In a message dated 5/7/00 11:52:04 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

>         I am a student in the 8th grade at the Parker Charter Essential
>  School.  I am currently studying activism issues, and I have chosen
mosquito
>  spraying as an issue, for my research project.  One of the sources I need
is
>  an interview or similar correspondence, and I thought I might be able to
>  satisfy this by asking the BEE-L.  I am myself a beekeeper, which is why I
>  am interested in this issue.  Some interview-type questions I can give you
> are:
>
>          Have you or are you planning to protest the spraying, or try to
stop
>  the spraying in any way?  (it need not be a holding-signs-by-the-Statehouse
>  type of thing)  If so, in what ways did/would you do this?

    Kendra, I have never tried to prevent spraying, as there is a public
health issue; at least this is claimed by the officials, so I think it is
futile to try to prevent spraying.
But application must be done in accordance with label directions, or it is
pesticide misuse (illegal). The labels require that applications NOT be made
when bees are visiting blossoms in the treatment area. Right now there are
plenty of bee-attractive blossoms in the treatment area, and plenty of bees
visiting them during certain hours of the day.

    To comply with the law, the applicators must determine the times that
bees are NOT visiting the application area. This means they must do some
monitoring, rather than guesswork.

    What they usually do is circumvent the law, by notifying beekeepers to
protect the bees.  This is impossible in most cases, and it does absolutely
nothing to protect feral honeybees, and native wild bees. The native bees are
important pollinators, and the feral honeybes may be few, but are valuable in
that they may be a source of varroa resistance for breeding.

>          How would you propose that the mosquito problem be dealt with
> otherwise?

   Larvicides and good management of standing water as much as possible. When
adulticides like malathion must be used, there must be monitoring of bee
forage times and application in strict accordance with the label directions.
The public officials are not above the law.  You can get a copy of the
malathion label from a garden store or on the internet at Crop Data
Management Systems:  http://pollinator.com/pesticide_misuse.htm
Look under "Environmental Hazards."  The label is the law for that pesticide.

>          Is this only a bad thing from a beekeeper's standpoint, or might it
>  do things like kill off natural predators of mosquitoes?

   Widespread aerial applications kill off many other pollinators than
honeybees, and cause other disruptions in the natural balance.  For a
documented violation look at:
http://members.aol.com/gardenbees/

>          Any information would be gladly accepted, but I should have it
>  before this Wednesday at the latest.  I hope this is not too short notice.
>  If anybody could tell me about other sources I might find, please do!
>
>          Kendra Brown
>          8th Grader
>          Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School, Devens, Mass.

   Good luck. I hope you can make a difference!   I have worked on this for
two decades, and get pretty discouraged at times. In South Carolina, the
pesticide enforcement is done by Clemson University, and the pesticide
industry gives a lot of money to the school for research. So there is a
built-in conflict of interest.

    One of my biggest discouragements is that other beekeepers will not
insist that applications be done according to the law, and accept the illegal
circumventions that are favored by applicators. So many will run, instead of
standing together. After a while, there's no longer any place to run to....

    I know a beekeeper who was warned about a big aerial mosquito spraying
project in his area, so he took down the supers (in the middle of a
honeyflow) moved two tractor trailer loads of bees out of the area, then
resupered, and was immediately hit by applications on blooming alfalfa.  Both
the mosquito and the alfalfa applications were done in clear violation of the
labels. The beekeeper chose to run, and lost big time.

   Losses from pesticide misuse, are a form of selective breeding in favor of
the poorest, sickest stocks of bees that we have. The best ones are out
working on the flowers, and they are the ones that are hit the hardest.

Dave Green
The Pollination Home Page:   http://pollinator.com