Hi all -
I'm a suburban beek and enjoying my first successful year of beekeeping and was notified yesterday by the city that my neighborhood will get it's annual fogging shortly. We do have bad skeeter problems, but I'm going out on a limb and guessing this is not good for our bees... The city is claiming the fog is an "environmentally safe, US EPA-registered insecticide" and is sprayed after midnight to work in the dark hours, supposedly killed by the morning sun. Makes me feel confident... :? Does anyone have any experience with this? I would ask to be skipped, but it wouldn't matter as all of our houses are so close together.
Thanks!
I would lock my bees in their hive for a day or two. I've done this before using some #8 hardware cloth over the entrance when the Swingle guys come to my neighborhood to spray trees to combat the pine beetle. Can you contact someone at the municipality who would know what the chemical is? Perhaps you could at least look up the MSDS sheet on the chemical and do your own research.
Maybe move the hives for a few days.
my neighbohood gets sprayed oncea month, ya know the alabama state bird is a skeeter. I have not had any problems with it, but i know the guy who does it and he waits until after dark to do it. i figured it would all be gone by the time it gets hot the next day...
But the bees are bearded up on the front of the hive until well after dark in this summer heat.
the hives i have at the house are splits and small swarms that i started this year. with that being said they are rather small hives and are not bearding yet, but i beter take that into consideration when they get to that point
Environmentally safe insecticide doesn't mean safe for any insect! Just that it won't harm your kids or dogs...
I'd cover or (better) remove the hives if you can.
I've never had issues with bees during mosquito fogging as long as they sprayed at night. If they did it in the daytime it wiped out a lot of bees.
Quote from: Michael Bush on June 04, 2011, 01:36:11 AM
I've never had issues with bees during mosquito fogging as long as they sprayed at night. If they did it in the daytime it wiped out a lot of bees.
That's the point, mosquito foggins is suppose to be done at night for proper application, it's design disipate quickly because it lays down a thin film of "oil" on open, stagnant water. If done at night it should not impact the bees unless the hives are located in such a way the the fogging applicator is somehow directly into the hives. Done in the day time when the bees are flying and you can lose an entire bee yard.
So check on application times and route.
Luckily I got a visit from my city's health department. My bees are 400' from the nearest neighbor but someone had called the city concerned about my hives. The guy told me that I was in compliance ( which I already knew ) & said he pretty much told the woman who called that I was legal & to keep her kids out of my yard. I say luckily because he then told me that he would tell the mosquito trucks not to spray when they were on my block. He is also supplying me with their spraying schedule & I think I will still cover the hives when they spray. The driver may forget or the wind could still carry the fog my way. The hives are 500 feet from the road but are downhill. Had my neighbor not called they would be spraying my block.
But does anyone know what they spray?
>But does anyone know what they spray?
Typically, in my experience, it's Malathion.
This is discussed in the May 2011 article of the American Bee Journal on page 499 under the paragraph titled "What can beekeepers do?"