PING any arable farmers..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Who do we contactat DEFRA?

[Dave Liquorice]

guessing.

Google not working?

I'd start here:

[The Other Mike]

As I posted yesrerday

[The Other Mike]

and for your bee inspector

I'd recommend an RBI rather than a SBI be the first point of contact

[The Natural Philosopher]

led nowhere.

You don't want members of the public actually contacting you do you? chap perfectly happy to tell me how to sort of pets chips, but not bees.

[Martin Brown]

And I thought it was favoured because the dayglo flowers made it easier to check the claimed acreage planted by satellite surveillance. Evil smelly stuff it is horrible and oily to walk through and full of little black beetles that land on anything even vaguely yellow coloured.

Sorry to hear about your bees. Why not challenge the farmer directly? You may be due some compensation if spray drift killed your hive.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No: bad relations with neighbours are not worth 50,000 bees.

The bees are on their way to DEFRA and if he asks its all innocence 'oh they all just died last week: we have sent them off for analysis' and let him sweat. If DEFRA choose to take the matter up, that's of course is something us poor ignorant beekeepers could not possibly have foreseen...

[The Natural Philosopher]

local SBI simply hasnt bothered to contact us - email and phone messages left. "the farmers friend?"

Thanks for that. Bees sent off email sent.

all we can do for now.

[Onetap]

During which time the healthy bees throw the dead and dying bees out of the hive; it's fairly obvious there's something amiss.

I'd think so too. 100% mortality in a few days isn't natural causes.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

A real arable farmer was here earlier today retrieving his post banger so I asked the question.

He said that for OSR 3 weeks after emerging, the seed dressing would be losing effectiveness and a cypermethrin variant might be used to kill Flea Beetle.

Records of product used, time of spraying, temp and wind conditions are all conditions of crop accreditation schemes. Spraying in unsuitable weather conditions may breach cross compliance rules and put CAP payments at risk.

[Dave Liquorice]

Like having the paperwork say "beef"...

[Tim Lamb]

I don't think anyone has yet blamed the farmers, they don't sell horses.

TNP's potential complaint is just the sort of thing that leads to an investigation of paperwork and fines. There is no appeal against a decision by DEFRA to dock CAP payments.

>

[Dave Liquorice]

conditions

Some do but true enough, even the dumbest of abattoir worker probably knows the difference between a horse or beef carcase but once it's just steaks...

It's the bureaucrat sitting in a cosy office who will look at the paperwork and see that it was a still day with the right conditions on the signed form from the farmer. End of complaint. I'd be very surprised if they bothered to look up weather conditions for that locality at that time(*), after all the farmer isn't going to put false data on the forms as:

But realistically, what real checking goes on? Maybe a few random spot checks but otherwise out with the stamp, pass it on...

(*) Occasionally I get people in the locality here asking for wind or rain data for a given date as their insurance company are saying it wasn't windy or rainy. Insurance co has looked at the weather data for the nearest easyily available weather station data, Carlisle Airport, 25 to 30 miles away and at sea level not >1000'. It's a different world up here...

[Java Jive]

Sure is ...

I have a very real problem predicting weather up here, in Scotland. Most days I look out of the window, and see some rain on the hills opposite. Used to thinking in terms of more southerly weather, I think: ":-( It'll be raining here in an hour, can't mow the lawn then!", but what actually happens is very difficult to predict. Sometimes the rain is lashing on the windows within ten minutes, other days it gets 'stuck' on the hills for several hours, and I could have mowed the lawn after all - the former happened yesterday, the latter today!

As for hanging clothes out, I hardly ever dare. It looked settled sunny a week or so ago, so I hung my t-shirts outside, with three clips on each hanger in an attempt to keep it on the line in the brisk breeze, even so, some were soon off again. Within an hour, it had began to rain and I was dashing about getting them in again, wetter than when they went out. Fortunately, the house's old porch is large and has lots of windows like a greenhouse, so it makes an excellent drying room. I've seen neighbours' clothing hung outside in all weathers for days at a time.

Talking of neighbours, I've been discovering that one of my more distant ones is rather a 'wide' character. "Pleasant enough chap!", another neighbour said, "Don't buy a car from him, though!". I laughed, because I knew he'd been done for receiving stolen vehicles about a decade or so ago.

Allegedly the 'wide' neighbour has had serious trouble with another of his neighbours, and been assaulted by him.

A while back, the 'wide' guy was stopped by the police for 'Drunk In Charge ...' but it was only one officer, so, I suppose, he waited for him to get out of the car, and approach, and then took off. He got home and into his house before he could be caught, and of course they'd've needed a warrant to forcibly enter the house, so he got away with it.

Then, a shorter while ago, he was driv>

[Tim Lamb]

Snip

Defra do inspect. I don't know the frequency and have never had one but there is often a posting on the farming forums of the dreaded inspection.

The accredited crops assessment is annual so predictable. They are thorough! As you say, judicious recording of weather data is likely.

Nobody knows. Bees are a hot topic currently so, if the chemists concur, there may well be a follow up. Spraying near housing in windy conditions is inviting trouble.

Can I sell you a windmill?

>

[Dave Liquorice]

conditions

HMR&C VAT Inspect as well, I've never had one, been VAT registered for 20 years. I'm very small fry though and the numbers always add up. B-)

TNP's complaint may make Defra look a bit closer but for just one hive (sorry TNP) I doubt any "inspection" would be anymore than a paper excercise.

Certainly, if they get a few complaints about this incident that would probably make them pay more attention.

Nope. Having wind data going back to 1999, albeit not at 10 m. I have looked at what a 2.5 kW or 6 kW Proven would likely produce and it wasn't a great deal. Most of the time even the 6 kW jobbie wouldn't even meet the daytime base load of about 1kW.

Someone a few years back did propose 5 x 2 MW jobbies on Middle Fell, there was some opposition that highlighted the spin being used in the publicity material, it all went rather quiet after that.