Chuck Norton Said:
A search of the BEE-L Archives failed to come up with any additional posts
with "Intercaste Syndrome" as the quoted phrase. I frankly am not up to
date on this although I am aware of increased mortality and infertility of
queens and drones raised in an environment affected by "normal"
applications of various FDA (USA) approved pesticides. Could you and
others possibly expand on this hypothesis?

I have not heard of the term "intercaste syndrome" apllied to bees either. Google turned up nothing relating to bees, only ants, where the term may have originated. However, in very recent times researchers like Jeff Pettis and Marla Spivak have worked with these "approved" toxins and shown that at even very low levels, queen rearing, and development of surviving queens, is heavily impaired. It stands to reason then, that pheromones that are normally given of by a queen may also be lacking due to poorly developed glands and/or receptors. One could see that in such an event, two queens in a hive are a strong possibility. I recently listened to Dr. Pettis on one of these experiments, and he commented that even with residues from 1/4 of a strip of coumaphos in the hive, queen rearing proved to be extremely difficult. Something to consider, when we typically dose the hive with two of these strips.

On a brighter note, (and I do not know how much this topic has been discussed as I'm fairly new to the forum), our local university (WSU) has worked on the development and approval of sucrose octanoate, a non-toxic food grade sugar ester that is sprayed onto the bees weekly for three weeks (Dadant markets it as "Sucrocide"). It works by essentially dessicating the mites and clogging up their breathing apparatus. The bees merely lick themselves clean. While this method of mite control is too labor intensive for a commercial bee yard, it may be all right for a queen rearing operation, and eliminate the need for coumaphos or fluvalinate.


Frank Seiler
Seiler Apiaries

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and  other info ---
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::