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From:
Allen Dick 546-2588 <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 26 Nov 1994 03:49:00 -0700
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On Thu, 24 Nov 1994, Andy Nachbaur wrote:
 
> Its one thing to spend money if you have it, it quite another thing to
> risk the market for Honey which in no small part is due to the words,
> NATURAL, PURE, and Wholesome. Sugar in many forms is a well known
> substitute for Honey.
 
True, and we had a period years ago, when everyone aked if we fed our
bees sugar and somehow could not understand that if we fed starving bees
sugar in the spring that that did not mean they would make 'honey' from
that same sugar in August.
 
Many people were concerned about drug feeding a few years ago.  I hear
nothing about it now from customers.
 
> but with honey bees much is lacking in real knowledge about the basics,
> like "how do honey bees survive without man?", or maybe better stated
> "can honey bees survive without man?". I suspect that in much of the
> pasture man has moved them they can not survive, at least in the numbers
> that we may consider normal.
 
Just abandon a yard for a year or two and find out!  At least in this
country, the mice take over fast - after the AFB.
 
> AFB is a beekeepers disease more then a disease of bees, IMHO. It is
> true that it is the only disease that will kill all your hives if you
> don't control it, but it is also true that feral colonies are seldom
> affect by it. How you control it is up to the beekeepers and those who
> regulate them. In areas that have little or no AFB, it is proper to
> destroy all bees, including hives that are infected. In other areas
> regular drug use can hold the level of infection to 1/2 of 1%, if
> infected hives are destroyed.
 
I don't know what our breakdown rate would be if we quit using
Tetracycline and resorted to burning.  Probably not all that high, but
the inspections needed to keep it detected in time would be a real killer!
 
> <>Tetracycline has problem too.  In a dose slightly higher than that
> <>required to control AFB, (honeybee) larval mortality becomes a
> <>problem, I understand.  Since the dose is critical - at least the
> <>window is fairly narrow, we have the same problem.  We can't 'nuke'
> <>the offending organism without damaging the host. Sulfa didn't seem to
> <>have the same problems, and while available for the purpose, was much
> <>superior due to its persistence.  Having a second, unrelated drug at
> <>hand, decreased the chance of developing resistant strains of AFB
> <>considerably.
>
>   If you just dust bees for disease control, and leave out all the
> chemical ingredients, there will be mortality in the unsealed brood from
> the dust be it sugar or rice flower. I am sure that it is very very
> rare for bees to be poisoned by beekeepers using TM in any form. Not
> impossible but very unlikely in the field. I have worked with some very
> hot or high dosages of TM with little or no economic damage to bees.
> Take my word for it I have found others things that will shut a hive
> down, but TM is not a problem and its value to beekeepers can not be
> over stated. IMHO.
 
I notice you say 'economic'.
 
Well, I have never seen obvious TM damage, BUT James Bach was up here
recently and showed us how to do viability tests on brood by uncapping a
grid of pupae and looking at eye colour.  What impressed me was that just
because we see a solid pattern doesn't mean that some of the the capped
brood we are looking at hasn't been replaced when it died.
 
We also had a impressive lady up from a California university, a
researcher, at the Vernon meeting of the CHC/CAPA two years ago or so, and
she gave us fairly detailed figures on the toxicity of TM to brood.  (I'm
sorry I can't recall the name, although I've often wanted to because she
had one of the most fascinating presentations).  I really don't listen all
that well, but I recall having concluded that, asssuming she was right -
and I have every reason to believe her - we should be seeing some slight
mortality, even at recommended dusting dosages due to uneven distribution,
and that it wouldn't take a large dose increase (say an order of
magnitude) to do serious harm.
 
As for me - in real life, after all these years I've concluded that the
drug works well when used at about double the generally recommended rate,
and is a waste of time money and hope, otherwise.
 
So, there you go. . .
 
W. Allen Dick, Beekeeper                      VE6CFK
Rural Route One, Swalwell,  Alberta  Canada  T0M 1Y0
Phone/Fax: 403 546 2588      Email: [log in to unmask]

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