Mystery surrounds dead bees in USA

[nosmoking]

Jut found this on a Facebook link (If it's been posted recently...sorry!): http://www.floridatoday.com/article...s-keepers?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Local+News

 

[dickndoris]

Only in the US eh! I was in Florida earlier this year at Disney (we had free tickets ;-) and there was a flower festival on. Didn't see 1 flying insect all day! How do the yanks get away with sterilising everything?
So sad to see so many dead bees :'-(

 

[Brosville]

Now I wonder how that could have happened?
"Dibrom" is also known as "Naled", and is an organophosphate, which was used as sheepdip, from which farmers died or were crippled for life....

http://www.wtv-zone.com/infchoice/naled.html

and http://www.nospray.org/naled.shtml

 

[bellabee]

Let hope he has insurance!

 

[stilllearning]

feel sorry for him, probably a farmer or Government agency done something wrong/read the instructions wrong/mixed it wrong, and before you know it this happens and does happen and could happen anywhere in the world but hopefully no where near me

 

[sugarbush]

I have heard through the grape vine that they are up to 3000 dead hives in a 10 mile area. Definitively a pesticide issue, just have to figure out what went wrong.

 

[Skyhook]

Interesting that the article says dibrom has a 30-minute toxicity. According to Wiki, it's 16 hours.

 

[Ely]

What are your views on clinic ace?

 

[Skyhook]

What are your views on clinic ace?

Glyphosate-based weedkiller. Appears to be pretty harmless to bees, though possibly harmful to insects that predate on aphids etc.

 

[jakethedog]

a loosely linked report -to Florida bee deaths in September


http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2011.12.14.09.47.archive.html

 

[victor meldrew]

According to the article ,the syrup he fed was contaminated ,probably while in the back of a truck left at his home address whilst he was at a bee conference in Argentina !!!
VM

 

[chrismcd]

Now I wonder how that could have happened?
"Dibrom" is also known as "Naled", and is an organophosphate, which was used as sheepdip, from which farmers died or were crippled for life....

http://www.wtv-zone.com/infchoice/naled.html

and http://www.nospray.org/naled.shtml

Hi Brosville,

Not that OP, Naled is clearly much too toxic ever to be used anywhere near mammals in a sheep dip. Sounds like it was great on mosquitos, but even the Americans were frightened of it.

The main UK sheepdips that used OP's contained chlorfenvinphos or diazinon. Chlorfenvinphos (Supona) was not a nice product, but was superb on 'fly strike' - where the sheep get eaten alive by greenbottle maggots. Diazinon was 'relatively' safer - but it did kill the scab mite (it's those damm mites again!).

AFAIK neither have been used much since the 1990's.

To the best of my knowledge no farmers were killed or crippled for life by sheep dips - but having had a touch of OP poisoning I would agree that it is nasty stuff.

 

[Brosville]

I have no doubt whatsoever that OP sheepdip was responsible for a great many poisonings, some of them eventually fatal, many of them crippling - it's an ongoing saga of successive governments washing their hands of responsibility, The Countess of Mar herself suffered badly from it, and has been campaigning for some 20 years on behalf of those damaged by the stuff- there is no argument it's a very toxic nerve poison, and yet again it would appear that "undue influence" by it's makers on governments and civil servants have succeeded in hushing up much of the damage. http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/the-%E2%80%98sheep-dip-lady%E2%80%99-vows-to-keep-up-the-fight-on-organophosphates/30774.article

From memory the poison mentioned was "Dibrom", which IS Naled by another name, sheepdip contained OPs............

 

[chrismcd]

I have no doubt whatsoever that OP sheepdip was responsible for a great many poisonings, some of them eventually fatal, many of them crippling

Hi Brosville,

From personal experience OP poisoning seems to be very variable depending on the individual involved.

The 'advantage' of the OP's over the OC's was that they did not persist so long in the environment, or in the body. As fairly simple compounds, based on phosphoric acid, they are both highly active in the body and fairly rapidly broken down (speaking for myself I felt very rough for 48 hours). Most of us do not seem to have had long term effects (I sincerely hope!). However, I am quite prepared to believe some people had permanent damage - just glad I do not seem to be one of them.

Getting back to beekeeping. I am very glad that none of the OP's have ever been recommended for varroa in the UK. I think the choice of the two specific pyrethroids was criminally stupid and led to resistance much faster than was necessary (there are acaricidal pyrethroids, like meothrin, they just had not been used as veterinary products and it was cheaper to register the ones we ended up with).

Personally, I use Thymol in August and Oxalic acid syrup in December. Both nice simple chemicals I seriously doubt varroa will ever develop resistance to.

My only problem is deciding when to use the Oxalic. My bees were flying till the end of November and I wonder whether there is still some brood to worry about. Basically, the next dry, wind free day and I am going in!

 

[beesknee]

Jut found this on a Facebook link (If it's been posted recently...sorry!): http://www.floridatoday.com/article...s-keepers?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Local+News

sayes page cannot be found?

 

[jakethedog]

sayes page cannot be found?

been taken down, here's another link to the story

http://www.tgdaily.com/trendwatch-brief/58874-10-million-bees-deaths-reported-in-florida

 

[chrismcd]

As dickndoris said right at the start of this thread, the absence of insect life in central Florida is downright eerie.

With the amount of insecticides they must be using it is hardly surprising that accidents happen.

 

[jakethedog]

Maybe, but the incident referred to in the link attatched to post #10 was most certainly no accident -more to do with beekeeper rivalry.


From WESH TV, in Orlando, Florida, and Bee Culture magazine. Tuesday, Dec 13, 2011
"A beekeeper’s business was stung by someone who contaminated thousands of beehives and killed millions of bees near Micco in Brevard County, Florida last September. State and local law enforcement agents started an investigation Monday into the assault. In all, investigators said 2,300 beehives were directly or indirectly destroyed.....

...Detectives said a specific insecticide, Bee Culture has learned it was Fipronil, was placed in the syrup tank from which the bees were fed. Then, bees from neighboring hives, in the process of robbing the originally killed hives, died from consuming the contaminated stored syrup. Webb figures his loss is about $750,000."

 

[Hebeegeebee]

"Tests by a U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory found the poison in a mixture of white sugar and water he uses to feed the bees, Webb said.

The mixture was in a large plastic container in the back of a truck parked at his Palm Bay house, he said, while he was away at a bee conference in Argentina".

A deliberate act one would think.