>   BTW, I am not anti-pesticides.  -Just MISused pesticides. -Use in
>violation of label directions.
>
>[log in to unmask]        Dave Green
>
I read your post to Kelly Rosenlund also on this line of pollination for hire.
 
I might add that I could have rented to a migrant grower the other day. But
I did not because of his insistance on using pesticides. I might check into
our state laws on pesticide misuse. I was not able to provide all the bees
by myself. So I told the man that I could probably get several area
beekeepers to pool together and supply the bees he needed for his 300+ acres
of melons.
 
I, like the new pollinator in your other message, saw dollar signs. At first
they were coming into my account. Then, after I heard about his excessive
abuse of pesticide and lack of concern for anyones finances but his own, I
say the dollar sings going out of my account. I'm just glad that several of
the area growers that I rent to cared enough about this newbie to warn him.
 
BTW--I recently was sent some info on crop pollination by Wayne Buhler of
Purdue University (now retired). I believe he obtained it from Tom Eisle
(sp?) One of the articles was a partial article by some guy named David
Green. :) What was there was interesting.
 
This has already been a very interesting year for us. When it is warm enough
to work the bees, it is usually raining or the fields are too muddy. And
then my queens didn't materialize. The breeder told us that high winds kept
the queens from breeding. He first offered to send us virgin queens now and
replace them later with mated queens. He called back and said that Dr.
Sugimoto (sp?) informed him that virgin queens would not work easily with
nucs. He then offered to send us queen cells. But I had to meet the plane in
Indianapolis which was not an option with our schedule. This left two
options. He could ship the queens when they became available sometime after
the first week of May. Or we could get a refund for the queens and buy
elsewhere.
 
The bees were already on the verge of swarming (very prolific Yugos) so I
opted for the refund. Since I have a low cash flow and since bee breeders
have been stilted before, I had to wait until I could confirm that the
refund was on the way. I got my bees ordered and they are supposed to be in
about the middle of the first week of May. Back to where I was originally.
Geez! If it hadn't been for the blasted rainy and extraordinarily early
sring here in southern IN. I could have made my splits and let the bees
produce their own queens. Even though they would be of somewhat uncertain
genetics. I consider myself lucky to even get queens this late in the year
and on such short notice (I have Walter T. Kelly Co. and their queen
breeders to thank for that).
 
One thing I have learned already if you are going to rent bees out for
pollination. You are going to have to make quite a few split second
decisions. And some of them are gong to be WRONG!
 
I will leave on a couple of good notes though. I have several hives on
blueberries this spring. With the fact that they were already strong hives
and the prolific blooms on the blueberries, I had a hive to swarm the other
day (waiting on my queens). But the wide and I were there when the event
took place. She went back to the car for some reason. But the swarm landed
on the tire of the wagon directly under the hive they had issued from. I
happened to have an extra hive with foundation with us for some reason. And
I caught it. And then there is the swarm that came to me. Seems they liked
the empty boxes I had stacked up on the back porch. Plan on relocating them
to the watermelon fields on Monday. I had to thank God for both of them.
 
To a bountiful harvest!
 
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