Hello John & All,
John asks about the queen problems Keith & I  refered to.

There has been research but for the most part our U.S. queen producers have 
ignored the research. Our commercial beekeepers also. 

I took the research very serious and started around four years changing all 
comb. Completed in spring 2006.

Jeff Pettis of the Beltsville Bee Lab began using mass spec to test brood 
comb on which approved chemical strips had been used according to label. 
What he found was scary. Other research has been done by many others 
concerning chemical contamination trying to control bee pests.

Jerry B. has gave many talks about enviromental chemical contamination of 
comb. Comb contaminated which has NEVER had a chemical used! At the last 
talk Jerry gave Allen Dick & myself commented that Jerry's talk was 
probably (in our opinion) the most important talk of the ABF convention yet 
less than 20 beekeepers attended. 

To sum the situation up most comb in queen producers hives & mating nucs 
needs changed. Coumaphos wax contamination has been proven to cause life 
shortening, poor performance and queen supercedure problems. I think Anita 
Collens did some of the research . 

Drones raised on comb which has had fluvalinate used can be sterile but a 
noticable effect has been proven beyound a doubt .

Sure changing comb is expensive aand time consuming but while queen 
producers use the contaminated comb they still get top dollar for queens 
and the buyer sees early supercedure, poor performance, drone layers and 
shortened life span.

In my opinion the situation will not improve until comb is rotated AND 
could get worse. Yes I said worse!

Many have noticed I have quit attending national meetings. Why? Because 
beekeepers for the most part do not like to have a beekeeper stand up and 
ask the hard questions of ALL segments of OUR industry.

What good is funding bee labs, letting the labs do the research and then 
ignoring the results?

Common queen producer statement:
"Why should I change my comb as I am selling all the queens I can produce 
for top dollar and there is no guarentee changing the comb will improve my 
queens"

I love the internet! Any queen producers want to state why I have got the 
above all wrong? Didn't think so!

Ask yourself:

 Why are all the queen problems happening since we started putting 
chemicals in bee hives if tthe chemical contamination is not part ( if not 
the whole problem) of the problem?

Five years ago I was not crazy about queens from Hawaii but since then I 
have good luck with those queens ( from chemical contamination free comb) . 
Are the queens and bees still the same but queens raised in the mainland 
getting poorer? 

I wonder?

Bob

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