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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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From:
Cusick Farms <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 30 Jan 2013 07:12:55 -0500
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<It's not about us, it's about the bees.>

I guess that's a matter of opinion, I raise bees for me, not the bees.
Don't get me wrong I care for them and all, and do the best I can for their
health given the constraints that I have, but I look at the alternatives
too.  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.

In my opinion the best we can do is get the highest yield (sustainable
yield, but that's not a debate I want to get into again, so lets go with
consistent yield for now) possible out of that land which is under
production.  The alternatives I see are a) let people starve (more so than
are currently anyway, and b) put more land under production to make up for
lower yields and wreck more ecosystems.

If there were a more economical way to produce food other than using
pesticides farmers would already be doing it.  Farmers are out to make
money too.  Hopefully there will be even safer pesticides in the future,
but I haven't seen any conclusive evidence that the ones we are using now
are any more dangerous than previous, in fact just the opposite.  They are
insecticides, noone should be surprised they kill our favorite insects when
they are fed it directly.  Short of planting dust I haven't seen any
demonstration of extremely bad "in the field" problems so far.  I left my
bees next to treated corn and soy a couple years, they did no worse than
before when the ground was hay.

I'm sure it won't be too much longer before we need a new class of
insecticide because too many bugs are resistant to this one.  Let's hope it
doesn't have more field observable effects than the ones we have now.

Jeremy
West Michigan

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