Time to ban glyphosate?

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frazzledfozzle

Founder Member
9,128
7,989
Nelson/Tasman District
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Commercial
Last results in today this site is next to a large forestry block recently harvested, the chopper has sprayed the block prior to re planting. There is no pastureland in range of these bees.

View attachment 165

how far from your hives were they spraying ?
the forestry have just given notice of a pre plant spray program and we are wondering how far away is safe ?
 
1,311
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North Canterbury
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Inside 1 km.. at a guess 800m from site to edge of spray zone.. the area sprayed was pretty big and covered in thistle which the bees must have been working.. chopper worked well into the day no doubt flying bees were soaked also.
forest company claimed they didn’t know hives were there.. been a bee site for many many years and with my paint scheme pretty hard to miss..
I’ve had a spray plan sent today as well.. at least the communication line is open now following my visit to the office.
 

yesbut

Staff member
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Nelson
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Easy - your sample has glyphosate in it. It does not have the metabolite, AMPA, or the somewhat commonly used alternative, glufosinate.
Does this mean the AMPA & glufosinate results shown are lower than the technology is capable of detecting and are just some stray pixels floating around ? Or are you saying for practical purposes they aren't there ?
 
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47
New Zealand
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International
Does this mean the AMPA & glufosinate results shown are lower than the technology is capable of detecting and are just some stray pixels floating around ? Or are you saying for practical purposes they aren't there ?
The technology can go further but there is no practical purpose. The levels are only trace. However the Glyphosate needs to be <0.01 jar Japan
 
90
116
Hamilton
Experience
Researcher
Does this mean the AMPA & glufosinate results shown are lower than the technology is capable of detecting and are just some stray pixels floating around ? Or are you saying for practical purposes they aren't there ?

It essentially means that the lab is confident there is not more than 0.02 mg/kg of AMPA, or 0.005 mg/kg of glufosinate. It doesn't mean there is none there, but it does mean that if it is there, it's almost certainly lower than those figures. Any further interpretation would just be speculation on my part, since those results aren't from my lab and I'm not intimately familiar with their particular analysis method.

The technology can go further but there is no practical purpose. The levels are only trace. However the Glyphosate needs to be <0.01 jar Japan

Exactly correct. Going lower would certainly be possible, but it would require a lot of development work, and it would be a more expensive test to boot.
 
  • Good Info
Reactions: Fieldbee (Mary)

yesbut

Staff member
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Nelson
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The technology can go further but there is no practical purpose. The levels are only trace. However the Glyphosate needs to be <0.01 jar Japan
It essentially means that the lab is confident there is not more than 0.02 mg/kg of AMPA, or 0.005 mg/kg of glufosinate. It doesn't mean there is none there, but it does mean that if it is there, it's almost certainly lower than those figures. Any further interpretation would just be speculation on my part, since those results aren't from my lab and I'm not intimately familiar with their particular analysis method.



Exactly correct. Going lower would certainly be possible, but it would require a lot of development work, and it would be a more expensive test to boot.
I was questioning @Jacob's use of the phrase "It does not have " when to me plainly it does !!
 
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canterbury
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To me it says you won’t be sending that honey to Japan.
It's a bit of a kick in the guts eh .
100% pure New Zealnd and our honey is banned from a major ish trading partner .....maybe the Japanese are trying to grow their peasant economy, just like New Zealand Gvt had Manuka as a growth industry projected to generate a billion dollars worth of exports ..... after all Bees are great little earner in an urban environment, and Japan has lotsa that, apparantly.

The kick in the guts is that we here up beyond the Black Stump use very few chemicals. Roundup is banned on the farm. Gorse is mulched ....unless it's too steep when we have to resort to Tordon, but we make sure all the bees are gone before the chopper comes in ...

Which I guess just proves that you can be as Fastidious and Belligerent as you want .....but if yer neighbours neighbour is still in the dark ages, you're F'd.
 

Sailabee

BOP Club
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North Auckland
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In Europe there is much more information on how much of each agrichemical is used and on what crop it is used. The Netherlands has even more detailed information. In NZ we have none of that data collection. For the EPA reassessment of neonicotinoids the EPA had to ask the Ag Chem industry to provide information on the amount used and what crops it is used on - we are waiting for the EPA to make this public.

I am surprised no one is offering their glyphosate lab test data results to date. If we have access to this data in a sufficient sample size we can use our bees foraging efforts to survey glyphosate use throughout the country. This would be helpful in discussions with MPI.
@DonMac have you thought to ask those companies doing the tests for summaries - perhaps by area with the beekeepers details witheld? This would at least give macro figures to start with.
 


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