[Sosfbay-discuss] Fwd: Re: [usgp-media] Canadian Green Party organic beekeeper on bee problems

Thu May 24 18:03:18 PDT 2007

--- Rebecca <rebelrot at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Rebecca <rebelrot at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [usgp-media] Canadian Green Party
> organic beekeeper on bee problems
> To: Nancy Allen <nallen at prexar.com>,
> usgp-media at lists.gp-us.org
> CC: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org
> Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 12:43:41 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> Nancy thank you for this!  One of our local greens
> met his beekeeper neighbor while canvassing and
> learned a lot about the problem.  He said that one
> of the alarming things is the fact that everything
> green around us will suffer as plant pollination
> will be affected by the decline in population.  The
> carting around of bees is being done by the big GMO
> food  companies.  Just thinking about global warming
> issues alone this is some serious and scary math
> without thinking about good food! 
> 
> Rebecca 
> 
> Nancy Allen <nallen at prexar.com> wrote: "Sharon
> Labchuk is a longtime environmental  activist and
> part-time organic 
> beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has  twice
> run for a seat in Ottawa's 
> House of Commons, making strong showings around  5%
> for Canada's fledgling 
> Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial
> wing  of her party. In a widely 
> circulated email, she wrote:
> 
> I'm on an organic  beekeeping list of about 1,000
> people, mostly Americans, 
> and no one in the  organic beekeeping world,
> including commercial beekeepers, 
> is reporting  colony collapse on this list. The
> problem with the big commercial 
> guys is  that they put pesticides in their hives to
> fumigate for varroa 
> mites, and they  feed antibiotics to the bees. They
> also haul the hives by truck 
> all over the  place to make more money with
> pollination services, which stresses 
> the  colonies.
> 
> Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web
> site at Here  
> __ (http://bushfarms.com/bees.htm)  ,  Michael Bush
> felt 
> compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world
> right on  the top page:
> 
> Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa
> mites.  I'm happy to say 
> my biggest problems are things like trying to get
> nucs through  the winter and 
> coming up with hives that won't hurt my back from
> lifting or  better ways to 
> feed the bees.
> 
> This change from fighting the mites is  mostly
> because I've gone to natural 
> sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and  I
> wasn't for a long time, the 
> foundation in common usage results in much larger 
> bees than what you would find 
> in a natural hive. I've measured sections of 
> natural worker brood comb that 
> are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for 
> worker brood is foundation that 
> is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into 
> three dimensions instead of 
> one, it produces a bee that is about half as large 
> again as is natural. By 
> letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have 
> virtually eliminated my 
> Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this
> is  shorter capping times by 
> one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. 
> This means less Varroa 
> get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the
>  cells.
> 
> Who should be surprised that the major media reports
> forget to  tell us that 
> the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties
> that we coax into  a larger 
> than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef
> industry. And, have  we 
> here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it
> one that the CCD Working  
> Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large,
> will support? Will media  
> coverage affect government action in dealing with
> this issue?
> 
> These are  important questions to ask. It is not an
> uncommonly held opinion 
> that, although  this new pattern of bee colony
> collapse seems to have struck 
> from out of the  blue (which suggests a triggering
> agent), it is likely that 
> some biological  limit in the bees has been crossed.
> There is no shortage of 
> evidence that we  have been fast approaching this
> limit for some time.
> 
> We've been pushing  them too hard, Dr. Peter Kevan,
> an associate professor of 
> environmental biology  at the University of Guelph
> in Ontario, told the CBC. 
> And we're starving them  out by feeding them
> artificially and moving them 
> great distances. Given the  stress commercial bees
> are under, Kevan suggests CCD 
> might be caused by  parasitic mites, or long cold
> winters, or long wet springs, 
> or pesticides, or  genetically modified crops. Maybe
> it's all of the above...
> 
> Article  Received from Lancifer
> 
> Discuss this article in the forum 
> __
>
(http://www.redicecreations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=524)
>   
> 
> 
> Pat  Rasmussen
> World Temperate Rainforest Network
> PO Box 154
> Peshastin, WA  98847
> 509-669-1549
> patr at crcwnet.com
> www.temperaterainforests.org __ 
> (http://www.temperaterainforests.org/)   
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> usgp-media mailing list
> usgp-media at gp-us.org
> http://lists.gp-us.org/mailman/listinfo/usgp-media
> 
> 
>  
> ---------------------------------
> Never miss an email again!
> Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail
> arrives. Check it out.

___________________

JamBoi: Jammy, The Sacred Cow Slayer
The Green Parties' #1 Blogger
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com

"To the brave belong all things"
Celt's invading Etrusca reply to nervous Romans around 400BC

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)

____________________________________________________________________________________
Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate 
in the Yahoo! Answers Food & Drink Q&A.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545367