Is it time to look again at Nicotinoid dressings to control flea beetle.

[Lincsman]

If its £900/ tonne with a little being grown why spoil it with a lot being grown?

 

[ajd132]

Cloud cuckoo land. Anyway in Canada and other places there is now resistance, their effectiveness was beginning to drift in the uk. It was only a matter of time. Every single one of these chemicals we are reliant upon is going to break at some point. Look at how ridiculous and fast moving wheat fungicide effectiveness is, the whole thing seems like a losing game to me (a game I am firmly playing)

 

[Lowland1]

I don't disagree with you. Anecdotally I think declining bee population may have more a lot to do with changing weather patterns. Seems now we get a hot week in March this wakes bees too early, they emerge to find there is fk all nectar around and they quickly burn up their reserves and die. On the recent Greenpeace FB threads about neonics there were quite a few members of the pubic reporting they had been finding lots of dead or dying bees and associating it with the government decision to "allow bee killing chemical"... I did have to point out it would be rather difficult for all those bees to have left their woodlands and public parks, found sealed bags of treated sugar beet seed, somehow consumed the seed dressing and then flown back to their woodland and parks...

We used to use Gaucho ( imidacloprid) on our French beans as a dressing against bean stem maggots and aphids. We have a lot of hives on the farm an never found any issues with the bees or honey production. As we have to follow the UK we’ve had to drop insecticidal seed treatments which mean more insect problems with more sprays as we’ve got smallish blocks and varied cropping they can get away but you can see the problem. Bees in the middle of an 80 acre rape field can’t get away easily.

 

[yellow belly]

What also antagonises me is I have a feeling that there is now a problem with a declining bee population in the UK since the loss of Neonics. The bees have lost 350 000 ha odd that was formerly a brilliant habitat for them. I heard this quoted from a beekeeper- so may be an element of truth to it.
Somebody more educated about bees than me may be able to comment better on this point.

I could well believe that UK bee population has declined due to lack of OSR caused by Neonics ban. Somewhat ironic!

the bee farmer here has had problems with finding enough flowering crops particularly last year

the big advantage with osr is that it is an early flowering crop that gives nector in april before most other nector producing plants are in flower

bunble bees will survive in bigger number if they get early nector

bee collonies will produce more early workers and build up quicke with early osr crops helping make them stronger for the summer