[MannyLopez]

http://www.gizmag.com/beesvita/23496...m_medium=email

Around the world, honey bees have been vanishing at an alarming rate. Since bees not only provide honey, but are also vital for pollinating crops, this is not only distressing, it also puts agriculture at risk. The reasons for this decline are still unknown, but a Florida-based company claims to have found a solution in the form of a concentrated organic feed supplement. BeesVita is purported to not only protect bee colonies in danger of collapsing, but actually causes them to grow and thrive.


Any feedback on this?

[outfinofulpv]

http://www.gizmag.com/beesvita/23496...m_medium=email

Around the world, honey bees have been vanishing at an alarming rate. Since bees not only provide honey, but are also vital for pollinating crops, this is not only distressing, it also puts agriculture at risk. The reasons for this decline are still unknown, but a Florida-based company claims to have found a solution in the form of a concentrated organic feed supplement. BeesVita is purported to not only protect bee colonies in danger of collapsing, but actually causes them to grow and thrive.


Any feedback on this?

They've supposedly got the research to back it up but without any of it being accessible.

They have a website www.beesfree.biz but I'm calling shenanigans until they put up some proper data...

[PickEmUp]

Probably in homeopathetic amounts.


For those interested in bee stories here is another.


http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature...-buzzkill/324/

"
A Real Buzzkill
When 2,000 hives are poisoned in one night, it stings.
On the trail of the slaughter that looks like an inside job, leaving police and beekeepers baffled.




“ You could see where they tried to all rush out, and they got caught up — like people all rushing for the exit in a fire.”



“ All six who were hit were the six largest ones. That’s a pretty big coincidence, and you’d have to be in [the industry] to know that.”

“ There’s a shortage of bee sites down here on the south coast. Somebody might have got their nose out of joint … It could have been anybody.”
Four-Year-Old Apiarist Pat Roberts | Mike Bowers/The Global Mail




“ The bee industry contributes around $80 million a year to the Australian economy through honey and related products. In addition, the contribution of pollination services to agriculture is estimated to be worth billions of dollars annually.”



“ They just would have tried to get out. The poison would have come in, and they would have all been rushing and they would have gotten trapped.”
A hive has up to 75,000 bees | Mike Bowers/The Global Mail




It would have been dark.
Pitch black.
June 15, 2012 was mild and dry on the corrugated dirt road leading off the Pacific Highway.
The afternoon temperature had hit a high for the month, creeping up to 19.5 degrees — the close of a beautiful winter day in Batemans Bay.

It's not clear who they hit first, but by the time the killers appeared, dusk would have settled, making the dirt roads that wind ... "

Am not sure about the mention of Roundup ... not being an insecticide, I don't see the relevance, but maybe it's just a comment on the ready availability of whatever was used.

[Patgaepx]

http://www.gizmag.com/beesvita/23496...m_medium=email

Around the world, honey bees have been vanishing at an alarming rate. Since bees not only provide honey, but are also vital for pollinating crops, this is not only distressing, it also puts agriculture at risk. The reasons for this decline are still unknown, but a Florida-based company claims to have found a solution in the form of a concentrated organic feed supplement. BeesVita is purported to not only protect bee colonies in danger of collapsing, but actually causes them to grow and thrive.


Any feedback on this?

It sounds to me like they are feeding the colonies a protein mix to supplement pollen, this would ensure a lot of brood which could help the hive to come back from a colony collapse episode, I doubt it would work more than once or twice though.
The protein mix is generally soy based or yeast.

[BodoidearoLew]

As an aside, how much honey is left behind by an apiarist to get the bees through a Victorian winter? A couple of those frames or more like half?

[moopogyOvenny]

As an aside, how much honey is left behind by an apiarist to get the bees through a Victorian winter? A couple of those frames or more like half?

This will depend upon several factors. The main one being the supply of flowers. Bees can always be moved to where the flowers are. Australia is entirely different in that many of our plants do flower in winter. Also that honey producers stack their hives with boxes known as supers and they take off these supers accoording to oversupply. At the end of the season they will leave a whole super. If not they will likely have to resort to feeding.

A super is a box of eight or ten frames.




If the audience was the Global Mail's only agenda, then they'd make their pages legible text.

[BodoidearoLew]

This will depend upon several factors. The main one being the supply of flowers. Bees can always be moved to where the flowers are. Australia is entirely different in that many of our plants do flower in winter. Also that honey producers stack their hives with boxes known as supers and they take off these supers accoording to oversupply. At the end of the season they will leave a whole super. If not they will likely have to resort to feeding.

A super is a box of eight or ten frames.

Cheers, makes sense re the supers. Re flowers in winter, true, but the bees dont do much. On cold days here, you might see one or two slowly flying out of the hive but that is it. In summer it is humming and full of bees arriving and leaving.

[moopogyOvenny]

Cheers, makes sense re the supers. Re flowers in winter, true, but the bees dont do much. On cold days here, you might see one or two slowly flying out of the hive but that is it. In summer it is humming and full of bees arriving and leaving.

True but Victorian beekepers are known to move their hives all the way to Queensland during winter.

Many of the bees that are there during summer have died by winter. The apiarist stacks supers to get honey yes but also to accomodate the increase in supply of workers. An empty hive is difficult to keep warm, even for bees. Supers are taken off to compress the hive space down to a manageable size for the bees as well as the beekeepers. I've kept bees for almost thirty years without ever feeding them in winter.

[PickEmUp]

In that second article I posted to this thread, you'll find some interesting stuff on the winter feeding on native plants.

Unfortunately for the beekeepers, the people who wanted to sabotage them knew where they were keeping their bees for the winter in a forest of winter-flowering eucs

[moopogyOvenny]

If the audience was the Global Mail's only agenda, then they'd make their pages legible text.

[BodoidearoLew]

Unfortunately for the beekeepers, the people who wanted to sabotage them knew where they were keeping their bees for the winter in a forest of winter-flowering eucs

Other bee keepers?

[moopogyOvenny]

Other bee keepers?

Where humans are involved.. well, you know the rest.

[PickEmUp]

If the audience was the Global Mail's only agenda, then they'd make their pages legible text.

If you are referring to the sideways scrolling, I don't like it either, but I find the text perfectly legible myself and just use the arrow keys to navigate.
More than that, I find the articles interesting and generally well informed and well written (though the occasional gaffe ; I suspect the use of "roundup " in this article might be one of them, but am not sure

[PickEmUp]

Other bee keepers?

That's what a couple of the major players (bee keepers) say in the article ... much too professional an operation for standard protesters it seems.

[moopogyOvenny]

If you are referring to the sideways scrolling, I don't like it either, but I find the text perfectly legible myself and just use the arrow keys to navigate.
More than that, I find the articles interesting and generally well informed and well written (though the occasional gaffe ; I suspect the use of "roundup " in this article might be one of them, but am not sure

I get no text and it will be due to the fact that they require javascript for everything.. a stupid mistake as they don't need to set up their webpages that way, if they want me to read them. Roundup may or may not be a gaffe. I don't have any figures to hand on it but it doesn't have to be a known insecticide to harm bees.

[mesZibeds]

That's what a couple of the major players (bee keepers) say in the article ... much too professional an operation for standard protesters it seems.

It reminds me of the very big incident where tomato and other seedlings were sprayed with herbicide in Bowen a few years ago.

[moopogyOvenny]

It reminds me of the very big incident where tomato and other seedlings were sprayed with herbicide in Bowen a few years ago.

spot on.

[BodoidearoLew]

spot on.

That was herbicide in the water I believe. On military exercises one of the ways you know you have been infiltrated or got at, is that they will put food coloring or cordial in your pot water supply, either in the truck or the big rubber bladders they use. Very embarrassing.

[moopogyOvenny]

That was herbicide in the water I believe. On military exercises one of the ways you know you have been infiltrated or got at, is that they will put food coloring or cordial in your pot water supply, either in the truck or the big rubber bladders they use. Very embarrassing.

Yes. I remember seeing a lot of embarrassed cadets when they all stepped on the purple smoke mines I planted.


Edit: I tried the global mail site in another browser and again.. it is clear that whoever built the webpages, didn't want me to read them. The sideways scrolling is rubbish.

[mesZibeds]

That was herbicide in the water I believe.

Yes. And now I can't remember if they caught those responsible for it. Will have to dig around. (Although it's a derail from the original topic. Sorry 'bout that.)

On military exercises one of the ways you know you have been infiltrated or got at, is that they will put food coloring or cordial in your pot water supply, either in the truck or the big rubber bladders they use. Very embarrassing.