Keith Malone said:
> Small cell, The Lusbys and several beekeepers in the USA and
> Europe have done just as you have suggested above using small cells.
Done what?
While the approach is claimed to eliminate the need for chemicals,
I've yet to see anyone present any records to show that:
a) They have used no chemicals
b) Their colony losses have been minimal
c) They have produced reasonable marketable crops, or pollinated
But since the process of "downsizing" takes time, I will be more patient.
> Though their hard work and results are negated.
What results?
"Small cell" has been claimed to possibly be the solution to nearly
every beekeeping problem known, but tangible results have not been
forthcoming. (Again, it takes time, so we must wait...)
> When is a caring and honest researcher going to research small cell
> methods correctly and completely?
"Caring" and "Honest"?
As if researchers are neither?
[Allow me a moment to change the setting
on my Palm Pilot from "Stun" to "Puree"...] :)
A "caring and honest" researcher has better avenues of inquiry
to explore. He/she HONESTLY considers what is known about
"small cell", and CARES enough to not waste time and money
that could be better used to examine something else that stands
a chance of yielding some tangible results of value.
Research exists, but it appears that the research done to date
has not supported the claims made for "small cell". It would be
a very unfortunate mistake to think that the researchers who do
this work are neither "caring" nor "honest".
I know of the following:
1) Message, D and L.S. Goncalves. 1995. "Effect of the size of
worker brood cells of Africanised honey bees on infestation
and reproduction of the ectoparasitic mite Varroa jacobsoni
Oud". Apidologie 26:381-386
2) The book "Mites of the Honey Bee" by Webster & Delaplane quotes
a study by Ramon & Van Laere discussed in the book "Asian
Apiculture" by Wicwas Press, and says:
"The smaller cells of AHB, along with the fact these
bees have fewer mites than European bees within the same
setting has led to the conclusion that possibly a small
cell size would limit mite reproduction. Just the opposite
seems to be true. Larger cells have fewer mites."
3) An April 2001 progress report "Can the Reduction of Cell Size
Reduce the Impact of Varroa?, Sustainable Farming Quarterly
Progress Report, HortResearch Client Report No: 2001/291" by
M.A. Taylor and R.M Goodwin was quoted on Bee-L here:
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0107D&L=bee-l&P=R1042&D=0&H=0&O=T&T=1
There appears to have been no further reports from this study, so I
have sent an e-mail to Dr. Goodwin asking about the status of the
project. I suspect that things went very badly, and the project was
abandoned, but I'll let him tell us. (More later)
> Really there has been no great strides made in the transportation industry
> in the past one hundred years. Nothing has changed in our modes of
> transporting goods around the world, we only use boats, trains, trucks, and
> planes.
EVERYTHING has changed in transportation. The past 30 years alone have
seen increases in both the speed and the volume of international shipments
at a rate that can only be described as exponential. Go to an airport and
count the planes coming and going. Go to a seaport and TRY to count the
multi-mode containers coming and going. Realize that I got a package just
this Monday from Hong Kong that they did not ship until Saturday afternoon
their time. My wife baked bread for her brother in October, and sent it to
him in Sardinia. It arrived fresh. I can click a little icon on my Palm
Pilot, and a window will pop up showing me the status of UPS and Fed-X
shipments sent from here or destined to arrive here. Most of the status
updates are only hours old, and the reports track every single package,
planet-wide. (In contrast, I still can't find the keys to a 1964 MGB that
a friend asked me to give a new clutch...)
> It's really only been in the last three or four decades that this spread of pest
> and disease has occurred in honey bees.
There is a direct and tangible cause-and-effect link between
the increase in the number of international shipments of bulk
commodities (where the little beasties can hide), the speed
with which these shipments are delivered (which means that the
beasties arrive alive), and the appearance of invasive exotic
pests and diseases planet-wide.
> Nothing has changed in our modes of transportation's in
> the past one hundred years,
See above. To repeat, everything has changed.
> so maybe something has changed in the industry of beekeeping?
> Worker cell size has changed in the beekeeping industry in the
> past one hundred years.
There is no support for this claim. In fact, bees allowed to
build comb on "strips" or on non-embossed wax sheets have shown
no general tendency to build smaller cell sizes, and even feral
hives have not been shown to have smaller cell sizes. The only
bees shown to build smaller cells are different, smaller bees,
such as AHB, and bees that are "forced" into smaller cell sizes.
Yes, there were repeated efforts to use "drone comb" as honey super
foundation, in hopes of easing extraction or reducing the wax-to-honey
ratio in a filled super, but this had nothing to do with brood comb.
> It has only taken a bit of time for beekeepers mistakes to finally
> catch up and bite them in the rear.
What specific "mistake" did everyone make? If the claim is that
beekeepers and/or foundation makers enlarged cell sizes, everyone
still awaits any factual support for the claim to contradict what
information we do have.
> Somebody has to be able to put two and two together to figure
> this simple equation out.
There is a great deal of difference between wanting something to
be "true" "easy", and "simple", and the actual state of reality.
Admitting that there is no single "simple" answer to the problems
posed by pests and diseases is the first step on the road to staying
a beekeeper for more than a season or two. The truth is that one
needs a more complex toolkit to deal with the more complex environment
our bees must survive. It is not "simple", and it is not "easy".
It is hard work. Just like beekeeping always has been. Now it is harder.
It saddens me to see the effect of "true believers", since most not only get
discouraged and give up beekeeping after a season or two of frustration,
but their initial enthusiasm drags many neophyte beekeepers down the tubes
with them. One can see this in analysis of subscriber lists to beekeeping
magazines, mailing lists for beekeeping catalogs, and one might be able to
see the effect in the backups of the subscription list of this mailing list.
The sad dirty little secret about fashionable nonsense as applied to beekeeping
is that it turns relatively new beekeepers into ex-beekeepers at an alarming rate.
It threatens the industry itself, since equipment suppliers, magazines, and
breeders all need a minimum number of beekeeper customers to exist to stay
in business, and without such vendors and services, beekeeping would be
impractical for most.
> This is not Rocket Science and you do not need a Ph.D. to figure it out.
Yes it is, and yes it is.
That's what's different about beekeeping now.
We have all these exotic invasives to deal with.
They kill colonies.
Voodo and crystals don't save coloines.
Science does.
OK, a Ph.D. is not really required, but a great deal of technical
skill is required to even do simple things like merely DETECT the
diseases and pests that are claimed to be somehow "defeated" by
small cell foundation.
Quick, how many of these could YOU test for and detect?
Viruses
Paralysis
Sacbrood
Acute Paralysis and Kashmir Virus
Deformed Wing & Egyptian Bee Virus
Slow Paralysis Virus
Black Queen Cell Virus
Filamentous Virus
Y Virus
Bee Virus "X"
Cloudy Wing Virus
Apris iridescent virus
Akansas Bee Virus
Bacteria
American Foulbrood
European Foulbrood
Septicemia
Powdery Scale Disease
Spiroplasmas
Rickettsial Disease
Protozoa
Nosema
Amoeba Disease
Gregarines
Flagellates
Fungi
Chalkbrood
Bettsia Alvei
Stonebrood
Melanosis
Trichoderma lignorum
Mucor mucedo
Aspergillus niger
Claviceps (Only genus known for this one)
Nematodes
Agamomermis
Pest Insects
Greater Wax Moth
Lesser Wax Moth
Driedfruit Moth
Braula coeca
Other Braulidae
Asilidae
Phoridae
Calliphoridae
Pollenia
Conopidae
Phoridae
Sarcophagidae
Tachinidae
Mites
Non-phoretic Mites
Acarus siro
Acarus immoblis
Tyrophagus putrescentiae
Tyrophagus longior
Tyrophagus palmarum
Tyrolichus casei Oudemans
Carpoglyphus lactis
Suidasia pontifica
Phoretic Mites
Neocypholaelaps (in general)
Neocypholaelaps indica
Neocypholaelaps favus
Afrocypholaelaps (in general)
Afrocypholaelaps africana
Edbarellus (in general)
Tropilaelaps
Tarsonemus
Pseudacarapis indoapis
Parasitic Mites
Varroa jacobsoni
Varroa destructor
Varroa underwoodi
Euvarroa sinhai
Euvarroa wongsiri
Tropolaelaps clareae
Tropolaelaps koenigerum
Acarapis externus
Acarapis dorsalis
Acarapis woodi
Pyemotes ventricosus
cohort Parasitengona of the suborder Prostigmata
Erythraeidae: Leptus
You can't deal with diseases and pests you can't detect, and you
can't detect many of the above without a serious investment of
time, effort, and cash for toys. The good news is that anyone on
the planet can send samples to the USDA ARS at Beltsville and get
free analysis of anything they'd like with a simple "please".
(Thanks to Mark and his gang in Beltsville!)
The bad news is that there have been no "small cell" beekeepers
sending samples to Beltsville for tests, something that might help
to support the claims being tossed about.
> The father of American beekeeping, Langstroth, was not an
> Etymologist but was a mathematician
Yes, any educated person can think clearly even if working outside his
field of specific education. But even "education" does not insure that
one thinks clearly. Non-fuzzy thinking is a science in its own right.
> The answers to today's problems in beekeeping may come from an
> individual that is not schooled in etymology or scientific methods.
How true - "Etymology" is a big problem in this regard. :)
The proponents of alternative approaches are using far to many
words and terms incorrectly, indicating a need to master
ETYMOLOGY (the study of words), but they are doing far too little
actual ENTOMOLOGY (the study of insects) to provide more than
unsupported claims.
This leads us down the path of getting into EPISTEMOLOGY, where
we are forced to address "how we know what we think we know".
We end up stalled and out of gas at a dead end in "OLOGY", where
we get way off-topic in "the study of" everything and anything.
(I should not poke a simple typo so hard, but the typo
was very revealing of a basic problem in the discussion!!)
Regardless, without a minimum of "scientific method", an "answer" cannot
be shown to be an actual "answer". A trip to any public library or a few
web searches can equip anyone with more than enough knowledge to gain
a practical grasp of "scientific method" sufficient to design a decent
"study".
There is no excuse for not learning such things if one wants to do even
simple things, like keep good records of observations on how one's
hives are doing. The only investment required is a buck twenty-nine for
a spiral notebook in which to keep one's notes.
> The answers may come from a simple beekeeper who desires to be able
> to manage his/her colonies without the use of chemicals and therefore be
> able to manage more colonies than would have normally been possible.
Until the colonies die off, which appears to be what happens at present
to most beekeepers who try to do this. It is sad, but it appears to be
true. One simply never hears from most proponents of alternative
treatments and approaches after their initial and highly speculative
statements.
> We should be exploring even methods devised by beekeepers who are not
> necessarily of the scientific community but even someone that is simply a
> beekeeper.
You appear to be doing so. Good! Please keep us advised. This list
hears many impassioned statements from beekeepers who become convinced
that an alternative approach will work, but we hear very little in the
way of follow-up reports from people who use these alternative approaches
for multiple seasons. The obvious conclusion is that time and experience
is a harsh mistress. I remain certain that even minor successes will be
trumpeted from the rooftops, but the silence has been deafening.
> It was exploration that found America even though most people thought
> that the explorers would die when they fell over the end of the earth.
That was a fairy tale told by Washington Irving, who wrote the original
myth about Christopher Columbus and his "discovery" of the "New World":
In fact, Plato offered the first known comment that the Earth
was spherical. The first known recorded observational proof of
this suggestion was Aristotle's writing that the shadow cast by
the Earth on the Moon was circular.
Further, Erathosthenes (276-196 B.C.E.), who is credited with
coining the term "geography", was able to measure the circumference
of the Earth with excellent accuracy using only a well, a shadow,
and some clear thinking. (A measurement of a "circumference" clearly
implies that something is understood to be round. The greeks knew all
about circles and spheres.)
The point here is that "science" is much more an incremental process
than one might expect. Rarely are "discoveries" not preceded by hints
and clues that make the "discovery" little more than verification and
proof that the clues were correct. If you want to make progress, first
look for clues, and then try and take things one step further.
Or, put more simply:
Anyone wanting to "do science" first needs to get a clue. :)
> Explore, test, try, trial different methods but do not ridicule
> someone else's unproven methods unless you have tried it first.
OK, but when someone presents a mix of random claims and fuzzy reasoning
as a basis for diverting the tiny amount of funding available to "bee
research" into their pet theory du jour about bee management practices,
please understand that nothing is being "ridiculed". What is being REFUTED
is not the basic idea, but the complete lack of any rigor in the arguments
offered in support of the idea, and a complete lack of any tangible evidence
to support the claims made.
Trust that any hint of a promising avenue of inquiry will interest multiple
qualified researchers enough to result in good-quality research. These folks
truly ARE concerned about the basic survival of the industry, and they are both
"caring" and "honest"
Anyone else who calls a group of scientists by insulting
names can expect another Norse Saga like this one in reply.
jim
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