Fluvalinate does not explain bee losses by organic beekeepers, and the
number of these beekeepers reporting sudden bee losses has increased dramatically
this fall/winter.
Keep in mind, many of the beekeepers that we've sampled firmly believed the
notion that mites are the root of all evil. When their colonies started to
crash, they threw everything they had at mites. We saw strips and as many as
four OTHER 'treatments' for mites, all together in hives at the same time.
If CCD didn't take the bees out, the mite 'treatments' may have done more
harm to the bees than good. But, for the most part, these were AFTER THE FACT
treatments. CCD was already playing out.
This scenario does explain how brood may have elevated levels of miticides,
when it isn't detected at similar levels in wax and pollen. Even if the
prescribed (label) dose was placed in a hive, with a crashing adult bee
population, the dose per bee would quickly change, and the remaining nurse bees could
easily have transferred it directly to the brood.
Also, 5 brood samples with elevated fluvalinate can't be considered to be a
representative sample of CCD colonies. Its not clear whether those 5 were
from the same beekeepers, or 5 different beekeepers.
If its one beekeeper, than it simply means that a beekeepers had undesirably
high levels of fluvalinate in brood. If from 5 different beekeepers, that
would be more compelling, but not convincing.
We've found elevated paradichlorobenzene in lots of colonies - but this
problem is specific to individual beekeepers, with a bias for some regions,
especially the eastern states. The most likely scenario, areas with significant
wax moth problems are more likely to display PDB residues in the wax.
I've seen wax moths flying into the doors of beehives as soon as my truck
stopped in MD. I seldom have a wax moth problem in Montana. So, its not
surprising that bee colonies from the MD/PA/FL areas had elevated PDB, but bees
from the northern states in the west did not. The cautionary note - PDB builds
up and is retained in wax, so don't exceed label dosages, and periodic
replacement of wax may be a good thing to do. However, I don't think we can blame
CCD on PDB.
Many of you know that we've warned beekeepers for the past 30 years that all
kinds of harmful chemicals show up in beehives, including pollutants. So,
its no surprise that chemicals that beekeepers deliberately put in hives end
up in hive components and the bees themselves.
Jerry
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