>What about the stationary hive project?

The locations were not chosen to directly answer the question of whether
colonies could thrive in specific agricultural environments under best
management practices.

As it is, the EPA has no idea as to the degree of truth when beekeepers
claim that certain agricultural environments are "killing fields" for
bees.  All they hear are anecdotal claims by some beekeepers who say that
their colonies die due to pesticide exposure, vs the applicators,
registrants, and some beekeepers who say that their hives do fine in those
areas.

The FIFRA mandate is that no pesticide can cause unreasonable risk to man
or the environment.  If a sentinel hive network was to demonstrate that
honey bees cannot exist in certain agricultural environments despite being
kept under best management practices, then that would be strong evidence
that something in that environment was causing unreasonable risk to the
environment.

On the other hand, if sentinel hives thrived in certain agricultural
environments, then that would be very valuable information to all parties
involved, suggesting that the pesticides and other agricultural practices
used there were not causing unreasonable risk to pollinators.  It would
also then strongly suggest to beekeepers that they should adopt better
management practices.

To date, there is a ton of finger pointing and blaming, but little hard
data on the survivability of colonies when kept under best management
practices.  The data from self-reported surveys are questionable.  The
colonies in the stationary hive project were not maintained using best
management practices.

A network of sentinel apiaries, IMHO, would provide valuable hard data to
beekeepers, pollinator activists, pesticide applicators, and regulators.
If an area was identified in which bees could not exist, then we could
narrow our investigations to determine the specific reason.  On the other
hand, if colonies kept under BMPs could thrive for a period of years in
another agricultural area, then beekeepers having problems in those areas
might realize that they should look at their own management.

Some on this List seem to already know all the answers.  I don't.  I'd like
to see some hard data.  To the best of my knowledge, no one is currently
collecting this sort of data.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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