I pose this question based on information another beek pointed out to me. If u look at the USDA numbers for hives in the U.S., there has never been a significant drop in numbers of hives posted. Every year for the past 10 to 15 years the numbers alter in the 200,000 range from year to year. It has been that way since before CCD began being reported. Is the USDA just making guesses at numbers of Hives? I ask this because I know that the numbers reported for Mississippi are totally erroneous. The USDA reports regularly that Mississippi has 18,000 hives. How do they come up with that number? I know one beek in Mississippi that has over 18,000 hives. In Mississippi u are not required to register your hives, so are they just guessing? The Mississippi Dept. of Ag. regularly posts that during the season Mississippi has around 31,000 hives and during the winter it swells to around 160,000 hives. Has anyone here ever experienced CCD? Just wondering why u heard of 50 to 90% losses of hives, yet no numbers to support those claims. Just thought this might be something interesting to discuss.
I do not doubt that CCD is real, but I see no smoking gun. The whole neonicotinoids thing just does not resonate with me. I have lots of bees sitting on the edge of cotton/soybeans/corn, and not for just a year or two, for many years (10+ years). I know for a fact that treated seeds are used and the neonicotinoids are being applied to the fields. My bees are very healthy and I have not witnessed anything that remotely resembles CCD.
CCD Is used as a common excuse for poor beekeeping, It does exist, and it does happen on huge scales, BUT a majority of beekeepers who lose hives, then blame CCD, when it was actually something much simpler like pesticede, mites, or bad feed.
One of the biggest guys in the industry made that statement to me last week, and upon reflection he right on. Poor beekeeping is responsible for a lot of the claimed CCD cases. That said there are definatly times its a mistery and something beyound our knowledge has reared its head.
I have been a bee keeper, maybe a keeper of bees is more accurate, for 14 months. I have been reading about bees a bit longer, maybe 18 months. As a new beek, my fact finding about CCD is approximately equal to my long term knowledge of Sasquatch. I now understand there are people hunting Sasquatch with ultraviolet lights, heat seeking devices and long range hearing equipment. The application of these technologies may advance the search for Sasquatch somewhere ahead of the CCD conjectures that I have seen in print to date.
Wayne, if u want a smoking gun about neonicotinoids, just look at what Bayer did in California this year. Instead of going through a re-evaluation of their most profitable neonicotinoid, they pulled it from the market and asked almond growers not to spray it. An admission of a problem from Bayer itself? Don't know, but in these tough economic times, I doubt a company would pull its most profitable product from the market if it didn't know there was a potential problem. Just sayin'.
One of the purported benefits of neonicotinoids is a sensory loss of direction for social insects. France, Slovenia, and other areas saw causal connections between the introduction of the pesticide and CCD symptoms. Additionally, though it is supposed to break down in sunlight, how many of us build hive bodies made out of glass?
sounds more like a political problem than a problem with the product. If Bayer thought that there was a real problem with the pesticide then they wouldn't they pull it everywhere (and not just California almond growers)?
It worth mentioning the bees are thriving in the highest neonics use areas like North Dakota. There's also the flaw here that CCD doesn't mirror the map of agricultural neonics coverage (which it should if it is responsible of CCD).
CCD isn't a myth as much as a catch all to explain a new phenomenon that is happening. There are definite markers for CCD and a multitude of problems found in correlation- it is a scenario of which came first- the chicken or the egg. When these losses came we imported a bunch of bees and with them a whole host of pathogens our bees weren't used to. According to most reports this nosema c. is a real booger. The virus isn't contained in just the midgut which is why fumegelin isn't effective, the virus needs the sugars to survive itself, hence no brood rearing, comb building etc... and it turns the nurse bees into foragers much faster. So if the virus is using the sugars in the nectar then the bee that need this amount to get from point A to point B will run short because the virus is eating it. They are weak and can't fly, can't fight off mights. There is no tell tale blk smelly poop. I was told to use a teaspoon of chlorine or lemonjuice in the sugar water til they overcome it.
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