One saltire encrusted hobbyhorse coming up.No crocus or snowdrops at home tho' I believe they are starting to show locally.Originally Posted by Eric McArthur
One saltire encrusted hobbyhorse coming up.No crocus or snowdrops at home tho' I believe they are starting to show locally.
Hi Grizzly
I'll bring my riding boots!
Eric
Jon wrote:
Well the debunking of your conception of the genetics of inbreeding was at least a start.
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You never let me down fighting Gavins corner and twisting. I have already thanked you for your homily on alleles.
The prose I posted yesterday restates the fragility of a limited gene pool. As I have reiterated previously; a similar scenario actually occurred on Islay in the early 70s. Where the only beekeeper on the island reached the limits of his lone beekeeping enterprise.
Collectively you guys should hang your heads in shame by spreading the lie that inbreeding in the honey bee is something to be ignored in this current scenario of high year on year colony losses. Beginner beekeepers need to be informed of pit falls in the craft, not misinformation based on party political dogma, aimed at scoring Brownie Points! Unless I miss my guess Trog mentioned that he had some problems of either colony survival or colony viability in a not quite recent post drones were also mention. A few of your colleagues have actually written to thank me for raising the profile of inbreeding they felt too intimidated by the petty mass attacks on myself to venture into the public domain. I have noted that in matters which do not conform to the accepted wisdom of the Forum hard core and which generate interesting exchanges, that the kibitzer numbers rise quite steeply but the silence is deafening. Perhaps they are responding to the stimulus, which draws people to the circus blood on the sawdust!
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Jon wrote:
Banning one is a vote for the other. We live in the real world.
I am curious as to why you prefer these older products.
Try this link:
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01...ticide-harmful
The letter in the Independent tomorrow also tells it all!
Regards
Eric
Little bit of hyperbole there, but it is an interesting question and I hope he does dig into it, because I'll be interested to see what conclusions he draws. Again though, when you look at the details of the article, it's a study of two colonies. Two. Not Two hundred, or two thousand or even two different colonies every time over hundreds of iterations of the test always showing the same results.
What the article outlines is a basis for further study, not a call for legislation.
Maybe the letter in the Independent tomorrow will be far more illuminating than what you've linked so far which continually asks more questions than it answers.
Eric
Your continuing inability to think straight amazes me. Four exposures of your misunderstanding in one post:
1)
No-one, not one, nobody, none of us, has been 'spreading lies' about ignoring inbreeding. What happened here was that your lack of understanding was exposed and - perhaps - finally put right. Everyone who joined the discussion seemed to have a more realistic view of inbreeding than you, yet once again you come charging back with outrageous accusation that we are the ones who don't understand. That is really sad. And you spread stuff the other day about Norman being past his sell-by date!
2)
There is no army of people popping into read the threads you have stirred up beyond the numbers looking at other threads. I would hazard a guess that this kind of stuff is a major turn-off. It seems to be so on other fora.
3)
Trog is a woman not a man.
4)
For heaven's sake, was it not obvious to you that Jon *does not like* the older pesticides? Nobody does but he is especially strong on this point. If the utterly bonkers campaign that you and a few others are on is ultimately fully successful, you will be consigning humanity to two things:
i) a future food supply that is more unstable than it has to be
ii) at least in some parts of the world (and perhaps most shockingly where personal protection is used much less well than here) you will be forcing poor people to indulge in dangerous acts to secure their food supply. Neonicotoids are much less harmful to humans than some of the pesticides they replace, and probably a lot less harmful to the environment too - especially when used in moderation.
These last two points are why this campaign is seriously misguided and is, in my view, shameful.
Now go and have a lie down and think it all over, again. I see that Graham has signed up. Maybe you can take him for a lie-down too while you are at it, and you can both consider what you have done and what you are doing.
What colony losses?
UK colony numbers have increased from 40,000 to 120,000 in 30 months. That is a huge increase.
Some individuals, especially the beefarmers, have suffered high losses from foulbrood -and those who think you don't have to treat for varroa have lost a lot of colonies. Most others I know are doing well.
Personally I increased from 4 colonies to 30 in 4 years. That included one swarm I collected. I am now back down to 20 after losing some queens and combining colonies in the autumn. I have sold or given away 10 nucs as well. I have oil seed rape beside me most years. Presumably this is sprayed or has been seed treated.
Are you having problems with your own bees? if so, you may be over generalising as most beekeepers in the uk are doing well.
Grist article
Nellie I don't think it was even two colonies. It was two sets of bees in lab conditions, ie caged individual bees. It's hard to be sure as noone has seen the paper.in the transcript, Pettis says he and his research team exposed two sets of honey bees to Nosema, a fungal pathogen toxic to honey bees.
Serious problems are emerging with this type of study as caging individual bees causes stress in itself so it is very difficult to separate the interaction of imidacloprid and nosema from the effect of stress + nosema.
I suspect that the problem with the Pettis study and his failure to have it published is due to a design flaw through not having adequate controls for stress levels in caged bees. We will be able to pick through the bones if he manages to get someone to publish it.
In addition there is not a single field study which has demonstrated this effect or any other negative effect of neonicotinoids on honeybees. Not one Eric. Assimilate that. If I am wrong, post a link or reference the study. I challenged Graham White to do that exactly a week ago on the bbka site and the silence had been deafening apart from the gentle click of CTRL C CTRL V every few minutes.
Grist article
This refers to the recent study by Jerry Bromenshenk where he claimed to have isolated a new virus in 100% of ccd colonies.This is potentially game-changing research for understanding Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists have been focusing on the interaction between the Nosema fungus and a virus called Iridoviridae as the culprit.
Unfortunately Grist is off the pace as doubts have now emerged re. the design of his study as he may have been sampling proteins with recognisable sequences from IIV which originated from a source other than the virus itself, possibly dna from the bees. (Gavin correct me if I have got that wrong)
I am still keen to hear why you want these to be more widely used.
I thought she was a wren!Trog is a woman not a man.
Last edited by Jon; 23-01-2011 at 07:13 PM.
Hi All
Apologise to you Trog!
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I'll never walk alone! See under. This petition was only started about a week ago!
I would ask who is out of step? The list is growing at around 5 per second!
Eric
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To US and EU decision-makers:
We call on you to immediately ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides until and unless new independent scientific studies prove they are safe. The catastrophic demise of bee colonies could put our whole food chain in danger. If you act urgently with precaution now, we could save bees from extinction.
Axaaz.org will protect your privacy and keep you posted about this and similar campaigns.
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1,080,193 have signed the petition. Help us get to 1,250,000
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That's true. There are masses of conspiracy theorists out there.
Try assimilating the research and commenting on the findings if you want to be taken more seriously - rather than the newspapers, press releases and petitions. We don't want another posh spice incident.
I am still keen to know why you want to increase the use of organophosphates, carbamates and pyrethroids at the expense of neonicotinoids. It's not an academic exercise or a hypothetical conjecture. That is what will happen if neonics are removed from the market.
Er, what about, Eric? Do I have to read back through all these posts to find out what you've said about/to me? Been a bit busy this weekend so no time for chatting here!
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