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  • From: "Thomas Grizzle" <griz AT mindspring.com>
  • To: <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] FYI: Updated response from Canada's PMRA about 2012 Ontario
  • Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 03:51:05 -0400



Blair (et al.),

Along the lines of the varroa discussion, I am a relative rookie beekeeper,
now about 1.5 years into it, having started in April 2012 with 1 hive, and
then did a split in March 2013, so two hives total. I did not test for
Varoa (sugar shake test) until 2013 and I sure was fat and happy before I
learned the reality of the situation. I was just happy to have kept my bees
alive through the winter, but after the split when I tested found that I was
seriously infested in one hive, and reasonably so in the other. I used
formic acid strips for treatment in May 2013, which is considered an organic
treatment. There was some mortality from the treatment, I'd say about 100 -
200 bees. I plan to do another sugar shake test in late July and will post.

While this report appears to show that in these cases corn planting (with
neonics) near bee yards caused bee mortality, I am in a neighborhood and am
not worried about neonics hurting my bees like I worry about varoa or small
hive beetle (had problems with SHB last year). I do worry about pesticides
in general hurting bees, and if neonics are taken off the market, as Lewis
pointed out, older pesticides may come back into use, or next generation
pesticides could be brought out too. I think this latter possibility is
more likely because of patenting. They can make more money with a
protected, unique new product, and this is ALL about making money for their
stockholders.

Thanks for these data.

Tom
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 11:14:02 -0400
From: Blair Christian <blair.christian AT gmail.com>
Subject: [ocba] FYI: Updated response from Canada's PMRA about 2012
Ontario bee kills...
To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org, durham-county-beekeepers AT googlegroups.com
Message-ID:
<CAFT9XHxsbht1yT3ra9FEQp-mi4X0tveH0h7UwhHjPb6EJCjCqw AT mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Here's the scoop- the final report about last year's neonic bee kills are
the first link. At the bottom is a link to Canadian pesticide regulatory
notes, bee kill data (incident reports) and more. If only this data was
easily available at the EPA, and at the state level in the US...


English version of the draft of the final report
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/alt_formats/pdf/pubs/pest/decisions/bee_corn-
mort-abeille_mais/bee_corn-mort-abeille_mais-eng.pdf


>From the email to me from the PMRA regulatory information officer:
"The summary document "Evaluation of Canadian Bee Mortalities that Coincided
with Corn Planting in Spring 2012" has been posted on the PMRA website. The
links and a copy of the report are provided below.

"The PMRA will be able to provide you with the detailed evaluation report
once the document is finalized. The document is currently being translated,
and will be finalized following translation. This document contains more
detailed information. Please note that personal information is protected,
therefore, the data is in the detailed document is presented in a manner
that is consistent with protection of personal information."

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_decisions/index-eng.php
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_decisions/index-fra.php
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_decisions/bee_corn-mort-abeille_ma
is/index-eng.php
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_decisions/bee_corn-mort-abeille_ma
is/index-fra.php


Just to keep things in perspective: Here in Orange and Durham counties,
beekeepers choosing not to treat for varroa have been responsible for the
loss of many hives in addition to the infection of the hives of others (when
the almost dead varroa ridden colonies are robbed out by your neighbor's
healthier bees), while neonics have not been responsible for the loss of a
single hive. Let's not kill our own bees and sicken those of our neighbors-
if you don't want to treat for varroa, consider getting bees with VSH, such
as from these
sellers:
http://vpqueenbees.com/referral.html

VSH info at the bottom:
http://vpqueenbees.com/breeding.html

Best,
Blair


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End of ocba Digest, Vol 100, Issue 11
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  • [ocba] FYI: Updated response from Canada's PMRA about 2012 Ontario, Thomas Grizzle, 07/13/2013

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