Men with strange hairdoos have been threatening to launch nuclear tipped missiles recently  - which leaves me wondering on this nice fall day how a nuclear confrontation would affect bees and beekeeping.  

A search of the bee-l archives shows there has been some discussion about the affects of the Chernobyl accident.

 http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind0005D&L=BEE-L&P=R329

It has been 31 years since Chernobyl. How wide an area is still off limits to honey production? Have wild swarms repopulated the immediate area around the accident site?

Now that we have multiple nuclear armed countries, I expect a nuclear attack by one country would lead to retaliation by another - in which case there probably wouldn't be many of us left to worry about the bees. But suppose a hydrogen bomb  big enough to level a six mile radius was dropped somewhere on this planet, after which peace was restored. How large an area down wind would be affected (have contaminated nectar, pollen, bees etc and for how long)?     

 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html