In a message dated 95-06-30 11:42:16 EDT, [log in to unmask] (Michael Stoops)
wrote:
 
>Also, if you keep your agent abreast of where
>your bee yards are, you might get notification for the agency of
>upcoming
>spray schedules so that you can put screens on the entrances of your
>hives and keep your bees in on the day of the proposed spray.  It
>also
>helps if you communicate, and possibly give a jar of honey in the
>fall,
>with surrounding farmers and ask them to keep you updated with their
>spray schedule so as to prevent further bee kills.  A lot of work, I
>know.  But that might help prevent future drastic bee kills in you
>yards.
 
   So you are willing to take total responsibility for *protecting* your
bees, eh?
 
   That may be why we cannot get any action from public officials on this
matter, because of so many beekeepers like you, who are so compliant to
pre-FIFRA *solutions* that didn't work.  It is obvious that you haven't have
direct experience in this area. I certainly don't wish any bee kills on you,
but I'm sure that after a few, you would begin to see differently.
 
   The pesticide label (if a material is hazardous to bees) specifically
prohibits application if bees are foraging in the application area.  That is
the applicator's responsibility, and it is a legal requirement.  If he
applies on a blooming crop without knowing if bees are foraging, he is at
least negligent, possibly wilful. If labels are carefully followed, bee kills
drop to negligible levels.
 
   There is, of course the problem, that in circumventing the label
directions by your proposal to let the beekeeper take responsibility, that no
protection is afforded our pollinators that do not have a human caretaker.
 Oops, -there goes bumblebees, solitary bees,  wild honeybees in trees .....
 
 
   Lets try a couple scenarios, according to your plan:
 
#1.  You are a backyard beekeeper with three hives.  Just as you are to leave
for work, you get a call saying the spraying will commence in a half hour.
 You look out, and the bees are already foraging.  You have accepted the
responsibility for *protecting* them, and let the applicator off the hook on
label directions (as if you COULD give him permission to spray illegally).
 You call your boss and explain to him, that you can't make it to work,
because you've got to protect your bees.  He's not happy about that, and you
know that if you pull this again next week, you'll get fired.
 
   You begin to wonder how you are going to get the bees back inside the
hives, so you can close them up.  You close them up anyway, and the returning
bees cluster on the outside.  You open one up to let them back in, and a big
bunch from inside leave, and they sure are sore about being penned up, so you
catch a few stings.
 
   Then you realize that the bees are getting overheated, and are really
getting excited.  You realize that they are approaching meltdown.  You get a
bucket of water and douse the hives, because your hose isn't long enough.
 Then you run to buy a hundred feet of extra hose, because you don't want to
have to lug water all day.  Every time you go near the hives, the outside
ones chase you around. Let's leave the rest of this scenario to your
imagination, along with all the dead bees you'll find from the day's
stresses..
 
#2  Let's say you are a commercial beekeeper in cotton country (-pretty much
the whole southeast the last couple years).  Your bees are located in over a
hundred bee yards and pollination locations.  You estimate that on any given
day in July and August, as many as fifteen sites could be exposed to
applications. You purchase 400 burlap sheets to cover the hives.  You spend
two weeks finding all cotton fields, and notifying growers and applicators,
so they can call you.  (Some will, some won't.)  Some of them cuss you out
and tell you to get your #@#$&*%# bees out of the area. You know in your
heart that if you don't, they will be vandalized. But you don't know of any
safe place to go.
 
   You hire and train 15 assistants, provide them with smokers, veils, etc.
 You have to find people that are willing to be in the field by 5am, so they
can pen up bees before they begin to fly in hot weather.
 
    You get a tank for each, as big as a pickup can hold, so they can keep
the hives cool by dousing them with water every half hour or so. Hopefully,
each of your employees has his own pickup.
 
    Each one has to have a cellular phone, and you have to have a secretary
to monitor the home phone, as spray schedules are apt to get changed at the
last minute.  You also need a roving 4x4, in case someone gets bogged.
 
   I am quite familiar with the second scenario, because it is mine. By
following your suggesting of *protecting* the bees myself, I would spend more
than my gross annual income in six weeks of summer spray season. -- All so
the applicators could continue to ignore the label directions!
 
   Oh nuts...  Your pollination clients are complaining that the crops didn't
get pollinated, because you shut up the bees for 10% of the bloom season, and
they want a hefty refund.
 
   Cotton acreage here has increased explosively in the last three years, and
is exacting a very high environmental cost.  There had to be many hundreds,
possibly several thousand applications, in violation of bee directions on the
labels, last season.
 
   I am a very observant person, especially of pollinators.  In all the crops
I have worked with this season, I've seen less than a dozen bumblebees.  Yes
- that is for the WHOLE season.  I've seen only about a hundred solitary
bees, again for the whole season.  I went out of the cotton area a couple
weeks ago, and saw a hundred solitary bees on melons, of at least five
different species, in just a few minutes.
 
   Last year's pesticide damage has cost me more than half my income for this
year.  I gave up my entire spring honey crop, and my package and nuc sales,
because I had to replace my own losses -- and I still would up with fewer
hives than last year.  And that's not counting all the extra feeding.
 
   Do you get the picture?  I am not wanting to be unkind, but naive
acceptance of pre-FIFRA thinking is wiping out wild pollinators, and making
it impossible for commercial beekeeping in high pesticide use areas.  You can
see why I'm kind of intense about it.  I refuse to abet a scheme to
circumvent the law.  I refuse to be the turkey at the turkey shoot.  The only
way beekeeping can survive is the implementation and enforcement of the
pesticide label directions for bees.
 
   (FIFRA is the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rotenticide Act of 1972)
 It, and corresponding state laws, recognized bees as an environmental
resource and set aside the pre_FIFRA precedents that considered bees
*trespassers*)  But it has only been implemented, as regards to bees, in a
very few cases in 23 years.
 
[log in to unmask]                 Dave Green
PO Box 1215, Hemingway,   SC   29554
 
 
*All people can be divided into three groups: those who make things happen,
those who watch what's happening, and those who haven't the faintest idea
what's happening.*
 
*Sometimes silence is golden; sometimes it is pale yellow.*