Author Topic: I'm Tired of all this CCD BS (Read 9231 times)

MrILoveTheAnts · « **on:** March 24, 2010, 04:08:01 pm »

Yet another pointless news story about CCD has come out today basically quoting people and not answering anything. It's barely worth reading in my opinion but if you're interested http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100324/ap_on_sc/us_food_and_farm_disappearing_beesclick here.

Here is a YouTube Video that was posted last summer that clearly shows corn sprayed with neonicotinoids kills the foraging bees of a hive. Thus opening the door to all other virus problems seen in unhealthy hives. The reason there are almost no mites in the hive is there are no foraging bees to bring them in! At the very least could someone in the US try to recreate their finding, Thank you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Nsn4KvjwM#

wfuavenger · « **Reply #1 on:** March 24, 2010, 04:31:57 pm »

The video just confirms that the liquid on the corn is an effective insecticide. And when you feed an insecticide to an insect, it kills it. Not a very scientific video... It doesn't prove that is what is killing colonies anywhere.

MrILoveTheAnts · « **Reply #2 on:** March 24, 2010, 04:45:08 pm »

Guttation is when the plant naturally sweats out sweet liquid. I know it's a French video but the plants obviously weren't sprayed recently otherwise they'd be covered in dew. You see the tips of the leaves are where the substance comes out.

Also before someone mentions it. There are two pots of corn, one that was sprayed and one that wasn't. You can make this out at 1:05 of the video.

Because it isn't that great of a video is why I'd like someone in the US to try and recreate the experimental.

c10250 · « **Reply #3 on:** March 24, 2010, 04:55:28 pm »

I might be missing something here, but . . .

1. you spray a plant with poison
2. You take some "dew" secreted by the plant, which obviously has poison on it.
3. You feed it to the bees.
4 They die.

Help me out here. Why is that suprising?

MrILoveTheAnts · « **Reply #4 on:** March 24, 2010, 05:06:34 pm »

Quote from: c10250 on March 24, 2010, 04:55:28 pm

I might be missing something here, but . . .

1. you spray a plant with poison
2. You take some "dew" secreted by the plant, which obviously has poison on it.
3. You feed it to the bees.
4 They die.

Help me out here. Why is that suprising?

Because no one is studying that as a possible cause to the Mysterious CCD. Scientists said well neonicotinoides are not in the nectar or the pollen which bees love but they forget that bees will go for anything sweet flavored. Have you ever had a Soda where a bee flew into it? or a recycling bin full of bees? Hell a social feeder of sugar water?

The poison neonicotinoides is applies to corn (possibly other crops and whatever it drifted onto) and it stays active inside the plant for 9 months! Now it's not in the nectar or pollen which is good, But bees don't always go to flowers! Smash open a watermelon and tell me it won't become covered in bees on a nice day. So the poison is present in the sap and guttation of the plant.

It's not a virus that, we're finding in the dead and unhealthy bees that are in the gasp UnHealthy Hive. Try not eating anything for a few days and see how healthy your immune system is.

Mites shouldn't even be considered part of the issue because if they were present before CCD happened they'll be running rampant. If they weren't present before CCD then is shouldn't be surprising that they're not in the hive because all of the foraging bees probably died before returning to the hive.

doak · « **Reply #5 on:** March 24, 2010, 05:10:26 pm »

Bees will collect dew, or any liquid substance from "any" plant.
As corn is not one of the top crops that bees visit why rack your brain over it.
They are going to spray what they are going to where they are going to. "Who" is going to fix that?

MrILoveTheAnts · « **Reply #6 on:** March 24, 2010, 05:16:30 pm »

Quote from: doak on March 24, 2010, 05:10:26 pm

Bees will collect dew, or any liquid substance from "any" plant.
As corn is not one of the top crops that bees visit why rack your brain over it.
They are going to spray what they are going to where they are going to. "Who" is going to fix that?

They could be spraying pesticides that are bee friendly like they used to! Instead of something that turns the plant into a deadly toxin for 9 months. Unless you're growing pest ridden apples who needs a pesticide that lasts 9 months.

MrILoveTheAnts · « **Reply #7 on:** March 24, 2010, 06:30:22 pm »

Yah know this is basically a murder mystery without a corps. Everyone is investigating why the house is dirty but no one cares where the bodies are.

Ollie · « **Reply #8 on:** March 24, 2010, 09:41:16 pm »

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/business/27bees.html?_r=1

There you go...I like the caption for the picture! ....and tell me why they lost half the hives?

bassman1977 · « **Reply #9 on:** March 24, 2010, 10:37:58 pm »

From the NY Times article...

Quote

Isaias Corona of Bradshaw Honey Farm, near Visalia, Calif., putting corn syrup — bee food — into hives. The farm has lost about half its bees.

And here I thought honey was bee food. Silly me.

wfuavenger · « **Reply #10 on:** March 25, 2010, 08:00:25 am »

Quote from: doak on March 24, 2010, 05:10:26 pm

They are going to spray what they are going to where they are going to. "Who" is going to fix that?

The USDA and FDA are supposed to... But when they allow Bayer and other major insecticide and pesticide producers to "grease their palms" and slip chemicals through the back door of the approval process with known bee killing properties, it is impossible to stop.

asciibaron · « **Reply #11 on:** March 25, 2010, 01:28:50 pm »

Quote from: MrILoveTheAnts on March 24, 2010, 05:06:34 pm

Because no one is studying that as a possible cause to the Mysterious CCD. Scientists said well neonicotinoides are not in the nectar or the pollen which bees love but they forget that bees will go for anything sweet flavored.

this is not a true statement. no one is studying that YOU know of...

Jody Johnson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in the department of Toxicology. She is studying the sublethal effects of several pesticides on honey bees at the USDA Bee Research Lab in Beltsville under the mentorship of Dr. Jeff Pettis. Two imidacloprid studies, one with Dr. Galen Dively at the University of Maryland College Park on field based hives and one with Animal Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) in New York City and Worcester, MA on imidacloprid expression in red maple flowers and leaves, are central to her research. Other smaller studies have included work investigating the effects of fluvalinate (Apistan), chlorothalonil, and coumaphos (CheckMite+) on honey bee health.

http://161.58.48.157/honeyindustry/reports/research2009-8.asp

http://www.pollinator.org/pdfs/2010%20FINAL%20Honey%20Bee%20Health%20Release%20031510.pdf

she is currently working on a water quality study to see what is in the possible water sources of the honey bee.

Bee Happy · « **Reply #12 on:** March 25, 2010, 06:17:52 pm »

"Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted..." (somewhere around paragraph 6)

- this is from the article Ollie posted o.k. so this was a new york times author - presumably someone who thinks trees only grow in jumbo pots. but exhausted bees? :lau: without some outside influence? (like pesticide or illness) - The article itself suggests exhaustion as a primary factor. :-\ yeah, ok city slicker.

buzzbee · « **Reply #13 on:** March 25, 2010, 07:28:06 pm »

Some folks are looking at pesticides. They are looking in the wax,which is like a sponge that sops up anything the bees have on their feet or in the pollen/nectar they store in the hive.
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/pdfs/Cost-sharing.pdf

http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/powerpoints/Pesticides-pollination0310.ppt

One page of ppt presentation:
Outcomes of Honey Bee Pesticide Analysis

No “commodity” has had as many detections at such high amounts in so few samples over such a short time as has bee pollen

Highest detections were in-house miticides, fluvalinate and coumaphos, but well over 100 other pesticides and metabolites found

Pyrethroids dominate: known to impact foraging behavior,

No individual chemical is likely to explain CCD

Systemic or other fungicides occur at levels that may synergize with pyrethroids, organophosphates or neonicotinoids.

Role of pesticides and diseases like IAPV in CCD remains to be reconstituted in lab bioassays at relevant doses
Impacts of multiple pesticide residues in bee food most likely will be via synergistic interactions at sublethal levels on key behaviors/physiology

My thoughts:
camaphous and fluvalinate were dumped in many hives as varroa treatment. Beekeepers have contributed to being part of the problem it seems.
Check-mite plus has specific warnings to handle it with gloves as it gets absorbed through the skin and affects the nervous system

MrILoveTheAnts · « **Reply #14 on:** March 26, 2010, 03:58:50 am »

Ok where does it say anyone is studying plants that "Guttation" (whatever the past tents of that word is) and insecticides?

The treated plants bleed out the insecticide, the bees basically drink this sugar water tainted with insecticide, and thus all the foraging bees of a hive "mysteriously" die. I could not be saying this more simply.

Like think about the definition of what CCD is for a moment. Foraging bees "mysteriously" vanish, and the hive looks unhealthy. If we eliminate the problem of foraging bees vanishing does CCD still happen? Think about this for a moment.

I'm pointing out how an insecticide that remains active in a plant for 9 months can kill the foraging bees of a hive. Suddenly that on that warm day where any bee could use a drink that field of corn with glistening droplets of sugar water all over the leaves (guttation) looks like a likely suspect. It's quite a mystery isn't it?

All of these chemicals they're finding in the hives wax and pollen isn't that surprising at all. These are mostly commercial hives which travel around the country and encounter god knows what.

BjornBee · « **Reply #15 on:** March 26, 2010, 07:44:01 am »

Buzzbees comments are the best I've heard so far.

No single chemical or pesticides have been found to be the problem. In fact, some of the ones targeted, and those banned in France and other countries, have been found at ANY level, in only about 30% of CCD samples. Some of the other chemicals, and the ones beekeepers have placed in the hives themselves, have been found at much higher percentages of the hives. Fluvalinate, being the most toxic.

It seems that particular fungicides, tested and shown to be safe for bees unto themselves, has drastic kill rates, when mixed with other chemicals. These previously safe fungicides are being found to be the the "x-factor" and chasing down and eliminating one chemical as they are trying to do, may be in vane, since another chemical may just fill in for the job. So this could be a compounding problem that results in many chemicals being the "last straw" allowing this to take place.

It seems that research is about where many beekeepers thoughts were at least two or three years ago. That it is the combination of chemicals, probably with suppressed immune systems, poor nutrition, that allow other diseases and a complete crash of the bees immune system and resulting CCD.

BeeHopper · « **Reply #16 on:** March 26, 2010, 09:22:42 am »

Quote from: BjornBee on March 26, 2010, 07:44:01 am

Buzzbees comments are the best I've heard so far.

No single chemical or pesticides have been found to be the problem. In fact, some of the ones targeted, and those banned in France and other countries, have been found at ANY level, in only about 30% of CCD samples. Some of the other chemicals, and the ones beekeepers have placed in the hives themselves, have been found at much higher percentages of the hives. Fluvalinate, being the most toxic.

It seems that particular fungicides, tested and shown to be safe for bees unto themselves, has drastic kill rates, when mixed with other chemicals. These previously safe fungicides are being found to be the the "x-factor" and chasing down and eliminating one chemical as they are trying to do, may be in vane, since another chemical may just fill in for the job. So this could be a compounding problem that results in many chemicals being the "last straw" allowing this to take place.

It seems that research is about where many beekeepers thoughts were at least two or three years ago. That it is the combination of chemicals, probably with suppressed immune systems, poor nutrition, that allow other diseases and a complete crash of the bees immune system and resulting CCD.

This has been my belief. Many negative factors " all at once " would be detrimental to any living organism. We can control many of those factors ourselves as competent beekeepers, but eliminating the chemicals ( pesticides, fungicides, and other poisons) from our environment is more than half the battle.

MrILoveTheAnts · « **Reply #17 on:** March 26, 2010, 03:51:17 pm »

Once again my comments are getting pushed to the side as if finding out how all of the foraging members of a hive could up and die. As if all the foraging members of a hive dying has nothing to do with CCD.

BeeHopper · « **Reply #18 on:** March 26, 2010, 04:07:09 pm »

Quote from: MrILoveTheAnts on March 26, 2010, 03:51:17 pm

Once again my comments are getting pushed to the side as if finding out how all of the foraging members of a hive could up and die. As if all the foraging members of a hive dying has nothing to do with CCD.

Not really, I agree the CCD Hype is tiresome, I for one do not pay attention to it anymore.

MrILoveTheAnts · « **Reply #19 on:** March 26, 2010, 05:26:52 pm »

http://news.discovery.com/animals/honeybee-mite-sniffers-colony.html

This story has a video with it and sums up how scientist are NOT researching insecticides. Why? I don't know.

Edit: The video for this article implies that CCD is when adult foraging bees abandon the brood of the nest... which is an odd statement because the young bees are the ones taking care of the brood. The same young bees that were supposidly effected by this "disease" when, apparently, a mite bit them in the brood stage.

Considering the honey bee genome was only just decoded last year is it any surprise that we're just now discovering new disease with this species? Disease that quite easily could have nothing to do with CCD and as said by the people studying CCD are can be found in any hive.