[JPK]

Curious to hear from folks that keep bees that are not in areas exposed to overt amounts of pesticides and DO NOT treat their bees with chemicals.

Are you seeing incidents that fit the description associated with CCD or not? If so what sort of rate?

 

[alpha6]

I don't treat and the really big commerical beek I work for does. Neither of us are seeing CCD in this area. But then again we are not running bees on crops that would be using the nio nicotoids so that may be something. I have heard that in ND and SD those running on Sunflowers that have the new nio nicotoids in the seed are showing huge losses. Got to be something to it wouldn't you say?

 

[JPK]

I think first hand info/feedback from folks is preferable to second/third hand stories.

 

[Roland]

Re: Incidence of CCD and Untreated Colonies

I am confused. From my experiences with CCD, Pesticides and miticides have no correlation with frequency of CCD. I do not used miticides, and have seen no evidence of pesticide problems. I have seen CCD kill everything. The solution was new bees in new equipment.

Roland

 

[JohnK and Sheri]

Re: Incidence of CCD and Untreated Colonies

I am wondering how seriously unconfirmed reports of "CCD" can be taken. We have seen many such reports, which, on further examination, seem more likely to have been caused by the usual suspects, mites and nosema.

Additionally, wouldn't the survey have to include those who DO treat with chemicals and haven't experienced CCD?
Sheri

 

[odfrank]

I do not treat and have over 50% loses. I posted videos of huge die offs during cold and wet weather, Nov - Jan and I still see an excess of dying bees. Didn't seem like mites to me.

 

[alpha6]

I think first hand info/feedback from folks is preferable to second/third hand stories.

Talk to Tom L. who is on bee source about what happened to his 400 hives on sunflowers this year. Additionally, talk to Lyle Johnson who runs about 40,000 bees on almonds about the number of loses that came from SD and ND. He graded them and can tell you first hand. Unfortunately, my bees were not on sunflowers so I didn't experience these losses. However, since my information is second hand as related to me by those who actually dealt with it and therefore not preferable, you now can contact them for "first hand" feedback.

 

[Tom G. Laury]

Cats out of the Bag

Here I am. Sheri, tell me how it's all my fault I would like to hear it.

Semi to ND, #1 bees, low to no mites. After check, same for nosema. Virtually 100% loss. 80+ lbs surplus honey. I've been sprayed so many times i can't remember them all but never seen anything like this, but I guess if SOMEONE says it's not ccd I get no help. Nothing new there.

 

[Tom G. Laury]

Seems like many many folks are against gov't assistance for bee losses.

What can I say? I need some help. But if not forthcoming, I will still make it.

 

[Bens-Bees]

Seems like many many folks are against gov't assistance for bee losses.

What makes you think that?

 

[Michael Bush]

I don't treat, but there are plenty of people in Nebraska who do. No reports from my part of the country of CCD.

 

[BEES4U]

I do not treat and have over 50% loses. I posted videos of huge die offs during cold and wet weather, Nov - Jan and I still see an excess of dying bees. Didn't seem like mites to me.

Written in the older editions of the ABC & XYZ of Beekeeping there are to diseases documented.
One is Eucalyptus poisioning
The 2nd one is Spring dwindling
Ernie

 

[JPK]

Re: Cats out of the Bag

Semi to ND, #1 bees, low to no mites. After check, same for nosema. Virtually 100% loss. 80+ lbs surplus honey. I've been sprayed so many times i can't remember them all but never seen anything like this

Tom, do you treat prophylactically or are you avoiding chems?

Do you have any idea what you were sprayed with and if you've ever been hit with it before?

What were your bees working? Was is primarily a single crop or multiple good sources to work?

 

[JPK]

Re: Incidence of CCD and Untreated Colonies

Additionally, wouldn't the survey have to include those who DO treat with chemicals and haven't experienced CCD?
Sheri

Sure, Why not.

I guess what I was looking for was correlation of lack of CCD reports from folks that do not use chemicals and hence have colonies where there is not a high concentration of these same chemicals that are known to accumulate in comb.

If there are folks that use chems and do not see CCD like symptoms I would appreciate it if you also volunteer what chems/treatments you've used on that comb....its likely not a single chemical but a combination that exacerbates/causes issues.

I'm fairly confident that as this issue is looked at by others down the road in a scientific fashion that we're going to find that CCD is likely caused by some combination of chemicals/disease and that it may even be partially/completely self inflicted.

 

[JPK]

I do not treat and have over 50% loses. I posted videos of huge die offs during cold and wet weather, Nov - Jan and I still see an excess of dying bees. Didn't seem like mites to me.

Frank, was your video the one with two rows of colonies with large masses of crawling bees in the aisle in between?

If I'm thinking about the right video the first thing I thought of was poisoning not CCD.

My understanding of CCD symptoms is that more often than not, a large portion of bees either fly off or fail to return to colonies.

Did you do any testing to rule out poisoning/disease?

 

[BEES4U]

My understanding of CCD symptoms is that more often than not, a large portion of bees either fly off or fail to return to colonies.

Bees that have contracted N. ceranae do not return to the hive and are known as crawlers
Ernie

 

[JPK]

I've never heard anyone make a correlation between CCD and Nosema before. Did I misunderstand your response?

 

[peterloringborst]

I've never heard anyone make a correlation between CCD and Nosema before.

SEE:

This is the first case report of honeybee colony collapse due to N. ceranae in professional apiaries in field conditions reported worldwide. No other significant pathogens or pesticides (neonicotinoids) were detected and the bees had not been foraging in corn or sunflower crops. The treatment with fumagillin avoided the loss of surviving weak colonies.

"Honeybee colony collapse due to Nosema ceranae in professional apiaries" Mariano Higes Environmental Microbiology Reports (2009)

ALSO, back in 2007:

A higher virulence of N. ceranae, if conclusively demonstrated to be the case, could account for the unusual reported course of nosema disease in central and southern Europe over the last few years, in which nosema disease is a year-round phenomenon rather than a spring disease, and is associated with higher colony losses (Hatjina and Haristos, 2005; Higes et al., 2005; Imdorf et al., 2006). Colony level infection experiments in the field are now required to demonstrate a causal link between N. ceranae infection and colony collapse.

Nosema ceranae has infected Apis mellifera in Europe since at least 1998 and may be more virulent than Nosema apis
Robert J. Paxton Apidologie 38 (2007) 558–565 Available online

 

[Truchaos]

I don't use chemicals and I've experienced zero loss over the last year. In about 4 weeks we'll see how they fair the severe winter we're experiencing.

 

[peterloringborst]

I've experienced zero loss over the last year.

How many years have you had bees, if you don't mind me asking?