As far as your question about queen producers reporting problems:  Well, I
don't expect any will!  They don't hang on to all those queens for 90
days..they sell them as soon as they are mated and they see brood.  Instead,
let's ask the question:  Out of the number of mated queens sold, what
percent are turning out to be good ones?



I think your mistaken,  the quandary for us to report is baseline.   Any
Midwest queen producer is running his own stock.  And lots of it.  That's
why we do it.  We cannot compete with GA, CA, or HI for sales.   We raise
our own.  I am close to 500 for this year so far,  hope to hit 1500.  
But I cannot give Randy any valuable input.   My queen operation is in a
cornfield.  No comparison.  I run fair numbers,  95% take on cells.   75-85%
mated.    But I have no "clean yards" to compare to.  As for good ones?  How
do you evaluate?  My honey numbers this season are well over 100lbs so far
per hive.


I would say with no reservations,  Randy is one of the biggest skeptics on
any pesticide.  Hes no fan of neonics,  but he is understanding more than
most the cosequenses.  Any real discussion of Neonics  needs to include OP
any Pyrethroids.  Without that your not having and intelligent discussion.
That's where I get upset.  Should the Anti Crowd win,  in my life things
seem to go back 20 years in problems.   As one who has been thru that,  I
don't wish to go back, and I am not alone.  
  
Its not fair or right for people from NYC, or downtown Akron, or the UK to
try to change policy and rules they know absolutely nothing about,  and have
no stake in.


SO while we at it,  I would take a completely different position to Randy
and Most people position that we "use way to much" pesticides.  It's a
strawman argument.  I wonder at times,  as a very smart guy told me "give
them something else to be mad about"  I wonder if it's a diversion.

Simple economics tells us we use  "just the right amount" of pesticides.
Farmers are not vanishing,  and the public is not starving like a third
world country,  plant and insect life for the most part is not in any more
jeopardy than previously.  Hewit and Dubner would say we have the incentives
about right.  The cost of a pesticide for most use is carefully weighed
against its value in yields.
There are a lot of points to the argument,  and it can be emotional,  but
when you get to the core,  the incentives are more controlled than most
other things.  Less pesticides,  more land gets plowed,  food prices rise,
loss of habitat,  marginal grounds back in play?

Some will claim of course we use "propolactic" treatments of course we do.
Take canola for example.  The seed coating is right at 1/10 the toxicity per
acre of a foliar spray.  So when we cut use per acre to 1/10  we can
actually still spray 9 out of ten and break even,  yet we know that the real
number is about 1 in 5 need a latter season spray.  So that "excessive"
treatment put on "just in case" that everyone wants to decry, is normally
saving us around 70% of what we need when we use IPM.  Its always someone
who has never had skin in the game making that statement.  


So headlines are for those who don't understand or know,  and are bad at
math.

Most of use here, as smart as we are,  simple cannot accept the fact that
farmer John is doing this math,  every year,  and coming up with the right
answer.  So we stand at our meetings,  and parties,  and tell everyone we
use too much pesticides,  while we graze the snackbar, and cookie trays and
sound so smart!



Charles 

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