pest-free. I think Peter D. explained that more than a visual inspection is done. On the other hand no inspection is done of packages in the U.S.. No lab testing is done for permits to ship bees and queens. ONLY a once a year permit issued! >I don't really care about sending genetics to Australia. I don't know how much plainer I can spell it out for you! The large U.S. beekeepers wanting the import could care less if you want the genetics into Australia or back into the U.S.. Most those guys don't read bee magazines and don't know who Jim Fischer is. By importing into Australia through the tight queen program where the queen/ workers and complete hive are destroyed after grafting Australian queen breeders get the genetics we need in the U.S.. Then those genetics were sent into the U.S. to Bob Harrison & Dann Purvis among others for incorporation into U.S. queen lines. I have been involved with over 500 queens myself. Queens with the best genetics the world has to offer. Already here Jim! >Why should the US spend even a dime or lift a finger to provide any other country with our genetics if they want to make it difficult for us? The only U.S. genetics Australia wanted was queens from Dann Purvis. His program involved twice as many queens as Sue Cobey or Marla Spivak. I spent a couple days with Dann this week as he was a speaker at the Missouri State beekeepers meeting. Dann showed me his pictures of Australia and the new insemination equipment he installed for Terry Brown. Dann worked for weeks setting up a state of the art II system for the queens I hope to get in the future. other questions Jim would not have to ask had he read my Australian series of articles! > Quick, name a bee breed since "Buckfast" worth getting that was developed outside the US. I have been very impressed with the Buckfast bee/ The Italian varroa tolerant stock and the hybrid vigor created by using Italian purebred queens and crossing with my U.S. stock. All came in with the import. I said: > the gene pool in the U.S. needs new genetics to help > build our bees immune systems. Jim said: >Again, misleading and/or misinformed. Give me a break! Now Jim is an expert queen breeder! You crack me up Jim! >No "building" of immune systems results. Look at the pictures of those bees in my December article. No CCD here! Strong immune systems despite being trucked all over the U.S. >Canada if we want Buckfast bees that are "true to breed", as all he US producers have allowed the breed to drift. I agree and that is why I for one bypassed US producers. I said: > varroa tolerant (Italy) Jim asked: >And how are those working out for you? :) I am using for breeders this spring. Enough said. >I haven't heard the praises of this effort being sung from the rooftops, and if the effort was even a partial success, choirs of beekeepers would have spontaneously formed at bee meetings across the land. You have flushed me out in the open with your lack of import knowledge so I had to enlighten you. Send $500 and I will send a breeder queen ( Sue Cobey gets $500 for a breeder) next spring and only available to U.S. beekeepers . Email me for a place in line and let me know the genetics I talked of you want. Queen will be II. BEE-L flashing blue light special. Not available except from myself and my partner. Will ship in spring! > and the best of the Australian line. Jim asks: >Which is, what, exactly? The line which when crossed with most U.S. lines creates hybrid vigor! >They certainly are not "resistant" to anything, because Australia claims to be free of everything. You crack me up Jim with your lack of beekeeping knowledge! >They certainly can't include any of the new-fangled genetics you mentioned above, due to their "strict import controls", I believe you never have read my articles! See above! I explained our plans for getting import queens from other areas many times in my articles. I hope this post ends this issue and the list can see clearly Jim has not a clue about the Australian import or the bees! > Growers don't pay full rates for packages dumped into boxes 90 days before Almond bloom, do they? If you read my first article you would see Bell Hill Honey received full rate for the first packages and many which have already received their packages last month will get full price in February in Almonds. brokers like to say the packages will not bring full price just like the California queen breeders like to say there are no SHb in their area. I think the list is tired of the above between Jim and I but I could not let Jim's poor understanding of the import go unanswered. Sincerely, Bob Harrison "I still think the import will be good for U.S. beekeeping! Canada had its "sky is falling" crowd twenty years ago! twenty years of Australian bees did not ruin Canada beekeeping as predicted by the Jim Fischer's of the time period and the Australian import will not be the end of U.S. beekeeping despite the *opinion* of Jim Fischer. -- 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: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 10:41:57 -0500 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Free 'Bee-Friendly' Seeds Offered in CCD Public Service Announcement MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Burt's Bees, a division of Clorox. http://adage.com/article?article_id=121673 This is what happens when you let venture capitalists buy 80 percent of your company, as they did with Burt's Bees in 2003 - they cash out, and sell. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 10:53:46 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruth Rosin Subject: Re: One of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentieth century In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline -----Original Message----- From: Ruth Rosin [mailto:rosinbio@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 10:18 AM To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Subject: Re: [BEE-L] One of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentieth century Indeed, v. Frisch was the first one to discover that honeybee waggle-dances-dances contain information (which scientists can extract), about the approximate distance & direction location of the site of food, or what have you, that is repeatedly visited by the dancing foragerts. There is nothing amazing about that; which you will understand if you read my explanation of honeybee-dances. V. Frisch, however, also believed that honeybee recruits can extract and use that information, and innocently believed that he had successfully experimentally confirmed that. It was this amazing claim, very seriously, but erroneously accepted by the scientific community, that won him world wide fame. But, neither he, nor anyone else, have ever achieved such a confirmation, and his pre-WWII results in tests on honeybee-recruitment, suffice to show that it is most unlikely that anyone ever could achieve such a confirmation. End of a huge story that fizzled into nothing! -- Sincerely, Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear") ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 16:29:05 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bob, I have a few questions regarding the following: >>Australian queen breeders... genetics were sent into the U.S. to Bob Harrison & Dann Purvis among others for incorporation into U.S. queen lines. 1. What is the goal of incorporating Australian genetics into Dann Purvis' population? Since Australia does not have varroa, I assume the main contribution from the down-under genetics would be in productivity? 2. You mentioned Australia had imported varroa-resitant genetics from Italy. Since there is no varroa in Australia, I'd think it's hard for the Australians to test mite resistance of their crosses 'over there.' You mentioned I think that your Australian have gone for one year w/o treatments - or has it been longer? Don't we have bees in the US that already do that? 3. Why doesn't USDA import semen and eggs directly from Italy? I have nothing against Australian imports (have not seen anything plausible on disease/pests from down-under) but if Italy has productive Italian bees with the best mite resistance, we should go to that source. Getting eggs and semen from Italy in climate controlled containers and raising queens here would surely eliminate the risk of xfering any pests and [most?] disease. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 16:37:49 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Free 'Bee-Friendly' Seeds Offered in CCD Public Service A nnouncement Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>Burt's Bees, a division of Clorox. I've seen Burt's Bees' products in Wild by Nature stores (local health food/care storers). They have nice labels. But if they have 'only' 95% natural ingredients, I would like to know more about their other 5%. I'd prefer to see 100% natural. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 22:58:09 +0000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Gavin Ramsay Subject: Re: One of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentieth century MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi Ruth > There is nothing amazing about that; which you will understand > if you read my explanation of honeybee-dances. I have read more of your words than I care to recall, but don't recall why you or anyone else should fail to be amazed by the dance. That a mere insect can express - for whatever reason - in a dance the vector of an interesting place it just visited as well as clues on the distance to it is simply wonderful, isn't it?! It sure amazes me. There are few means of understanding how insects interpret their environment, and this (even if you are still in denial about fellow bees using the information) is one. > But, neither he, nor anyone else, have ever achieved such a > confirmation, and his pre-WWII results in tests on honeybee > recruitment, suffice to show that it is most unlikely that > anyone ever could achieve such a confirmation. That you will never accept such a confirmation is clear. But if by 'confirmation' you mean 'accept as very probably true' then most entomologists do accept the interpretation offered by authors of the papers we hotly debated earlier last year. take care, and keep an open mind! Gavin ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 18:35:37 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Chris Slade Subject: Re: One of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentie... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 06/11/2007 13:25:47 GMT Standard Time, peterlborst@GMAIL.COM writes: Von Frisch's realization that dances carry spatial information was surely one of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentieth century Although von Frisch did much work on the dance language and refined ideas, Pettigrew wrote about it in 1875, before von Frisch was born. Chris ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 15:42:19 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: One of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentieth century In-Reply-To: <7dd5575e0711060753u4d2c7f19q4bd885efef5534a9@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Ruth Rosin wrote:But, neither he, nor anyone else, have ever achieved such a confirmation, and his pre-WWII results in tests on honeybee-recruitment, suffice to show that it is most unlikely that anyone ever could achieve such a confirmation. Sincerely, Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear") If effort was expended, it could easily be proven or disproven. Baton Rouge Bee Lab has an island off the coast of Louisiana that they use to ensure proper open flight mating of their queens. A person running these tests could use that island to run isolated tests to confirm or refute the basis of the bee dance language. Mike in LA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 18:44:10 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?windows-1252?Q?J._Waggle?=" Subject: Defending the Drone Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >J. Waggle wrote: >>Drones & DCA - the nearer the better! >>http://www.springerlink.com/content/k4503054483137v5/ Peter L. Borst wrote: >Basically, this proves drones are lazy, which we already knew. I recalled this most offending remark made towards the defenseless Drone while working on a project. Standing to defend the Drone which nature has not equipped with the means to defend itself from such attacks; I post this paragraph from a most excellent article of it's time appearing in 1843, titled ‘The Bee.’ The author relies heavily on Bevan’s book ‘The honey bee; its natural history, physiology, and management (1827) which was popular at the time. “The drones or males are at once her majesty's nobles and husbands, dividing with her the administrative care of the State, the official trusts, and the parental functions. They are the office-holders and politicians; having, in general, little to do but to buz about royalty, pay their court, eat the fat and the sweat of the land, and talk politics. Their number varies with the strength of the hive, from fifteen hundred to two thousand, They seem to be, for nobles and husbands, rather unwarlike; for they possess no stings. On the whole, as they neither fight nor work, but only make love, they must have rather an easy time of it. Still, as we do not choose to injure any body's character, we feel bound to say that, if they mix not in the ordinary tasks of the operative Bees, it is the fault of nature, and not theirs: for she has furnished them with neither the sort of trowel to the jaws, with which the workers manage the wax, nor the baskets to the legs, in which they collect their fragrant spoil from the flowers. They labor not, then, because they have higher functions to perform, of a far loftier consequence to the public weal. And their wise and just fellow-citizens, content that each order in the State should discharge its appropriate duty, murmur not, nor stigmatize them as non- producers, nor rail nor roar at them us aristocrats; but recognize their utility in the peculiar part which has been assigned them of the public business, and submit with cheerfulness to their exemption from inferior tasks, inappropriate as well as impossible to these general fathers of the Bee people.” - (‘The Bee’, 1843) Best Wishes, Joe Waggle ~ Historical Honeybee Articles http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/HistoricalHoneybeeArticles ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 20:59:49 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: where do I send the invoice? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >1. What is the goal of incorporating Australian genetics into Dann Purvis population? Brood viability & hybrid vigor for a start. >Since Australia does not have varroa, I assume the main contribution from the down-under genetics would be in productivity? The Australian line has many good qualities but strong colonies can be testy I have been told but have not seen in my Australian bees. I see prolific and honey production high points and very similar to my U.S. lines of bees. The commercial migratory beekeeper running 6000 super strong Australian said they can be testy. He used the example that an employee found out the Australian bees did not like the smell of Icy Hot. He said he runs a six man crew daily and this time of year seven days a week. Muscles get sore so an employee used Icy Hot. The bees kept trying to sting the spot where the Icy Hot was so the employee had to go and wash the Icy Hot off. Bees do react to different smells but I have never heard of bees finding the smell of Icy Hot or Ben gay a reason to sting. 2. You mentioned Australia had imported varroa-resistant genetics from Italy. The import was from a lady queen breeder named Francine I was told. She has been working with varroa tolerant stock for two decades. The above import went through the strict import station and the queen/ workers and hive were destroyed after larva were grafted while the hive was in the compound which bees can not escape from. $4000- $5000 is paid for each queen. If the queen is killed during introduction the fee is still charged. >Since there is no varroa in Australia, I'd think it's hard for the Australians to test mite resistance of their crosses 'over there.' Testing was done in the U.S.. Unlike all other U.S. varroa testing the testing was done with adding varroa to levels over threshold trying to kill off all but the lone survivor. If I remember correct only one queen/hive survived and became part of the varroa tolerant project out of around 30 plus hives. > You mentioned I think that your Australian have gone for one year w/o treatments - or has it been longer? I am not running varroa tolerant experiments now but ran many over a four year period. Dann Purvis is testing the Australian lines now. By adding varroa load and frames of varroa infested brood he hopes to kill off at least 50% of his hives each year! Each year its getting harder to do as the lines are becoming very varroa tolerant. >Don't we have bees in the US that already do that? Depends. Most commercial lines now need treating at least once a year. Not as varroa tolerant as they were even a decade ago. Most back then would need treatment fall of the second year. I do not understand the change unless with chemicals (illegal getting stronger) we have breeding a super varroa mite! That's what happens on the chemical treadmill. Bees do not have a chance to become varroa tolerant and the varroa breed mites tolerant to most chemicals. As with the cockroach pest control people usually have to use a concoction of up to four different chemicals to control a serious infestation ( told to me by several pest control friends). If all control chemicals cease to work by themselves I expect concoctions will be used by beekeepers. Dann Purvis suggests that if a varroa tolerant bee needs treated to use Apiguard because the way apiguard kills does not create a tougher varroa. Hey! Even the Russian bee will need a treatment now and then. Dann Purvis is a queen breeder looking for breeder queens which is why he uses the methods he does. If you run a Russian or a varroa tolerant bee and the hive needs treating to keep from crashing I suggest treating with a soft treatment. Kirk Webster suggests shaking the bees on the ground in cold weather and taking the equipment. Especially when PMS signs are present. I worked my Russian yard today and with nothing blooming they were as nasty as ever! They are varroa tolerant but lack many of the traits I like to see in my bees. 3. Why doesn't USDA import semen and eggs directly from Italy? Eggs could be problematic but semen could be imported as long as the person on the receiving end could do insemination. Illegal movement of semen has been going on for years as semen is viable for a long time in tubes without a lot of care. Warwick Kerr was the first to ship semen. semen is easy to gather and easy to ship. The problem with shipping semen is only a very very small part of beekeepers can do instrumental insemination. Picture of Bob Harrison doing insemination in the January 2004 Bee Culture article I did on my Russian bees. 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: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 08:06:47 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Keith Benson Subject: Varroa in Kashmir MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit FYI, from Pubmed. VARROOSIS, BEE - INDIA: (KASHMIR) ********************************* A ProMED-mail post ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases Date: Sat 3 Nov 2007 Source: Etala'at News Service [edited] Varroa mite infection of bee colonies has strongly reduced honey production in Kashmir valley. The department has recorded 45 metric tons of honey production this year [2007] compared to last year's 30 metric tons. "This production is negligible when we compare it with 400 metric tons of honey some 8 years before," said apiculture development officer Mehraj-u Din. "Due to the mite disease, there has been a 72 per cent decrease in honey production in the valley, while almost 90 per cent of the bee colonies have perished," said an apiculture development officer. Out of 40 000 bee colonies registered with the department of agriculture Kashmir, more than half of the colonies have perished because of the mite disease. The officials in the apiculture wing of the agriculture department said that varroa mite attack has dealt the biggest blow ever to the apiculture industry in the state. The field officials of the apiculture department said that the disease in the valley might have been brought by the bee hive keepers from outside the state, as most of the beekeepers migrate with their hives to Punjab and other adjoining states during winter. "Some bee hive keepers from Kashmir go with their bee hives to Punjab and other states during winter to increase honey production. We suspect the disease might have come from there," said a field officer, Ghulam Mohammad, from Kulgam. [map at ] At present, there are only 10 064 bee colonies in the private sector registered with Kashmir's agriculture department; there were 11 375 colonies registered last year [2006]. In addition, the agriculture department has 164 bee colonies of its own. According to farmers, the disease was reported 1st in valley in 2003, but until now, the concerned department has not come up with any specific cure against the disease. As the disease shows no sign of cessation, the agriculture department has began to prescribe formic acid fumes and sulfur powder for this disease, but the farmers don't seem to be convinced of these as a remedial measure. Seriously concerned about the loss caused by the mite to honey production, the scientists at the Sheri Kashmir University of Agriculture Sciences (SKUAST), Shalimar Srinagar said that the university is keenly studying the disease and hope to find the cure soon. "The loss due to the disease is not the same as it was in the beginning. We have taken up certain projects including "fall the strip" and "sulfur fumigation" to work out the measures to check this disease," said A.R. Wani, a scientist in the agriculture university who is working on these projects. -- communicated by: ProMED-mail [Varroosis is a worldwide distributed bee disease, caused by the mite _Varroa destructor_ (formerly _Varroa jacobsoni_), a parasite of adult bees and their brood. It penetrates the intersegmental skin between the abdominal sclera of adult bees to ingest haemolymph. It can sometimes be found between the head and thorax. The number of parasites steadily increases with increasing brood activity and the growth of the bee population, especially late in the season when clinical signs of infestation can 1st be recognized. The life span of the mite depends on temperature and humidity, but, in practice, it can be said to last from some days to a few months. Varroosis is reportable to the OIE; for its global distribution (2004), see . For additional information, subscribers are referred to chapter 2.9.5., "Varroosis," in OIE's Manual for Diagnostic Tests and Vaccines for Terrestrial Animals at . - Mod.AS] ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 08:34:52 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Re: One of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentieth century MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Greetings While I agree that the discovery that honey bees communicate via symbolic dances is one of the major discoveries in behavioral biology in the twentieth century, I would also hand that honor to Tom Seeley's discovery of "quorum sensing". On the one hand, foraging bees find many sources of nectar, pollen, water, etc. and recruit helpers in gathering these substances. There is usually no reason that all these may be gathered at the same time, so dances for these various substances can go on simultaneously. On the other hand, when choosing a nest site there may be multiple candidates at first, but finally the colony *has to decide* which one will be the site that they will fly to. The process of selecting the best site uses a system that mirrors natural selection and can be readily simulated using a computer program. > With careful research, Thomas Seeley and his colleagues have uncovered how a swarm comes to a decision. It's not a democracy, exactly, but rather a matter of reaching a threshold as bees endorse a particular site using their "waggle dancing." For a group of about 10,000 bees, several hundred scout out nest sites, but it takes the build-up of just 10 to 20 bees at a site before the swarm starts to move to that location. Through experiments and mathematical modeling, Seeley's group has shown that the bees' method is best at balancing the need to find a home quickly and choosing an ideal nesting site. ( review in American Scientist Magazine ) > The choice of a new home site by a swarm of honeybees is a striking example of group decision-making. When a swarm clusters after leaving its natal colony), scouts search the countryside for cavities with the appropriate volume and other characteristics. They then return to the swarm, and communicate the distance to and direction of the sites they have found with waggle dances, just like those used for communicating locations of food sources in foraging. Usually, the scouts find and report several sites, but in time dances cease for all but one of them, and finally the swarm flies to the selected cavity. Self-organizing processes such as this, in which a complex higher- order pattern (here, the development of a consensus on the best site) arises from relatively simple responses of individuals with no global view of the situation, are receiving increasing attention as biological mechanisms for elaborating complexity. ( Visscher ) See: How self-organization evolves by P. Kirk Visscher NATURE | VOL 421 | 20 FEBRUARY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature Group Decision Making in Honey Bee Swarms by Thomas D. Seeley, P. Kirk Visscher, Kevin M. Passino American Scientist Volume: 94 Number: 3 Page: 220 www.americanscientist.org -- Peter L. Borst Danby, NY USA 42.35, -76.50 picasaweb.google.com/peterlborst ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 08:45:25 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Apiculture Research Will Save Honeybee And Pollination Industries, Cornell Entomologists Predict MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline (Ten years ago) Apiculture Research Will Save Honeybee And Pollination Industries, Cornell Entomologists Predict ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 1997) -- ITHACA, N.Y. Despite dramatic losses in wild honeybees and in colonies maintained by hobbyist beekeepers, Cornell University apiculturists say the pollination needs of commercial agriculture in the United States are being met -- for now -- by commercial beekeepers, although their supplies are precarious. Roger A. Morse, the recently retired Cornell professor of apiculture who tracked the mites and diseases for 25 years, concurs. "The mites represent the greatest threat to beekeeping since European bees were brought to this continent more than three centuries ago," Morse said. "But if we can get the results of research to the beekeepers, we can keep the crops growing and the honey flowing." "It's true that these mite diseases have caused the death of 95 to 98 percent of the wild honeybee colonies. And more than half the hobby beekeepers have lost all or most of their colonies," Morse reported. "However, commercial beekeepers in this country are surviving, though they, too, have had serious losses." "Growers who rent bees are well aware of the problems and are making plans with beekeepers for the colonies they will need for next spring's pollination," Morse said. "At the same time, there continues to be a great interest in hobby beekeeping, and hobbyists also are learning to cope with mites and diseases by tapping into resources like Cornell's apiculture extension program." ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 19:15:09 -0500 Reply-To: bee-quick@bee-quick.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Calls To Move APHIS From Homeland Security Back To USDA MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a recent "Catch The Buzz" newsflash: http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2007.11.06.08.43.archive.html It said: "The American Beekeeping Federation is one of 87 farm organizations that are calling for the quarantine and inspection functions now at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to be returned to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin and ranking Republican committee member Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia they say the 2003 transfer of inspectors previously dedicated to agricultural threats has proven to be unsuccessful." This would be a good move, if they can make it. So, despite attempts to position any questioning of the bee import process as being the "sole opinion of Jim Fischer", "jim's imagination", and "phony baseless misinformed BC articles", it appears that one need look no further than yesterday's e-mail to neatly and completely refute these claims and personal attacks. The American Beekeeping Federation is very much on board with what another tries to dismiss as merely my "imagination". So are 86 OTHER farm organizations. And what, other than APHIS inspections as they relate to pests and diseases of bees, could the ABF be concerned about? Well honey is not inspected by APHIS, honey is the FDA's job. The concern has to be "pests and diseases" of bees. So, let's read on... "The letter says that despite many assurances that performance will improve, the problems continue and lead the groups to conclude that improvement is not possible in the current structure." Gosh, with a statement like "improvement is not possible", it looks like AFB has joined a chorus of voices calling for "new management" over APHIS, specifically, the old USDA management, rather than Homeland Security, who've been running the show since BEFORE the first bee imports. Long story short, Homeland Security has pretty much ignored the APHIS side of inspections while they focused on looking for "dirty bombs", cargo containers containing suicide commando teams, and sharks with friggin' laser beams on their heads. (Kinda funny that with all these concerns about something nasty slipping in, the DHS guys never realized that thousands of stinging insects would be the perfect "cover" for just about any contraband.) And Congress had hearings on this, with extensive testimony: http://www.cfbf.com/agalert/AgAlertStory.cfm?ID=920&ck=6D0F846348A856321 729A2F36734D1A7 Note the headline - "Congressional hearing triggers alarm over lax pest inspections" And even the General Accounting Office agrees that APHIS just hasn't been able to do its job under DHS: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06644.pdf Contrast all that with my modest proposal, offered since 2002, where I simply pointed out that bees are under the "Plant" side of APHIS, rather than the "Animal" side, which is just plain stupid, and that an agency called "Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service" should not need to be begged to consider doing some actual health inspections for a change. Looks like it only took 5 years for everyone else to do their homework and begin to share my point of view. So, the small and prudent practice of taking some samples from the packages imported on the US end would be a quick and easy task with zero downside, so anyone opposed would have to be asked what their actual agenda was. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 18:21:41 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Welter Subject: NASA looking to monitor bees Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I found this interesting. It looks like NASA is looking into monitoring bee hives as an indicator of the health of the environment. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Bees/bees4.html ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 19:51:46 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: 2007 bee die off MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello All, Dave Hackenberg a couple nights ago said he had heard of bees dying in the Missouri bootheel, Arkansas delta & Mississippi delta soybean areas. He said the die off has been traced back to poison pollen from pesticides. I have been trying to confirm but those I have been able to contact said they had not heard of a die off. Dave said the beekeepers felt gaucho use was the problem. I am only passing on what I was told by the person which spoke directly with Dave Hackenberg. Has members from the area Dave spoke of heard of the problem? I will try to contact Neil Bergman or Kevin Jester to see what they know about the problem after I finish feeding bees tomorrow. The Speedy bee came yesterday and not a word about bees dying in the U.S. from CCD or any other problems which is a good sign we may be lucking out this fall. However would not be a normal year if we didn't see some SSDD in a few operations as varroa is alive and well in the U.S.. I am still trying to get used to the price of sucrose compared to HFCS. The warm weather of the past couple weeks has really caused the bees in my area to consume winter stores. I will say that the Minnesota Hygienic bees of Marla Spivak have put up enough stores for winter without much help. I believe because Marla selects for wintering ability. The California and Hawaii queens apparently did not get the *memo* winter is just around the corner in the Midwest. 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 * ******************************************************