Scot Mc Pherson wrote:

>Nature knows what she is doing, why are we fighting nature which always
>finds the balance in the end. You can't fight her, she will always win.
>
>
Nice to know that. I just got through with antibiotic treatment for a
very bad case of bronchitis. Cleared it up nicely, but obviously, I
should have refused the treatment and hoped for survival. Also my recent
bout with cancer: I guess I should have refused treatment and not fight
nature..

But then I would have been dead.

We all will die, but that has no reference to allowing "nature" to speed
up the process. Our bees will all die, but there is no real need to
sacrifice them.

We do not do that when we or our children are involved. Or even our pets.

In my garden, I pull weeds. Mother nature can find her own place to grow
them. In all of life, we do not let nature take its course. Truth is, we
fight it daily and live longer and better as a result.

I lean strongly toward using the least harmful thing for my bees,
including small cell. But all beekeeping is local. You might have
excellent results with a "natural" technique in the south while it would
be a disaster in the north.

A good example is something as simple as winter feed. Most bees in the
south can survive nicely on just about anything, while bees in the north
will not survive the winter or come through poorly on the same feed.

I restrain my condemnation of those who "do not do as I do" just because
something works for me but may not for others. If someone wants to
refuse chemotherapy or radiation as a cancer treatment and go natural, I
have no problem. I would council them to do otherwise. I did the
research and found that most do not make it going that route, but the
few that do give great testimonials on its "effectiveness".

(That is my new law, by the way: The Law of the Survivor. Every person I
talked to when I was in the middle of fighting my malignant melanoma
either survived it or were in the middle of treatment  and fighting it.
So there obviously was a 100% survivor rate, since all I talked to were
alive. You only hear from the survivor as to the efficacy of most
anything. The ones who do not survive, cannot tell you about their
mistake in following a different path. We who have been on this list for
a long time can attest to all the new, "effective" treatments that were
espoused by those no longer keeping bees. Many followed those pied
pipers and we do not hear from them either.)

I am in total agreement with those who posted about the mis-use of
Apistan. But I will not condemn those who use it as registered. I will
try to educate them on alternatives, but it is an allowed pesticide and
was the stop-gap for many of us when the battle was being fought. It
allowed us more than ten years to look at other methods of control
including other bees that might be mite resistant. If it had not been
around and we had allowed nature to take its course, there would not be
much of a beekeeping industry around today.

I thank God daily for all those who preceded me in the fight against
cancer. Were it not for their willingness to fight  nature and, from
that, work toward a cure, I would not be posting this.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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