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From:
Madeleine Pym <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Thu, 10 Sep 1998 23:25:02 +0100
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The Old Drone is right, our babies are doomed.
 
I am prepared to testify to the sin of feeding both my sons honey well
before the age of 6 months when I used it to sweeten their first baby
cereal, and now I am reaping the rewards.
 
They hang around honey pots all day given the chance, well I should say
all night really because they have acquired the ability to sleep right
through any amount of buzzing whether it be alarm clocks or telephones
until around 3 or 4pm.
 
Then they take a flight or two out for a while only to return hungry and
tired and searching the larder for stores. I have tried stopping feeding
them and managed to push one of them out when he had missed a couple of
meals, even though he's about 6 inches taller than me. But he still
keeps coming back, especially on Sundays for some reason.
 
What am I to do?
 
What's more they never do any work around the house or bring home
anything useful apart from the trail of dirt on the soles of their feet.
 
But I jest! What I mean to say is what a load of nonsense really all
this is. The English always used to have a great deal of faith in eating
one's peck of dirt in a life time in order to stay well, now we have
gotten afraid to drink out of a cup if it hasn't been through the dish
washer.
 
BUT ON TO MORE SERIOUS THINGS
 
Alternative ways to 'euthanaise' your bees. It's no longer 'PC' to say
KILL.
My father uses chloroform when he has a colony that is badly infected
with acarine.
 
He has recently started to wonder whether one could give a smaller dose,
not enough to kill the bees, but sufficient to knock out and, sorry,
'euthanaise' the acarine. If this were possible it would presumably mean
there were no contaminants left in the hive afterwards. OK, the adult
bees would be pretty sick still, but there would be no acarine to
reinfest, and the brood could all emerge to their brave new world free
of acarine.
 
My thoughts are that it would not destroy the eggs and they would then
cause a second outbreak but you could give a timely follow up treatment
surely. What do you learned folks think. Could it work on other wee
beasties too. Fortunately for him his stocks rarely ever get acarine -
since he got rid of the New Zealand queen he bought - so it will have to
remain a theory for the foreseeable future.
 
FINALLY
 
Unless I am mistaken I am NOT a gentleman, so does protocol mean I am
excluded from having any opinions about beekeeping.  I refer to a recent
mailing to this line which started something like 'Dear Gentleman', it
certainly did offend this Bee-L member and you have all narrowly missed
a mailing with as much sting in its tail as anything Andy Nachbaur can
dish out.
 
A somewhat spikey feeling Madeleine Pym,
Still just a beekeeper, not a candle maker, or even a good honey cake
maker.
 
(By the way my youngest son asked me to point out that I am lying
barefacedly about them never doing any housework, etc. what's more he is
training to be a professional chef and says he doesn't need me to feed
him anyway - not that I'd have time to with all those demanding females
to look after at the bottom of my garden.)

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