Helianthus annuus - Sunflowers*
 
With a name like that every beekeeper should know "approach with caution",
at least when it comes to the modern scientific commercial growing of
Sunflowers as its your bees that will be the ones who gets it in the annuus
and you will be the one who suffers the pain in the rear as our brothers in
France are learning or will learn..
 
I know that there are some who really believe that bees were placed on this
earth to do good and we beekeepers are here to move them into a better
position so they can do that good. I say between my experience of the tears
of seeing my own bees all but destroyed time and time again and now the
laughter hiding my tears at seeing other beekeepers repeating the mistakes
over and over again... "pollination is good farming practice but seldom
good beekeeping", but misery does love company and beekeepers do qualify..
 
Now French beekeepers are learning about pollination of sunflowers or just
flowers as the growers like to refer to them as. To them I say, and I
believe they do have problems with their bees and it could be one pesticide
or another,  welcome to pollination, suckers.
 
What a cold thing to say, they are suffering fellow bee people but never
the less they got a long way to catch up with beekeepers here in California
and to some extent in other areas of the US.  You got to charge enough when
you pollinate no matter how big your eyes get when you see those fields of
potential bee pasture to make up the cost of doing business down on the bee
farm. This not only includes the value of the bees lost and what it takes
to make them back up but the loss of crop you should have made but then if
your crop is the crop you are pollinating you got a big problem, as always
to bite the hand that feeds you and continue in business is no easy task
and sadly beekeepers here and there tend to relies on the regulation of
pesticides by government to protect their bees which is mistake number two.
Mistake number one was to get involved with pollination in the first place.
 
Rule three, never, never believe anyone who tell you that any chemical a
farmer wants to use will not harm your bees. More times then not harm only
means to the dusty is that when what he used actually burned the hive into
a pile of ashes, wires, and nails and has noting at all to do with the
health or productivity of your bees as a beekeeper or their ability to live
from one season to another.
 
I will bet you two things, that the French scientists will spend that
million bucks and find out that they need more money for more research, and
because beekeepers have a chemical dependency problem and their loss may be
something they used themselves to kill their own bee pests or at the least
they can not be sure it was not.
 
Why can't government do the job, again as one American president liked to
say "the buck stops here" and this is as true today in government as in the
day of the mad hatter but today its the "big $$$ bucks that stops any
government from protecting the minority", and we beekeepers are a minority
within a minority, (agriculture) and all should know by now not to have
great excitations from any government agency we would like to think are
their to help us only to find out the form of help you get from government
is increased taxation and regulation which are the two faces of government
with one hand in your hip pocket feeling for your wallet and today the
other one today could be some place else felling for who knows what, at
least with this Democratic in power, the Groper, we call our president in
this the USA, it don't get no better.
 
Some facts you should know and that is there is at least one or two
"dusty's" or pesticide salesman for every beekeeper and maybe ten in some
areas. They are getting harder to identify because so many today hide
behind some environmentalist sounding title. These guys have the mystical
power of high education on their side and know ahead of time what pest
problems a farmer is going to have in any one year and they already have
had their sales meeting and the warehouses are overflowing with pesticides
ready to sell to the farmer as soon as his crops are out of the ground and
their job is to sell and clear out that warehouse for next years supply.
This year they are doing an exceptional business around here as it has been
two wet to do much farm work like making the first cutting of hay so they
have sold many farmers three or more spray jobs to protect that hay and
damaged thousands if not tens of thousands beehives and you know
what...that farmer when he does cut that hay will have little to show for
his efforts as any hope of making anything like a profit on it was lost
because of the costs of protecting it from all those big bad bugs. Of
course the beekeepers loss is not his loss and who would dare say not to
spray and have to risk the damage or loss of the crop would be better, yet
it would have been better not more times then not if only for the money not
spent but the fact is there is nothing better then getting a farmer to
spray that first cutting of alfalfa as it just about insures many, many,
repeat applications for that season and in a crop like alfalfa which is the
mother of all insects good and evil on the farm this early spray jobs just
about guarantees that as other crops advance such as cotton, corn, melons,
sugar beets, that they too will need spraying also as the beneficial
balance or the war of insects eating insects has been altered and can not
repair itself until another season. All this is from the prospective of the
farm advisor pesticide salesman view and they are as close as two hogs in
the muck together, at least here in California, it would be hard for the
public to tell the difference other then one is paid for by the chemical
industry and the other supported by them in all things and in all ways.
 
Anyway I know whatever I say will not make little difference because like
most of you I get big glassy eyed when it comes to thousands of acres of
flowers in some farmers fields just dreaming how wonderful it will be for
my bees and all that honey they will produce, and that's what it usually
turns out to bee, a dream but not a nice dream but a nightmare.
 
If you want to know more about Sunflowers one of my favorite crops take a
trip to the Northeast and Canada at:
 
http://www3.mb.sympatico.ca/~dleslie/sunf.htm
 
You will be surprised, maybe, not easy to find a kind word for the job
honeybees do but lots of information about the pests the growers are going
to have to protect themselves from and at the same time take care of the
honeybee overpopulation problems every beekeeper must have who pollinates.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
 
http://209.76.50.54
Coming Soon the
March USDA Market Reports