# neighbors and pesticides



## knuckledragger (Jun 6, 2007)

I'm new to beekeeping and will be getting a couple of bee hives this week, and in the course of my research I have found just how many widely used pesticides are harmful to bees. It occurred to me that a guy "next door" has 5 acres and raises vegetables for his roadside stand. I don't know what pesticides he uses. Is that likely to be an issue? If so, how would you address it with him? 

Also, the field across the street from me is used to grow corn, cotton, or soybeans depending on the year. Do commercial farmers commonly use pesticides that are harmful to bees?


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## ace admirer (Oct 5, 2005)

"If so, how would you address it with him? "

very, very, very carefully.

if not , he may ask you to keep your bees off his property.


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## boiledfrog (Jun 2, 2011)

ace admirer said:


> "If so, how would you address it with him? "
> 
> very, very, very carefully.
> 
> if not ,  he may ask you to keep your bees off his property.


I'll have to try that on the dairyman up the road. "will you please keep your flys on your side of the road" Ya I like that!:rock:


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## ace admirer (Oct 5, 2005)

so the best you can hope for is to make very good friends with every farmer and gardener for a three mile radius and perhaps have them phone you before they treat their crops so that you can stop up your bees. its a very difficult problem.


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## ace admirer (Oct 5, 2005)

he will say that the cows are his but the flys are not his.....

so that give some insight into the problem, we would have the dairy farmer spray for flys, but not spray if it may kill bees. 

oh the life of a farmer surrounded by non farmers..


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## BRYAN (Jul 5, 2008)

Most vegatable produces are happy to have the pollination from your bees. If your neighbor is excited about the benifits of having your pollinators next door, ask him to do most of his spraying very early and very late to minimize loss of your workers. Just understand that he cannot alter every needed application schedule. I once had a small yard 150 ft from cotton fields, in fact they had me surrounded for a mile in every direction. They were put there for an early flow from clover along a four lane hwy, but they done so well, I left them. My losses were minimal, even though the Boll Weevil Eradication was in full swing with regular applications of ULV Malathion which really hammered some other apiaries. That was one of my most consistant and productive yards, especially in the summer when the cotton was blooming, and my other yards were making very little surplus. They would still be there except thieves stole most my colonies and vandels finished the rest. I never had the heart to put anymore there. In all, it can be a win-win. Most of the commecial apiaries in my area are right next row crop operations and the Dept of Ag Pesticide inspectors in my state rarely get complaints to investigate.


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## Usingmyrights (Jan 10, 2011)

My thoughts are that regardless of where you live there is a very good chance that someone within three miles of you is using pesticides. Now if its your neighbor I may try to talk him into using a more natural way of getting rid of pest and explain to him that he should see an increase in his production because of it due to the bees being so close.


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## boiledfrog (Jun 2, 2011)

ace admirer said:


> he will say that the cows are his but the flys are not his.....
> 
> so that give some insight into the problem, we would have the dairy farmer spray for flys, but not spray if it may kill bees.
> 
> oh the life of a farmer surrounded by non farmers..


We farmed this land decades before he moved his 60,000 cows in.


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## ace admirer (Oct 5, 2005)

ok,, not sure of your point,,,..but there are several reasons we in the United States have the cheapest food in the world.....by magnitudes.. one is large scale (the 60,000 cow thing) another is chemicals.

the question is how can my bees coexist with my neighbors need to make a living with a farm that is producing the worlds cheapest food. the "problem" is a person with a beehive cannot control the 28 or 79 square miles of land around them,,,unless they own it. be it cow or fly farmers or pig farmers or someone growing organic earth worms.. 

i had bees bringing in grains of sugar one time.....in my area that meant MY bees were stealing someone's moonshine supplies. How do i approach that problem with my neighbors? again i say very, very, very carefully.

others have already pointed out the answer, great communications, scheduling, timing along with stopping up bee hives and usually gifts of packaged honey...


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## knuckledragger (Jun 6, 2007)

I spoke to my neighbor and he was very gracious. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met, so I figured things would go okay. He told me that he does use sevin (which is harmful for bees) but that he would gladly switch to whatever is not harmful for them. I told him that I would look into it. Got any ideas?

I also told him that if we could not find something else that worked as well as sevin that I had heard that it would help if would spray late in the day as possible. He said that would be no problem.

He also said that he would buy any extra honey that I was willing to part with so that he could sell it at his road side stand. Sounds like this may work out pretty well.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Any gardener who has part of his crop dependent upon insect pollination also knows how to use pest control effectively with the pollinators. Sevin is one of the safest pesticides and can be used safely where honeybees are the main pollinators. Internet search will produce a useage schedule which would not affect the bees but be very effective on pests. 

Martin


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