[ExI] bees

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of BillK
Subject: Re: [ExI] bees

On 1 April 2017 at 22:32, spike  wrote:
<snip>
..
>
>>... Moral of the story: lets keep our hopes up, but if banning neonics is 
> a failure, let us not be shocked, and let us not give up...
>

>...Neonics is a worldwide problem, not just a USA/Mexico cross-border problem.
I agree that there are probably other factors damaging the bees, but getting rid of neonics would be a good start. It might strengthen the bees enough that they could fight off the other problems...BillK

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Ja I am hoping for some reliable data coming out of the European experiments with banning neonics.  I don't know the details, but the EU led out on the ban.  Slightly complicating the picture is a difference (difficult to quantify in itself) in resistance of European honeybees to the ravages of Varroa mites.  The US was quick to import Australian queens which are known to be highly resistant to Varroas, possibly at the expense of lowered resistance to tracheal mites (whooda thunk, there are bugs that live inside the trachea of a bee?)

spike