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Honey bee basics part 2 – drones, Varroa and breeding bees
May 7, 2010 Last week a preliminary report from the USDA announced that one-third of the US of honey bee colonies did not survive the 2009/2010 winter. The self-reporting survey (those who responded identified the cause of their own hive losses) quantified what caused the deaths of the colonies. Beekeepers blamed a mite called Varroa destructor [...] -
Honey bee basics part 1 – the denigrated drone
Photo by Richard Bartz, CC Share-alike 2.5 Originally published at Examiner.com, April 30, 2010 As spring firmly takes over from the harsh rigors of winter, one of the things beekeepers look for in their hives are the appearance of drones. Once the drones appear, bee mating season can start, hives may swarm and beekeepers [...] -
Book review: Why Do Bees Buzz?
April 16, 2010 Third in Rutgers “Animal Q&A” series (Rutgers University Press), Why Do Bees Buzz? provides an abundance of information in its deceptively slim 188 pages. Designed to be read cover to cover, or by hopscotching to questions of interest, the authors Elizabeth Capaldi Evans and Carol A. Butler touch on nearly every aspect of [...] -
Larry Connor speaks about drone management
April 7, 2010 On February 12, 2010 a packed house greeted beekeeper and columnist Larry Connor at the Midwinter Meeting of the Finger Lakes and Ontario County bee clubs. Connor focused on how any beekeeper, whether managing two hives or twenty, can help create disease resistant bees. His suggestion: breed drones. “We [...] -
Help researchers understand colony collapse disorder – beekeepers, fill out the USDA survey
March 30, 2010 The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service, in conjunction with the Apiary Inspectors of America, is conducting a voluntary survey to determine the bee colony losses for the 2009/2010 winter. This survey is not just for beekeepers with huge numbers of hives, even small-scale beekeepers [...] -
Personal commentary: joys of beekeeping
March 25, 2010 I started keeping bees last year for the honey. I love honey, but I also love mead and mead making. My husband and I had experimented with a couple of different recipes, made perfectly drinkable concoctions, but only on a casual basis. A five-gallon batch of mead takes between [...] -
Wisconsin governor signs honey standards bill
On March 15, Governor Doyle signed Assembly Bill 575 into law, which will establish standards for products sold as honey and “Wisconsin-certified” honey in the state. Why honey standards matter In 2007, beekeeper and honey producer Nancy Gentry started a grass roots campaign to get the state of Florida adopt a honey standard, [...] -
Wisconsin honey standards bill poised to become law
On February 16, the Wisconsin Senate approved a bill which will create standards for what can be labeled as “honey” and “Certified Wisconsin Honey” in Wisconsin. The bill now awaits action by Governor Doyle. If enacted, the bill will require that food labeled as “honey” sold in Wisconsin meets the global standard for honey (pdf). This [...] -
What happens after the honey bees get the “stop” signal?
Dr. James Nieh, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of California, San Diego recently described a form of bee communication called the “stop” signal. Foraging bees – ones that leave the hive in search of pollen and nectar – may encounter competition or predators at a food source. When these foragers return to the [...] -
Honey bees warn each other about predators at food sources
Organisms in the wild, particularly those at the base of the food chain, have evolved various ways to communicate about their natural surroundings. Family groups, such as the prairie dog shown to the left, even divvy up chores to the benefit the entire family. One or two siblings keep an eye out for predators, which [...]