# That wasn't very well thought out....



## Schroedc (Sep 2, 2016)

Apparently trying to control the Mosquitoes in SC they made a major whoopsie and killed a ton of honeybees. I'm wondering what that's going to do to flowers and fruit and whatnot if there aren't enough to pollinate in that area next year....

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/01/health/zika-spraying-honeybees/

I don't recall who the beekeepers here are but I'd be interested in their take on the situation.


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## Spinartist (Sep 2, 2016)

Schroedc said:


> Apparently trying to control the Mosquitoes in SC they made a major whoopsie and killed a ton of honeybees. I'm wondering what that's going to do to flowers and fruit and whatnot if there aren't enough to pollinate in that area next year....
> 
> http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/01/health/zika-spraying-honeybees/
> 
> I don't recall who the beekeepers here are but I'd be interested in their take on the situation.




That's disturbing. They are spraying here in south Florida too.


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## Tclem (Sep 2, 2016)

Does anything get thought out ?

Reactions: Agree 1


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## CWS (Sep 2, 2016)

Not when it comes to goverment

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 2


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## ripjack13 (Sep 2, 2016)

Wow....just wow. I swear this government run circus is full of ahole morons....

Reactions: Agree 1


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## HomeBody (Sep 3, 2016)

Just wait until they turn loose the new "gene drive" on the skeeters. Supposedly they will go extinct. Then, what will the birds eat? Dangerous messing with mother nature like that. Gary

Reactions: Agree 3


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## Tony (Sep 3, 2016)

That's a shame. From what I've read the bee population is already much lower than it should be. @rocky1 , what say you on this? Tony

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Schroedc (Sep 3, 2016)

We screw up and wipe out the bee population and Humanity isn't far behind.

Reactions: Agree 2


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## rocky1 (Sep 4, 2016)

As far as the situation in the article linked, I honestly don't know who to blame there.

-- Partly the beekeepers' fault, Zika is all over the news down here, I know for a fact I have to get in touch with St. John's County pest control and register bee yards before the bees get back from ND. Although they've been there for 10 or more years, and we've never had a problem, I see this sort of thing becoming more of a problem with increased mosquito control efforts.

-- County's fault for spraying during daylight hours maybe. For not making more noise about stepping up their spraying efforts maybe. I don't know... While Zika is a real threat, one does have to wonder what spraying that chemical over homes, over people in the field is doing to them. Not cool. Nor is it cool to kill all the bugs in the environment, many other than bees are beneficial. Bees are but one of many pollinators, they aren't even one of the more efficient pollinators, they're simply easier to deal with because they live in boxes that can be picked up with forklifts and hauled on trucks.

-- Chemical Company for mislabeling the product; that could be the reporter's fault on that one though. Two hours after sunrise would work in some locations, certain times of the year, it would be too cool in the morning for the bees to fly. Some crops produce early in the day, and if it's warm enough, the bees will start flying shortly after first light. Some crops on the other hand produce late afternoon, and the bees will work until last light.

Sounds like more communication is needed.

Whether the equipment would have to be destroyed in this case, I honestly don't know. Not familiar with that pesticide, it's toxicity, or it's half life. Most you set the box out in sunlight for a week or so and reintroduce a new hive. There are some however that the chemical will remain in there forever, and kill bees for a long long time! A lot depends upon whether they were sprayed in the field and carried the pesticide back, or whether the hive itself was sprayed. Looking at the pictures in the article, I'm going to guess they sprayed over the top of them.



*As for Tony's question... @Tony *


I've been working in bees to some extent for about 53 of my 58 years on this planet, started out when I was a wee little tyke, holding a flashlight for the old man to nail entrance screens on the hives back in the days when he loaded them in a stock trailer to move them. Tried to get out of the business for a number of years, but always wound up helping somewhere along the line, before getting back into it full time 12 years ago. What I can tell you guys is...

In my younger days, it was not unusual for a hive of bees to live for years; for a given queen bee to remain in a hive for 4 - 5 years. Yes, queens can be and often are marked, hives can be marked, you knew they were the same queen, there was no doubt about it. And, that was without treating them for much of anything, without doing a whole lot of anything to them, aside from feeding them a little over the winter. Back in those days both went hand in hand, you mixed a little terramycin or sulfathizole with the syrup you fed and that was it. Now... That just doesn't happen guys; hives nor queens live anywhere near that long. 

Back in the old days, average colony mortality would run maybe 10% - 15% of your operation annually.
Now... it's not the least bit uncommon to see that every 2 months.

In 1974 we started making the annual migration back and forth to North Dakota, and it wasn't unusual to see 10% loss over the summer. Bees are stressed being bunched up in abnormally large yards with little or no nectar source, then stacked on the truck together and hauled 1800 miles, and you do that to them twice, going up and coming back. So yeah, your losses go way up.
Now... It's not uncommon to go through every hive in the operation, verify they are all alive and healthy with a laying queen. Bunch them, load them on a truck and ship them to ND, spread them out and make the rounds putting empty boxes on 10 days after verification, and find 10% of them dead. Not weak, not failing, not falling apart, DEAD! Not a bee in them. Then you lose 20 - 30% over the summer, and then you lose 10% on the trip home. That's 50% of the operation lost from June through October.

And, then you go into winter when bees have little to work, kick back and eat up the stored honey and pollen they've put away over the summer, and are just generally stressed to the max, causing a higher mortality rate in and of itself. However, we are now storing nectar and pollen gathered from GMO crops, and the effects of stores from those plants is not fully understood. At least not by anyone outside the chemical companies that designed them and they just aren't being real straightforward about things. 

A new government program was implemented to try and help the beekeepers out a couple years ago, and part of the program is record keeping designed to help study and track losses throughout the industry for the sake of research. So now we're counting losses every time we make the rounds. And, what we are seeing is a loss of 2 - 3 percent every - week to 10 days. - And, it's pretty consistent, year round, then it spikes when they are stressed by being piled up, stacked on a truck and moved long distances. And, if you don't treat heavily along about the 3rd week of October here where we're at, it'll spike through the friggin roof about the middle of November.

It sounds impossible, I know; you do math and you'll say, "But... You're saying that you've lost the entire operation in a year, with those numbers." And, that would be very much correct guys . However, beekeepers are constantly growing bees trying to keep our numbers up, because you either grow bees, or go run a forklift at Lowes to eat and pay the bills. For years we were seeing expenditures on Queen bees that were sufficient to suggest we replaced every queen in the entire operation, and our numbers weren't growing, meaning we had effectively rebuilt the entire operation over the course of the year. So no... these numbers we're seeing now did not surprise us in the least, when I ran the spreadsheet on hive count. 

And, that gentlemen is constantly treating for Varroa Mites, Tracheal Mites, African Small Hive Beetle, Nosema Ceranae, and a number of bacterial diseases that affect the brood. Along with feeding vitamin and mineral supplements to try and help boost the bees' immune systems during times they are stressed. All in attempts to try and keep them alive.

The stuff you always hear about on the news, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), typically takes it's toll in the fall of the year, hence our November spike in mortality down here, although it can decimate an apiary at any time. Colony Collapse is viral, which of the 20 or so strains of virus that affects bees it is directly attributed too, remains uncertain, it's been blamed on more than one. There have in fact been, several new viruses discovered in attempts to determine which it is, and like all viruses, there's nothing you can do; it's going to run it's course, you treat the symptoms and hope for the best.

Typically you don't catch it in time to do anything about it. One week your bees look fine, the next week they look like bat guana, and the week after that they're empty boxes. If you catch them when they first start to crash, and treat for all you're worth, you might save half of them. If you hesitate, even slightly, trying to figure out what to do, you might lose them all. CCD is seriously nasty, I know beekeepers that have lost 95% of a 2000 hive operation in 2 - 3 weeks when it hits. These aren't inexperienced beekeepers, these are people that made their living doing this for years. Dad lost all of his bees to it back in 2005, I came to Florida and helped rebuild his end of the operation. Likewise, there are those running 20 - 25 thousand hive operations, that have experienced 60% mortality in a matter of weeks. 

They know CCD is caused by a virus, they're relatively certain it is Varroa Mites that carry the virus that causes CCD, they know varroa and the virus can be present in the hive at all times, and not cause a problem, they simply don't know what other influencing factors trigger it.

In theory, they suspect that varroa and/or nosema are influencing factors that set the virus off. As long as the bee is healthy the virus can't penetrate the bee's exoskeleton or it's intestinal wall. Therefore a healthy bee isn't affected by the virus. Varroa punches a hole in the exoskeleton, nosema eats holes in the intestinal wall; either of which may allow the virus to enter the bee's body and wipes them out.

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On the other hand, those queen bees that used to last for 4 - 5 years, don't anymore. If you get a year out of them, you're lucky. Typically what we see are queens go sterile, quit laying fertilized worker bee eggs, and start laying infertile drone eggs. Since drones are fat and lazy and their only purpose in the hive is to mate the queen, having a hive full of them is not a good thing. No one is exactly sure why the queens are breaking down in the fashion they are either, some blame it on...

-- Nosema Ceranae - Nosema is a bacterial infection that causes ulcerations of the intestinal walls in bees. Queen bees have one drunken orgy in life, they fly out mating with 6 to 16 drones on the mating flight. The seminal fluid is stripped, and excreted, and sperm is stored within the queen's body for the remainder of her life, if Nosema eats the walls of the spermathecal gland up, all of the sperm is lost, and no more fertile eggs.

-- The Chemicals used to treat for small hive beetles within the hives - This excuse was used for years trying to blame it on the beekeepers themselves. We backed off treating for small hive beetle, it made no difference in queen's breaking down whatsoever. 

-- The Queen Bee's diet - About 70% of the Queen's diet is pollen; it's higher in protein than honey. All of the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides stored within the plant in GMO crops are present unfiltered in the pollen. Honey on the other hand, the nectar is ingested, partially digested, and regurgitated upon return to the hive. The worker bees' digestive tract absorbs and removes some of those chemicals in the nectar they bring in.

-- Personally, I also question the number of drones available in mating yards, given the number of Queens being produced to meet the demands of rebuilding everything that's lost these days. If the queen doesn't store enough sperm, she runs out of sperm to fertilize eggs prematurely.


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Thus the problems affecting the bee population are multi-faceted, you have invasive species (e.g. Varroa and Tracheal mites, African Small Hive Beetle), Bacterial Infections (e.g. Nozema, American Foulbrood, European Foulbrood, Chalk Brood, etc. ), Pesticides, Herbicides, Fungicides, GMO Plants, stresses caused by migration, and changes in farming and timber practices reducing and eliminating forage.

Yes, they affect all beekeepers, large or small. Yes, they likewise impact feral bee colonies feral hives can rob diseased hives and carry diseases back to the hive, varroa does migrate when the host colony dies. And, not just within the beeyard, they'll migrate quite some distance at times.

Politics complicates this picture further, we have only one chemical that has proven effective on varroa, it wasn't labeled for treating bees, it was however labeled for treating livestock (hogs, cows, chickens, goats, and sheep), and it's in your lap dog's flea collar, so you are exposed to it from every direction under the sun already. It works, it breaks down very rapidly, no trace of it has ever been found in any honey sample. It however leaves a residual by-product that has been determined carcinogenic at levels several hundred times that ever found in a honey sample, so they can trace it. And, the government in their infinite wisdom has not banned it's use, but... The chemical companies pulled it off the market, in the US only, and devised an approved method of use for us here. It's readily available every where in the world in jugs of various sizes, but here you can only buy it in a plastic slip. Beekeepers are using it every where in the world but here, and we import their honey. It's not illegal to possess it in this country, but you can't import it; Customs stops it.

It used to cost us about 5 - 10 cent per hive to treat with it, you treat 12 - 16 times a year. The chemical company's plastic strip, costs around $3/strip, you're supposed to use 2 - 4 strips per treatment, per hive, dependent upon size of the hive, and you're supposed to treat with them every 45 days or 8 times per year. Used to cost us 60 cent to treat a hive per year, now it costs $48. Not a big deal if you got 2 hives, if you got 2000 hives, that's a different story.

The biggest problem with this plastic strip is that it slowly releases the chemical over time, you are supposed to disassemble your hive completely and remove those strips or at some point the mite is exposed to sub-lethal dosages. Again, if you've got 2 hives it's not a big deal. If you've got 2000 hives on a honey flow, it's impossible. The methods used by beekeepers, simply soaking a paper towel in it and laying it in the hive, it's there for 72 hours and gone. It broke down and went away, sub-lethal dosage was not encountered, the bees chewed up the paper towels and hauled them out of the hive. Everything else that used to work on varroa, the chemical companies screwed up with their plastic strips and slow release. We're really not sure what we're going to do when they screw this one up

Reactions: Informative 5


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