Kim Flottum has been sending out via email very timely and useful updates concerning honeybees
and CCD called "Catch The Buzz"
If you are not a subscriber you should bee but here is a link to his latest on CCD research and
Marla Spivaks thoughts if you are not.
http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2007.12.18.17.31.archive.html
a partial excerpt I found of interest
There were nearly a dozen speakers on the subject, but here I will only discuss a very few. Marla
Spivak elegantly stated that we shouldn’t be able to keep bees. There’s just too many things going
wrong – varroa is affecting all manner of honey bee health issues, poor pollen is becoming more
common, pesticides, especially the new neonics are everywhere and anywhere you look, and the
economics of beekeeping in general, essentially, suck (my term, not hers). To support this she
read a laundry list of things going on...mites, contaminated wax comb, reduced forage, poor
nutrition, pesticides, poor return on honey, increased acreage of pollination-needing crops,
increased dollars for pollination contracts, lots of moving .... stir and add just one more thing
and....poof.
She added one glimmer of hope though, and it was worth the trip. One of the things that has been
discovered with the study of the honey bee genome is that honey bees have fewer than half of the
genes other insects have for fighting off diseases and pests...those immune genes you keep
hearing about. But honey bees have propolis. And propolis fights off pests and diseases...maybe
that’s why bees are the way they are, gene-wise. So...looking at propolis a little closer, Marla and
other scientists are finding that this magic substance has considerable capacity to fight off
problems...honey bee problems and human problems. More is on the way, for both propolis and
immune genes we’re told.
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