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The Blue Shop Towel Method for Tracheal Mite Control in Honey Bees

21K views 56 replies 18 participants last post by  Ian 
#1 ·
#35 ·
You could buy Ethylene DiBromide

You are saying that you can purchase EDB at a bee supplier.
And, that's without an Agric. I.D. #
I can not buy Mite-a-way 11 without a permit.
The tolerance for EDB in honey is very low and if your hobey contaminates a batch you get to pay for it's disposal!

Regards,
Ernie
 
#36 ·
Edb

Ernie hi;

I'm not saying you can, just that you could, about 30 years ago. I brought this up because as pointed out in a preceding post, just because it's over the counter, doesn't mean it's safe. Yes you could go to Dadants in Fresno and buy EDB in 5 gal. cans, no permit required. It was used for moth control.

Approved chemicals can be abused just as easily as materials that are not registered for certain uses.

Sherri makes a good point:
Domestic "commercial" honey is intensely scrutinized, now even for bacteria . How much "hobby" or back door product is?
 
#43 · (Edited)
If you don't listen to the leaders you're a fool!
Advise is to be taken carefully and with a grain of salt.....

I suspect that the Honeybee industry shares a lot of parallels with Agriculture.

If you're a small Organic Farmer are the methods that Big Ag uses going to work for you on your crops? Not likely.....but there may be SOME practices that you can benefit from....and vice versa....I'm sure there are practices that small Organic Farmers use that Big Ag could put to good use.

I'm a newby so at this point I'm pretty much all ears.....I've heard some things from both the commercial beeks and the hobbyists that I'll pick and choose from that sound like they'll work well for me.
 
#51 ·
Ahh, an extra strength, blue disposable towel. I need to get some of these, my guys go through the cotton shop towels like toilet paper, especially since we converted the diesel to WVO. I bought a passle of the red cloth ones thinking I can wash them and re-use them (how stupid of me) but the 1st time I hauled a bag up to the house to run a load through the washer my wife, a purple belt in Japanese Karate', took some type of bent leg defensive stance and mumbled something to my son about dialing 911. Now I don't know whether to just burn them or see if I can sneak into a laundrymat late at night.
 
#53 · (Edited by Moderator)
BjornBee,
You said it all with perfect clarity in comment #16. The point to which one will lower the bar shows how low they will go with anything they do. Our industry is what we make it be. If we don't care about how we raise our bees for market then we will also go the way the feed lot beef industry went with the mad cow thing.
When we make bad choises at the bottom end and expect to receive the top end prices for doing it , we only fool ourselves. When we stick to the safe side we cover our own rear's and will not end up as a certain big operator did!
Even in this time of changing ways of doing our beekeeping we still need to have integrity in making the correct changes that will help the bees and not harm the public with our products at the same time.
Lee..
 
#54 ·
cold turkey

if you breed from your own stock and don't treat for tracheal, tracheal will be gone cause its quite deadly over winter.


you work with a resistant bee like Russian and you don't need any nosema or varroa treatments either. russians are very well known to be resistant to tracheal.

i run 700 colonies and don't bother with any treatments. don't have the time or the money to waste anymore. plus the bonus is my comb is clean and my bees healthy.

the VSH lines also look promising so there other options out there.
 
#56 · (Edited)
>>and will not end up as Adee did!

Wait a minute! So easy to slag large operators. Yet there are so many smaller ones also experiencing the same problems. Care to finger any of these guys? I see it here just as your seeing it there. This isnt a problem of commercial operations, its an industry problem!
Reading an article in the ABJ yesterday about beekeeping down under. they dont have the same problems we have been facing, THEY DONT HAVE VARROA OR TRACHEAL MITES!!
 
#57 · (Edited)
>>and don't bother with any treatments. don't have the time or the money to waste anymore

I have a neighbour with the same mind set with his beekeeping operation. He lost nearly 80% of his stock last winter. Had to buy in replacement stock. Nearly lost the business over it, he would of if he wasnt on a good honey crop this year sitting on someone elses bees.

Stock selection and breeding programs are oh so important, I defenatly agree, but I dont believe its advanced enough in it breeding yet to be able to hold an industry on. We will be there, just need more time.
 
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