Hi Marie, First and formost, thank you for sharing your information on ccd. I'm just getting started in the world of beekeeping. I read your post as something to keep in mind but not to think about long enough to come up with a real opinion. I work as an artificial insemenation technician on a 10,000 cow dairy. All day long I'm hit with "something to be aware of" and "things to keep in mind" and they ussually relate to a disaster of some sort. I have learned to keep my head down and let the chips fall where they may and hope for a positive outcome or wait until there is actually something that I can change to avoid trouble. In addition, I use bees as a way of shutting down my brain and focussing on something else for a while. It's still a study of animal behavior but different enough that I can forget about cows for a while. I don't like to dwell on problems in my little beekeepingwonderland...especially if I can't do anything about them. I think alot of people who keep a few hives kind of feel the same way. Thanks again though for the information. It will be filed away for later use in a conversation with someone else escaping reality or in trying to save my thousand hive beekeeping business from the brink of disaster at the hands of ccd... whichever comes first.

Hi all. I'm a newbie to this forum but not to this topic. Bottom line in regards to the original posting: if you sign the forms and then violate those terms then you are legally responsible. Putting aside what I think about the chem congloms (I detect a stench strongly akin to that of Ma Bell), signing your name to a legal agreement is still binding. Say you decide to quietly save back some RoundUp Ready seed, or decide that non-GMO refuges are just a waste of time/money and put a field completely into a GMO crop...you are knowingly going against your contract and busted is busted. If the speed limit is 35 and you get clocked at 70 don't feign surprise when you get the ticket. We have been saving back seed from our best-performing variety of soybeans for the last seven-10 years (non-GMO of course). This year when we contacted the operation that we use for our cleaning and storage they informed us that they had totally discontinued this service due to ongoing litigation with several customes. You guessed it...people were caught saving back GMOs. And the same people who don't understand the concept behind a refuge system with GMOs are quite often the ones who have more and more weeds still nice and green after yet another year of ALS-herbicides and can't figure it out. They accept the technology as foolproof without ever fully understanding it. I am sure there are a few here who will immediately want a background check. Here's what you get: We are small farmers-- the dying breed, if you will. We farm less than 400 acres of the big three (a rotation of soybeans, corn, and milo), all conservation tillage. The only reason my husband and I stay with this is because his dad died this past September and we absolutely refuse to sell the family farm to the 5000 Acre-Big Names. If I had my way (and wishes were horses so that beggars could ride) I would put it ALL BACK into native hardwoods and prairie and tell the rest of these greed-driven big operators to keep their damn hands off...uh, sorry--need my Prozac fix, forgive the tangent. Did try Bt corn against my wishes...I don't feel secure around anything GMO but the decisions are not all mine to make. Objectively speaking, I did notice that the non-Bt had a higher mold occurrence in the ears due to caterpillar frass breaking down (Makes me think of the contaminated Diamond dog food in the news lately), but other than that, we didn't see much difference in yield or stalk quality between the GMO vs non. Of course, no two growing seasons are alike in terms of weather, pest stresses, etc.... Never used RoundUp Read...beans, corn, any of it. In fact three years ago we got a 30-cent PREMIUM for non GMO beans. Only money we EVER saw from RoundUp Ready was two years ago when a neighbor who does bow and scrape to The Roundups had an adjoining field custom sprayed... seems that operator skipped school the day they taught basic GPS and so we received a complimentary spraying and a bunch of dead beans. It isn't possible with bigger acreages, but some of us still do it the old-fashioned way: long-sleeves, a bottle of water and a cane hook. I admit I am losing ground to the water hemp and the cockleburrs in some places, but after the initial spring planting/spraying (yes, we DO use some chemicals) the majority of post emergent weed populations such as shattercane, ragweed and velvetleaf are up to me. I have yet to read of a knife-resistant strain of anything. Politicians, maybe?

Thanks Caroline I brought my iPod over to the laptop so I can add some non-games that I use. Utilities Apzilla 2 has all sorts of different utilities, most of them are worthwhile. Some you might never use. Even though Apzilla has it I also have MyLite (a flashlight) and a Free Level program. (a level for hanging pictures straight)and Free Space, a program that tells you how much room is left on your iPod and battery info. Capacity is another program that does this. Free Wi-Fi tells you when you travel where there is free wi-fi you can log into. 5-0 Radio Pro is a fun Police and Fire scanner so you can listen for any calls that come out in your city or even places in your country. My hearing isn't the best and sometimes the talking isn't too clear for me but it is fun listening to the information. It can run in the background. Shopwise is a program that tells you certain deals. I have World Atlas and Google Earth. Book Crawler is a program that lets you keep track of all of your books. iPlant is a gardening book that is quite good. For notes I use Awesome Notes. MyStuff2 is a neat inventory program I haven't used yet. I use IOwn and Iconic Notes, but I don't think either of those are available now. Someday I will transfer everything over. Ian's Laces as Caroline mentioned is fun but there also is a program called Tie a Scarf for women' scarves. Holiday List is also a great Christmas gift planner. AppSniper and AppShopper are two programs I use occasionally. They tell you the new programs that are out. A lot of programs are free for a short time before they start to charge and these programs as well as others will let you know this. I have a lot of medical programs and photography programs as well but this thread is getting long.

I was able to listen to the broadcast late yesterday, then had a discussion with my son. We got so interested in them we decided to try growing tiger nuts in large planters next spring. The large planters (making them into mini-bogs) I have intended to use for growing rice for two years (good intentions, poor execution). I located seed at Seed World - 1# - $3.90 (plants 800 sq. ft.). Not long ago I was going to order tiger nut flour to try since it's gluten-free, but it was expensive and I just kept it on my wish list at Amazon. It fits perfectly in with my bizarre list of ingredients I work with.