On Sat, 3 Nov 2007 18:36:20 -0700, Mike Stoops <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Just be thankful that the bees are more resilliant than the beekeepers that keep them.
>


Are they? Is that why people are claiming the sky is falling and over time we have less and less 
colonies? 

Pettis, Mussen and Spivak all seem to be saying that we've reached a breaking point for honeybees 
with a combination of stresses 

poor nutrition from monocrop pollination
reduced genetic pool 
contaminated combs
mite treatments 
frequent long movements
increased exposure to pesticides
loss of habitat
etc.

my whole point of this thread is that the negative effects of migratory beekeeping are spilling over 
to the stationary folks. what baffles me is the obvious disregard for honeybee health with the 
unregulated movement of colonies regardless of what issues like CCD are present. 

basic animal health principles like quarantine in time of disease are being ignored for the sake of 
a relatively small number of beekeepers who move their hives for pollination.  the vast majority of 
beekeepers are being negatively affected by this sorry state of affairs.

this new breed of long distance bee movers is portrayed as heroes and victims of some kind by 
the industry. the reality is that migratory beekeeping is now at THE CORE of the PROBLEM by being 
a major source of stress, potential incubator of viruses and rapid dissemination of disease and 
pests. 

migratory beekeeping spreads problems they created themselves to potentially healthy stationary 
colonies. unless we regulate the movement of bees on a national level in this country nothing is 
going to change. in the meanwhile the problems grow and the industry acts like more research 
money is the answer and that the Ag chem industry is their big problem.,..........we're looking at 
massive denial and your post Mike on resilient bees appears to me to be a form of that denial. 

think about it........ almost every bee related problem we've had since the 1980's can be traced 
back to the movement of bees. that is the world we live in but we have not adopted regulations to 
reflect that change.

i'm not saying we stop migratory beekeeping, I'm saying we should recongnize the risks and try to 
mitigate them. 

something needs to CHANGE

IMO every package or hive moved interstate should be charged a surchage - the money should be 
used to manage a national honeybee program which includes inspections and mitigation plans to 
slow the spread of unwanted disease and pests. hives that are moved should be listed in a 
database with GPS locations. bee movers should be prohibited to move hives near stationary hives. 

the priority of the program should be to insure the health of bees owned by the majority of 
beekeepers NOT giving the upper hand to the few beekeepers or bee movers who have the most 
hives.  in this kind of a system we would at least have some idea of where bees have been in time 
of a supposed crisis like CCD. 

where do we want our priorities to lie? the short term for pollination or the long term to insure a 
healthy population of honeybees? 

i'm not implying I have all the answers - i'm trying to get people to think about what we are doing 
in this country and where do we want to bee......in the future. cause the present situation is not 
pretty.

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