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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Brad Kosiba <bradkosiba AT gmail.com>
  • To: Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Local news
  • Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2016 13:47:00 -0400

So Randall,

Would it be fair to say:  

"Keep Calm
and
Count Your Mites"

Cheers,

Brad

On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 12:32 PM, Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com> wrote:
Quote from article: "I found out that a lot of people everywhere did not know there was this massive die-off with the bees."

This is a myth perpetrated by ignorant journalists and pandering activists. Worldwide, managed honey bee colony numbers are way up over the past 50 years. In the US, they are higher than they've been in 20 years.

This is agriculture, folks: the number of colonies goes up and down with the price of honey and the price of pollination contracts. High prices = lots of colonies, low prices = fewer colonies. Yes, we have challenges with varroa mites and improperly managed or unmanaged colonies will die, but those aren't the ones that are pollinating our national crops. And if they are, others who are better at livestock management quickly step in to fill the gap. An excellent, must-read academic article on this topic is <here>.

But what about all these "massive" winter losses we keep hearing about? Well for one thing, nobody cares how many chickens Purdue must raise in order to get one chicken to market. All they care about is the cost of chicken and whether it is on the store shelf or not. Why should managed honey bees be any different?  But even more important is the fact that these "unprecedented" losses aren't unprecedented at all. The crux of the "problem" is that we have only recently started paying attention. Peter Borst, a researcher at Cornell and a frequent contributor to "The American Bee Journal" and "Bee Culture" explains this <here>.

If we don't understand what the real problems are, we'll never come up with real solutions.

Randall



On 8/24/2016 9:07 PM, Walter Starks wrote:
Carrboro mural in the news.


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--
Bradley E Kosiba, PhD
Biochemist-Beekeeper-Gardener-Scouter
 



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