The statement that  caught my attention was the claim of NO Side Effects from natural products.  Really???  Mother Nature produces something repellant or toxic to something else that preys upon  or eats something  - plant, animal, insect, bee - and she ensures no side effects??

Keeping in mind Christina's warning about purifying and concentrating a natural product, I'm still going to ask - how about something like rotenone - used by plants to kill leaf-eating caterpillar?  I'm not sure whether anyone has looked at whether the 'natural' materials in the  plants can wash into streams (perhaps from decaying plants), but the crystalline product derived from these plants certainly KILLS FISH.

I'd think that might be considered a Side Effect?  The plant presumably isn't deriving a benefit from killing fish.

We've been conducting trials of NATURAL products extracted from plant materials.  Some are from roots of plants.  These may  have use for pest/pathogen control in bees.  Our first tier of trials looked at toxicity to bees.  Yep, all of them kill bees - we had to find a concentration that didn't.  We accomplished that with some of the extracts, had to conclude others were just too harmful to bees to warrant further consideration.


We've also looked at a long list of essential oils (which members of Bee-L may/may not consider  to be natural products).  We looked at oils commonly found in various bee supplements and tonics.  Many shortened bee life.  So much for them being good for bees.




J.J. Bromenshenk
Bee Alert
Missoula, Mt

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