Re: New Neo Nic Study

This report seemed to me to be long on suggestion and short on facts. But even if neonics in corn kill bees, then what? You have to weigh the economic hardship of the beekeeper vs the economic hardship of the farmers if they were prevented from using neonics. If corn were causing my bees to die, I would get the hell away from it. I know farmers that plant corn, and I would be very uncomfortable trying to tell them how to do their business. 

A friend of mine had a yard that was doing poorly and we went and looked at it. It was next to an apple orchard. I said, what are you -- nuts? Why would you think it was a good idea to leave bees near apples year round? That's why apple growers pay to get bees brought in, because nobody would put bees near apples otherwise. And then they expect the beekeepers to move the bees away so they can start spraying right away. 

In my region there are a lot of apple orchards. The usual practice among large scale beekeepers here is to pollinate apples for a fee. After the petal drop, they move to summer locations, away from the apples. A beekeeper that kept bees by an orchard knowing that spraying was going to be done, would be a knucklehead. As far as corn sprouts killing bees, I think you would have to show that bees actually worked corn sprouts on a regular basis, which the report did not do.

plb

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