From: "deelusbybeekeeper" <deelusbybeekeeper@excelonline.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 17:09:59 -0800
To: <BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: Clean wax for Organic Production?

Hi to all on Biological Beekeeping

Erik wrote Below:
>
> > Why do
> > you suspect DDT?. The wax would be from loghives mainly I suppose, not too
> > close to farmland

To which Dave Cushman replied?
>
> DDT is still very widely used in the third world not just on farmland.
> Wildlife has been sampled, it is not whether or not DDT is present as it is
> present in all samples. The question is how much is present and from a
> toxity point of view how much of the breakdown products are in the
> environment after sixty years of its continous use.

Further reply:

Dave has asked "how much is present and ...how much of the breakdwon
proeucts are in the environment after sizty years of its continous use." To
which I would say, the blame is not all S. Africa. Allied forces used DDT
extensively during WWII throughout Europe, UK, and USA and after, crops in
all countries were heavily sprayed with it for years past the 1960s.
Residues of toxicty have been found all the way to the south pole and in
eggs of penquins. It seems to have a long half live. Rachael Carson's "
Silent Spring" sounded the alert to toxins of pesticides harmful to nature
and diet with humans.

I think the main emphasis rather than finger pointing here, is to find
sources for beeswax, with as little toxic residues as possible, or teach
beekeepers how to lower them in the wax & products they have, with each
succeeding round of foundatioin making/comb changing out, on a rotating
basis, so as to gradulally achieve cleaner and cleaner products for our own
health and our bees continuance, to enable survival for pollenation of the
food we need to eat.

Now just how do we help beekeepers get their wax cleaner for foundation
making, assuming that once traded for foundation you have no guarantee of
what grade (chemical) you are getting back). Are there controls in place for
one on one procesing of ones wax to get what you gave for working rates
back, without the wax being substituted for something else? Another reason
to self-contain and learn to make one's own? Beekeepers make everything
else, right? Whay have they never been taught how to make the other half -
namely the foundation their bees use? Why? A controlling mechanism? Don't
think so, but it does make one wonder sometimes!

Here for making foundation, I would say, thinner is better to give the bees
a greater chance to add new fresh clean wax to dilute the base by 90% each
time so by round three, say, you have a relative degree of safety if
starting with badly residued wax from say - coumaphos a highly neurotoxic
nerve jumping compound.

Chow

Dee