Influx of Passion vine hoppers in Christchurch
- Thread starter Grant
- Start date
Unless there are tutu plants in the area, it shouldn't be a problem. ChCh is below 42 degrees latitude south.
My point exactly. The testing requirement doesn’t exist for the majority of the South Island because the hoppers are not normally this far south. With climate impacts becoming increasingly common do the standards need updating? Plant wise with the number of native bush regeneration projects throughout Banks Peninsula it could create an issue no one is expecting
Don't take the "we below 42 degrees, so we ok" too seriously; if vine hopper is setting up camp, then you need to test just like everywhere else. Just up to you our much or when you think you should test.
That document is a guide, not a set of rules, and it's several years old, and nature, ###### it, changes.
I am not saying we are ok and that I am not taking it seriously. I said unless there are tutu trees in the area it should not be a problem. I am also not saying there are no tutu trees in Canterbury, but I can't say I have ever seen one in Canterbury, but I guess some people have.
Although last week I did see some passion vine hoppers for the first time ever, but the honey flow in Ellesmere is well and truly finished.
That's when you have to worry Maggie.
Bees do not prefer passion hopper produced honeydew on Tutu plants, they only get it when there is nothing else going.
So up here where I am, long as there is a flow on, little to worry about. It's when things dry off and flowers not producing that bees will be sniffing around Tutu plants and licking up the honeydew.
One teaspoon of it will kill a person. A lessor amount can make someone very sick, and cause permanent neurological damage.
That's why up here you cannot eat comb honey collected at that time. Because if you stick your teaspoon into the cell that had tutu dew put in it, things going to be nasty. Extracted honey is safer because of the dilution effect.
As an aside, my bees are in the bush, I specialise in native forest honey. The flow where I am other than cabbage trees and a few things gets going fairly late, but then lasts a long time. The bush has Tutu plants dotted around in it, and they do have passion vine hoppers on them. One of my sites has a big Tutu plant growing just meters from the hives. But in all the years of compulsory tutin testing, tutin has never once been detected in my honey. I'm just lucky with the timing of the plants my bees forage on.
