Spinosads and honey bees

[Seamaiden]

i've been in communication with an affiliate of this group. they are on the forefront of when... at least last time i was at one of the classes.

http://cleangreencert.com/home/




no i'm on the mainland. 21 miles away from the island. lol. would be tough to have enough food on that small island year round i'd think. i keep urban bees!! haha. but down here things are always in bloom.

It's bigger than most folks think, but the vast majority is preserved in its wild state in perpetuity. With buffalo. :o

Thanks for that link!

 

[toquer]

yeah now that i think about the numbers for urban bees. figuring there are 9 hives in each square mile in LA, we're not talking monster hives, but just feral hives of about 5-10,000 bee's.
my quad deep is something i'm still working on. too late to make changes for this season, but in the winter when they are finally slow enough to push into 2 deeps i can reconfigure and make my own box. currently the honey supers can slide over the top of two deeps so that when i go inside i don't take the top off rather just move it out of my way. i'm thinking of an upside down pyramid. but the bottom needs to be a regular deep and a split so that it's wide enough to support 2 deeps above. (i'm going to cut a monster sized hole in the side of the deep and the split so that the queen doesn't have to go up to the top and back down the other side. she does travel quite a bit between the 2 side by side deeps currently). then i can 4 supers on top and can just take one off whenever i need honey.

 

[BeenBurned]

Across the board pollinators are having trouble, not just Bees and not just chemicals...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27951040

without a massive change in the habits of mankind pollinators and water will just be the beginning of the end. Kudos to the hobby hives...I will be starting next summer, It is good to know there are apiarists at the farm to shoot Qs at!!

 

[Rosenberg]

I know you're aware of the Bt corn that came out a couple of years ago. It's now, in VERY short order, created Bt-resistant corn borers.

And yet somehow, as mind boggling as it is, there are still many creationists out there who believe evolution is a lie!

Regarding the topic of pollination in general, planting near native forest does wonders for it. Bees are perhaps the best known pollinator, but they're far from the only or even best pollinator. There are literally countless - maybe millions - of pollinating insects out there, from butterflies to beetles, moths to midges, flies, ants and wasps, and the many many other species of bees. There have been studies done that crops plant near native forest produce significantly more than those plant away from forest, due to the diversity of pollinating insects able to exist in habitat that has not been annhilated by monocultures.

Insecticide are easy to turn to yet it's becoming apparent that their use is causing problems that are very difficult to solve.