[ExI] bees again

spike spike at rainier66.com
Mon Mar 4 05:19:53 UTC 2013


>... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty
Subject: Re: [ExI] bees again

On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 9:12 PM, spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
>>...Please do your part: stop buying honey.  If you are moved to do 
>>more than your part, post to friends and family on your distribution and 
> ask them to stop eating honey as well.  Explain your reasoning, or 
> forward my post if you wish...spike 

______________________________________________
>>... The imidacloprid theory might be wrong, the evidence ambiguous, but it
does explain ... spike

>...Can you make a couple infographics showing the farmer robbing bees and
leaving them corn syrup, then some bees too week to pollinate fruit trees,
then consumers paying too much for fruit?  Mike



Thanks Mike, right idea, slight correction please, an important one.

The practice of extracting honey then feeding the bees on sugar water, corn
syrup, other similar substitutes, is very common and goes way back.  It
works.  I worked for a beekeeper in my misspent youth who managed to get
several restaurant owners to sell him waste pancake syrup.  He fed his bees
on that over the winter.  Arguing against taking off honey will likely
produce nothing but pushback, especially now when raw honey is bringing in
over 6 bucks a pound in some spot markets this year, a cool fortune to poor
beekeepers, liquid gold.  Taking the honey and feeding them with a cheaper
substitute generally will not weaken the bees.  Unless...

...Unless the substitute has some kind of pesticide that can accumulate over
time in the hives and in the brood, and at some concentration the material
impacts the bee's navigation system such that a swarm becomes disoriented
and cannot find the way home.  Bees navigate by mysterious means; we don't
know the mechanisms which can mess up that system.  Bayer may have
accidentally stumbled onto something which does exactly that, an unintended
harmful consequence.  Can anyone think of an alternate explanation for that
swarm I saw on 1 January where the bees  were on the ground, about 80% dead
of apparent exposure, no signs of ageing on any of them that I could tell,
no obvious internal parasites, no varroa mites, no tracheal mites that I
could find (although the results are not conclusive: I examined only four
bees and I don't know what I am doing.  I tried slicing off the heads and
peering down the trachea with my microscope, but for all I know I could have
been peering down their carotid arteries, assuming bees have carotid
arteries.  I didn't see anything that looked like tracheal mites in there.)
So these bees apparently just couldn't find their way home, so when it was
dark, they just landed and perished of exposure.  A few (6 to 8) were still
alive when I collected the 50 to 60 specimens.

With honey prices thru the roof, and knowing that most beekeepers are very
poor, it is unlikely to help anything if we go about this the wrong way.
Beekeepers now make most of their living renting their hives to fruit
growers.  Back when I was a teen, it was very nearly balanced: the beekeeper
wasn't paid by the citrus guy but he didn't need to rent the fruit trees
either; he made his living off of extracted honey.  Over the years the
balances have consistently tipped in the beekeepers favor: he can rent his
hives easily and close to home.  But honey extractions are still an
important part of his income, especially now when prices are high.  My
notion is to get people to stop buying honey so the price will drop back
down low enough that it isn't worth the labor and extractor investment to
take off the honey.  They just let the bees survive the winter eating their
own stored honey.

I don't know anything about infographics.  But if we do something like that,
it must emphasize that all we can do is to not buy honey, for every time we
buy a jar, that creates demand and that drives up prices, beekeepers take
off as much as they can, feed with something that might contain imidacloprid
or one of the others specifically used on corn which doesn't rely on bees
(corn is pollinated by wind), which might contribute to colony collapse
disorder.  It might be far worse than that, if the neonicotinoids accumulate
over time in the structure of the hives and in the brood, as some
entomologists have suggested.  For the citrus industry and plenty of other
crops, Imidacloprid might be a ticking time-bomb.

Mike I like your idea of a facebook graphic.  In the meantime, If honey is
on the table at a restaurant, don't eat it.  And don't buy any.  Call your
mother and request to do ye likewise.  

spike







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