> the use or non-use of antibiotics and treatments in beekeeping. What are your personal ethics in regard to this subject?

You raise an interesting question. There are a great many ethical
issues raised regarding the "keeping" of bees, but I haven't thought
so much about antibiotic use and misuse, as some of the other issues.

For openers, it is illegal to feed antibiotics to bees during the
honey flow. But is it unethical? There is potential for harm, inasmuch
as the antibiotic COULD find its way into the food supply. But does
it? If not, how can that be deemed unethical? Who would be harmed? An
example would be honey with chloramphenicol in it. Such honey has been
rejected for import into the US from China. The amount of antibiotic
in honey is so small that is almost impossible to conceive of any way
that someone could be harmed by it.

But the US has a zero tolerance for chloramphenicol. Therefore, it is
not an issue of the harm caused by the chloramphenicol at all, but
rather the issue is breaking the law. We have pure food and drug laws
to protect the citizens and in the case of zero tolerance of a
particular substance, the amount is not at issue, but the principal.
The food is not pure if it contains a banned poison. We depend on
these laws and citizen compliance to ensure the health and safetyh of
the citizens, their pets and livestock.

I often wondered why the Chinese would use an old fashioned and
potentially harmful antibiotic like chloramphenicol, and what were
they treating with it? We have approved in the US oxytetracycline,
tylosin, and fumagillin. Why use chloramphenicol? Turns out it's very
cheap, much cheaper than these others. So in order to save money a
cheap dangerous antibiotic is used. This is common practice in many so
called third world countries, where the laws are weak and unenforced.
Unfortunately, in the US the laws are also evaded. Beekeepers use a
wide variety of unapproved and untested chemicals, although usually
not antibiotics. The registered antibiotics seem cheap enough and
effective enough to warrant avoiding going "OFF LABEL".

But there is a another ethical issue to ponder. Will I allow my bees
to become sick and die of contagious disease rather than use
antibiotics? Who is harmed by this practice? Is withholding treatment
unethical? It is in the case of human beings. If you go to the doctor
with a contagious disease, he is duty bound to treat you to protect
you and the public. Are you not also bound to protect the bees in your
care as a matter of ethics? Once you take on the care of an animal,
you accept the responsibility to look after their health.

Furthermore, it is the law AND your responsibility to control certain
contagious disease lest they spread to your neighbors' bees. Of
course, you can destroy the bees to control disease but is this
ethical, when the disease can be prevented for a few cents worth of
terramycin? WIll you place your desire to be antibiotic free before
your responsibility to protect the health of the bees in your and your
neighbors hives?

I will offer no answers on this, because I believe it is each person's
duty to ask him or her self these types of hard questions, and decide.
Do the research, think about it, try to see all sides of the argument
BEFORE taking a position one way or the other. In ethics, as in life,
it is a mistake to make up one's mind first and then look into the
details of the situation. God gave us the power to think, feel and
judge. To exercise these powers is wisdom. To blindly follow the
edicts of another is stupidity.

Peter L Borst

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