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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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From:
Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 16 Feb 2014 18:42:03 -0500
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> that in my grandfather's time orchards were and always had been a good place to keep bees,

I don't know when your grandfather was alive but this from 1920 shows orchards were very hazardous. 

Fruit-growers who apply lead arsenate or other arsenical sprays to
trees in full bloom have long been accused by beekeepers of causing a tremendous
death rate of bees from poisoning. Beekeepers and entomologists
have noticed the large number of dead bees around sprayed trees and
about the hive. Even when they made allowance for death from old age,
disease, and other causes, the mortality was abnormally high. Fruitgrowers
have not been willing to assume responsibility for this excessive
death rate, and up to the present time very little in the way of exact data
has been submitted to support either side of the question.

SUMMARY

A very small amount of arsenic (less than .0000005 grams)
is a fatal dose for a bee.

The time required to kill the bee with arsenic depends upon the
size of the dose. Some expire within one and one-half hours from the
time of administration of the poison, others linger on for a period of five
or six hours. Most of those observed to die from a dose gathered in the
field did so within three hours.

Bees work freely on sprayed trees in the open, even when there
are unsprayed trees all about.

The mortality in the check cage was 19 per cent. as compared with
69 per cent in the lime-sulphur-arsenate of lead sprayed cage, and 49 per
cent in the sulphur-arsenate of lead dusted cage.

For the sake of the bee, fruit trees should not be sprayed while in full bloom .

BEES AND THEIR RELATION TO ARSENICAL SPRAYS AT BLOSSOMING TIME
PURDUE UNIVERSITY Agricultural Experiment Station BULLETIN No. 247 JULY, 1920

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