The question to ask is whether you will have colonies for pollination
without the use of miticides.  The current absense of feral colonies will
provide one answer to the question.  The second is the promising management
being developed by Dee and Ed Lusby and others in Arizona.  They have let
all their mite susceptible colonies die over the last few years, and begun
breeding from the survivors.  They are also converting their combs over to
a small size cell which has been proven to negatively influence the
survival of mite population in their hives.  If you can't do this, your
bees will die from mites.  There are other potential management techniques
for maintaining very low levels of mites but they still require the use of
miticides until our bees have been bred to have a tolerance mechanism for
mites.
 
I doubt if anyone has tested the presense and levels of miticides on
flowers, or bees for that matter.  It would be nice to know what levels of
miticides occur on house bees, or bees in the brood nest, and the levels of
miticides transferred to brood comb per year.
 
I don't believe any organic gardner, at least in Washington, can find
untreated bees to use for pollination.  And if I can venture a personal
opinion, I think it borders on preposterous to think that so-called organic
management principles can be used on bee colonies, that is unless you use
the Lusby method.  I have reviewed the 14 page Oregon organic standards for
managing bees and written a 14 page analysis of them for people in our
department.  The standards have serious flaws having been designed around
flawed reasoning about bee behavior and bee management systems, and an
assumption that organic gardening principles can be converted into bee
gardening principles.
 
James C. Bach
WSDA State Apiarist
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