I have sprayed right up next to my colonies with Roundup many times.  I know I have sprayed flying bees and I know I have gotten some spray on landing boards.  I have never sprayed a colony all over the front.  I have never seen a problem.

There is a standard recommended practice on how to deal with empty pesticide bottles and any used spray equipment.  It is called triple rinsing.  You wet all surfaces with water, totally empty to the best of your ability and repeat twice more.  In fact just to be sure I add some dish washing detergent to the rinse to make very sure I have cleaned totally.  Dispose the rinses in a safe manner.  I dump the small amounts I generate from home use someplace where any traces of pesticides will hurt nothing.  Often in my gravel driveway.  The reason behind triple rinsing is simple.  Some things can be exceedingly sensitive to very tiny amounts of some pesticides.  For example 1ppm or less of a phenoxy herbicide (2,4D) on tomatoes or peppers will shut the plants nearly down.  Few flowers will produced and those that are produced will not set fruits.  The effect can easy last a couple of months.  Even if I have used my sprayer for Roundup last and am going to use it for Roundup this time I triple rinse before use.  It is easy to triple rinse and hard to remember what you sprayed a week or four weeks ago at least for me.  I can easy see someone spraying say malathion in a sprayer and coming back a week later and without cleaning the equipment properly spraying Roundup around a hive and killing bees.  Roundup gets the blame every single time this happens when the actual problem was residual malathion.

This summer I will soak the whole front and landing board of a couple of nucs with Roundup spray on purpose.  My bet is I do not kill any bees.  If I do kill bees most likely it will be the result of the surfactants in the Roundup formulation not the Roundup itself.  Some "soaps" which are simply surfactants are registered as insecticides and are good at killing on contact.  But, generally those must have direct body contact and are not a problem if simply picked up on the insects feet.  Roundup itself is actually a half decent surfactant.  It was first made in the search for better surfactants to use to potentially wash clothes or dishes.  Then semi by accident it was found to kill weeds.  So, soak an insect with enough and Roundup all by itself could probably kill that insect.  Remember, everything is a poison at a high enough dose.

Dick

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