In a message dated 8/11/00 5:27:45 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:

> The spraying was done soon
>  after dark and all bees were in the hive.  The mist from the fogger fell on
>  at least 6 hives as the truck turned around within 20 feet of the furthest
>  hive.

    I have hives in veggie fields that are sprayed all the time with stronger
stuff than Anvil. When the spraying is done at night, or at least after the
bees are done flying, there is no real hazard to the bees. I've had the boom
on a spray rig pass right over the hives on nightime sprays. The bees are
inside and are mostly unaffected. A few guard bees at the entrance may catch
a droplet and die.  By morning the dew has broken down the non-residual
pesticide and it is no longer toxic.

    The pesticide applicators seem to think the problem is spraying the
hives. This is not the problem. Beekeepers should know better, and should be
educating the applicators. The problem is at the FLOWER.  And the label
protection makes no mention of the hives, their location is irrelevant. The
legal protection is at the flower, which is in the application area.

    Get a copy of the labels of some of the common insecticides from your
farm store or at Crop Data Protection Systems,
http://www.cdms.net/manuf/manuf.asp
or some of the manufacturers listed at:
http://pollinator.com/pesticide_misuse.htm

    You will see that all label directions have to do with bees coming to
flowers in the application area. I once had a tobacco grower call me; he was
upset.  He said, "I've got to spray my tobacco!"   I had bees about a hundred
feet from the field.

   "Do you have flowers on your tobacco?"  I asked him.

   "Of course not, only poor farmers leave the blossoms."

    "If there are no flowers, bees will not be present in the field.  Go
ahead. There is no problem."   He was relieved.

    Beekeepers should be well aware of what blossoms the bees are working. If
these blossoms happen to be the clover in a neighboring orchard floor, or the
tassels on a local sweet corn field, or the blooming alfalfa in a local
hayfield, then they have reason for concern, and they should know the common
pesticide practices, and what the labels say for the normally used materials.
 I have seen hundreds of bee kills and have not seen one yet that did not
involve violation of the label directions.

   A good tool for educating beekeepers, and even more important,
applicators, is the flow chart at:
http://pollinator.com/cotton/flowchart.htm      It's designed for cotton, but
works for any kind of application.  Print copies of this and give them to
pesticide applicators, such as your county mosquito sprayers.

    As it is, they did everything right, as far as bees are concerned. They
may not have understood why, but they did. You can complement them. But give
them the chart anyway.

   The question that sparked this theme is Anvil (sumithrin) which, of all
the mosquito adulticides (=insecticides to kill adult mosquitoes, as opposed
to larvicides, which don't affect bees), does not have any bee directions.
Since this material is listed in the manuals as toxic to bees, we are
concerned whether there was a glitch in the labeling process, or if there is
some mechanism of protection for bees that is not operative with other
adulticides.

David L. Green
The Pollination Home Page:   http://pollinator.com