So does anyone have pics, or any practical idea's for vac deflectors for a 16 row 1250 Case IH planter that would work without effecting the vac performance. Just looking for a solution not an debate on the issue, I just to need to address my neighbourly relations."
A friend in NW Ohio mentioned this website. Take a look at it. Obviously it is funded by the makers of those insecticides but these insecticides are legal according to label directions in many if not most countries. They are very important on crop seedling emergence to protect them from predators.
Bee colony collapse has been blamed on many things. First there was the Varohha Mites, then the African killer bees, and then everything known to man killing our honeybees, needed for pollination of plants.
I liked Still Learning's answer, "A solution reducing the drift of pesticide dust from planters is required in many countries in Europe.
Technically it is quite straight forward to solve the problem on a vacuum planter. Connect a large hose to the outlet of the fan. This hose ends with an "inverted funnel" close to the ground. This means that dust (including some chemicals from the seed treatment) will exit from the machine close to the ground with a low airspeed and thereby most of the particles will stay on the ground. Maybe this is good for the tractor driver too, but that's another topic.
What do you think?
Ed
I wouldn't trust that site too much, imidacloprid is apparently the worst bee killer on the market. And I think it's already banned in many EU countries. One way to reduce the toxic effect at planting is to change the composition of the coating to make it less fragile. Seed companies already did that, and it cut the amount of dust by 50%, they can probably still improve on that figure.
ReplyDeleteEven though, the concentration of imidacloprid in the air at planting time is several thousand times the lethal dose for bees, so any filtering system would be good. I'd rather see this dust collected and disposed of properly than just dumped at ground level. It's still dust and can easily travel by wind. One of the causes of the colony collapse frequently mentioned is flowers such as dandelion that are present at planting time. But anything would help a lot, really, especially if it's a cheap implement, as it would be easier to make its usage more broadly accepted.
Greenpeace just released a 48 page report on the decline of bees that summarizes the current knowledge on this issue. No doubt it's biased too, I haven't read it fully yet, but it's probably much more objective than a site by a manufacturer of neonicotinoids. The PDF report has the commercial names for these insecticides.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/european-agriculture-at-risk-time-to-ban-bee-/blog/44656/
As I understand, the document will be used to support a proposal to ban 3 such insecticides (imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam) made by Bayer CropScience and Syngenta that was voted down last month and will be proposed again by the European Commission in the next weeks, possibly including more pesticides from the list in Greenpeace's report (imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin, fipronil, chlorpyriphos, cypermethrin and deltamethrin).
Actually, 13 member states voted in favor of the ban, only 9 against it, but 5 states abstained. Typical EU bureaucracy...
http://www.slowfood.com/sloweurope/eng/news/170778/neonicotinoids-what-do-we-in-europe-need-to-open-our-eyes-and-ban-these-unsafe-pesticides-
"Phobias, obsessions, and other irrational behavior.
ReplyDeleteBee keepers, for pollination and for honey production are feeling around in the dark. Their bees are dying and they know not why.
Confusing coincidence with causation is very common.
Simple irrational behavior is more common than you would think. A crop Duster Flies over a house and the little old lady has a trauma. Just KNOWS she is dyeing from poison.
We do not know but possibly the talcum powder in other planters are perceived to be lethal also. You are put in the difficult position of attempting to prove a negative.
So you are put in the position of hanging 100 lbs of hoses on your planter or letting the ground go.
If you do not make an effort and show a bunch of hoses hanging from your planter tool bar, and one hive does a die off it is all your fault.
Follow the poor logic on, even with patented hose system to vent all the fumes to the soil, if that one hive dies anyway it is still the fault of your planter system.
It all depends on the level of paranoia you have to put up with.
Shoot Everybody knows it is those contrails from the air planes.
There may be a small grain of truth in that. The SR 71 used (past tense) a very toxic jet fuel that they were not allowed to burn in their engines until they got to some really high altitude."
I remember calls from the little old and young ladies who swore they were dying when planes were spreading cereal rye into fields when I worked in Warren County.
Ed! Perception is reality. If the little old lady thinks she is being poisoned from airplanes then she is. If the bee guy thinks his Bee's are dying from talc then they are. You can't argue, you just have to hang something on the planter that looks like it works. Or buy a case of Johnson's Baby Powder and tell the guy you switched to baby powder instead of talc.
ReplyDeleteOne thing the bee keepers don't talk about is the issue if the bees are dying (if they are) because the big bee keepers truck their bees all over the country to the almond groves or where ever there is money to be made and the bees are exposed all sorts of different diseases and stress that they don't have resistance to. Sort of like Shipping fever in cattle. Then they bring these regional issues home with them and spread them to the local bee population.
It would be really nice to know if the pesticides are killing the bees. Seems to reason that it would happen. We also have no reason to trust the chemical companies. But then again we can't really trust Greenpeace either.
Money will be made from the change. When the chemical company wants to come out with a new chemical I imagine that Greenpeace report will come in really handy. Whether or not the honey bees live or die is really not the issue.
Now Budde, haven't you changed someone's opinion on agriculture for the good?
ReplyDeleteThe alternative is just giving up and not trying. I can't do that.
Speaking their language is the hard part.
Communication.
Ed