ACTION: Save the Bees

request for context (4.00 / 2)

Jill, can you provide some background, some rationale, for why Sierra Club is moving on seed coating? Is the question of seed coating in regulatory play for some reason? I can't locate any information about this, certainly not at the Sierra Club website.

Nicotinyls found in the Cascades and Coast Ranges have been the result of Central Valley spraying, not seed coating. European actions in the 1990s and early 2000s regulated spraying, not seed coating. Of all the ways to use nicotinyls, seed coating would seem to be the least damaging to bees, although I'm sure it isn't helpful to bees.

California is trying to address all use of nicotinyls. Sierra Club probably wants to do the same, I'm guessing, but why are they concentrating on seed coating now?

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by: count @ Wed Jan 27, 2010 at 23:24:56 PM UTC

corn (4.00 / 1)

Your first Sierra Club memo mentions coating corn seeds. I didn't know honeybees were used for corn pollination. Are they?

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by: count @ Wed Jan 27, 2010 at 23:29:25 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Bees are not necessary for corn pollination (corn is wind pollinated) (4.00 / 2)

however, bees do hand out on corn when it's got pollen going. I've watched them many a time.

I don't know how much of the coating on the seed makes it into the plant and then up into the pollen. I always thought that corn seed was coated with a fungicide, and that it didn't make it up into the main plant, much less into the pollen.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 02:35:50 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

so corn farmers (4.00 / 1)

wouldn't rent bee colonies, and commercial beekeepers wouldn't set up their colonies in the middle of cornfields.

Thank you.

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by: count @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 02:47:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

why don't I put you in direct touch w the Sierra Club? (4.00 / 2)

Can you email me?

I'll send your question to her now.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman

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by: Jill Richardson @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 07:58:11 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

re: request for comment (0.00 / 0)

Chuch Benbrook, PhD, is an independent scientist who was interviewed in this new documentary called Nicotine Bees. He offers a fantastic explanation of  the seed coating issue. We recommend purchasing the documentary - it's only $15. We suggest showing it to groups, too. We just got it shown at a national beekeeping conference where it was well received.
To purchase the video, visit: http://www.amazon.com/shops/ni...
laurel hopwood, sierra club
PS If you'd like info on guttation studies, please email me at lhopwod@roadrunner.com

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by: hopwood @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 11:17:15 AM UTC

As long as you're here, (0.00 / 0)

why not take a stab at answering my question? I'd appreciate the effort.

Thanks.

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by: count @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 18:11:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Bunk! (0.00 / 0)

First let me note that I was born with a beekeepers tool in my hand in a 3rd generation family that raises bees and also grows apples. My life is honeybees. I have an advanced degree and formally worked for a large R&D firm when I was younger so I have a strong background in science and research.

I used to worship the Sierra Club when I was younger.

But in the past decade the organization has let politics trump science in their stances on various issues.

Couple of REALLY glaring in accuracies, first CCD was a primarily winter of 06/07 incident with a few beekeepers reporting more the following winter. So basically CCD has long been over. The 30% losses every year? utter hype and a complete fabrication. Bloggers and the media keep reporting this statement that is not backed up by the industry, USDA or really anyone of real standing in the bee world.

On the Bayer neonicotinoids issue. These compounds were in wide use for over a decade before CCD was ever even an acronym.  Furthermore anyone who is involved in the pesticide wars knows that these new compounds are a step in the right direction as far as humans, wildlife, fish and the environment is concerned. Its nicotine based folks! Duh!!!!  

There is no argument that the organophosphates that are due for delisting in 2012 are really scary actors that impact all aspects of the environment and are very lethal to bees.  

So a lot of misinformation on these materials. Bayer caught in the controversy to their credit established a study group full of scientists and beekeepers to cooperatively work together in the last year to design experiments that beekeepers wanted to see. More on that later but I want to cover what I and many other experienced people in the industry feel is the real culprit in the bee crisis.

The real story is rooted in the early 1990;s when the varrora mite jumped host from the Asian honey bee to the European which is the common honeybee. This mite is a vector for many viruses and is for sure still the major killer of bees around the globe. At this time Austrailia is the only continent that had avoided this plague.

Beekeepers responded by putting insecticides into their hives to kill or be killed. The two major chemicals fluvalinate (trade name Apistan) and coumaphos (trade name checkmite)  have been used now for over a decade or more. Through work at Penn State Maryann Frazier has found that in the CCD hives that the 3 top chemicals found in the beeswax combs the bees live are beekeeper applied chems. Thats right - the Bayer neonics were far down the list and only found in something like 7% of the hives.

Since 06/07 a flurry of papers have also been published that shows these two compounds when combined together and sometimes with a common ag fungicide combine synergistically to be many times more lethal. The short of this is beekeepers are blaming Bayer and the neonic with no real data to back it up while meanwhile ignoring the hard data that shows they are killing their own bees! Its a f-ing smokescreen for the real self contamination issue thats off the radar of the media. The bee industry can easily remove these bee killing products from the shelf. Instead some of them point at Bayer. Like an alcoholic that cannot admit his/her own issues.

The bulk of literature on the neonics points to the materials as being safe for bees in most situations. Incorrect application, soil types and some other variables do appear to play a role and in some cases create issues for honey bees. But there is no smoking gun - not like there is concerning the miticides that beekeepers put into their hives. To Bayers credit they have been very open with their data on the international bee chat group known as BEE L.

Organizations that I have lost credibility with like Greenpeace and Sierra CLub like to pull quotes or pieces of data out of selected studies and publihs out of context. The Bayer story is like gossip on the playground that everyone is sharing.

Another concern that many of us in the industry are fighting is the importation of Australian bees. Almonds are the biggest cash crop in CA and USA. Without honeybees to pollinate the crop is compromised by up to 70%. Claiming a bee shortage the Industrial beekeepers and Almond Board persuaded APHIS USDA to relax a 1920 law that prohibited the importation of bees from other countries to prevent disease and pests from coming along with imported bees.

Austraila has had a reported 50 swarms of Asian Honbeybees that came in on ocean ships. The Asian Honey bee is the vector for parasites that the European Honeybee has no natural defense for. Remember the varroa mite I discussed above? There are a number of frightening parasites that could jump host again and be imported on these Aussie bees.

This is a real issue that threatens our industry unlike the trumped up and bogus issue of the neonics highlighted in this post.  Non industrial beekeepers are vigorously fighting this importation that threatens to unleash a new unwanted pest.

I alluded above to a studies suggested by beekeepers to Bayer in the working group. this study I am going to describe was just released at the winter American Beekeeping Federation in Orlando a few weeks ago I attended.  So Dave Hackenberg, bless his heart is not the most educated man but the poster child for CCD. He alerted the USDA to his loss in fall of 2006 and got the whole ball rolling on CCD. He is kind of a hillbilly. Anyhow he had a study of 12 hives left in orange groves and 12 hives nearby away from the grove. The hives in the grove were sprayed along with the trees with a newer neonic chem called Movento that Bayer claims is even more safe for bees. During the next months the two groups of hives were tracked. No difference in the fragile brood was found. No differences were found in any variables that reflect honeybee health. Now the kicker. Hackenberg dragged these hives up and down the east coast then for the rest of the season to pollinate other crops. (and no corn is of no interest to bees and beekeepers) Only 2 hives of the original 24 were left in the fall.

WTF? thats not beekeeping folks! Its Industrial Beekeeping! Jesus its not Bayer that killed his bees but the constant movement for pollination fees!

I have posted previously here about the Feedlot Beekeeping practices in CA during almonds where HFCS is fed to bees with soy flour to mimic incoming food and spring. They do this in winter to keep the bees population up unnaturally so they can collect huge pollination fees for almonds, an Asian nut tree growing in North America that blooms and need pollinators in the middle of f-ing winter.

Look I like Jill and this blog. There's not always a real tight standard here on though on the science behind some of the posts and claims. Lots of emotional and shoot from the hip claims about complicated issues not well understood by the public or non scientific crowd.

Like sipping expensive coffee and delighting in the latest expensive organic delicacy - trashing certain issues is fashionable and politcally required to mingle in the sustainable earth circles.

This info from the Sierra Club posted above is just riddled with inaccuracies. the sad thing is the Sierra Club have become unwitting pawns for the Industrial Feedlot Beekeepers who do not want to address the top issues facing the industry instead hypocritically point the finger at Bayer.

I'm still waiting for some enviro journalist to dig into the real issues in American beekeeping instead of recycling this fairy tale shit about Bayer, cell phones and GMO's killing bees.  

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by: bud dingler @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 14:01:40 PM UTC

bud... (4.00 / 1)

Just curious, but are you the same bud dingler who just said this on a Minnesota Independent article?

bud dingler
Comment posted December 28, 2009 @ 3:23 pm

I don't like pawlenty but he made a good call on this one.

seriously who would want their kids going to school with a freak show for a teacher? maybe a GLT parent but thats about it.

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by: JayinPhiladelphia @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 14:34:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

what if I was? (0.00 / 0)

my views as a 70 year old beekeeper has nothing to do with my views of a transexual being allowed to teach children.

i have gay friends and even in the past employees. the story up there in mpls was a teacher who changed back and forth over a period of a few years and the confusion this created with students.  i don't feel there is a place for a freak show like that in our public schools.

your pathetic attempt to defame me illustrates my criticism of these echo chamber sites where you have to believe and say all of the right things to be part of the "club" .

Jay how about YOU showing some open mindedness - you look like the people in CA who have have no tolerance for people who supported Prop 8 and the Gestapo tactics that were used on the supporters. just as hypocritical as the beekeepers in my view.

we can all have our own views - thankfully that makes for a more interesting life.  

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by: bud dingler @ Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 17:47:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Then that would just further confirm... (0.00 / 0)

my suspicions of what you are.  And I never would have bothered if not for your own "shoot from the hip" arrogance which you once again displayed in your original comment.  It goes both ways, bud.

And if it were an attempt to "defame" you, I would have posted some more of the numerous hundreds of other idiotic statements a simple google search on your name instantly turns up.  But thanks for being honest, at least.

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by: JayinPhiladelphia @ Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 21:01:45 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Nicotine (0.00 / 0)

In the 2006 Syngenta DVD, titled "A Primer on Pesticides", Donna Houghton (a Syngenta toxicologist) declares that nicotine is more toxic that "pesticides." She was promoting the use of Syngenta pesticides, to be sure, but the statement seemed to garble her message, in my opinion. Also, it was interesting because, although Syngenta and Bayer are competitors, they are CropLife partners. Is there no comity among criminals?

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by: count @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 18:05:48 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Apples (0.00 / 0)

Has it been your family's practice to use orchard mason bees for apple pollination, or very inefficient honey bees? If honey bees, what criteria determine the choice?

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by: count @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 18:21:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

mason bees do not fly very far (4.00 / 1)

they can be useful for small plantings and ideal for the small farmer or gardener who needs pollination for a short time period and does not want the complexity and cost of a honeybee hive.

they will never replace the versatile and prolific honeybee.

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by: bud dingler @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 23:36:07 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

CCD has long been over? (0.00 / 0)

06/07 incident?

Vanishing of the Bees

In the UK, around one fifth of honeybee hives were lost in the winter of 2008/09.

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by: count @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 18:33:26 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

May I retract that link, (0.00 / 0)

please? The UK loss was not necessarily specific to CCD, nor does it seem to be outside the range of normal winter loss.

However, from the CCD wiki,

In the winter of 2008 a survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Services (USDA-ARS) and Apiary inspectors showed that 36% of America's 2.4 million hives were lost to CCD. The survey covered almost 20% of America's 1,500 commercial beekeepers, and suggested an increase of 11% over the losses of 2007, and 40% over the losses of 2006.

This is just about the U.S. and just about CCD, which is different from normal seasonal loss or loss from other causes such as death of a queen.

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by: count @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 19:33:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

good call (4.00 / 1)

the media has hyped the UK situation

but when I converse with UK beeks online they talk about the horrible back to back summer of 07/08 and how it was either too wet or too cold for the bees to get populated. no population then no honey and no winter food and the bees die.

that story could have some ties to AGW although I have my doubts too about AGW and how sound the science is there at this time in history.

to the media a dead bee or bees is a doomsday story and conjurs up visions of CDD, runaway AGW and death.

death is part of a honeybee cycle.

fact: workers only live 6 weeks in the summer. unless you know the rest of their life cycle you probably should not be writing a blog or news story about bee losses.  

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by: bud dingler @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 23:40:22 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

literature (0.00 / 0)

The bulk of literature on the neonics points to the materials as being safe for bees in most situations.

Except for the literature showing some neonics to be lethal to bees, even at very low levels.

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by: count @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 19:02:08 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

exception (0.00 / 0)

the literature showing some neonics to be lethal to bees

I assume that Bayer did not do or pay for that research.

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by: count @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 19:04:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

bayer had paid for much of the research (0.00 / 0)

but there is a plethora of university research now here and in the EU that pretty much supports the Bayer data.

to their credit Bayer has been more or less open about their research. I mentioned the working group they formed with beekeepers.

One last thought- its all about the dose. there are materials I can use for organic apples that in the right dose are lethal to me and wildlife.

we either kill or be killed in agriculture. we just want to kill softly and leave no residue :) or we starve and die! even in organic farming you need to mitigate or kill the enemy.

the Bayer materials are a state of the art solution that is as close to perfect as we have seen yet. they are VERY specific in their ability to kill some insects and leave other life forms unaffected

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by: bud dingler @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 23:46:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

miticides (0.00 / 0)

Hive decimation is attributable to many real, not speculative, different causes. CCD is a defined non-seasonal syndrome. Much of the public confusion about this discussion seems to come from a failure to differentiate between CCD and other bee losses, and the failure to distinguish sometimes seems deliberately obfuscatory. Varrora is an example. Varrora mites crawl all over any discussion about CCD but - yes, they cause serious loss, but nobody has linked mite infestations with CCD. This doesn't mean CCD isn't real, and it doesn't mean that losses from mites exonerate neonics as a CCD candidate. Conversely, attempts to limit discussion about neonics to CCD carry the disturbing undercurrent that neonics must be OK if they aren't the cause of CCD. Not true.

This info from [bud dingler] posted above is just riddled with inaccuracies.

but bud makes one interesting point despite himself. Bud doesn't say that varrora mites cause CCD. He introduces the role of miticides used to control mites, which is a different issue, and a connection I didn't know about.

dig into the real issues in American beekeeping

I'd like to know more about the role of miticides, but again, this is about much more than just CCD.

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by: count @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 20:18:39 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

who is your ghost writer you clipped? hmm...probably an industrial feedlot beekeeper (0.00 / 0)

my point is the miticides that are used to combat varroa are more likely the source of large unexplained bee losses in an indirect manner.

beeswax is a sponge. god made beeswax a sponge so it could absorb natural toxins and keep away from the bees. bees can live on these combs for many many decades

when the combs they live in are contaminated with miticides it affects a receptor in the bees immunity system.  the bees are exposed to this poison 24/7 and the young ones too. the bees are sick or unhealthy then and more vulnerable to viruses and nosema. stress the bees more by moving them or providing poor forage and boomo the hive collapses.  IFB treat for varrora 3-6 times a year. because they have active brood all year round in the unnatural feedlot setting and the mites are parasites so the population explodes.

stationary bees in the northern half of the usa have a break in the brood cycle during winter - thats important as the mites have nothing to parasite. its a form of sustainable beekeeping to leave stationary.

the whole IFB system of keeping bees has nothing to do with the bees best interest and health.

combine this with grossly over crowded unnatural conditions and you create a domino affect the result of which is big CCD headlines.

again is it the disease or the CAFO analogy.

the mite and brood cycle is very complex and IFB style of animal husbandry does not consider that interaction and greatly magnifies the outcomes.

im pretty f-ing passionate about this folks as i feel the real story is not being told. don't beleive the IFB and they're crap story about CCD and Bayer.

buy only local honey and make sure its raw! and from a stationary not migratory beekeeper!

sorry but the sierra club are tools for the Industrial Feedlot  Beekeepers!

Amen

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by: bud dingler @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 00:01:50 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

The clips (0.00 / 0)

are from you, bud (first quote slightly altered!)

I got your point about the mites, bud. I tried to say it was a good point.

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by: count @ Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 00:27:24 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

CCD (4.00 / 1)

the stats cited about bee losses in 2008

note they surveyed the Industrial Feedlot Beekeepers (IFB) aka as commercial beekeepers.  they are not going to tell the survery takers that it was the coumaphos they dumped into the hive to kill mites that built up to LD50 levels and weakened the bees so that natural disease took over.

true CCD appears to be a stress induced collapse with an involvement of nosema ceranae and IPAV a virus.

many sustainable beekeepers believe CCD is an excuse for the losses attributed to Industrial Feedlot beekeeping.  like my previous story about IFB Mr Hackenberg who suggested an experiment on his bees and then went and killed most of them off himself toting them around for the rest of the season.  CCD my ass Hackenberg!

the media and IFB's like to portray CCD as either a mysterious malady with virus and new nosema strain OR link it to Bayer OR make it sound like a doomsday scenario like espoused by AGW fear mongers.

the various movies of bee doom are mostly inaccurate hype. the IFB like them as they push the blame on the evil ag chems blah blah and are a smokescreean for the miticide issues.

my point was or is that the Sierra Club's news release is mostly hype. the reality is even in the worst losses of 06/07 most of those bees were replaced within months.

winter losses and some losses in general are common and historical. but beekeepers don't just sit on their hands and hope for more bees to arrive like manna from heaven - you either make splits and raise or buy new queens or buy a new hive or pkg or nuc. the articles I am critical of  like to extrapolate a loss down to zero but hive numbers are not a linear function in regards to losses.

so Sierra Club and others like greenpeace and OCA like to use the bee issues to promote some other agenda and love to leave the impression that the bees are dying , we don't know why but this and that is the likely reason that are our pet environmental issue and we're all going be eating rice and wheat and or die.

you can believe me or not but CCD is a non issue in the industry and has been since early 2008 as it became apparent it was confined to a few huge operations. its only an issue trotted out for the media and politicians and tree huggers.

in fact the biggest IFB in the world Mr. Adee lost what was it 80,000 hives in the winter of 07/08. jesus he had like 100K hives on a huge ranch in a Cali holding yard. amping them up on corn syrup and soy flour waiting for almonds to bloom. in the wild bees are spaced about a half mile apart. that way when the grim reaper appears in the form of disease its unlikely to spread too far.

back to the holding yard in Cali. well ceranae nosema or CCD or whatever you want to call it swept though Mr. Adees holding yard and wiped him out. So is this something backyard gardeners need to worry about concerning bumble bees? well no. first of all bumble bees are different species and secondly huge holding yards are like overcrowding in a livestock CAFO.

if you can see my point - its the industrial practices not the disease thats the problem. and the answer or solution is.......drum roll.....not the answer the IFB wants  to hear - its NOT sustainable!!!!

maybe the smarter folks here can see my point I am pounding on. the media and sierra club don't have a clue what is going on in the bee world. if I told you the pigs or chckens in CAFO were dying is that an environmental catastophe for the species? I think not - it reflects more so on the animal husbandry practices. but these fine points sometimes get lost.

miticides: these are chemicals beekeepers willingly dump into their hives.

google apistan and checkmite and then look up the active chemicals in these strips and learn about their toxicity. by doing so you will be learning more then the bloggers and other talking heads know that recycle shit on the internet and claim to have any knowledge at all about the subject.

here's something to ponder. complete beehive losses to AG pesticides are rare in the industry. if the material is real toxic the bees never make it back to the hive so a small fraction of the work force may be lost but not the mother ship that in the peak of the summer is cranking out baby bees at the rate of 1000-2000 a day.

so when the comb analysis i mentioned was done by Penn state turns up mostly beekeeper applied chems it should be no surprise as they are using grams of these materials in their application. contrast this with nanogram levels of trace chems bees that don't die bring back to the hive.

none of this stuff is very intuitive if you are not a beekeeper. folks like sierra club and a few arm chair experts posting here just don't have the basic knowledge to be offering an opinion or authoring an article about the complex issues of bee losses and industrial feedlot beekeeping..

i have been maligned in my industry for pointing out the sins of my mostly brothers and few sisters. thats ok because I really love bees and care more about them then a bunch of IFB's that treat their bees like shit and wonder why they are dying.

about 70% of the nations bees are owned or managed by about 1800 or less beekeepers. these are mostly the IFB I refer to.

back yard and stationary beekeepers tend to be more in step with nature and realize bees have limits and needs like livestock.

mixing the issues of IFB with backyard beekeeping is like apples and oranges.

we're in no danger of losing honeybees - what is in danger of becoming exticnt is the practice of moving bees across the country and pushing them in a feedlot type of operation.

i would rather have my 3000 colonies around Bayer neonics then the old organophosphates that are due for delisting. the neonics are an important advancement and appear to be much much safer for humans, wildlife and the environment. calling for therepeal is a misguided attempt and I have nothing good to say about the sierra club .

one other comment: Maryam the producer of the Vanishing Bees visited me at my location in southern Wisco. I was not drinking  the Bayer Kool Aid so my views were not included in the movie. My position and still is is that the IFB beekeepers are killing their own bees with miticides. Anyhow she is kind of a flake, means well, blogs about her menstrual cycle on the movie blog and is pawning off the story on bayer as she could see that it had some momentum in the media and there were plenty of hayseed beekeepers that would go on tape claiming bayer is killing my bees. i saw the movie when I was in England last month and its a real piece of shit. the animation is like a young kid did it. the newspapers in London had nothing good to say either.

look life is cruel but truth is hard to find and honeybees are the meaning of life.  

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by: bud dingler @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 23:30:17 PM UTC

IFB (0.00 / 0)

Picking an arbitrary year that has nothing to do with anything except that it is far enough back that some useful data might be available:

Since 1990, has the honeybee population shown a declining trend, either in the U.S. or in any other country? Is a bad loss one year pretty much recoverable in the next year or two in the absence of infestations which come and go, drought that limits honey (food) production, etc.? Although it might be reasonable to hear news stories about possible bee shortages in one year or another, are you really saying that us lay people shouldn't be concerned long term?

1800 or less - the above quote from the CCD wiki says about 1500 commercial beekeepers.

Other agenda - are you speculating that the Sierra Club action alert actually is a campaign to sell a movie? (Could be.)

Is anyone here mixing IFB issues and backyard beekeeping issues? (If that happened, wouldn't it be more like elephants and pancakes than apples and oranges? [joke]) You might explain something to me - you advocate buying local honey from stationary beekeepers, fine, that's good. Does that have anything to do with providing pollinators for industrially farmed crops, though? Are those separate issues, or not? Industrialized beekeeping is a response to industrialized agricultural production, not the other way around. Hypothetically, factory farmers could all become stationary beekeepers, but how likely (or practical) is that? Perhaps it is practical, I don't know, but do problems exist for which that would be the solution?

Our contention here is that the entire system of industrialized factory farming is not sustainable. As long as the system exists, though, can sustainable beekeeping support unsustainable agriculture?

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by: count @ Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 01:34:23 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

guttation (0.00 / 0)

a Italian researcher discovered that the systemic chems of Bayer can be found in sometimes dangerous levels in water droplets that form over night in corn leaves (called guttation)

as with all science and literature context is everything.

so initially the alarm bells went off in bee world.

i was just looking but could not find a recent follow up study on this issue. if i recall it demonstrated no bee kills as the bees hardly gave a rip about the water and it was only available to them for an hour or so on in the morning on hot days in late summer.

corn offers no nectar and the pollen is poor nutritionally. its a last resort for bees. linking corn to bee deaths then is like saying bong water is toxic to dogs. how many dogs get to lick the bong water off the carpet?

sure this research was valuable and informative. in itself it proves nothing and I'm hard pressed to see how water droplets at one time of the season is the magic bullet that explains away all of the myriad of issues affecting bees.

nice try but no cigar

i have half my 3000 hives surrounded by corn - no CCD or bee losses here. but then again I'm not a industrial feedlot beekeeper either so what would I know:)

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by: bud dingler @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 00:12:34 AM UTC

i very much dislike the website this article comes from (0.00 / 0)

Natural News has shown a long history of ignoring science and posting speculative BS posed as news. however this story back up my position. the story is not completely accurate either but the author has apperently grasped the important idea that beekeepers are no different then other CAFO operations.

with the release of two propoganda movies targeted on the bogus claim that the Bayer neonics explain all of the issues behind bee losses there is significant campaign we will all see in the media during the next two months or so.

i hope my posting here has opened some eyes and ears and some of the readers here will be more critical of the political games being played by the Industrial Feedlot Beekeepers.

here is the link

http://www.naturalnews.com/028...

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by: bud dingler @ Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 17:38:47 PM UTC