Handling a Farmer Spraying.

**Panhandle Scott** · 09-09-2009, 07:46 PM

I am sure alot of you deal with this on a yearly basis but how do you go about being informed on not only your neighbor farmer spraying but one who might be 2 or so miles away.

I have maybe 3 major farmers in my area who either own land or lease land within right out my back door to over 3 miles away. Given that bees can travel some distance for pollen/nectar on food crops how can I protect therm from all of the ag chemicals.

The main 3 farmers are really not on the same schedule but a few weeks apart so their spraying times are completely different. I am lucky that the guy who farms behind me does his spraying late in the afternoon at almost dark but with weather situations he can never really say when he will spray.

I want to protect the hives but how can you control farmers or at least let them inform you who might spray 2 miles down the road without you even knowing about it.

**peacekeeperapiaries** · 09-09-2009, 08:07 PM

Find out who the farmers are and ask them. Explain your circumstance and provide your phone number, ask them to call you when they are going to spray. Obviously they don't have to comply but most will try to remember

**Panhandle Scott** · 09-09-2009, 08:16 PM

Originally Posted by peacekeeperapiaries

Find out who the farmers are and ask them. Explain your circumstance and provide your phone number, ask them to call you when they are going to spray. Obviously they don't have to comply but most will try to remember

I know most of the farmers in my area but even they can't give you a timetable. So much of it is weather related for their schedule.

Even though I would worry most about the fields by my house it is the ones who are a mile or two away that concerns me. Like I said all of these farmers are on maybe a 2 to 3 week different schedule.

With my work schedule and their uncertainty as to when they will spray I couldn't afford to keep the bees covered up for 3 or 4 days out of seven cause they might say they will spray but not even do it until next week during more favorable weather conditions.

**beedeetee** · 09-09-2009, 08:29 PM

Are they spraying anything that is blooming? When I was a kid we had 40 hives on the edge of our cherry orchard year around for 15 years. I would turn off the nozzles on that side of the sprayer while spraying diazinon, malathion, lead arsenate, perthane and other insectides. I was driving within 20 feet of the hives with a 400 gallon sprayer and the fan would blow bees away, but we never had a problem as we never sprayed while the trees were in bloom.

I have had pesticide poisoning of hives where I live now from some place. Usually it is just one hive that gets into something. Your odds are pretty good if you could get farmers to call you that live within a mile. The odds go down beyond that, but it wouldn't hurt to give them you number to call and leave a message any time they can remember.

**Panhandle Scott** · 09-09-2009, 08:46 PM

Beedeetee...can you ask the farmer what they are spraying and if it is toxic to bees per the labels.

It seems that alot of nitrogen will be sprayed but depending on the crop they will also spray for worms, beetles, etc even when the plant may be blooming.

**WI-beek** · 09-09-2009, 09:24 PM

You should be able to get ahold of whoever is the ag guy at you county ag department. There should only be a couple company's who spray the area and if they are reasonable people they pay attention to where they are spraying and give beeks in the area a heads up a couple days before they spray.

I was going to get ahold of the county ag department here this year but I did not notice many soy beans within a couple miles so I did not worry about it to much. Next year all the corn will be soybeans. If they get and aphid problem I will have a problem. I plan on having all my bees on trailers next year so I can move them if this happens. I am told that the people who spray are good at letting you know what they are spraying with and everything.

**WI-beek** · 09-09-2009, 09:27 PM

I did a quick search and found this for your county. Many phone numbers for you to call.

http://www.florida-agriculture.com/a...ton_county.htm

**beedeetee** · 09-09-2009, 09:59 PM

Other than aerial spraying I would suspect that most farmers do their own applications. Yes you can ask what is being sprayed. Fertilizers and fungicides will have less impact than insecticides.

If they can tell you the spray name you can look here:

http://www.cdms.net/LabelsMsds/LMDefault.aspx

to find the label and you can read it for yourself (look under Environmental Hazards on the pdf of the label). Most of the farmers will know ahead of time the names of pesticides that they will use during the season. They may not know exactly when they will need to apply them, but they could give you most of the information about the sprays.

In our orchard the buyer's field man would tell us to spray something once in a while.

**Lil Grain of Rice** · 09-10-2009, 05:19 AM

Interesting question, but it begs another question for me....so what can you do if a neighbour is spraying (something blooming)....you can't shut your bees in for a couple days, can you? Or rather, would you?

**bnatural** · 09-10-2009, 05:30 AM

I could be very wrong, but my guess is that the laws about not spraying certain pesticides when bees are on the bloom and/or notifying beekeepers of upcoming spraying were probably created to protect commercial beekeepers from experiencing huge losses during pollination and not for the person, who has one or two backyard hives (not that the law shouldn't apply equally, just talking about the reasoning behind the law). If that's true, then it used to be that a farmer might only have to worry about notifying one or two beekeepers of upcoming spraying.

With the explosion of interest in beekeeping, most of it of the backyard, one or two hive hobby nature, I can see a situation where a farmer might suddenly start getting calls or requests from several backyard beeks asking about spraying. That could quickly develop into a 'screw it' situation, where someone, who already doesn't have enough hours in a day to get all the crop maintenance done, now has a list of people to call and just doesn't do it.

My point is that it might be a good idea to coordinate with others from a local beekeeping club. This way, farmers would only have to call one number, and then the club would disseminate the information internally.

Just thinking out loud here. Don't know if it's a good idea or bad or even if the situation I described is a real or potential problem.

Bill

**Camp9** · 09-10-2009, 08:12 AM

Originally Posted by Lil Grain of Rice

Interesting question, but it begs another question for me....so what can you do if a neighbour is spraying (something blooming)....you can't shut your bees in for a couple days, can you? Or rather, would you?

Not all farmers spraying are applying insecticides, and if a crop is in bloom such as a seed crop like alfalfa, it might be something as simple as bt. We hit our orchard with a product to thin the blossoms. I'm not an organic farmer, but use a lot of organic products, and once in a while get the 3ed degree just because I own a sprayer and use it. You have to find out what their spraying. Most farmers don't want to hurt bees.

Camp

**Lil Grain of Rice** · 09-10-2009, 08:42 AM

Yeah, most of the time when someone is spraying it's probably not so much of an issue anyways. I'm just wondering with the original question, if there was someone going to spray something and it might be on the dandelion bloom, say, and it might be roundup, or something you really don't want in your hive or honey, would you relocate your hives, or screen them in, or just address your bees by saying "Today we're going to avoid dandelions and concentrate on the lower east side. And let's be careful out there." (10 pts. for the tv reference)

**Charlotte** · 09-10-2009, 07:41 PM

This is my 2 cents....

Why not stop by the local neighbor farmers, jar of honey in hand, introduce yourself, have your phone number already written on a piece of paper & on your jar of honey...then ask them to call you & explain why.

1. Putting a face with a name & having met the person, will help someone remember better
2. Jar of honey in hand. Honey tastes good. Farmer likes. Farmer may want to buy some. Farmer's wife says --don't forget to call Mr. Beekeeper down the road today, cuz I just love this honey in my coffee, baking, etc.
3. Phone number is already written on paper. Farmer's wife takes it in the house & tapes it up someplace.
4. Hey Dear- don't forget to call Mr. Beekeeper--oh, shoot, we lost his number-- oh, but wait it's on that jar of delicious honey!
5. Farmers are busy. Really busy. Trust me, I know. They are lucky they remember to do all they have to do without worrying about the guy down the road-- but wait--we met him personally, he gave us that honey, seemed like a nice guy--guess I'll give him a call... As the saying goes.."you catch more flies with honey, than with vinegar."

Good Luck!

p.s. as camp said "most farmers don't want to hurt bees"

**bonterra bees** · 09-11-2009, 07:37 AM

It's not just rural areas and farm crop spraying. MOST of those homeowner treatments available at your local hardware store, that read "harmless to everything", contain active ingredients that are HIGHLY TOXIC TO BEES". I speak from experience.
Think about "WHAT'S IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD"
When tomatoes are $5 each maybe people will respct bees.
Mark