Hello All,
Hardly know where to start with this post but will try to educate the
author.
> Personally, I take the term “sustainable,” as used by Brian here on this
> list, to mean
You guys have certainly got the right to your opinions but looking at the
dictionary meaning I see none of the terms you use.
You say large scale beekeeping is going to crash and take the whole of
beekeeping with it. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. History does
not support your hypothesis and all you offer is opinion (which you have a
right to!).
I started as a migratory beekeeper going on 49 years ago. I have had a
couple problem years but my bees look great!
My fellow commercial beekeepers bees look great Are we the exceptions to the
rule?
No CCD here!
> 1. Pollination alone is not how our bees survive in nature. It is
> nectar-gathering, and supplemental pollen-gathering in the process, for
> which bees have been engineered through natural selection.
There is a whole world of beekeeping the stationary beekeeper has never
seen. Honeybees without a flow are like a duck out of water. Migratory
beekeepers seek out honey flows for the bees.Stationary beekeepers for the
most part feed patties and syrup. Stationary beekeepers in Georgia are
praying for rain while the Georgia migratory beeks are all moved to areas
with rain.
Hence,
> industrial almond pollination exclusively serves us, the humans, totally
> ignoring their needs, an irresponsible stewardship.
How do you figure? bees come out of almonds strong and needing split. Bees
love the almond bloom!
In other words, there
> is no give-and-take in this marriage, hence not symbiotic. What’s in it
> for THEM?
bees love a flow! Spending half a year in a cluster is not what bees need!
Before almond pollination increased to a profitable level the main reason we
went to almonds was for the buildup.
> 2. Worse, a massive dose of almond pollen alone, as many on this list
> have already observed, does not serve the bees well,
What the heck are you talking about/ Nothing wrong with almond pollen!
Almonds are the only serious flow in the U.S. at the time. I think every
California beekeeper would ask to move his hives into almonds to build
rather than leave in an area of no flow. We always ask for the dinks to be
placed in almonds free of charge so they can build. Some of those dinks look
better than hives we were paid for once they return which says what for the
graders?
> 4. Pressing on the above line of argument, it does not take rocket
> science to figure out how a pandemic epidemic often coincides with
> *overcrowding* of a single species;
The above has not been our experience with bees in almonds. Or orange flow
as an example. Our opinion is weakened immune systems cause problems and not
over crowding. In orange we have kept 600=700 hives in one spot without the
above problems for over forty years. Yes the whole truckload on an acre.
> 5. for example, > nosema (a spore-forming, unicellular, parasitic fungi)
> has never been an
> issue in the south, and still isn’t in my operation, thanks to a warmer
> climate and screened bottom ventilation.
Very misinformed. Nosema is usually unseen by the uninformed beekeeper.
Kills bees in the last two weeks of life (when a forager) The largest buyer
of fumidil in the U.S. was a commercial beekeeper in Florida ( source
Mid-Con). Now would he be spending tens of thousands of dollars if he did
not need the product. The beekeeper had a lab and tested for nosema.
"still isn't in my operation"
Want to bet money? If you have NEVER treated I will find some spores. I
don't mean to sound condescending but I am here to inform you that you need
to get serious about nosema and do some testing. same for the no treatments
group getting ready to meet!
> Yes, it is hard to even think about the
> disappearance of bees off the planet, but they don’t seem to be thriving
> under current mode.
I heard this chant first almost fifty years ago!
> just as where will all the rubber > particles from the tires we wear out
> every year end up? We are breathing
> them in daily. They will end up in your and my blood stream, if they have
> already not done so.
How would you solve the problem? Go back to horse and buggy (LESS RUBBER
TIRES) ? Have you ever heard of a case of rubber from tires getting into the
blood stream? Is the tire issue a crisis? Maybe we should all wear a mask
when we go outside? Relax Yoon only having a bit of fun at your expense. Now
I will not only cover my nose when I sneeze but when around cars on streets.
., finding the “cure” for Israeli virus alone will
> not cut, an ingenious duct tape to hold a hot engine part for a while.
You need to read Jim Fishers BC articles. no proof IAPV even harms bees.
No proof the virus came in with imported bees. proof has been found now the
virus was in the U.S. as early as 1999( source hackenberg).
> The fact that American bee suppliers cannot meet the domestic demand seems
> to indicate the industry is in deep doo doo;
No it doesn't!
It means that most young people see more profitable and less hard ways of
making a living.
new people are not coming into beekeeping.
Most people can not afford the risk of large scale beekeeping. The outfit I
worked with took around $200,000 a month just to turn the lights on and make
a months payroll.
That's not taking into consideration the cost of 10-15 trucks and forklifts
plus 50,000 hives and support equipment. The person with millions of
dollars to invest is not interested to invest in beekeeping. Which is why
most large operations are parted out over a period of years when the owner
retires.
we used to import bees to
> other countries. Now that we found a virus from Australian imports,
Which strain are we talking? Three so far and all might have been in the
U.S. before the import. The Science article researchers have got egg on
their face! Improvable hypothesis is not fact. 16 times the science article
pointed to Australia as the source of the IAPV virus and most important
those researchers had ZERO proof the virus was even a problem!
They completely ignored the fact that N. ceranae & KBV was found in 100% of
the CCD samples. They called IAPV a *marker* but the better marker would
have been N. ceranae or KBV ( both which are proven killers of bees!) In
fact Dennis Anderson said in Australia he suspected IAPV was simply a mutant
form of KBV (which has been in the U.S. for years).
I would love to have a debate with the researchers from the Science article
in front of the beekeeping community. Sadly my offers have been turned down.
Why? Its one thing to get up and do a prepared text and then leave quickly
without taking questions and to debate the issue with a knowledgeable
beekeeper.
> Indeed, for a hobbyist, a single colony death is a national tragedy, and
> it should be so, and it must remain so.
Maybe we should lower the flags to half mast once a year in memory!
However, for a migratory
> beekeeper, ten-thousand colony loss is a mere statistics, a figure against
> last year’s benchmark, for he will order twenty-thousand more next year.
At least we do agree on something!
> Why not? But from where? Try Mars?
Martian bees! A novel approach! An import from mars! Nanu Nanu! Mork from
Ork!
I guess its hard for you to fathom but for countless decades hives have been
depopulated and replaced with packages from the south by beekeepers in the
north. Not a popular idea with hive huggers but has been going on quietly
for many decades.
I do depopulate *dinks* but not without a moment of silence! being part
Indian I always ask Mother Earth for forgiveness for my deed before doing
the
deed. Sometimes I make the sign of the cross also!
bob
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