At 10:25 AM 4/24/98 -0400, you wrote:
 
>Anyway I don't think, no, I'm sure no one really knows.  In the meantime
 
Arron, I think you got the part right about...."no one really knows",....
                                                                                            but the Shadow knows,  APISTAN!
 
Anyhow from my perspective as one who has lived agriculture all his life it
really sounds to me like bee keepers are sounding more like farmers
everyday. Once a chemical does not work, or quits working down on the farm
the first thing a well educated, well read, well indoctrinated, and well
financed farmer does is yell, RESISTANCE, and looks for another better
farming through chemistry solution from his local dusty, backed up 1000% by
a local farm advisor or the friendly farm agent.
 
I like to called them farm agents myself because so many of them are really
agents of the agro-chemical industry that keeps them well supplied with the
latest advances in modern chemical warfare and many perks. I accidentally
have attended several of their meeting myself,..farm agents/chemical
/regulatory agents and farmers, and find it hard to believe that today's
entomologists and yesterdays bee keepers were as once as close as two bees
in a hive. We sure missed the boat going our separate ways, bee keepers to
keeping bees, producing honey, pollinating flowers and entomologists
selling chemicals,...at least as far as the perks go. I don't think bee
keeper suppliers are good for more then a free drink or two at most bee
meetings today and what a farm advisors/pesticide pimp can make off with at
one chemical meeting is more then most bee keepers can earn in a year. And
beekeepers wonder why when it comes to pesticide problems it is always
comes down to a value judgement, the value of the bees vs the value of the
crop, or more realistic its always been the value of the farm chemicals
sales on that crop.
 
>look for resistent mites coming to a neighborhood near YOU!
 
Why not look for resistant beekeepers? Beekeepers who are resistant or deaf
to the call of the chemical sales man or dusty's. Or resistant bees, of
course to find a resistant bee one would look at bees that have not been
treated with chemicals, according to the promotion I hear there are none of
these rare breeds around anymore.. Maybe at the most bees only treated with
one of the legal but not registered alternatives, and then I believe for
most of us we would not recognize it, resistance, if we saw it anyway as
for sure if a law was passed yesterday barring all treatments beekeepers
would be treating their bees same as $1.00 for each butt is not going to
stop the smoker who thinks he needs just one more drag on that weed.
 
I have not heard from even one bee keeper for about a year complaining
about dramatic bee losses from anything but pesticides, or have I heard
from anyone reporting a build up of mites that needed extra efforts to
control with the exception of what has been reported in the bee journals
and having had one of the main participants here for two weeks this spring
there is more to the story them what has been made public. It is a hoary
story of chemicals, mites, and bee keeper inactive with a satisfactory
ending as the bees were saved, even if not repeatable, but has really
little to do with resistance of bees or mites to any one chemical. I will
say I would not be surprised that if the same tests that are being tauted
as showing this so called resistance in the US were re-done on the same
bees in the same areas they would come up with different results.
 
This is just my personal opinion as always and was not colored by the long
letter of exclamation I and many others received from the Zoecon-man sales
department which in effect said no more then "not to worry" we are looking
out for your interests and our multi million sweet heart deal with the
regulatory industry. (Who me worry, naa I'm just a bee man.) Don't panic
and don't use any competitors products as they are illegal even if they
work better then ours and we don't send perks to any jail house addresses.
 
Well maybe something was left out of my translation of that letter, but I
hope more bee keepers are worrying about putting on supers, and extracting
honey then about mites or the misuse of drugs, other then what the kids are
buying at school these days. Which is why the farmer's chemicals quit
working in the above, not by buying cheep chemicals off the street but
because they misused them. Misuse is using any chemicals that does not work
by definition, does not matter they just maybe that chemical never did work
anyhow. But you know for a fact some farmers around here did not buy that
chemical company line of BS (not Bee Science) and after years and years of
court battles which I am today not even sure who one, but I am sure that
they proved the chemicals sold them did not work. Today they are going more
to using less and fewer chemicals. Some are such hard heads that they don't
use any, other are harder heads and use all the chemicals anyone will sell
them because they don't want anyone telling them what they can do and you
know the difference in the crop yields is little different, except the
one's who use none or little make more because they have less expense. And
in some years they all have pest damage to their crops, and in those years
those who use little or no chemicals even do better.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
open soon again at
http://beenet.com
until then try our new secure server store setup
and buy a Bee Wind Sock or the Pooh & Some Bee's book
 
http:/290.7650.54
 
 
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