Thanks for posting. Our beekeeping group, and I’m sure most groups around the country, have been trying to educate ourselves on all of the problems our hives can encounter. It’s not just pesticides - GMO products, pests, viruses caused by the pests.. and so on.
My problem this spring has been hive beetles. I did have a hive with some wax moths - not overrun with them - but I sure hate those things.
Okay, enough shop talk. :-)
You bee keepers are doing good work but your PR stinks. Films in which bees are prominently featured include My Girl ... and Ulee’s Gold, a boring film with an aged Peter Fonda practicing beekeeping in slow motion.
Never had wax moths, but have always feared wax moths. They can take out a colony quick.
I found the beetle traps work well, but the beetles are not as devestating as the moths or mites.
Um... please explain the mechanism by which "GMO products" cause harm to bees or any other beneficial form of life? And please explain how GMO organisms produced by modern targeted forms of gene insertion/deletion/alteration are worse than the old methods of gene modification which involved indiscriminate gene breakage, random mixing of genes from different organisms, and propagation of obvious genetic mutants?
I get annoyed to see all the anti-GMO hysteria. It consists of a lot of emotionally driven fear-mongering tempered by very little fact and no data.
The only GMO I can think of that *might* be toxic to bees would be the insertion of the Cry gene from Bacillis thuringiensis. That would be no more and no less toxic than the widespread application of live B. thuringiensis to crops. However, a quick perusal of the scientific literature reveals that the Cry toxins are very specific to certain insect species--which do not include honeybees.