Thank you to all who have participated in this topic so far, I have really been enjoying the discourse!  And thanks Aaron for responding to Ted.  It's great to have a venue for logging information out there, but it is only as good as the degree to which beekeepers participate, as Lennard pointed out in defense of modeling.

I am going to spend more time thinking about this.  I'm a slow thinker so it could be awhile (if ever) before I have anything worthwhile to report.  (Would love to have some mathematical help).

As I mentioned earlier, I think focusing on just one thing at a time, when it comes to best practices in bee health, misses the fact that all the offending factors are interconnected.  And furthermore, there seem to be some BENEFICIAL conditions out there that we haven't properly identified or maybe even thought about.  Below, I have pasted some gleanings...excerpted snippets of conversation from Bee-L archives over just the last few weeks or so.  (Hopefully no one will consider themselves quoted out of context, apologies in advance if so).  The "elephant in the room" threading through many of these comments seems to me, as the advertising gurus say, to be "Location, location, location"!  Lennard says his modeling, as limited as it has been by insufficient data input, has reached the same conclusion (a bad location one year is a bad location the next).  And what I now wonder is:  What's so *special* about some locations--the "good" ones???  And I don't mean quality of forage, wind protection, or any of that obvious stuff (this for Randy).  I wonder why bees thrive on neonic treated canola but not neonic treated veggies.  That stuff. Food for thought.

“In a yard or (holding yard) of U.S. bees you will find all levels of nosema and varroa. Field tests on hives free of these factors are a waste of time as not a real scenario.”

 “The source colonies were kept in the field, and had no demonstrable effect from being fed imidacloprid over 10 weeks.  Tellingly, nosema levels in the field colonies did not correlate with exposure to imidacloprid (the "real life" situation).”

“I do see differences. The older pesticides were clearly toxic, and the piles of bees hard to miss.  Yet, the colonies often recovered.   Those older chemicals were frequently in ppm levels when an incident was observed.  And,I know from both my own testing and from the nature of the modes of action, virtually all of those pesticides had sub-lethal impacts, its just that no one was studying and reporting them.”

“Bees displayed intoxication, rejected contaminated foragers, changed the  sounds produced by the colony, showed a wide array of behavioral/memory/avoidance responses to assays such as PERS, got lost going  through mazes, tried to avoid contact, got defensive, the list is long and these types of effects can be seen at incredibly low exposure  concentrations.  There's nothing unique about sublethal effects that limits them to neonics.”

“For example, a couple of years ago I talked to a second generation beekeeper who had lost 400 of his 1200 hives during the winter. The only variable he could think of to explain this loss was the 400 dead hives had pollinated a vegetable crop treated with neonics the previous summer. On the other hand, I’ve also talked to beekeepers who used their hives to pollinate hybrid canola treated with neonics - with no ill effects.”

“An entomologist named Janet Knodel said the reason for the bees dying most likely from bee parasites, stress from hauling bees long distance and pesticides.”

“little actual checking done except for paper trail so hard to monitor.   temick is still being used illegally in Florida and many organophosphates will be until supplies are gone.”

“at the two recent national bee meetings, we saw both beekeepers and researchers at odds over the issue of whether Nosema was or was not a problem and to a lesser similar debate about the extent of problems due to viruses.  About the only agreement - varroa is still a problem.”

“CCD as a phenomenon, has never been defined.”
“..All of this presents an interesting question - how can you refine a definition for a syndrome that still has no definitive cause?”

“The best environment for the bees is not agricultural, I have them there for my benefit and deal the best I can with the side effects thereof.“

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm