James says:

<<Germans went through the same evaluation process, and their
best practices included the following:

- Do not plant treated seeds in case of wind speeds of more than 5 m/s.

- The treated seeds including contained dusts or dusts developing during the
sowing process, have to be worked completely into the soil.

- Treated seeds should not be planted by means of pneumatic seeding machines
(vacuum system), unless the exhaust air is channeled in such a way that the
dusts can be led into the soil.>>



The real issue in the corn belt of the USA is the change in practice to almost nothing but corn (due to the alcohol fuels program), continuous corn (no crop rotation), little or no till combined with planting cover crops that bloom in spring, or letting weeds bloom.  Dust from planters is directly deposited on or settles on blossoms, and bees get a dose.  

Almost all of the planting occurs within a period of 10 days - 10 days out of 365; high risk, if its dry, hot, and windy.  

Some beekeepers report severe bee kills when its been raining cats and dogs; in those cases I'm skeptical.  I've also heard beekeepers argue that they need those flowers to feed bees coming out of CA, or getting a start in the spring.  Maybe bees need feed, but if you know the bloom is likely  to be contaminated and you put your bees there anyway, then as a taxpayer, I object to claims for damages from the government.  And, much as I'd like to think  growers would want to protect pollinators, I doubt they are going to offer to pay for syrup and pollen sub. 

Nowhere have I found any precedent that says growers have a responsibility to  feed bees.  In Montana, many of our beekeepers generally don't have a pesticide issue within the state, but since Budweiser and others came to the state and promoted growing grain over alfalfa in select areas, those beekeepers have lost large tracts of good bee forage.   That hurts honey production, makes them look elsewhere, spreads out their operation, increases costs. Yet, I haven't heard them say the growers owe them nor have they sent a bill to Budweiser, as far as I know.

It's like I first learned in eastern MT, where we find large ranches.  The eastern MT beekeepers LIKED OLD ranchers, hated it when one  moved on or passed away, and some new, YOUNG rancher took over the ranch.  The old timers tended to be less fussy about mowing weeds, cutting hay as soon as bloom appeared, etc.; or else they were no longer able to do everything.  

Similarly, the lack of safe places to put bees in the corn belt and the lack of anything remotely resembling good forage (it's a green desert) is ultimately a reflection of changes in agricultural practices driven by ill-conceived federal and state programs like alcohol fuels (fed), spraying or mowing down anything not corn along roads (state), various land-bank and conservation programs that not only don't promote plantings that benefit pollinator, but often work against them.

Best thing to do, TALK to the growers and work to change government programs that fail to consider pollinators.  As Montana's 20 yr Director of DOE funded Energy-Related Education and Research through the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), I was shocked at a DOE meeting in Golden Colorado to learn that the whole DOE alcohol fuels program was put  in place with only one small study regarding the environmental impact - one would think turning vast areas into nothing but corn should have required an environmental impact assessment, but apparently not.


J.J. Bromenshenk
Bee Alert
Missoula, Mt



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