Another Salmon farm is Quarantined

Again we hear news that Salmon has been infected with a disease. Its sad that the salmon may be dying off even if the disease does not affect humans. I wonder if the disease is natural or if the environment of the salmon farm is what is fostering the disease. I want to know if people think that the farms are what are causing the disease. I also want to know if getting rid of the farms will help the salmon become more healthy. I suppose that salmon weren't tested for diseases as often as they are now that they are in captivity, so I wonder if they had these diseases before.

Pesticides turn bees into picky eaters

This article talks about how neonicotinoids affect the bees negatively. They say that the bees only want nectar that has a higher sugar content. This phenomenon reminded me of obesity in humans. They only want sugary food. They dance less or not at all and they have decreased memory. Just like in humans. This pesticide may be one of the factors to the decrease in honey bees and this is alarming because we need bees for almost every aspect of living.

Sygenta settles herbicide lawsuit

I think that this is ridiculous, Sygenta was able to get out of any responsibility just because they paid for the damages that they caused. I wish that they had lost the case instead of settling because now no one will remember what happened and if it happens again it will look like a one time thing and that they didn't know of a problem before it happened. I am glad that the people affected are being reimbursed for their damages but I am upset that Sygenta will still be able to sell their chemicals.

Bee Keepers Prepare to sue EPA

I am torn I want to believe that the pesticides are what are killing the bees, but I have a feeling that it won't be that easy to find the answer to the loss of bee's. I think that in all probability there a several factors and one of which may be the use of pesticides. So while I want to side with the people suing the EPA I also understand that big farms need to use some sort of pesticide or they will not be able to make the money they need to survive. It is too easy to paint all pesticides with the same brush and label them all as evil when they definitely play a part in our need for food. As the population grows we have a greater and greater need for more and more food. If we lose all of our crops to insects we fall farther and farther behind in what we need for the masses. I think that one has to look at both sides when considering this issue. Many studies have been done on if this pesticide harms bees and so far it has been proven that it has not. I think that for the time being it is better to use the best pesticide that we have rather than use nothing. But I also think that we need to try and find better alternatives for the future and that we need to find out what is killing all our bees because without them there is no us.

Finishing Queen Cells

This article is basically about how to take care of your growing queen's. You may need to feed them and you have to be careful that you don't tip the frame or cause vibrations because this will upset the larva. The rest of the article just talks about where to place the unhatched queen cells and what to do after they have hatched. Personally I would only create a queen cell after the old queen has begun laying irrationally or the hive has become too big and I want to split it.

Using Extra Queen Cells

This was a rather short article. There are three ways to use the extra Queen's. 1. Give to a friend 2. Mate 2 queens and sell one 3. Freeze the extra queen's and let them sit in rubbing alcohol for a few months and use this as a swarm lure Overall I think that all three are good options and that they take relatively little time and work. If you have no use for your queens you can give them away, if you want to sell or split a hive you can have two queens and if you don't want to clip wings this might be a good alternative.

Clipping and Marking Queens

One way to mark the queen is to use a Baldock cage which is pressed into the comb and traps the queen behind a layer of mesh. This is the easiest method but a few pupa may be killed. There is a colour scheme : White for years that end in 1 or 6. Yellow is used when a year ends in 2 or 7. Red if a year ends with a 3 or 8. Green when 4 or 9 is the last digit. Blue if the year ends in a 5 or a 0. Instead of paint a coloured disc may be used. But this is far harder than paint. This article also talks about how to clip the wings of the queen. You need to make sure that she has sperm or she will not lay and so it is best to clip her right after she starts laying. The point of clipping her is so that she doesn't swarm. Some other helpful hints are to wash your hands in alcohol between queen's, use a match stick so the paint can penetrate the hair layer and do not clip a virgin queen because the hive may think her defective and replace her. This seems like a complicated way to prevent a swarm and I would rather use one of the methods that we used in school.