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bdgee
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_sc/birds_and_bees_1
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Bigfoot
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You ain't kidding Bdgee.

You talk to keepers nowdays and they have gotten to the point where they have to just expect that they won't be able to keep a colony going for more than a few seasons before the mites invade and they have to start over. It's terrible.

There is some promising work being done at the U of M. Basically they are breeding bees that are manic cleaners. Any egg that has anything odd about it (such as being infected by mites, or being mishaped, or whatever) immediately gets tossed out of the hive. It can't stop mites from getting in but it can stop them from repopulating within the hive. Growth rates are a lot slower though from what I understand.

Once I get the wife her horse farm bees are one of the operations I intend to keep us solvent. Not until they get a better handle on this problem though. Now ain't the time to be a novice.

Bigfoot

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bdgee
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I ain't a novice, though it's been a bunch of years since I kept hives.

A properly maintained hive needs to be slpit periodiotically, but kept at a fairly big population so they can fight off things.

Assuming there is no problem with the queen, the main two times you need to worry about them is when they are over populated and haven't swarmed and when they are weak from being too under populated. In either condition the various beasties that can attack them can do so without much resistance.

A hive with an old or sickly queen is in real danger fron moths and mites and even aunts (and otherhives of bees). Even a healthy young queen has a time providing enough "queen stuff" to keep a seriously over populated hive satiated, so they don't mount a sufficient devfense. It is obvious why an underpopulated hive is susseptable to attack.

If you do get the chance to get into bee keeping, read, read, read. I don't remember the names of the books and the authors, but there are classics that will tell you most of the techniques. There are supply houses where you can buy the bees and all of the other tools and equipment you might need. When I first started, I bought a hive of bees from a keeper out in the hilld of West Alabama.

It's a great passtime.

Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
T e x
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I used to help a beekeeper, from time to time. Didn't know chit about bees, but he couldn't rig his boxes when extractions needed to be made much above ground-level. Loved it. Saw some neat stuff. Would hang his box for him, then get out of the way and watch. Got some really different-flavored honeys, too...

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bdgee
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Yep, it's a fascinating business.

When I was just a little feller, I'd go with my grandfater to "rob" the bees and the whole thing kinda settled in me as fun and productive.

I wanted to get some hives here when I came back home, but the City warned (threatened?) me that they wouldn't like it.

Shoot, gardens would be a heap more productive if they'd get over that silliness.

I kept them right in the middle of town before and when I was working the hives, neighbors liked to gather and watch from a distance. (If you know how to handle them, they don't get upset and sting.)

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The Bigfoot
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I've got a few friends who have been trying to get me to start for the last year or so once they found out I been informally researching for a couple years. They say a few bigtimers in the Association around here have recently hung up the smoker and they need some fresh recruits... But living downtown with a one car family is not conducive to those activities. One day...but not quite yet.

BF

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bdgee
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Got a 3 ft. by 3 ft. spot on a baclony?

That's enough room to keep a hive.

Make it 4 ft. by 3 ft and you can have two.

Even in the downtown areas of major cities there is sufficient forage for bees.

Come time to move to the suburbs and you can move the hives one night and they will be back foraging the next day.

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IWISHIHAD
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The recent bee post won't come up right.


=

Posts: 3875 | From: ca. | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
raybond
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I almost thought BDGEE was posting again

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glassman
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quote:
Originally posted by IWISHIHAD:
The recent bee post won't come up right.


=

are you trying to post a link?

i'm interested.

this project is just barely outside my wifes professional interests, she has tried to "get in" to the program in the last year, but we aren't having much success because ofthe overall job problem... some of th epeople in the hunt to "cure" this are getting tired and burned out and htey need some "fresh eyes" but they are also stuck in their mortgages and can't "hand-off" the baton. [Mad] i admit anything "away" from where are right now is looking pretty good [Wink]

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glassman
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this si the most current state of affairs that i can find:
A new paper, published in the Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society, offers a ray of hope for native bee species. In this research, Droege and his colleagues compiled a list of 770 species that are historically native to the eastern U.S. They sent this list to a network of bee experts, asking them to note which species they had found within the past 20 years. The survey revealed that 95 percent of the bee species that lived 150 years ago have not gone extinct. Thirty-seven species were nowhere to be found, but the researchers pointed out that those bees had been rare to begin with and were often subject to taxonomic confusion. The paper offers "a clarification to the 'all pollinators are going to hell' point of view," Droege says.

It is important to understand the health of our native pollinators, because "in the absence of pollination, whole communities could collapse," says USGS ecologist Ralph Grundel. "If plants can't reproduce, you lose the primary producers, and then the species that depend on them." It is also estimated that bees pollinate about a third of the food that we eat, at a value of about $15 billion per year.


note that this is really a sign of hopelessness for the bee industry.
they are dropping back to native pollinators instead of feeling like they can cure what's ailing the European honey bee (our industry standard).

this also happened to the cricket industry just a little while back too:

Virus kills hordes of crickets raised for reptiles

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
More from BusinessWeek

JPMorgan's Big Loss: Volcker's Not So Dumb After All



PORT ALLEN, La.

A virus has killed millions of crickets that are raised to feed pet reptiles and zoo animals, putting some producers out of business and disrupting supplies to pet shops across North America.

The cricket paralysis virus killed 60 million of the insects at an operation in Canada, forced a Florida farmer to declare bankruptcy and prompted a Michigan grower to close until spring.

The virus led Elizabeth Payne to declare bankruptcy in June, and a bank foreclosed on her property in Leesburg, Fla., in November. She and her husband, who died three years ago, bought their farm in 1987 and built up sales to a million crickets a week, but it was ruined by the virus.

She finally gave up after closing the facility four times and spraying the walls and equipment with a strong chlorine solution, then pressure-washing the walls.

"There is no cure for that virus, and there is no way to get the virus out of that facility," Payne said.



that is jobs lost...

don't laugh, i've had herps (only a couple snakes, i like lizzards) for more than 70% of my adult lfe, and am even breeding some geckos now. it's huge cash busiiness (exotic pets) that has been a mainstay in US smakll biz...

i got lucky cuz the geckos i have are able to live and even thrive on a specailly prepared diet mostly consisting of Honey... doesn't honey mostly come form bees?
i would be raisng bees personally except i had strange reaction to a bee sting a few years back... the colors were extraordnary [Big Grin]

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glassman
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hmmmm..... here's something that don't sound good, in fact this is reallllly bad for Bayer:

Colony Collapse Disorder in bees triggered not just by pesticides, but also by GMO high-fructose corn syrup

Thursday, April 19, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer


France actually banned the use of imidacloprid on sunflowers and sweet corn back in 1999 and 2003, respectively, after more than one third of its bees died (http://www.guardian.co.uk). And yet the pesticide continues to be used in the U.S., despite the fact that it was never even lawfully approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).



http://www.naturalnews.com/035610_honey_bees_pesticides_corn_syrup.html#ixzz1ua7 5rfgo


A leaked document from January of 2011 demonstrates that the US Environmental Protection Agency knew about the pesticide’s dangers, but ignored them. The document says Bayer’s “highly toxic” product is a “major risk concern to non target insects [honey bees]“.

here's the actual paper as opposed to media regurgitation:

http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Lu-final-proof 1.pdf

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IWISHIHAD
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Originally Posted By Glassman:

"are you trying to post a link?"

_________________________________________________

I was, but everytime i posted it and then checked it, back to a different article it went.

So i just deleted it.


=

Posts: 3875 | From: ca. | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
glassman
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it's OK, and thanks, cuz you put me on the scent of soemthing even bigger than the mess we've been stuck in here for th elast few years (which i cannot discuss), but i can say that the players are the same:

Larger view
Western rootworm beetles climb on a corn stalk. (Photo courtesy John Obermeyer, Purdue University)


EPA faults Monsanto in rootworm cases
by Mark Steil, Minnesota Public Radio
December 1, 2011

Worthington, Minn. — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is criticizing Monsanto for its handling of cases of damage to corn crops by rootworm.

The pest is a significant threat to corn crops, and the damage occurred in crops that Monsanto genetically modified to protect against rootworm.

A growing number of reports of rootworm damage from farmers in Minnnesota and other midwestern states have raised concerns that rootworms are developing resistance to the Monsanto's genetically modified corn.

The EPA says Monsanto's mandatory resistance monitoring program is 'ineffective' and 'inadequate'.

The plant contains a gene which is supposed to make the corn fatal to rootworms. The EPA says Monsanto, the nation's leading seller of seed corn, must do more testing of insects from problem fields to find out if they can survive feeding on the genetically modified corn.

The EPA says Monsanto also must instruct farmers in rootworm problem areas to use conventional insecticides to kill the adult insects. The EPA stopped short though of saying that scientists have confirmed that rootworms have developed resistance to the Monsanto corn. Instead the EPA says it "suspects" resistance.

The EPA report notes that scientists have demonstrated that rootworms are showing a greater ability to survive feeding on the Monsanto corn, but that there may be flaws in some of their tests.

Monsanto's Mimi Ricketts said so far the EPA has not proven that resistant rootworms have developed.


somehow i missed this whole mess... and it is because i have been distracted by soemthing else that is equally crappy

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Pagan
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quote:
Originally posted by glassman:
this si the most current state of affairs that i can find:
A new paper, published in the Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society, offers a ray of hope for native bee species. In this research, Droege and his colleagues compiled a list of 770 species that are historically native to the eastern U.S. They sent this list to a network of bee experts, asking them to note which species they had found within the past 20 years. The survey revealed that 95 percent of the bee species that lived 150 years ago have not gone extinct. Thirty-seven species were nowhere to be found, but the researchers pointed out that those bees had been rare to begin with and were often subject to taxonomic confusion. The paper offers "a clarification to the 'all pollinators are going to hell' point of view," Droege says.

It is important to understand the health of our native pollinators, because "in the absence of pollination, whole communities could collapse," says USGS ecologist Ralph Grundel. "If plants can't reproduce, you lose the primary producers, and then the species that depend on them." It is also estimated that bees pollinate about a third of the food that we eat, at a value of about $15 billion per year.


note that this is really a sign of hopelessness for the bee industry.
they are dropping back to native pollinators instead of feeling like they can cure what's ailing the European honey bee (our industry standard).

this also happened to the cricket industry just a little while back too:

Virus kills hordes of crickets raised for reptiles

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
More from BusinessWeek

JPMorgan's Big Loss: Volcker's Not So Dumb After All



PORT ALLEN, La.

A virus has killed millions of crickets that are raised to feed pet reptiles and zoo animals, putting some producers out of business and disrupting supplies to pet shops across North America.

The cricket paralysis virus killed 60 million of the insects at an operation in Canada, forced a Florida farmer to declare bankruptcy and prompted a Michigan grower to close until spring.

The virus led Elizabeth Payne to declare bankruptcy in June, and a bank foreclosed on her property in Leesburg, Fla., in November. She and her husband, who died three years ago, bought their farm in 1987 and built up sales to a million crickets a week, but it was ruined by the virus.

She finally gave up after closing the facility four times and spraying the walls and equipment with a strong chlorine solution, then pressure-washing the walls.

"There is no cure for that virus, and there is no way to get the virus out of that facility," Payne said.



that is jobs lost...

don't laugh, i've had herps (only a couple snakes, i like lizzards) for more than 70% of my adult lfe, and am even breeding some geckos now. it's huge cash busiiness (exotic pets) that has been a mainstay in US smakll biz...

i got lucky cuz the geckos i have are able to live and even thrive on a specailly prepared diet mostly consisting of Honey... doesn't honey mostly come form bees?
i would be raisng bees personally except i had strange reaction to a bee sting a few years back... the colors were extraordnary [Big Grin]

You shouldn't be going around telling people you have "herps". Since we all are well aware of your typing dyslexia....some may think you just missed typing the "e"! [Big Grin]

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glassman
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LOL!

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glassman
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i can't begin to 'splain how screwd up this GMO thing could be...


i have seen some htings here in theMS delta that are not yet public and are totally immoral as far as the agrobiz goes and finding soemthing else this big just makes me want to puke.

there are some realy good people working on the problems, give them some time to get it worked out.. it's not easy when millions of $ are ont he line tho...

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glassman
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for thos eo you intersted inhthis at teh Science level amd not from the media hype? here's where we have been--from a couple years ago:

The only pathogen found in almost all samples from honey bee colonies with CCD, but not in non-CCD colonies, was the Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV), a dicistrovirus that can be transmitted by the varroa mite. It was found in 96.1 percent of the CCD-bee samples.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572

now from two years go:

Large-Scale Field Application of RNAi Technology Reducing Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus Disease in Honey Bees (Apis mellifera, Hymenoptera: Apidae)

http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1001160

you may remeber that it was just about a yer ago that we discovered RNAI could possibly cut viral infections in humans out too? well that was mostly media hype, but htere are some kernels of wisdom in it...

next?
FFWD to last winter:

Monsanto Advances RNAi-Based Products Through Pipeline
January 12, 2012


http://www.genomeweb.com/rnai/monsanto-advances-rnai-based-products-through-pipe line

unfrotuantely? you have to be subscriber to open that up all th eway...

suffice it to say that an Israel based co got bought out by Monsanto because they have a technique to produce RNAI (molecules) by the pound...

the probelm is that the bees aren't really getting better thru this, the good news is one of our friends cashed in big on this one. 8 figures...

"we" (my wife and i) got yanked hard. hard enough to be real angry. i won't sya how angry, but enough.. and the "thing" is the Science behind this is very very solid, it will apply to- well to alot of new stuff, so we continue to work our butts off getting into the right position to make it all work for us and everybody else too... don't worry when we get it EXACTLY right? we won't be quiet about it. this "trick" is very specific and you have to have alot of genomic sequence to make the right molecule that will do ONLY what you want, sequence suddenly became impossible to get a coiuple years ago... and that's all i can say for now.

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Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.

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glassman
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here's where it's all headed.... imagine you are a lion hunting dog. bred and raised for it, trained and ready to kill lions. Every time you tree one? the "great white hunter" snaps on your leash and drags you home? what do you do? you start finishing off the lions yourself without "sounding" to the GWH. [Wink]

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Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.

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glassman
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just to tiethisallup? BT corn ( spcifically Cry3Bb1 protein expression) was not supposed to be fed to bees... if they have been getting it, and htta's why the colony are collpasing? we got a real problem...

watch this commercial and tell me what you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl9vZYj-aJ4

BTW? you can ignore all the normal complaints about HFCS versus cane suger... both of them are OK if you watch how much you eat...

i once wieghed out the sugar for my kids on a scale so they could see why i won't keep them in th ehouse, but allow them to buy it as treat...

39 grams of sugar in a pile is pretty impressive. gulp. any doper knows that is almost an ounce and half [Confused]

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Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.

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glassman
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after reading the actual paper? honbeybees are not being poisoned by genetically modified BT corn... they are possibly getting poisoned by a Bayer product called imidacloprid which is a nicotine analogue- th earticle written ny "the media" tries to tie in the Monsanto product BT in th eheadline, but once again when you go to the actual paer you find that "the media" is FOS...

this is goingon every day by both bothe "greenies" and the "corporate nuts"...

i did make sure with ( and breif) my wife about the technology and the article and she (as usual) was like, "no way did they already put imidacloprid into a gene insertion, it's not possible" [Big Grin] i dunno what she sees in me but i'm aluckysob...

the part of this that's so "hard to sallow" is that it's (apparently) just the (planting) seeds that are treated with the imidacloprid and these scientists tests indicate that there is enough on the seeds alone to trigger colony collpase disorder on honeybees that get high fructose corn syrup extracted form the plant actually the seed that grew from those treated seeds.. that's a big dilution, but they claim it's the problem...

they calim a mortaltiy rate of 94% after 23 weeks with incredibly tiny amounts of th estuff... not impossible, but hard to accept...

the study is out of the harvard school for environemtal health...

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/departments/environmental-health/

they are very well funded, but maybe they have an axe to grind with Bayer? bayer holds the patent on the toxin..

in the meantime, the european honey bees are still not "cured"... in the end it may be that the africanised "killer bees" end up saving saving our butts, even tho we've actaully been trying to kill them [Roll Eyes]

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