Posted on 08/27/2016 5:04:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Left is like the little boy who cried wolf. Everything is dire, critical, we will all die if we don’t (fill in latest cause celebre here.)
In the early sixties they were telling us school children we would be in an ice age in the ‘70’s, and, at about the same time run out of oil. They kept moving the date forward and then, as some point, decided that global warming had more money in it. So they switched to that. The news tick-tocks from Swine Flu to Beepocalypse to Trump will incinerate us all.
I’ve reached a point where I don’t even glance at these articles beyond the headline. One day, the wolf will eat the boy and nobody will give a damn.
A guy I work with is a third generation bee-keeper. He says the main reason bees are dying out is because they’ve bred so much aggression out of the bees that they no longer defend their hives the way they used to.
I hope it's soon.
Bees are doing fine. There ARE some pesticide kills, contrary to this article, but that’s usually stupidity and misapplication.
The big issue is varroa: they weaken hives and make them susceptible to all sorts of nastiness. The cure, to the extent there is one, is to have more hives and accept that a higher mortality rate is here to stay.
Here’s the story on this subject which I gained at an educational seminar three weeks ago for pesticide users by a scientist (I forget his name offhand, but he is well known in the University of Wisconsin system).
Short answer to the effects of pesticides on bees: no one knows because the research has not been done. I should add that research in this case involves product by product studies. There is as I recall one product formulation that has been well documented (again I forget which) in studies and does not have any effect on bees. But it is the ONLY one.
All stories are either A) anecdotal, B) are exaggerated, C) due to human error.
One of the most popular among the anti-pesticide crowd is an incident which happened in Oregon. “50,000 bees in mass killing due to pesticides!!” Truth was that it was 25,000 bees. Why did they die? Linden trees were being sprayed by a commercial applicator for Japanese Beatles - this is normal. I forget the product in question, but the product label clearly says, “Warning: Do NOT use on Linden trees in flower.” Pesticide labels are law. Not following the label directions in a prosecutable violation.
The commercial sprayer clearly ignored or did not read the product label and so killed the bees. It was his fault not the product’s.
All pesticide products are divided into a few limited chemical groups. Manufacturers reformulate a particular product for their needs. This new pesticide product is not the same as a similar one by the same or another manufacturer even though the use (target) is the same and so must undergo a testing regime against the target and against various environmental concerns of which bees are just one.
Many laymen think that the only really bad pesticide is glyphosate (aka: Roundup) - its actually among the more benign when properly administered (label directions followed). Most formulations break down in a few days into harmless compounds. There are strict rules about just how often these products can be applied, and in what percentage per acre during a given year in commercial applications (non commercial users just want it to work and seldom read the label or understand what they are reading hence the rise of RTUs (ready to use) products).
There is NO research on the effects of glyphosate on bees.
In this case, I do not believe neonictinoids should be written off.
We do end up ingesting them at certain points in the food chain.
Glyphosate is an herbicide.
My Italian ladies are as docile as they come, but this time of year, when the flow is kicking and they know winter is coming, you better be in full protective gear if you get near their honey.
Every agitation while working with them increases their buzz tone/freq. Every time that happens my body releases a bit more adrenaline. I can take it for about 45 min to an hour then its time to do something else.
Exhilarating to say the least.
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I dont know what to believe about all this.
I do know a few things:
1. The honey from my own backyard is delicious, and a blessing from my Creator. The time I have spent fiddling with the bees with my children and grand-children is priceless to me.
2. 50,000 bees is not very many. One large hive can have more than that.
3. Having the FDA, USDA, EPA involved is not a good thing.
4.We need a Bee-FReeper Keeper Ping list
All I know is that I am up to my neck in bumblebees. The are still going after the flowers on my raspberry bushes, which makes picking the berries getting ripe “interesting”.
I took bee keeping as a 4-H project many many moons. It was an amazing educational experience to understand the social hierarchy. I was given a queen pupae sp? to start my hive. It worked out for awhile but disease eventually took me out of business.
Even today, my family’s farm in SE CO allows a beekeeper to bring in @70 hives for the alfalfa in the vicinity. What a treat every fall to receive several quarts of honey as a thanks from the keeper. My elderly folks use the honey as Christmas presents.
The biggest challenge for bees in our area are the damn bears. We use lots of electric fence and it seems to work.
It is, it also could have some affect on insects.
For what it's worth, I can recall attempts to introduce panic over 'bee kills' way back in 1973.
I didn't believe any of that nonsense then either.
The funny part is that for beekeepers, their hives prosperity is their prosperity, so being a smart group of people, they have acted wisely, judiciously, and cooperatively with each other, (with minimal government involvement, I should add), and there are now far *more* bees than there were before the “colony collapse disorder” was first recognized.
How do they do this?
In past, beekeepers intentionally limited the number of hives instead of propagating new ones. Because larger hives equals more honey (and less work). However, when their hives were at risk, they began cloning their hives.
Granted more work, but more hives also produce more honey.
Next, beekeepers will transport their hives to fertilize particular crops. This created a problem because a healthy hives territory could overlap with an unhealthy hive, typically a wild hive.
Their solution was to both set exclusive territories and timetables from each other, and to keep a watch for wild hives.
Lastly, they work with farmers to avoid areas that have been recently treated with pesticides. By working around the problem, like using pesticides after the flowering cycle is over, no problem.
Yes it is but it is also called almost everywhere a pesticide as it is in the same “family” of control products and a generic name. And BTW, weeds or unwanted vegetation are pests so the appellation, pesticide, is correct again. A pest does not have to be an animal or insect.
Specific products for animal pests (deer, rabbit, etc) are also pesticides which do not kill (unless over- or mis-applicated) vegetation. Others kill insects and are labeled insecticides - which kill insect pests, but not vegetation.
Herbicides kill (or are supposed to) only vegetation which are pests as I said earlier. And so glyphosate is a pesticide and an herbicide - it just depends on the use and application.
The term “pesticide” is used to refer to any substance that is used to control an unwanted organism. An herbicide is a subset of pesticides that is intended to control unwanted plants, just as an insecticide is used to control unwanted insects. Another way to put it is that all herbicides are pesticides, but not all pesticides are herbicides.
That said, just because a particular substance is termed an “herbicide” does not mean that it will not or cannot have pesticidal effects upon other life forms, indeed one of the big takeaways from investigating the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder in bees has been the synergistic effect of different pesticides on bees between products used by beekeepers to, for instance, control Varroa Mite and whatever products are being used on the crop the bees are pollinating. Studies have shown that there exists the potential for a exponential increase in lethality if bees are exposed to two or more different pesticides, even if taken separately they are beneath toxic levels.
Pesticides are more rightly classified by their mode of action rather than herbicide, insecticide, fungicide, etc.
Umm...yeah. My bad for taking “herbicide” and “pesticide” literally.
And always follow application instructions. :)
“As Prime Minister Jim Hacker quipped in the theatrical version of the British comedy series Yes, Prime Minister: “Computer models are no different from fashion models. They’re seductive, unreliable, easily corrupted, and they lead sensible people to make fools of themselves.”
What a great quote!
Don’t forget the population explosion. Kill your “future”-kids to save the planet then import the third world to fill the ranks of the low cost worker (not necessarily low skilled worker)...
Interesting.
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