What’s the Price of Cheap Honey? by Married with Bees

Tags

adulterated honey, food, honey, honey prices

People love to ask questions when they find out that we started keeping bees.  One of the most common questions is, “When will you start selling honey?”  That question is usually followed by the comment, “Local honey is really expensive.  You can make a lot of money.”  In our part of the Midwest, local honey sells for anywhere between $8 and $12 for a 1 pound bottle, and those prices are typically set by hobby beekeepers who sell mostly at places like farmers markets.  If you read my previous blog post, you will know that hobby beekeepers aren’t getting rich on their honey.  The question that people should be asking is, “Why is the grocery store honey so cheap?”  The answer to that question will probably shock you.

Read the full article here: What’s the Price of Cheap Honey? — Married with Bees

Advertisement

Pan Fried Honey Bananas by In Dianes Kitchen

Tags

honey, honey bananas, honey recipe, recipe

Wait until you taste these all natural Pan Fried Honey Bananas! They are unbelievably easy to make and are sweetened naturally with honey then sprinkled with cinnamon. You could eat this for breakfast but for me it is more of a dessert or great snack.

Get the full recipe with pictures here: Pan Fried Honey Bananas — In Dianes Kitchen

How to send samples of adult bees to the USDA for diagnosis by InsideTheHive.TV

Tags

Beltsville Bee Lab, diseases, diseases of honey bees, management of honey bee disaeses and pests, Sending Bee Samples, USDA Diagnostics

This is the video number one of a series of videos about the honey bee diagnostic laboratory at USDA Beltsville Maryland. This video series will cover the main diagnostic procedures applied to bees sent to the lab for diagnosis.
In this video, Dr. Humberto Boncristiani and Sam Abban discuss the best procedure to send samples of Adult honey bees to the lab. It is very important to send the sample the right way to improve the quality of the service.

If you want to know more about this service provided by the laboratory check the link below.

https://goo.gl/Yuff23

via How to send samples of adult bees to the USDA for diagnosis — InsideTheHive.TV

Honey Jalapeno Dip by The Honey Cottage

Tags

honey dip, Honey Jalapeno Dip, recipe, snack recipe

One of our favorite things about fall is; FOOTBALL!!! There is nothing more thrilling then hanging out and watching the game with friends and family! One of our favorite dips to eat when we are watching the game is Honey Jalapeno dip. This is perfect to serve with crackers, chips, and vegetable trays. We even like spreading on our sub sandwiches. Hope you enjoy it this dip as much as we do!

Ingredients:

1 cup of sweet potato

8 ounces of cream cheese

1 1/2Tbsp of Jalapeno

1 1/2Tbsp of green chili

½ Tbsp of Worcestershire sauce

2 Tbsp of honey

½ -¾ cup crushed pecans

Read the full recipe here: Honey Jalapeno Dip — The Honey Cottage

Book Review – The Sting of the Wild by Justin O. Schmidt by Vishy’s Blog

Tags

book review, entomology, stinging insects

‘The Sting of the Wild‘ is about stinging insects. In the first part of the book which runs into five chapters, Schmidt gives us an introduction to stinging insects and talks about how their stinging capability might have evolved from an evolutionary perspective. In the second part of the book, Schmidt focuses on individual insects, talks about their life histories and their lifestyles, their relationships with humans and other animals from the animal kingdom, how they use their sting and how sharp and painful their sting can be. He creates a four-level sting-pain scale and tries to rate each insect’s sting using this scale. Some of the insects which are featured in the second part of the book are sweat bees, ants of different types including fireants, harvester ants and bullet ants, wasps of different types including yellow jackets, tarantula hawks, mud daubers and velvet ants, and of course everyone’s favourite, the honey bee.

(cont.)

Read the full article here: Book Review – The Sting of the Wild by Justin O. Schmidt — Vishy’s Blog

How Can We Bee … Helpful? by A Guy Called Bloke and K9 Doodlepip!

Tags

bee friendly gardens, gardening for bees, planting for bees, plants for pollinators, pollinator gardening, pollinator gardens, sustainability, sustainable apiary

It’s not rocket science it’s just awareness – simplicity itself – what would you rather Bee Dead or Bee Alive – personally l think l would prefer living bees to dead bees and the bees probably agree with me!

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

How BEE friendly are you? With Spring just literally on our doorstep now, although even l have to concede at times that in the UK alone, it appears that Mother Nature has withdrawn it … our bees are back into their daily routines. The garden l have here, is not a gardeners’ delight, we have wild herbs growing next to wild flowers, and very soon we shall be planting out our seasons’ rotation for vegetable growing. I tend to like to see more ‘weeds’ and don’t see them as such but more as flowers in the wrong place, it sounds kinder that way.

Plant more BEE friendly flowers and flowering herbs in your garden – With the loss of nesting and foraging habitat due to intensive monocultural agricultural practices and the ever increasing and rising suburbanization driven society pressures demanding more housing – natural landscapes are fast disappearing. You can alter things by planting flowers into your garden. Plant bloom heavy as Bees love forage volume and plant for the seasons that the pollinators are most active – as in early spring to late summer. Plan your flowering crops effectively;

Read the full article with lots of wonderful photos here: How Can We Bee … Helpful? — A Guy Called Bloke and K9 Doodlepip!

Honey Pickles by The Ephemeral Bee

Tags

honey, honey pickles, honey recipe, pickles, recipe

I found a recipe for Honey Bread and Butter Pickles in Canning for a New Generation and decided to give it a try.  I’m reluctant to continue to call these pickles bread and butter pickles since they’re missing one of the key components I generally associate with bread and butter pickles – the sweetness factor.  I actually doubled the amount of honey called for in the recipe.  They were still not what I would consider sweet, and I tend to have a fairly low tolerance for sweet.  The recipe still turned out a wonderful pickle, it’s slightly different from a traditional dill, and has the additional bonus of not containing any cane sugar.  I also didn’t bother with canning these pickles, although, this recipe is perfect for canning if you want to put in the extra work.  I simply decided to save some time and store then in the refrigerator for up to a month, and gift a few jars.

via Honey Pickles — The Ephemeral Bee

Musings on Minimalist Beehive Management by Tom Hebert

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping management, management, minimalist beekeeping management

How much intervention in the hive is enough? Some beekeepers do lots of management, entering their hives at least weekly, if not more. Others are minimalists with little or no inspections. Every beekeeper has their own unique situation that dictates their management.

In their zealousness, some new beekeepers always want to get into their hives to see what is happening. They are overly enthusiastic with this new endeavor and want to do inspections a couple times a week. And then there are other beekeepers who do minimalist management, letting the bees do what they know how to do with infrequent intervention. And sometimes it becomes very infrequent or even nonexistent.

So, is more management better? Is less acceptable? My guess is many beekeepers will say there’s a point when the beekeeper will overdo their inspections. But this debate could also be about whether the beekeeper does not do enough inspections.

I consider myself a minimalist when it comes to the management of my top bar hives. Often, I put little effort into checking them and managing them. It sometimes reaches the point where a person can consider me more of a bee-haver instead of beekeeper. I don’t even touch some of hives except to harvest them.

For example, one of my apiaries is in the mountains of Honduras on a coffee farm. I don’t get up there very frequently. The last hives in the line get the least attention. Time runs out and the truck is ready to take the workers back down to town. This is a Saturday and they work only until noon. I must go with it (or take a couple hours and walk down the mountain which is not likely after spending all morning in the hives). These are the hives that I only enter to harvest.

But minimal management works for me in my situation. I want honey from them but I don’t do beekeeping as my primary income source. I’m an elementary school teacher and bees have become a secondary income (unfortunately). They give me what they want for effort I put into their management. I accept that and I’m grateful for it.

Read the full article with lots of great pictures here: Musings on Beekeeping

Can a Hobby Beekeeper Make a Profit? by Married with Bees

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping for profit, honey production, products of the hive

Good article and yes, my bees pay their way here too. The author makes an important point in closing that one must have a love for the bee primarily and any financial gain an added bonus. ~sassafrasbeefarm

Recently I met a friend for lunch, and over sandwiches she inquired about our honey bees.  I love talking about our bees, and she is a good friend who indulges me.  After I provided a status update she asked, “Are you making money yet?”  Her direct question caught me off guard.  Most people ask us when we will have honey available, and I think my friend was curious to know if our colonies had reached a point where we could harvest honey for sale.  Doug and I are first year beekeepers, so we are letting the bees have all the honey this year to get them through the winter.  Nevertheless, my friend’s question made me wonder if hobby beekeepers could make a profit from their bees.

Doug and I became beekeepers because we find bees fascinating.  We like learning about bees and talking about bees and taking care of them.  I also wanted to increase the output in my vegetable garden.  Neither one of us eat that much honey, and we never considered keeping bees for the purpose of generating income.  First year beekeepers spend money but don’t make money.  However, subsequent years may bring opportunities to actually earn some revenue.  Therefore, I decided to make a very rough estimate to see if it is possible for a hobby beekeeper to be profitable.  As the saying goes, this is a back of the envelope calculation.

Read the full article here: Can a Hobby Beekeeper Make a Profit? — Married with Bees

Autumn Abscondings and Other Odd Events by sassafrasbeefarm

Tags

absconding, beekeeping, CCD, dearth, fall management, hunger swarm, seasons, swarms, ursurpation

(above) Small October cluster on bluebird box. Collected after the flood of 2015 – swarm or abscond?

Late summer and autumn swarming does occur but is an exception and probably occurs only in unique situations. Biology says when the parent hive is ripe for reproduction and all conditions are met the goal is to swarm. Queens that fail to reduce laying during dearth, well fed colonies, with the addition of a brief nectar and pollen flow may indeed swarm during this time of year. Inspect overachieving hives and disrupt the colony by adding empty drawn comb, sharing excess  brood with weaker hives, or  taking off excess honey stores. This makes the parent hive less than ready and disrupts their plans. Only after all conditions are met will they swarm and if nature or the beekeeper gives them work to do at home they will typically stay. In general, however, this time of year it’s hard for them to feel that conditions are optimal for swarming.

What we saw last year was an apparent increase in abscondings or colony failures where all of the bees left the hive and did not return. Abscondings are typically related to poor conditions in the hive or environment. i.e. starvation, drought, mites, SHB, yellow jackets, critters. Historically these were termed “hunger swarms” but may occur with or without food being present. I like to think of the conditions that precipitate abscondings as stress related. Think of it this way, if your house was overrun with fleas you might stay a while but eventually you’d gather your family up and say, “I’m not sure where we’re going but we’re not staying here.” Same for food; if you lost your income, no job prospects, and had no cash flow for food eventually you’d say, “I don’t know if I can get a job in Timbuktu but I know there are no jobs here so we’re moving.”

How are swarms and abscondings different?

Swarms are generally reproductive in nature and motivated by the organism’s innate drive to reproduce as a result of positive and plentiful stimuli. This is why they usually occur slightly before and at the start of the main nectar flow when resources are at their highest. This gives the swarm the greatest chance of survival. Late season swarms are probably generated by the occasional but less likely situation where the hive is simply full of stores, lacks room for expansion, yet is being stimulated with brief fall pollen and nectar flows. It’s a bad time for them to swarm and in all probability will not have a positive outcome for the issuing swarm.

Abscondings are different in that most of the bees in the hive will leave. It’s like one day they decide they’ve had enough of the poor conditions (stressors) and decide to leave. Unlike a swarm, it is precipitated by negative stressors. The beekeeper comes to the bee yard and finds the hive almost empty. The bees inside are usually bees that were left behind due to being out foraging at the time of the absconding or they are new hatch outs. If there is little capped brood you can assume they have been stressed for some time – scant brood decreases the attractiveness of the bees to the colony.

After last year’s events most beekeepers remarked that they never saw a cluster hanging in a tree nor any new colonies in swarm traps. One possibility is usurpation. Usurpation is when one colony forces its way into another hive and takes over. Apis mellifera scutellata is rather noted for its tendency to usurp calmer races of honey bees. One author promotes the idea that usurpation is more common than we think. The event goes unnoticed as there is no clustered swarm and the landing is not in a tree limb or swarm trap but another hive in the bee yard where they take over operations. Actually, as a survival mechanism, this is quite clever whereby a colony over run with stressors during a time of poor nectar production can unite with another weaker colony and increase its chances of survival.

What about the queen? That may be the $64,000 question. Colony Collapse Disorder symptoms where the queen and a few bees are all that’s left behind continues to mystify many researchers. I’m not going to say I have the answer that the researchers have yet to answer. It is a mystery. But I will say that it’s no mystery that the queen isn’t the only card in the game when it comes to honey bee behavior. Most beekeepers, after a few years in the hives, understand other powers at play within the colony like lack of brood pheromone, population balance, and the host of chemical pheromone balances that signal wellbeing or decline. Leaving without a queen is typically viewed as colony suicide, but as we have already covered above, usurpation might provide an answer to why one colony might leave a failing queen behind.

Another answer proposed to account for the events experienced last year is that the bees died while foraging or failed to return home. While this may be possible, it does not account for the lack of thousands of nurse bees that should have never left the confines of the hive.

In closing, I’m not offering any single cause to what you hopefully will not see this autumn in your bee yard. Last year, here in the Midlands as well as elsewhere, we witnessed multiple accounts of bees absconding. Almost no one saw a cluster hanging in a tree, captured a swarm, or otherwise accounted for the missing bees. We know many of these events were recounted by the beekeeper as having occurred within the course of a week. Forty thousand bees one weekend; two hundred the next weekend. Stressors last year included exceptionally high heat during dearth period, approximately half of normal rainfall, and of course the ever present Varroa mite.

We did an impromptu survey to see if a particular cause could be identified. However, no single cause was identified. In some instances it appeared to be related to mites, in other instances, poor forage or lack of feeding, the much higher than normal temperatures experienced, and/or a rainfall approximately half of typical for our area. Conversely, our survey data showed that those that offered their bees more supportive measures had fewer or no abscondings. Respondents with no abscondings had higher reporting for feeding during the dearth period, treatment for Varroa, availability of water, and overall higher supportive management of their colonies. This would seem to indicate that while no specific stressor could be implicated, a lowering of the stress level by increased supportive management reduced colony abscondings.

Beekeeping a Rewarding Hobby by Work | Play | Life

Tags

beginning beekeeping

I clearly remember the first scary time I stuck my hand into the screened cage holding my first hive of 10,000 honeybees. Like most people, my reflexive response is to give bees and other summer stingers a wide berth. Up until that moment, beekeeping was just a concept. Now, I had my bees and, if I was going to give it a go, I had to reach into the cage (with a gloved hand) to remove the queen. This was my real introduction to beekeeping.

Beekeeping and gardening go naturally together. Squash, cucumbers, apples, melons and strawberries are just a handful of the many crops that rely on bee pollination. And then there’s the honey. A single, healthy hive can yield 50 to 100 pounds of this sweet, golden elixir.

Read the full article here: Beekeeping a Rewarding Hobby — Work | Play | Life

Fall Nectar Flow by sassafrasbeefarm

Tags

beekeeping, fall management, honey bees, management, nectar flow, seasons

The Fall flow is officially on in my corner of Southeastern Lexington County, South Carolina. Weight gain, white wax, and increased activity indicate a nectar flow. I went out to feed some of the lighter hives and noticed some white wax as well as some weight gain on hives since 10 days ago. As the day warmed the bees were definitely flying with intent with some congestion on the landing boards. Even with the lack of rainfall, fall flow is on over here in the barren sand hills of Southeastern Lexington County. If it’s on here in this sandbox it’s likely you may find it’s on elsewhere in the Midlands. Bees flying with intent, launching themselves off the landing board immediately after exiting the hive entrance, increased incoming traffic as well landing and hurrying inside, other bees show excited behavior on the landing board, overall appearance of heightened purposeful activity, some white wax noted inside, the smell of goldenrod and sight of yellow pollen coming in.

It was a happy day indeed to be able to save some of that syrup until another day. I found a renewed interest in the pollen feeder which baffles me a little but may be a result of some increased brood rearing… I don’t know. All these things are a pleasant change from the doldrums of dearth. Pray for some rain to sustain the flow. Order up – winter bees please.

The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend. by Berks County PA Honey Bee Removal

Tags

bald faced hornets, honey bee pests, hornets, management of honey bee disaeses and pests, yellow jackets

About this time of year, for the past several years, most of my honeybee colonies would be fending off hundreds of yellow jackets daily. They also would deal with the occasional baldfaced hornet, but to a much lesser extent. This year however (so far), I have witnessed a grand total of 2 yellow jackets, and 2 baldfaced hornets attempting to harass my bees.

So why the picture of my topbar hive full of European hornets? It was back in May that I noticed a single, huge mother hornet enter my empty topbar hive. I looked through the viewing window to see an adorable little paper cone about the size of a silver dollar hanging from a bar. I was preparing to go in and smoosh it, along with mamma when I thought to spend a minute researching these things. I decided to leave it be, and if it got out of hand, then I’d kill it. It never really did get out of hand in my opinion, and it has been as interesting to observe as any other social insect colony.

Read the full article and follow some links to videos here: The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend. — Berks County PA Honey Bee Removal 19601

For Good of the Colony, Sick Honey Bee Brood Sounds the Alarm By Kaira Wagoner, Ph.D.

Tags

bee biology, biology, honey bee biology, honey bee brood, sick bees

Pollinator health is a top priority these days, and everyone seems to be asking, “What can be done to save the bees?” Since most of the current challenges to pollinator health can be attributed to humans, there are several things we can do, from restoring pollinator habitat by planting pollinator-friendly natives to curbing our use of harmful pesticides.

This work is both ecologically and economically important, as honey bees are the most agriculturally important pollinator worldwide, contributing over $15 billion to annual crop yields in the United States alone. But honey bees have flourished on Earth for over 100 million years, so perhaps it is also worth asking, “What can honey bees do to help themselves?”

As social insects, closely related honey bees live in crowded colonies with frequent physical contact, a recipe for the rapid spread of parasites and pathogens. As a result, honey bees have evolved some fascinating social immune mechanisms, which help mitigate the spread of disease between sisters in a bustling colony. One such immune mechanism is “hygienic behavior,” the ability of adult bees to detect and remove unhealthy brood from the colony. By sacrificing a few unhealthy young, the overall health of the colony, and thus the probability of colony survival, is improved.

Read the fill article here: For Good of the Colony, Sick Honey Bee Brood Sounds the Alarm — Entomology Today

Environmentalist Scare Stories – Never Mind! by peoples trust toronto

Tags

bee decline, gardening and pesticides, neonicotinoids

“Baby boomers” will remember Gilder Radner’s Saturday Night Live character from the ‘70s – Emily Litella, who would launch into hilarious rants against perceived problems, only to discover that she had completely misconstrued what she was fuming about.

“What’s all this fuss about endangered feces?” she asked in one. “How can you possibly run out of such a thing?” Then, after Jane Curtain interrupted to tell her “It’s endangered species,” she meekly responded with what became the iconic denouement of the era: “Ohhhh. Never mind.”

The Sierra Club and “invertebrate-protecting” Xerces Society recently had their own Emily Litella moment, over an issue they both have been hyperventilating about for years: endangered bees. For over half a decade, both organizations have been raising alarms about the imminent extinction of honeybees and, more recently, wild bees – allegedly due to the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides.

These are advanced-technology crop protection compounds, originally developed and registered as “reduced-risk” pesticides. Applied mostly as seed treatments, neonicotinoids get taken up into the tissue of crop plants, where they control pests that feed on and destroy the crops, while minimizing insecticide exposure to animals, humans and beneficial species like bees.

But not according to the Sierra Club! It campaigned incessantly for years on the claim that neonicotinoids would drive honeybees into extinction. For instance, in March 2015 the Sierra Club of Canada launched a nationwide “Protect the Pollinators Tour,” as part of its #SaveTheBees project.

“Ironically, the justification for this chemical madness is the same desire to produce enough food to feed everyone,” it said. “The chemical industry wants us to believe we have no choice; it’s their way or the highway. But the science tells us otherwise – that farmers don’t need these chemicals at all! The science also tells us we’re not just killing bees and pollinators, but other insects too. And we’re also killing birds and aquatic life. The scientists tell us we could be creating a Second Silent Spring. It’s madness.”

Read the entire article here:  Environmentalist Scare Stories – Never Mind! — peoples trust toronto