# Beekeepers take action



## reginabee (May 15, 2008)

All the studies have been done and we know what is killing the bees. Beekeepers watch the Nicotine Bees movie, I just purchased one for our bee club, and then take action! Stop poisoning our bees!
http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/whatsnew/whatsnew_2009-11-10.asp


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

All the studies are not done at this time. The use of Nicotine isn't the whole story nore is it the whole problem. there are many other factors in the real story.

 Al


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## stormwalker (Oct 27, 2004)

Yipes! I have many bees visiting me. I thought I was doing fine. I don't use pesticides except for Neem, and I only spray at night. I'm going to be more careful about buying seeds next year.


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## cathleenc (Aug 16, 2007)

Neonicotonoids are really scary stuff! its the effective ingredient in front line/advantage/advantix that we use on cats & dogs, btw.


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## indypartridge (Oct 26, 2004)

I'm with Al on this one. There has been a lot of suspicion and research directed at neonicotinoids since the outbreak of CCD. However, there are still many unanswered questions. No one in the research community has so far produced evidence of a single cause to CCD, and, in fact, much of the research indicates that it's a combination of factors.

If neonicotinoid seed coverings were THE cause of CCD, why haven't we seen similar die offs year after year? There are still pieces of the puzzle that are missing.

As an Indiana beekeeper with a lot of corn and soybeans nearby, I'm concerned about pesticides and herbicides and their effects on my bees. I've been in meetings with the State Chemist's office and with Dept of Ag folks discussing what can be done.

On the other hand, I don't want to see knee-jerk reactions based on preliminary data and half-baked conclusions. It was a mistake when DDT was banned based on bad science, I'd rather we take the time and get it right this time around.

That said, I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, and am grateful to the producers for both caring about bees and trying to raise public awareness.


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## reginabee (May 15, 2008)

I got "nicotine bees" in the mail will watch!


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

The only common factor found in CCD losses is the bees were migrient bees used for pollination.
I also have lots of corn and bean fields near our many bee yards. Never have we lost a colony with CCD like simtoms. Even the colony I lost this summer to AFB like turned out to not be AFB when the testing was done at Beltsvill.

 Al


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## Durandal (Aug 19, 2007)

Ditto Here Alley...

I have also gone 100% treatment free. Survivors only from local swarms. Of my 30 colonies currently, 6 are packages and the rest are whatever I find, split, or pull queen cells from.

So far so good.


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

By Susan Milius 
Web edition : Tuesday, December 15th, 2009



INDIANAPOLIS, IND &#8212; Jeff Pettis continues to break the hearts of mystery lovers.

Two years ago he and other entomologists went to work on what sounded like the scenario for rip-roaring fiction: widespread, unexplained disappearances of honey bee workers that left the youngsters and queen behind for no obvious reason.

His progress report to the national meeting of the Entomological Society of America, however, isn&#8217;t pointing toward a fictional crescendo. Pettis argues that there may not be a Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the candlestick, but a web of subtly interacting factors. At his presentation December 12, he might have been an epidemiologist chiding humans about the need for life style changes: &#8230; multiple stresses &#8230; subtle interactions &#8230; importance of nutrition.

Pettis is an entomologist though, the research leader at the USDA Agricultural Research Service&#8217;s Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. For at least a year, he has been talking about the interaction hypothesis.

He points out that a working honey bee leads a tough life in today&#8217;s landscape of imported parasites and long-distance road trips to agricultural fields that may have low nutritional value but considerable pesticide residues. He proposes that such stresses weaken the bees and interact with other menaces, such as viruses, which can massacre a colony.

Other research, which he didn&#8217;t review, has identified viruses that lead bees to expire when they have ventured beyond their hives. That quirk might explain the syndrome&#8217;s illusion of vanishing workers.

As examples of worrisome stresses, Pettis described sublethal doses of pesticides, under study in cooperative research with Galen Dively of the University of Maryland in College Park. In this work, bees didn&#8217;t die from weeks of exposure to a neonicotinoid pesticide. But when the same bees faced a later challenge, the nasty fungal pathogen Nosema ceranae, they developed worrisome infections. Pesticide-exposed bees ended up with three to four times as many Nosema spores in their body as did bees without the pesticide preview. &#8220;It&#8217;s a very subtle interaction we wouldn&#8217;t have detected&#8221; without the specific test, Pettis said.

Hauling bees across the country adds more stress, although Pettis says he&#8217;s not betting that the long-standing problems of transportation will prove a major factor in the recent colony collapses. Nevertheless, ARS and other institutions are looking into the stress. A comparison of hives shipped away versus ones left in place found higher egg and larval losses in the transported colonies, he said.

Also, bees on the road failed to manage their hive temperature as well as the stationary ones do, Pettis said. Hives sitting in California stayed near 34 degrees Celsius even though day and night outdoor temperatures zigged and zagged during the same period. When traveling on a truck though, hive temperatures lost their relatively even control and began spiking and dipping.

This multiple-stress approach to the bee dilemma doesn&#8217;t grab public imagination the way a classic mystery villain does. Yet it&#8217;s just as worrisome. Adding colony collapse disorder to the other perils honeybees face has raised winter losses to around 30 percent, Pettis said. Beekeepers have divided hives and compensated to some extent so far, but &#8220;this is becoming unsustainable,&#8221; he said.


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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

My antivirus program is blocking the link from the OP. Is it the same as this one? http://www.viewzone.com/lostbees.bayer.html that says


> Colony Collapse Disorder is poisoning with a known insect neurotoxin called Clothianidin, a pesticide manufactured by Bayer, which has been clearly linked to massive bee die offs in Germany and France.


Further down the page it says...


> The first clue that Colony Collapse Disorder was a simple case of poisoning -- similar to the DDT bird kill-off decades ago -- was when clothianidin was used on corn crops in Germany's Baden-Wuerttemberg state.
> 
> In July of 2007, the German crop was infested with the rootworm. The German government ordered that every possible method should be used to eradicate this pest, including the use of clothianidin. Shortly after the seeds were planted, in May of 2008, some 330-million bees abruptly died!
> 
> According to the German Research Center for Cultivated Plants, 29 out of 30 dead bees had been killed by direct contact with clothianidin.


I've had 2 colonies of bees die off. Corn is not grown in my area. The only corn here are the commercial bags of feed corn. They wouldn't contain clothianidin would they? I guess if it was on the seed that was planted, it could be in the feed corn. It scary to think we might be unknowingly introducing this stuff into our animals and soil, thereby introducing it into our own bodies.  If it's killing bees, what's it doing to us?


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## stormwalker (Oct 27, 2004)

Oh Goody!
I just bought myself a jar of Geman honey!


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