Randy Oliver article on winter bee losses

[Jon]

This is looking at US losses but there is a lot of stuff relevant to our own beekeeping.

This article by Randy Oliver of Scienfific Beekeeping fame looks at factors involved in winter losses (http://gallery.mailchimp.com/5fd2b1aa990e63193af2a573d/files/What_Happened_to_the_Bees_This_Spring2013_opt.pdf) .
The second part starting on Page 13 looks at pesticides, all of them, not just neonicotinoid pesticides.

[prakel]

This is looking at US losses but there is a lot of stuff relevant to our own beekeeping.

This article by Randy Oliver of Scienfific Beekeeping fame looks at factors involved in winter losses (http://gallery.mailchimp.com/5fd2b1aa990e63193af2a573d/files/What_Happened_to_the_Bees_This_Spring2013_opt.pdf) .
The second part starting on Page 13 looks at pesticides, all of them, not just neonicotinoid pesticides.

An interesting article. I read it first thing this morning and almost posted the link myself...but thought it would only encourage more 'my pesticide kills more than yours' posts. Very apt in many ways (although some will dismiss it out of hand because it's not written by a Britisher).

Mr McG' posted a reply on a thread on the big forum earlier today which correlates nicely with a few points in this article -but will probably be missed by many as they're more interested in the poly hive side of things which he also touched on.

[Jon]

I saw Murray's post on BKF and it does coincide to a large extent with Randy Oliver's observations.
The key thing seem to be that a current bee problem can often be traced back to an earlier event such as drought, nutrition, varroa, virus, nosema, even pesticides!
To paraphrase Karl Marx, a bee colony contains the seeds of its own destruction from an earlier event. (mind you seeds were not coated with anything in the 19th century)

[prakel]

No, but I bet that there were some rather noxious mixtures being used on the leaves and flowers by some of those Victorian 'hobby scientists'.

[Black Comb]

I attended a lecture at Harper Adams by Maryanne Frazier of Penn State University. She and others have spent quite a lot of time and money analysing pollen and wax for pesticides. She found 134 different pesticides in the wax. Cant remener howmmany in pollen but alot. The top 2 were Coumaphos and Fluvalinate. Most of the others were sprays administered on apples and almonds.
She also analysed the adjuvants (as best she could because some of them are commercial secrets) and found that adjuvants from one pesticide can be very lethal when they come into contact with another pesticide. There is no requirement to test adjuvants in the U.S.
After that she lost me. I am not scientific and her mixing of parts per million, parts per billion and grams per something went over my head.
Not one mention of neonics, except the risk of planting dust.
In Europe we do test the adjuvants. In the main we do not use Coumaphos and I think Fluvalinate has had it's day.
So, the situation here is very different and I think we just can not compare.

Where does our foundation wax come from?

[susbees]

Mine comes from the UK and Africa. Apparently.