Up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and in other areas they are planning to use Permethrin to kill deer ticks on the deer, to control Lyme Disease.
The Permethrin goes on rollers that the deer have to reach through to get to corn, so it gets on their necks and from there the pesticide spreads on the rest of the deer and it "can reduce adult tick populations in target areas 'anywhere from 80 to 90 percent'."
There's some BeeSource threads about beekeepers who use Permethrin to control ticks and chiggers. In the way they're using it, in the article, for deer ticks and Lyme Disease, is it likely to threaten honey bees in any way?
Also, Deet. Some beeks use it to keep bees out of places like cut-outs, etc. I guess for mosquitoes, it messes up their smell or scrambles their brain in some way that makes it hard for them to find and bite the human who has it on their skin. I see threads here where people use it a lot to keep off mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers. But does it rile up the bees? Could it mess with them in other ways?
For me, a related experience is opening up a hive after I had done roof repairs, and I had cleaned the tar off my hands with paint thinner. The bees did NOT like that! I had barely opened up the hive when "instantly" I had three or four stings on my hands. It was amazing to see them take action that fast!
You can be sure I learned a lesson from that, about getting chemicals on my hands that the bees might not like.
The Permethrin goes on rollers that the deer have to reach through to get to corn, so it gets on their necks and from there the pesticide spreads on the rest of the deer and it "can reduce adult tick populations in target areas 'anywhere from 80 to 90 percent'."
There's some BeeSource threads about beekeepers who use Permethrin to control ticks and chiggers. In the way they're using it, in the article, for deer ticks and Lyme Disease, is it likely to threaten honey bees in any way?
Also, Deet. Some beeks use it to keep bees out of places like cut-outs, etc. I guess for mosquitoes, it messes up their smell or scrambles their brain in some way that makes it hard for them to find and bite the human who has it on their skin. I see threads here where people use it a lot to keep off mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers. But does it rile up the bees? Could it mess with them in other ways?
For me, a related experience is opening up a hive after I had done roof repairs, and I had cleaned the tar off my hands with paint thinner. The bees did NOT like that! I had barely opened up the hive when "instantly" I had three or four stings on my hands. It was amazing to see them take action that fast!
You can be sure I learned a lesson from that, about getting chemicals on my hands that the bees might not like.
