Dave said:
Some growers with a past history of fire blight routinely use it
during bloom.

Being a grower of both apples & pears I would say that streptomycin IS the
antibiotic of choice for fireblight which is very common.  Pears seem to
always get fire blight. I have butchered many a pear tree trying to get fire
blight under control. Treating with streptomycin  is rather expensive as
compared to cutting out the fire blight.

Growers spray streptomycin many times with bee hives in the field but all
nectar goes into the brood nest in our area.

Could the streptomycin found in some U.S. honey be coming from such spraying
I do not know. If I were to guess I would say no for our area as little if
any extra  honey over what the bees use is had in our area and many times
the hives need feeding coming off apples.

Last year we needed a extra 100 hives to complete a pollination contract of
a large Apple orchard so we approached a local beekeeper which put a hundred
hives on grocery pallets for us to put in for him. When we picked up the
hives he had supers on each hive. Needless to say all supers were empty and
his bees needed feed when we  returned to bees to him. The bees do raises
quite a bit of brood on Apples if they go in strong.

Other parts of the U.S. may differ greatly from our Midwest experience with
Apple pollination.

Bob

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