mnist said:
> While working with a veteran beekeeper this summer,
> spraying bee-go on top of the inner cover was the
> only method I saw him use.
> He has a lot of hives and found that this was the
> most efficient way to clear bees off the honey supers.
> Please explain the bad points of this?
Let me rant a bit here.
Nothing should be in honey except honey.
It is just that simple.
An inner cover is either plywood if it is a good one,
or masonite if it is a cheap piece of crap. Neither
are generally considered "absorbent materials".
If you spray a liquid on a plywood or masonite
surface, and then place that surface over the supers,
what happens to the liquid? It has to drip down onto
the frames and the combs. This is a big non-no.
You never want ANYTHING to come into direct contact
with honey, comb, or frames, since it will certainly
come off in the extractor, and get into the honey.
There are some people who have been misinformed, and
think that butyric anhydride (the active component of
Bee-Go and Honey Robber) oxidizes to butyric acid, and
think "that's OK", as tiny amounts of butyric acid are
found in all honey. Only SOME of the chemical goes
through this reaction process. Nowhere near all.
Butyric anhydride is not food grade for human food.
It is permitted as an additive for animal feed, but
it is not "generally recognized as safe" by the FDA,
nor is it listed as an "approved food-contact substance"
by the FDA. The EPA "exemption from the requirement for
a tolerance" for butyric was revoked by the EPA back in
1998 (see page 6 of
http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/fqpa/revoked.pdf.
The EPA uses the synonym "Butanoic Anhydride" as
the formal name for the chemical. Same thing. With
this revocation, there is no remaining "food use"
for this chemical.
So, what part of "no food use" is unclear?
Heck I dunno, the EPA and FDA have much bigger
problems to worry about, and the "honey industry"
tends to be a self-regulating group of responsible
people. An administration that quietly reclassifies
carbon dioxide as "not a pollutant"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030916-6.html http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=438719 http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/36/we_538_03a.html
is not going to "enforce" much of anything, is it?
Now, fast-forward to "later", after you have harvested.
The supers are removed, and the inner cover is back on
the hive. The bees are still exposed to the residue
of the Bee-Go, and will walk in/on it, spread it around,
and get it all over the hive.
As many have pointed out, the odor of butyric anhydride
is amazingly persistent to many noses. Long after it is
no longer repellent to bees, it remains repellent to humans.
Your inner cover is going to smell terrible for a long,
long time. So will you, since you must handle the inner
cover.
Enough said. You get the idea.
jim