[MrILoveTheAnts]

Is anyone attempting to recreate this in the US? The guttation (sweet flavored dew) from corn treated with neonicotinoids kill foraging bees almost instantly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Nsn4KvjwM&feature=player_embedded

I post this becuase it seems like all I'm reading about in the news is the Mystery of CCD and I'm tired of the news constantly bringing up viruses as a cause. Yah know because the bees that have the viruses are found in dead and unhealthy bees due to the lack of foraging.

Ohh but they don't have mites! ... because there are no foraging bees bringing them in.

It just seems like lack of foraging bees is the thing we should be focusing on.

I hear people, myself included, preach that the honey bee isn't important because we have 4500 native pollinators. Well that's not the case if the cause of CCD and our declining native bees is the result of an insecticide.

 

[power napper]

Yo Ants

That is kinda scary.

However as an observation I have never seen any of my bees on the small corn sucking up water.

Thanks for sharing the video.

 

[Omie]

Yes i just mentioned this video a few hours ago on the other thread about CCD:
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?p=516969#post516969

CCD symptoms include the disappearance of foraging bees that never returned to their hive. Hmm...maybe they croaked a few minutes after drinking the dew off treated seedling leaves. Investigators just keep testing the hives though- the bees in the hive, and the honey, pollen, and wax stored in the hive. Where are all the foraging bees that never returned?...vacationing in Rio de Janiero?...or DEAD on the ground a couple miles from their hive?

 

[AmericasBeekeeper]

Power napper, your name says it all! You have to be up before dawn to see the bees on the dew.

 

[power napper]

And wearing the tri focals also.

 

[Truchaos]

I didn't watch the video but I did attend a lecture last month given by a honeybee researcher studying the effects of pesticides on honeybees.

She said that neonicotinoid pesticides have an LD50 in honeybees in concentrations starting at 200 parts per billion.

That's a TINY amount of pesticide to be that lethal. She also said that neonicotinoids can be found in bees wax in concentrations beyond 200 parts per billion but that since it's trapped in the wax it's less lethal to the bee.