The true impact to CCD???

[BjornBee]

I met with a fruit grower last night from the Pittsburgh area. He was in the area attending a fruit growers seminar at the extension office in Biglerville. Thats in the heart of apple county, Adams county, Pennsylvania.

He was a hobby beekeeper and wanted a few queens. He does have a full service farm market with a variety of fruits, vegetables, etc.

In discussing bees with him, he mentioned that Marianne Frazier from Penn State was the keynote speaker at the talk that night and was going to talk about CCD. I asked why would she be talking about CCD to a bunch of fruit growers. He said that the outline was to discuss the impact to fruit growers and the talk was going to focus on alternative pollinators. They were going to discuss masons, bumblebees, and other strategies to limit exposure to honeybees.

I was a little disheartened.

So the next time someone is running around yelling "Wolf", remember the impact, the image, and the consequences to these actions.

It ticks me off that a few highly public pollinators are constantly in the press. These were the same pollinators that had apple growers in a tizzy from there "professional" three frame pollination units this past spring. These are the same pollinators that raised their prices above everyone else after sending "informational" letters to growers, crying the blues and telling them how bad it is. Somehow trying to justify their crappy quality, high prices, and trashing of the industry...all the while crying WOLF"!

Yeah, some money might be seen from the congressional hearings. I'm sure a very select few will see it. Meanwhile, I hope everyone realizes the impact and long range ramifications of the total picture that beekeepers are painting.

I know the problem is real. That CCD did hit many hard. Someone asked if CCD was a hoax. No, its no hoax. But perhaps its an overblown hyped situation that the beekeeping industry has seen previously, and will no doubt see again. I just hope we can deal with it without shooting ourselves too many times in the foot!

Are we banding together and using this to our advantage somehow, while portraying this as something the industry can deal with? Or is this something to allow the industry to be affected by circumstances beyond our control after we hype it for more than its worth? Hard to say. But fruit growers and other industries are not going to sit by and listen to us cry, boost our prices, and provide crappy quality. Thats for sure!

[Dave W]

With Africanized bees "everywhere", Varroa "killing all our bees", the "bee troubles" in California, and now CCD, sadly there hasn’t been much "good" said about honey bees lately.

[Chef Isaac]

I was wondering when more people (growers) were going to talk about other pollinators to use rather than honeybees. I do not think that, in reality, they will find another pollinator. There has been talk about bumblebees but the timing is iffy on those.

I do think that we need to work with the growers more rather than capitilize on the fact that CCD is present.

[mistergil]

I pollinated an orchard for many years that specialized in Cortland apples for the gourmet, west coast, market. They were big beauties, hand wrapped and he got top dollar for them. He had tried to get by with native pollinators but the yields and quality were so low that there were hardly any to ship out and still maintain his reputation. Only one good sunny day during bloom with two strong colonies per acre and after fruit set he was thinning so the branches weren't all breaking off. I doubt if there is any way they can replace the honeybee's efficiency in this area. This alternative searching is going to be lose for them. Honeybees are a known item and a lot of experience surrounds their use. They need to put the money on, and focus on a proven quantity.

[Keith Jarrett]

>shooting ourselves too many times in the foot!

Gosh, what's with all this doom & gloom, maybee they should turn the gun 180 degrees. :)

Also, what this , "the mites are killing all our bees"
Dave, you just said I was wasting my time treating at a drop rate of 50-100 ???

I have never made so much in the bees as I am making now.
Why??? mostly due to poor beekeepers.

1) pollination UP
2) bulk & package UP
3) queens UP
4) honey ??? well we can thank the N.H.B there.

P.S. I talked about the "CCD ,cry wolf" months ago, when the almond growers started looking else where.

[BjornBee]

I think having an attitude that growers have no other viable option, other than honeybees or the current trend in dealing with pollinators is not just wrong, but very unhealthy for the industry.

I constantly get questions from traditional smaller operators about masons, bumblebees, pheromone attractants for beneficial insects, and the like. Many of these growers are traditional one crop frowers (apples). The days of all your eggs in one basket is over. They are branching out in various fruit and vegetable crops. So the days of bringing in bees for smaller operators for a couple weeks for one crop is somewhat diminishing.

For the larger operators, such as almonds, we may see a disposable (throw away pollination unit) business thrive in the future. Can we say aussie packages?

Also remember, that the honey board (or was it the almond board) themselve's eluded to the fact a few years back that if the U.S. bee industry can not get their act together, money they currently use to support bee research and the like....would go directly to lobbying efforts to bring hives across the border from down south. The only thing stopping that from already happening is AHB's. Since we already have them...how long can that smoke screen be used?

Having large groups of growers attend meetings to discuss alternative options to honeybees can not be good. Some growers I know already have large numbers of masons. One has 10,000 tubes. I also know two growers this year that has decided to get into beekeeping themselves. This may be out of ignorance as some think "they can do it better", but it may be for other percieved problems the growers see's, and this is his insurance agianst all that he hears on a constant basis about shortages, booming prices, etc.

Anytime an industry(producer/provider/seller) percieves or think the buyers side of the market place has no options or alternatives...a great lessen usually follows.

Its us beekeepers talking of shortages, mass losses, problem upon problem, over and over again. Many cliche' comments as if the food industry itself is ready to collapse. I did not hear of shortages in almonds. I did not hear that for apples. But if you ask a grower, or the consumer in general....article after article has been seen about a bee industry on the verge of collaspe. Food shoratges possible. so on and so on.....

I know there are real problems. CCD did hit some large operators. But I hardly think people will be starving, or the industry is on the verge of collaspe. I thought there was a problem perhaps with the general public to include growers, of what they are being told about some pending devestation. But after reading a few responses...Maybe a larger problem could be seen from within beekeeping itself, with the attitude we have, and thinking that growers have no options or alternatives.

[Jim Fischer]

It is distressing to hear that someone who is working on the CCD issue is taking time to promote the "alternative pollinators", but anyone who knows tree fruit realizes that even honey bees must be quickly pulled from the groves once their work is done, lest the hives suffer from the spraying that the growers want to do the moment the pollination work is done.

All types of solitary bees, even if deployed in easy-to-move canisters, like this (http://bee-quick.com/bee_tube.jpg)are very difficult to move so quickly if one wants to keep them (and their progeny) alive. What one has when the pollination is done is some number of eggs perched atop piles of "goo" made of pollen and nectar. Even slight bumps can knock the eggs off the food, which will result in the larvae starving to death when it hatches from the egg. To make sure you don't kill the progeny, you'd want to wait until the egg
hatches, eats the food provided, and spins a cocoon. This takes different amounts of time for different solitary bees, but it is at least "weeks" after the
pollination is done.

Now, you could simply deploy the bees, and let them and their progeny die, but this makes it harder to keep a stable population going. You'd be forced to "raise bees" in one place, and you'd never get any population increase from the bees you deploy in the orchards, as they would die.

One need look no further than today's Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118428490685465247.html
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB118428490685465247.html

To read the happy story of how "the plight of the honey bee" can be solved by putting up "bee boxes" (drilled with 7mm or so holes) to attract "native" bees. Read the article, and see if you detect any sense of urgency to address the problems that honey bees face. (Naw, let's just use these OTHER bees, never mind that we have no clue if they can be used in practical large-scale agriculture, and lots of clues telling us that they are nowhere near ready for prime time.)

And what about the use of native pollinators in agriculture? Well, the only way one could tie “native pollinators” onto the CCD problem bandwagon was to give the impression that native pollinators might be part of the solution to the CCD problem. All the press has been about honey bees, you see. The "Pollinator Protection Week" folks needed a “hook” to ride on the coattails of our well-publicized dilemma.

While there have been some small-scale successes with alternative pollinators reported here and there, the fairy tales offered are very different from the actual track record.

Everyone’s heard about bumblebees being used in greenhouse tomato operations, so this would seem a success story. But what does the Xerces Society (who promotes the use of "alternative pollinators" in agriculture as a justification for their preservation) say about the unintended consequences of this effort?

“The bumble bee subgenus Bombus is represented by five species in North America. Of these, one, B. franklini, may be extinct, and two others, the western B. occidentalis and the eastern B. affinis, appear to be in steep decline…. circumstantial evidence indicates that the principal cause for these population declines is the introduction of exotic disease organisms and pathogens via trafficking in commercial bumble bee queens and colonies for greenhouse pollination of tomatoes.”

So, bumblebees native to the USA were bred overseas, and sold to greenhouse operators. Some of them escaped the greenhouses, and spread a very nasty European form of bumblebee nosema. It killed off the native bumblebees. In this case, advocates of the use of native species in agriculture appear to have been the cause of the extinction of at least one entire species of native bumblebee. Keep your fingers crossed for the other bumblebees, but the National Academy of Sciences 2007 report “Status of Pollinators in North America” concludes that both Bombus occidentalis and Bombus Franklini have a status of “apparent local extinction”.

Whoops.


Perhaps the best thing we can do for native species is to realize that they are precious and fragile creatures that should not be exposed to the rough-and-tumble of modern agriculture. Crop plants are a mixed bag of introduced species and high-tech hybrids that bear little similarity to any plants native to the USA, so why should we expect a native species to work on these very recent creations of man? Perhaps we should discourage the use of native species in large-scale agriculture so as to avoid additional extinctions. After all, we never used deer to pull wagons and plows for good reason – we used horses carefully bred in Europe over the centuries, each breed suited to a specific type of task. Honey bees were also carefully bred in Europe over the centuries. Somehow, I see a connection.

A future in which bumblebees don’t exist to entertain us with their antics would be a bleak one indeed. Preservation is a laudable goal, but the attempt to justify preservation efforts by making claims about the advantages of “alternative pollinators” in practical large-scale agriculture are disingenuous, and tend to dispel the sense of urgency that CCD deserves.

How many innocent species of pollinators have to go extinct before we stop trying to force them into the gaping maw of 21st Century agriculture in misguided and misinformed attempt to make them “work” for humans? Can’t we leave these bees alone, and just let them bee?

We have to stop this before things get out of hand yet again.

Please, do it for the poor bumblebees!

[peggjam]

Well said Jim.

[BjornBee]

Everything you say Jim may be true. But I also know that in the past several years, many more growers are asking about bumblebees. Bumblebee representatives are constantly at area grower conferences.

I also passed on the name to you the individual that is a large apple grower with 10,000 tubes of masons. Yes, he does maintain a pollination stock and a breeding stock at the same time. Yes, there are problems with the sprays and the timing of movement, and egg development. Thats why he has a breeding stock, seperate from his pollination units. But he is very successful and his masons are a sight to see!

I'm sure others(farmers) have not decided to go this route due to inconveneince, cost, or knowledge. But this one grower has many contacts. Farmers talk. Farmers will try new things if confronted with constant problems from pollinators, and a constant deumbeat of story after story of potential disaster in the honeybee industry.

You can find qoutes all day long. Thats not what the growers are reading or talking about. They are talking about article after article about pending shortages, disasters after honeybee disaster, and lack of (reported)pollination units for their crops.

I'm talking directly to growers. I know two who this year bought bumblebee units for field crops, just based on horror stories they heard over winter. They did not want caught with their pants down. I had two, who happen to be nieghbors with the farmer with 10,000 tubes of masons, ask me what I thought and if I provided masons. They obviously talk to each other. And when presented over and over again, with story after story, all produced by beekeepers themselves, of something that effects their livelihoods as pollination....they are seeking other options and other means.

I get the sense Jim, that you dismiss what I previously said, due to mason or bumblebees not being as manageable as honeybees. I agree with what you said. But I think farmers are talking about alternative pollination strategies, about other pollinators, and are willing to protect their interest of needed pollination. Will all farmers consider this, No! In fact many never saw shortages. I'm not even sure there was any. But the papers and news is full of pollination shortages, disaster around the corner, and an industry ready to collaspe. I think much of it is hype. Hype for several reasons. But that hype is being "read" by farmers and the general public.

I see small farms trying other pollinators such as masons and bumblebees. I'm seeing that now. I see larger operators using throw away or disposable units, and there are some indications that this is already happening.

Is there anything we can do about it. Hard to say. I just wanted to suggest that this "pending collaspe" put forth by some, is going to hurt the industry in many small ways.

Your article about native bumblebees is nice. But not sure how that means much to a farmer buying boxes for pollination, and assuming(knowing) they are for one season. I don't see the connection. They are being marketed to farmers regardless of the state of native pollinators.

[Jim Fischer]

> Your article about native bumblebees is nice. But not sure how that
> means much to a farmer buying boxes for pollination, and assuming
> (knowing) they are for one season. I don't see the connection.
> They are being marketed to farmers regardless of the state of native
> pollinators.

OK, let me be more clear - the preservationist/ecologists who want
to "protect" native pollinators have long dangled the promise of
using these insects in production agriculture. While there HAVE been
isolated cases of "success" here and there, the efforts have invariably
resulted in population crashes.

Worse yet, when a preservation effort is justified by claiming practical
value that is, at best, marginal, and the attempt to obtain practical
value results in the extinction of at least two types of the
insects being "preserved", we can see that we need to isolate
"preservation" from "modern agricultural application".

Yes, I plan on visiting the guy who has the large solitary bee
operation, and I hope to learn a few things about his approach.

But the same modern agriculture that provides so much food of
such high quality to so many people for so little money is very
rough on insects, so the "best" pollinator is the one that can
be moved away from the poisons that are used to control pests.

I've TRIED moving solitary bees out of orchards after
they were done pollinating to keep them alive for the rest
of this season, and their progeny alive for "next year", and
the results are not pretty. Now, if you can find a grower
who uses no sprays at all, you can leave the nests in
place until the eggs hatch into larvae, and the larvae spin
their cocoons. Then, moving them is no problem. But
asking any tree fruit grower NOT TO SPRAY is like asking
them to slit there own wrists from their point of view.

I've tried confining the solitary bees and protecting them
from sprays without moving them. I've provided water,
pollen, nectar, and STILL the adults died while confined,
even when restricted to large containers, fully shaded,
and provided positive ventilation with battery-powered
fans. (Oh yeah, I've gone full-bore on these babies,
and pulled out every trick I had up my sleeve to make
them "work". Who wouldn't want to pollinate entire
orchards with no more than a single Volvo-load of stuff,
and nothing weighing more than a few pounds?)

But short-range bees can only service small plantings, or
MUST BE MOVED, and growers are not going to go back
to small orchards/fields, nor are they going to stop spraying
to insure that "perfect" fruit that everyone demands.

[BjornBee]

Jim,
I think my post had to do with a larger sense of the picture, real and percieved, negatives and positives of this "CCD hype" as I like to call it, and the impact across the board.

I agree the problems with masons. Thats why I also mentioned bumblebees, throw away units, foriegn supply, and other items.

I guess if you can get out there and educate the growers faster than the salesmen for these other products, then a smaller impact could be assumed.

I just know that right now, due to the hype and the doom and gloom crowd...growers are in fact looking at alternative means to protect their crops and livelihood. Discussing the inner details of masonbee, is not going to stop farmers from looking elsewhere for their needs. Some might go with masons, some with bumblebees, and so on. I'm talking about industry image, whether real or percieved, and the impact on the many, many articles predicting total collapse on some level. You may think masons are a poor choice, and I agree. But farmers don't know that. And its certainly not the only option available to them.

The fact that entomologists such as Marianne talking to growers of these options, and grower associations in conjuction with extension offices involved, speaks for itself.