[Greenbuilding] Why the bees are dying [OT]

[Racheli Gai]

Hi Rob,
I'd like to see the story about that guy!
Also, I forgot to say that my beekeeping informer told me that his own  
bees are
the Africanized variety, which makes them way less susceptible than the  
European
bees to diseases.
Racheli.


On May 23, 2007, at 10:25 AM, Rob Tom wrote:

> Racheli wrote [on the Greenbuilding list]:
>> According to some, the reason for the bees disappearance has to do  
>> with> pesticides, not cellphones.
> I caught a snippet on the radio the other day about (yet another)  
> massive  fish die-off in Lake Erie last year, where area residents  
> reported piles  of dead fish washed up along the shore, 10 feet wide  
> and four feet high.
> It wouldn't take much imagination to somehow link the current bee  
> die-off  to those fish deaths and if I were to imagine such, I would  
> say, (to  paraphrase that comic strip (Pogo ?):             "The  
> problem is us".... but I won't.
> I make an annual trip to a five generations-old beekeeping operation  
> to  get my year's supply of honey and pick up some for people in town  
> while  I'm there.
> If I'm lucky, I catch Grandfather (a delightful 89 year-old gentleman  
> who  has been a beekeeper for 71 of those years and was a provincial  
> govt  apiary inspector for 40 of those years as well as perennially  
> being a  judge at fairs around the country) and we hang out for a  
> couple of hours  in his "honey office" in the back porch. (I have a  
> PDF file of a newspaper  piece that was written about him about a  
> decade ago that I'd be(e) happy  to share.
>
> Unfortunately, I've not yet made this year's trip so I haven't gotten  
> the  "scoop" on the situation from his wise perspective yet.
> But there is a Yahoogroups organic beekeepers List (of course) and  
> there's  a fellow (with the misfortune to have the surname "Bush") who  
> does offer  some insights into the current "Colony Collapse Disorder"  
> (CCD) bee crisis.
> At his website, http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm  he writes:
> 	"Are you surprised that the major media reports forgot to tell us	how  
> the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax          
> into a larger than normal body size?"
> He also writes:
> 	"Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites.           
> [the cause of the big bee die-offs in years previous]	I’m happy to say  
> my biggest problems are things like trying to	get nucs through the  
> winter and coming up with hives that won’t	hurt my back from lifting  
> or better ways to feed the bees.
> 	This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I’ve gone	to  
> natural sized cells. In case you weren’t aware, and I wasn’t	for a  
> long time, the foundation in common usage results in much	larger bees  
> than what you would find in a natural hive.
> 	I’ve measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm	in  
> diameter. …What most people use for worker brood is foundation	that is  
> 5.4mm in diameter.
> 	If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one,	it  
> produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural.	By  
> letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have  
> virtually	eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems."
>
> -- === * ===Rob TomKanata, Ontario, Canada< A r c h i L o g i c  at    
> C h a f f Y a h o o  dot  C a  >(winnow the chaff from my edress in  
> your reply)
>
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