Any Bee Keepers Out There

I'd like to buy one because the bees like me. Now they produce wild under the roof in the air vents. I also will need a burka, I guess, and gloves. Perhaps smoke too?

I would love to get some info, preferably to make one myself, if possible. I will sign your petition. D

My brother keeps bees, and at the risk of accidentally venturing off into something political... the homeowners are not using enough of the stuff to kill off substantial amounts of bees; it's the massive industrial farms.

This insecticide is allowed by the EPA though, and therefore it is good. Anybody that says otherwise is anti-government. End of story.

killing off bees accidently can be explained away as a "rounding error" when spun by a professional

There is no definitive research linking neonicotinoid based pesticides to colony collapse disorder(CCD)...... I say give researchers enough time to come to a conclusion....Jumping to conclusions from anecdotal information is not the proper approach...imo....Now there is no doubt that if you spray bee's with any pesticide they will probably die, but what we are concerned with here is the effect of bioaccumulation and proper spray dosage and timing....

http://www.xerces.org/neonicotinoids-and-bees/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/about/intheworks/honeybee.htm

http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/about/intheworks/ccd-european-ban.html

Didn't we already do this?

http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0405-hance_colonycollapse_pesticides.html

"Both imidacloprid and thiamethoxam are highly toxic to honeybees."

From here:

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pi117

Yes, everything from GMO's to stress has been accused, but research takes time, and going off half cocked is not likely to be a wise approach.....and feeding pesticides directly to bee's will have a predictable result....

http://cr4.globalspec.com/search/sitesearch?do=show&order=asc&sort=textmatchrank&srch=colony%20collapse%20disorder%20ccd

I agree.

Rather than the outright banning of the insecticides, I would like to see a controlled, "real world" study, in which the use of these insecticides is stopped....say, within a 500 mile radius of a place where bee die offs have occurred, as well as eliminating HFCS from the diet, and see if the hives start to recover.

We're going to need a certain degree of insecticides, and with increasing work in DNA and genetics, we may come up with something that targets specific insects.

I also think it's very important not to allow a complete die off of honey bees, as it will devastate our food supply.

Stop the spraying isn't going to help much it stays in the soils at lethal levels for over 15 years.

"Independent studies show that while the photodegradation half-life time of most neonicotinoids is around 34 days when exposed to sunlight, it might take up to 1,386 days (3.8 years) for these compounds to degrade in the absence of sunlight and micro-organism activity. "

"Neonicotinoids are registered in more than 120 countries. With a turnover of €1.5 billion, they represented 24% of the global market for insecticides in 2008. Neonicotinoids are even more important in the market for seed treatments. After the introduction of the first neonicotinoids in the 1990s, this market has grown from €155 million in 1990 to €957 million in 2008. Neonicotinoids made up 80% of all seed treatment sales in 2008.^[18]

Eight neonicotinoids from different companies are currently on the market.^[18]"

^"...the neonicotinoid imidacloprid is currently the most widely used insecticide in the world.^[3] "

"The application rates for neonicotinoid insecticides are much lower than older, traditionally used insecticides."

"Because most neonicotinoids bind much more strongly to insect neuron receptors than to mammal neuron receptors, these insecticides are selectively more toxic to insects than mammals.^[31]"

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid}

I think that any role it plays, can mostly be attributed to misuse by the end users.

...which can be huge. A big part of the reason that antibiotics are losing their punch, is because people don't finish their prescriptions.

One possibility would be to use separate, certified, pesticide companies, for the industrial and large farms, rather than turning the farmers loose with tons of it.

Yep....regulate it's use. I said it.

Fault can be spread all around, but Operator era by misapplication can be the biggest........ But it is easier to blame big business..... One can mandate spray applications to the using by having them pass an exam, which improves the usage and application, but there are still problems

It comes down to money.

The big farmers are strictly thinking about maximizing yields, which means killing as many pests as possible. They aren't thinking about dead bees.

Admittedly, I wouldn't be either.

That's why I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to take the entire pesticide aspect out of the hands of the farmers, and into the hands of specialists that know the correct timing and balance, to both maximize crop yields, and protect beneficial insects.

Another thing that needs to be kept in mind, is preventing the creation of bad bugs that are resistant to the pesticides...which is also happening.

Allot has to do with overspray, or spray drift....... As far as removing the pesticide aspect out of the hand of farmers....that I don't think you realize that farmers have contract sprayers doing their spraying, and to remove them........ One thing that may solve is our country's over weight problem.

Farmers are required to be licensed to apply all pesticides legally speaking whether they do it or not is another problem. Your pesticide license requires you to read and understand the product's label. Funny thing is the public who goes to their local ACE hardware isn't. How many of you actually read the label and follow the mix ratios application rates application patterns? This is the main reason why the pesticide you by in the store is diluted because they know human nature that most people either aren't going to read the label or don't care and apply what they want.

Good point.

It comes down to who follows the directions (I do) and who doesn't.

Generally chemicals sold to the public are less concentrated than the commercial versions, all the more reason to read the labels, and follow the dilution instructions.

Unfortunately, many times the directions are hard to find, hard to follow or even to written to shield the maker from any liability in the case of misuse. (dam lawyers)

This is precisely the "uncontrolled" scenario I mentioned but did not explicitly explain earlier. I know that the persistent pesticides, like DDT, are reasonably well controlled.

It wouldn't surprise me that the lawyers advised that pesticide manufacturers still produce some product concentrations that should be diluted to mitigate corporate liability. "We told you to thin it down."

I believe Malathion is the most harmful...... When in our area we had an infestation of army worms in the 70's these critters would go field to field, and even take the roads as opposed to the ditches we had draw a line with Malathion and I was amazed when the worms touch this line......... .

Spraying by airplane, by the time you put in your request to have a your field sprayed, the worms already move to the next fields when the plane did come.

Getting the license and actually following protocol is two different things.

Although, I believe I remember hearing about the EPA using drones to spy on farmers.

According to Dr David Goulson a renown expert on bees and bee diseases. Neonicotinoid ban is a feel good policy at best until more important issues causing bee deaths and disease are stop mainly destruction of natural habitat, the use of intensive farming, and bee husbandry (trading bees from one country to another spreading diseases and parasites.

I think that feel good policy was already mentioned here....... But I agree?

check what the Europeans have done and are doing- Germany has banned-Solar I respect your opinions but your adherance to Monsanto is sickening

He does have a certain reverence for that company, that runs very deep.

His defense of Monsanto makes this post laughable.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/comment/986864/Re-politics-amp-CR4

The uncontrolled use of pesticides is a problem that we haven't properly managed for decades. Remember how the wide spread use of DDT a half century ago impacted bird populations. This reminds me of the problems from drug resistant diseases we now have from the wide spread use of antibiotics in livestock feed.

Colony_collapse disorder is a complicated mystery. In one study it appears a combination of a parasite and fungicide appears to be the culprit. The nicanoid pesticides you cite is another plausible reason. The root of the problem could also possibly be our reliance on one species of bee for our commercial hives. However, it appears that wild bees are in worse shape.

The use of pesticides is not uncontrolled....this is why persistent pesticides were banned...

http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/controlling/agriculture.htm

http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/index.htm

Farmers and bee keepers have an understanding

Home Depot or lowes, if you want to make an impact..... Organize against farmers cooperative and/or chemical suppliers........ One cornfield next to the hive will wipe them out........ Or maybe talk to Monsanto.

But maybe wait till after lunch.....

Plenty of opinions; no bee keepers.

Thanks.

As protectors of the environment, I like to think we are all bee keepers....

But yeah, no....

"As protectors of the environment"

That's open to speculation. Many things "we" do harm the environment.

I'm just wondering if anyone thinks there's any substance to the web site and the claims it makes.

The website Credo Mobilize is a place where anybody can start a petition, for any reason....The guy that started this petition is Philip Smith, associated with a group called Oregon sustainable bee keepers...they are apparently against all pesticides and fungicides and well whatever chemical substance they perceive as a threat....they have legs on this because there was an instance in Williamson, Oregon, where a well meaning individual sprayed some flowering trees around his parking lot with poison, which killed a bunch of bee's....and he can't seem to manage his bee colonies properly without them all dying, so he is on a campaign to attack blindly anybody or anything that might be to blame, except of course, himself....

Well, maybe.

We just can't seem to agree on anything these days. (I don't mean you and me).

'Victory for bees' as European Union bans neonicotinoid pesticides ...

BBC News - Government rejects the science behind neonicotinoid ban

Since the bees were here before the pesticides, maybe taking a two year break will shed some light on the issue.

Maybe not.

Well it doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to consider the possibility of lack of coordination in the use of pesticides and the pollination of flowering crops...mostly almonds...but mismanagement of hives is just as likely....imo....here is an excerpt from USDA site.....

"In October 2006, some beekeepers began reporting losses of 30-90 percent of their hives. While colony losses are not unexpected, especially over the winter, this magnitude of losses was unusually high.

The main symptom of CCD is very low or no adult honey bees present in the hive but with a live queen and no dead honey bee bodies present. Often there is still honey in the hive, and immature bees (brood) are present. Varroa mites, a virus-transmitting parasite of honey bees, have frequently been found in hives hit by CCD.

This is not the first time that beekeepers are being faced with unexplained losses. The scientific literature has several mentions of honey bee disappearances-in the 1880s, the 1920s, and the 1960s. While the descriptions sound similar to CCD, there is no way to know for sure if those problems were caused by the same agents as CCD.

There have also been unusual colony losses before. In 1903, in the Cache Valley in Utah, 2000 colonies were lost to an unknown "disappearing disease" after a "hard winter and a cold spring." More recently, in 1995-96, Pennsylvania beekeepers lost 53 percent of their colonies without a specific identifiable cause."

"The total number of managed honey bee colonies has decreased from 5 million in the 1940s to only 2.5 million today. At the same time, the call for hives to provide pollination services has continued to increase. This means honey bee colonies are being transported over longer distances than ever before.

Declines in honey bee colony health were exacerbated in the 1980s with the arrival of new pathogens and pests. The arrival of Varroa and tracheal mites into the United States during the 1990s created additional stresses on honey bees.

Colony losses from CCD are a very serious problem for beekeepers. Annual losses from the winter of 2006-2011 averaged about 33 percent each year, with a third of these losses attributed to CCD by beekeepers. The winter of 2011-2012 was an exception, when total losses dropped to 22 percent."

Will the losses continue to decline, only time will tell.....

Good read here....↓

http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/docs.htm?docid=15572

Lots to digest here, but,"steady decline in the numbers of managed hives from a peak of nearly 6 million in the 1940s to 2.3 million by 2008."

Who knows the real cause?

If they're looking for a single cause, they're never going to find it.

Just the stress from the industrial "slave" hives, that are transported all over the country and pushed to the extreme, have killed a lot of them.

Add to that, the winter feeding of HFCS...which contains traces of insecticides and has no nutritional value....

I guess we could say that humans are killing the bees.

http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/hfcs-food-for-bees-found-to-increase.html

This seems to make a lot of sense to me -- but then, I am not a beekeeper. The 'pull quote' from this is:

"A bee's natural food is its own honey, which contains compounds like p-coumaric acid that appear to help detoxify and strengthen a bee's immunity to disease... The widespread apicultural use of honey substitutes, including high-fructose corn syrup, may thus compromise the ability of honey bees to cope with pesticides and pathogens and contribute to colony losses."

Leave it to Lyn to complain about politics, and immediately toss a political hot potato into the fire.

Don't even pretend that you didn't know it, LYN!

Why didn't you just jump straight to AGW?

I have no clue what you mean.

I also don't want to know. The mere fact that it pissed you off is satisfaction enough for me.

Western Australia has a possible unique opportunity to contribute to bee R&D.
It is one of the relatively 'bee specific pesticide free' areas of the world.

Thanks for that. I will send it to my brother, after I get a chance to look at it.

Thanks for your first hand knowledge and experience.

I'll pass this along to my brother when we've gotten to the end of the discussion. Already have some pithy information for him.

Happy Holidays.

Somebody will need to correct me if wrong on this snippet;

A while back the bees in Britain nearly died out. The industry (sounds like a wrong word for nature) was saved because bees that had been exported to Australia were re-imported. Anyone know more on that ?

My parents used to keep a few hives, though long before colony collapse disorder. After that time I did notice a serious reduction in the number of hives. If pollinating insects disappeared overnight we would all be in serious trouble. For my ten cents, It's something that could easily happen and take us unawares. People having to pollinate by hand already occurs.

Department of Agriculture and Food - Western Australian bees ...www.agric.wa.gov.au/PC_95655.html?s=1001‎Western Australian bees sweetening Canadian industry. 9 May 2013. Nearly 40 million Western Australian honey bees have been exported to Canada in the past month to ... small hive beetle and varroa mite is a major factor in the Canadians ...

While not quite the detail about bee exports to the UK, there still could be info here.

Thanks, Don, that's interesting stuff to ponder. I may have got my wires crossed with Bumblebees, but I'm glad I mentioned it.