I had a gut instinct the bee's getting sick are not only from GE crops contain systemic pesticides running through every part of the plant. If an insect , like the honey bee who has to collect pollen, feed from, return to the colony, etc., and not be harmed by this is kidding himself. It is fact that a human who consumes food with trace amounts of these toxins is linked to health problems. The bee not only eats and collects, it builds a colony of wax that houses the eggs! Now how long do you think it would take before we saw the epidemic? Not long because they are insects. Rather then discount this as a scare tactic article, respect the simple facts. GE crops are going to be designed to not require bee's, so who are they to care? To answer Wayne 5, you are correct. They do need the bee's, many almond orchards hire beekeeping services to bring their bee's to be released down the rows. The problem is if consumers continue to use systemic pesticides, sprays and the like, you will never see any beneficial insects like praying mantis or lady bug. And if you do use chemicals and they are in your garden, you probably have seen the last. If they really did work, then why on earth did the GE crop need to be designed? I know the answer if your interested. I have fought against GE crop foods which will now be allowed to be in baby food without being labeled as a GE product. If you do your homework, like is like saying hormones in poultry and dairy products is harmless. We have proof this is far from the truth. The goverments consumer stand on this is "BUYER BEWARE". So if the chicken gets bigger and matures faster by hormones, then we eat the chicken with the hormones what happens to us scary! NOVA Science team did a documentary about the human body it is shocking. Young girls development is documented at an alarming rate. I would like to believe Honey bee's are smart enough to stay away from suspect plants. But they learn by evolution. The bee can't avoid a species because the colony perished. They have no way of detecting right now. So what should we all do? We can watch the numbers disappear. By the way, the bee's are not just dying off from the reported bee keepers, they simply are disappearing. No sign of foul play, disease, not one bee body lying dead on the ground, nothing. Maybe the bee's knew their options to live were limited by the bee keeper and possible pestisides. They saw their colonies not up to par and searched for a location, became ferrel with an organic garden. That is exactly what happened one year ago in my backyard. They just thrived, and recently split up with a new queen and swarmed to hopefully, a safe envirorment. My have has either an new queen or the old one, either way, mother nature is in charge. I collect no honey. I wish I could, but my job is to provide the food in the garden for them. Thank you for letting me vent, sorry I got off track.

We use a combination of Nickel Plus and K-Phite. It's working great. We spray with both, using a sticker-spreader we got at Tractor Supply. We also add their blue dye now, because it helps us see where we have missed a spot. It isn't very easy to see through goggles, with sweat pouring down in your eyes. Just avoid spraying any blossoms, unless you are really desperate for a blue daylily. We were advised to spray once a week for 3 weeks, then wait 3 weeks before spraying again. I've only sprayed once this fall, since it has been raining off and on ever since. Occasionally, I will have a plant that shows sign of rust, but nothing like it was before I started using the nickel. I wouldn't use anything else. Well, let me take that back. I am going to try some Actinovate on just a few isolated and unimportant plants to see how it works. The only thing I don't like is having to don all that protective gear, but I wouldn't have it otherwise. I'm very cautious. We use goggles, a special pesticide mask we bought at Lowes, chemical gloves (also at Lowe's), rubber boots and a yellow rain slicker. My hubby and our yardman refuse to put on a garbage bag drawstring skirt, but if I'm doing the spraying, I wear that, too. I'll have to get my hubby to take a picture of me in that fancy outfit so everyone can get a good laugh. When the weather is warm, we get very sweaty in all that garb! We start very early in the morning while it is still cool. We have a big tank sprayer on wheels we pull behind our riding lawn mower. It runs on the lawn mower battery. We got an extra length of hose so we can cover more territory. One of us drives the lawn mower while the other sprays. I could do it by myself, but it takes longer to have to keep stopping to move the mower ahead. We wash the tank out thoroughly after spraying and run clear water through the wand when we have finished. Aren't you cold climate people lucky??? Nancy

She was really nice through our first emails also but then as the weeks went on and I got to asking her about the trade she sent me a nasty email with profanity in it also.

Mike and Raven, Thanks for the suggestions. I tried everything and just got more frustrated. I was about to call a traveling guru to come to my house and pick up the PC, but I decided to wait because today my DSL provider was sending a tech to update my modem so I can try faster DSL for 3 months, and then decide if I want to do the upgrade and pay for it. Well, the very nice young man who brought the new modem fiddled with my PC for 5 minutes and got the keyboard working again. I don't really understand what he did, but I am certain he is a genius. As for my laptop, it often goes for 6 months without being turned on and then, when I do turn it on it needs hours to update everything available. It doesn't imediately recognize my home network, but if I wait for the prompts it makes me choose which network I want. So, I am choosing my network each time I boot up, but at least it works. My sweet little laptop is AOK and my Kindle works fine so I am quite satisfied. Nancy