> that honey comes from supers, (pause while you ponder that) and those 
> supers are not put on until a set period expires after any treatments are 
> done to a colony.  most are fall treatments and are isolated to deeps, 
> where the bees and brood are. Not the honey. The honey left with the 
> supers  Therefore, the supers never come in contact with anything added to 
> the colony, and neither does the honey. That is why there has not been any 
> difference between organic and non-organic honey when they have been 
> tested.

This above is not true. If bees are treated with things like fluvalinates or 
antibitics these will get easily  into the wax of the supers ( fluvalinates) 
and honey
(antibiotics) even in cases when supers are not on during medications. The 
supers get these residues by the bees.

The Danes had a nice stude a few years back They coloured winter feed sugar 
at fall green with a food grade dye. Let the colonies overwinter and develop 
the normal way in spring and took first extracton of pale green coloured 
honey from supers that were added in spring. Bees do not use stored food 
without mixing it with the incoming nectar that they are handling at that 
moment. As the brood area is expanding in  the lower boxes they will empty 
the winter feed cells and some part ot it will be stored with the new honey 
into supers. This will of course depend on the situation. Will be more if 
the hives gets throught the winter with lots of stores and very little in 
hives that fall near starvation before summer flow.

Also some part of wax is taken from below and mixed into cappings and walls 
in  new boxes. Also ropolis is moved this way. And the bees travel by foot 
in the hive passing from brood boxes into supers. Travel stain in supers is 
known by most of the beekeepers. Just walking from old frames into new will 
carry some residues.

It is very good practice treating only when supers are not on. It will 
reduce dramatically the residues in supers. But it is an illusion to think 
that this will mean 0 ppm residues in wax and honey of supers. Bees use all 
that they have and mix it all the time with what is coming in. Remember the 
studies with radioactive markers. After feeding only few bees almost all 
bees had the marker into them after only few hours.

These abowe are among the reasons that state in Finland that bee hives 
treted with antibiotics ( only tetracyclines allowed) can not be harvested 
for the honey collected within next 100 days. Not even form supers that were 
not on during the treatment. In our short summer this means that if hive is 
trated in spring honey from the whole summer can not be sold for human 
consumption.

Ari Seppälä
Finland

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************