25 Friday Mar 2022
Posted in beekeeping, hive products, honey bee biology, propolis
The varnishing of cells?
Where does this get a mention? It’s in the study notes..
http://basicbeekeeping.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/lesson-113-sticky-subject-of-propolis.html
They asked lots of people too.
In Ribbands, Chapter 27, Huber (1814) observed that new combs become more yellow, more pliable stronger and heavier and sometimes there were reddish threads on the inner walls. Chemical tests showed this was propolis.
Source: Uses of propolis
28 Monday Feb 2022
It’s spring colony splitting time and one thing we should keep in mind as we delve into the congested and complex hive is having the correct balance of bees of various ages within the hive or split. An upset in the balance of bees’ ages upsets the proper functioning of the colony. Ex.: who’s going to clean the cells and feed the young larva if the colony goes queenless for an extended period and all of the bees have passed that stage in their adult development? Reversible? I wonder to what degree, and about the quality of work that can be expected from a bee that has passed it’s normal period for the work expected.
I’ve read below and elsewhere that there is some flexibility in the bees’ ability to move forward or backward in their age defined activities. However, the quality of the work suffers based on the bees’ physiologically ability to perform a particular task.
When making splits during the spring buildup there isn’t any difficulty finding brood of various ages so as to provide a split with a diverse population. Done well, a split hardly misses a beat and continues to grow and build effortlessly, while poorly configured splits struggle to get going and sometimes fail.
A simple diagram showing the life history of the honey bee worker.
The schedule of worker bee activities is both flexible and reversible, depending more upon physiological age than on chronological age, and is altered according to the needs of the colony. Diagram Source: Sipa Honey Bees
22 Tuesday Feb 2022
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology, honey bees, management, spring buildup
Not long ago, someone asked when we should start feeding the bees. The answer given was another question – What are your goals?
We want to building strong colonies but for what purpose? To catch the nectar flow? To make splits?, nucs?, or early pollination purposes? Each goal has a different start date.
Much of what we do with our bees involves looking forward. Last year I wrote a piece on when we should start the push towards building them up for purposes of capturing the nectar flow. Today, I’d like to think through another planning exercise for the beekeeper wanting to make strong splits from overwintered colonies.
I like bee math!
An experienced mentor and bee buddy of mine called me recently to ask if I wanted to order some early season queens. He caught me off guard just a bit because I really had not done my math homework for the coming splits season. Well, I’d better get hopping and decide if I’m going to order queens or make queenless splits.
And if I’m going to make spilts, when do I need to get busy?
Framing the issue:
We know from prior swarm seasons and winners of the “Golden Hive Tool Award” (given to the first captured swarm of each season) that swarming in the Midlands starts as soon as late, late February but typically early, early March and will remain strong for a month to six weeks into April then taper with an occasional spurts and sputters along the way.
We know that nature provides natural pollen and nectar for buildup in the Midlands around early to mid February (give or take). Some people see some earlier and this is climate and location dependent. So in nature we see feed for the bees a ~ month or so before swarming.
We know that the climate is still a bit dicey March 1st with occasional surprise freezes which could impact the survival of splits. I’m not sure I want to tempt Midlands weather.
March 1st looks to be an intersection between climate and colony readiness.
So, with natures help,some colonies are ready to swarm as early as ~ March 1. What constitutes being “ready?” Well, colony swarm preparations are a topic in itself but one hardwired componet is drone production. So we deduce that swarming colonies will have made drones ready to mate. I presume nature and the bees assume other colonies have done the same so as to provide some genetic diversity. But back to the point. If a colony is ready to swarm with ready drones when did they start those drones? The answer might help me as to when to start pushing buildup.
Let’s try to nail down a date to promote drone production by reviewing our bee math for drones: 3 days as an egg; 6 1/2 days as a larvae, and capped by day 10. 14 days as a pupa – 24 days. Right? Oh, but we must not forget that that drone is but a wee tot when born and needs to get to his “adolescence” to be ready for mating. That occurs after another 14 days give or take. Okay, I need to start making drones 38 days prior to making queenless splits. Right?…Wrong. Remember that if I make a split the bees will have to begin queen cells and we don’t need ready drones at the start of queen cells. We need them to coincide with the time it takes to make a queen and allow her to “harden” ready for her mating flight. Oh my, that probably negates some of my original calculations.
Nature tells me it will start making the splits for me (i.e. swarm) around March 1st. Let’s use that a date that nature chooses as the earliest date swarms are likely to survive and use subtraction to come to the date I need to start building up my hives in order to maximize my success with queenless splits. March 1st minus 38 days leaves me at January 16th. I know this date as the birthday of Johann Dzierzon, father of parthenogenesis. (In animals, parthenogenesis means development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell. Ain’t that a coincidence?) But, as much as I would like to start pushing for drone production on Johann’s birthday, remember I need to deduct (or add back) the time for the colony to create a mating ready queen or approximately 20 to 24 days. My head is starting to hurt. Okay, January 16 plus 24 days = February 7th (or three days before Ormond Aebi’s birthday).
Isn’t it a curiosity that my efforts at calculations results in a bunch of needless time wasting when mother nature gave me the buildup date to begin with – the bloom of Red Maples! That is, when the maples bloom is the start date when nature itself provides the necessary ingredients to maximize successful colony reproduction on a date conducive to climate and impending nectar flow. You can’t fool mother nature. I’m exhausted but it serves me right. Beekeepers should probably reply to questions like this with bloom dates rather than calendar dates.
20 Thursday Jan 2022
Posted in beekeeping, equipment, honey bee biology, management, swarms
Final stages of Scion creation. Another coat of propolis, essential oils, and wax and it’s ready to hang.
After reading about the Russian Scion last year I have been eager to make and employ one in my own bee yard. Having used swarm traps with great success I know that swarms can often be retrieved before flying off. However, sometimes issuing swarms choose high branches or remain out of sight of the beekeeper. The scion adds another opportunity to the beekeeper prior to the swarm trap. Since I am home most days and walk my bee yard daily, hopefully I’ll be able to attract them to the easily retrievable scion, and hive them instead of relying on the traps which are also located on site. Below is a good post found on http://www.beesource.com posted by DocBB with some nice pictures:
I found a almost unknown device for us but which is of a common use in every Russian apiary is the “Scion” – (Привой и роевня)
It is a trap or a shelter to catch the swarm as early as possible without (may be) climbing trees.
Can you find it here on the plan?
There are many “designs” but it is commonly settled not far and in front of the hives entrances , one or several of them according to the size of the apiary
The traditional model is a 20-30 cm wide and 30-40 cm plank with one cleat fixed vertically in the middle , more or less rolled with burlap and coated with
alcoholic solution of propolis and flavoured with essential oils (lemongrass, etc.)
as on this blog
the “scion” is then hanged at around 2 to 2,5 m high.
It seems to work !
and the use of one or more old frame is not forbidden
or an old propolised burlap
12 Monday Apr 2021
Posted in beekeeping, birthday, birthdays, famous beekeepers, honey bee biology, queens
Bee biologist Harry Hyde Laidlaw Jr. (1907-2003), known as “the father of honey bee genetics,” served on the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty from 1947 until his retirement in 1974. Long after his retirement, however, the professor continued his research and outreach programs, publishing his last scientific paper at age 87 and his last book at 90. He died at age 96 at his home in Davis.
Childhood and Career Development
Born April 12, 1907 in Houston, Harry spent his boyhood and teen years in the Southeast: Virginia, Florida and Louisiana. In his childhood, he developed a keen interest in bee breeding and worked with his grandfather, Charles Quinn. They experimented with mating queen bees and control breeding and developed what became known as the Quinn-Laidlaw hand-mating method.
In 1929, while working in Baton Rouge, Laidlaw was encouraged by his boss to attend Louisiana State University. He completed his master’s degree in entomology in 1934 from Louisiana State University and received his doctorate in genetics and entomology form the University of Wisconsin in 1939. Two years later he was inducted into the U.S. Army, commissioned. and served as the Army entomologist for the First Service Command in Boston. There he met Ruth Collins, whom he married in 1946. They lived in New York City where he worked as a civilian entomologist for the Army. His career with the UC Davis Department of Entomology began in 1947.
Laidlaw is best known for developing artificial insemination technology for honey bees. His contributions enabled selective breeding of honey bees and pioneered the fundamental study of insect genetics. He authored numerous scientific publications and four books on honey bee genetics and breeding.
Laidlaw studied pests and diseases and conducted research on the breeding of queen bees and on re-queening bee colonies. His research on artificial insemination of bees inspired poet E.B. White to write a poem, “Song of the Queen Bee,” published in the New Yorker magazine in 1945. It included the lines “What boots it to improve a bee, if it means an end to ecstasy.”
International Awards
Laidlaw received national and international awards for his research and service to the university, agriculture and the beekeeping industry. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1955, and the Entomological Society of America (ESA) in 1991. At UC Davis, he was the first associate dean for research (1969) in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The College of Ag selected him for its Award of Distinction in 1997.
Laidlaw was awarded the Western Apiculture Society’s “Outstanding Service to Beekeeping” award in 1980, being cited as “one of the great scientists in American agriculture.” In 1981 he won the C.W. Woodworth Award of the Pacific Branch of the ESA.
Laidlaw published his classic text Queen Rearing in 1950, in collaboration with J. E. Eckert. He published his last book, Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding, written in collaboration with Robert Page, former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, in 1997
Although retired, in 1980-85, he established a honey bee breeding program for the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture as part of a joint UC-Egypt agricultural development program.
Naming of Laidlaw Facility
In 2001, the Bee Biology Laboratory at UC Davis was renamed the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. Local artist and sculptor Donna Billick and entomologist-artist Diane Ullman designed the sign at the facility.
Source: Harry H. Laidlaw Papers from the UC Davis Special Collections
Biographical materials, correspondence, writings, research materials, course materials, printed materials, memorabilia, photographs.
Source: Robert E. Page Jr.; Harry Laidlaw’s daughter Barbara Murphy; and the UC Davis Special Collections
23 Tuesday Feb 2021
Posted in beekeeping, chores, honey bee behavior, honey bee biology, honey bees, inspections, management
Early Swarms 2016
I’m not at all convinced the warm climate we are seeing this winter is here to stay. But I’m not sure the bees agree with my weather predictions either. Watching the landing boards with foragers in full pollen collection mode and brief inspections tell me that some colonies are already in full tilt brood production.
What does this mean for the beekeeper?
Well, it means lots of excitement watching them grow at a rate that is phenomenal. By this time next month either you will have made room for the extra bees and managed them for swarming or you may be looking up in the trees for half of your work force.
Or it could be more dire. Winter food stores up until this point have been steadily declining at a gradual but predictable rate. What happens now when the queen is at full egg laying (brood producing) coupled with a growing workforce? Well, between increased consumption of ever more house bees and foragers, plus trying to feed thousands of larvae, the food stores decline can no longer be graphed as a straight line. Now it is a sharp spike upward!
Beginning now is when the beekeeper needs to remember to lift the backs of their hives. And on those pretty days when you get into them to ooh-ahh at their numbers and beauty, look and assess their nectar stores. December and January saw a full pantry with slow, steady declines, but brood rearing brings on food demands that dwarf the demands of fall and early winter.
And a final scare for you. It’s quite a curiosity that starved bees don’t slowly decline due to lack of food. No, for them, it’s the Three Musketeers: “All for one and one for all,” meaning they’ll go down together if they run out of food. One day they are all fed, the next, well…not.
06 Wednesday Jan 2021
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping seasons, honey bee biology, management, seasons
An article by the Northeast New Jersey Beekeepers Association
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03 Wednesday Oct 2018
Posted in beekeeping, biology, honey bee biology
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
21 Friday Sep 2018
Posted in beekeeping, biology, honey bee biology
Tags
They’re freeloaders yet vital to the colony’s success. Most of the time they’re laid back bordering on lazy, yet they give it all to their mission when pheromones beckon, dying in the process. They’re allowed to play in the hive all season then bullied out in the fall. It’s all about colony survival. In a healthy hive, drones are the background hum, the harmony behind the melody, a small but important part of the symphony.
Read the full article at: The Background Hum — Why Do Bees
25 Monday Jun 2018
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology, queens
Watching reruns of the television series Elementary last night, Sherlock mentions twice the phrase, “Biology dictates behavior.”
In the beehive the genetics of the queen and the multiple drones she mated with is manifested in the behaviors of the workers. While honey bees progress through different work tasks according to their age, other behaviors are less defined and not seen as routine. That is to say, all bees begin as house bees and start by cleaning cells. They progress through various jobs as they age becoming nurse bees, feeding larvae, cleaning the hive of trash and dead bees, tending to the queen, wax excretion, moving nectar, and fanning the nectar or cooling the hive. However, most of these jobs are not compulsory nor do all bees perform all of these tasks as they age. There simply isn’t a need for all bees to progress through the task of feeding the queen nor is there a need for thousands of undertaker bees. The bees tend to have some degree of flexibility in shifting behaviors to meet the needs of the colony. But there is no macro view of the colony so how do they know what tasks need performing to be able to change behaviors. (Imagine an Amazon.com warehouse where all the workers seemingly just know what to do every day when they report to work.)
The same can be said of those bees that have graduated from house bee status and become foraging bees. Some specialize in pollen, other propolis, water, and still others nectar. The bees shift amongst these tasks depending on the needs of the colony but, again, their is no central command issuing “orders of the day” to direct these tasks. Yet, remarkably, the jobs get done.
So what determines bee behavior? We know that there is a biofeedback loop based on pheromones produced by the bees and that the queen has a major role in signaling, through pheromones, the colony needs and wellbeing. That’s one method of directing the day-to-day activities but it doesn’t fully account for the flexibility observed in an organization comprised of tens of thousands of bees operating on a day to day basis and responding to changes that take place in the environment and within the hive.
Let’s consider defensive behavior within a colony. Beekeepers may miss or overlook a lot of bee behavior but they seldom fail to observe a colony that is more defensive than others. Often referred to as “hot,” these colonies stand out to the beekeeper and rightly so as it’s not fun working a colony of bees intend on displaying defensive or aggressive behavior. Once again though, we typically find that even in colonies that display higher than normal defensive behavior we don’t usually see thousands of bees dedicating themselves to delivering their sting, and their life, to the cause. Most often there is one or several ready to act on the behalf of defending the colony. Additionally a measured response is noted with the bees ratcheting up the response as alarm pheromone is spread and triggering more and more bees to act. It’s biology in action.
But it begins with a genetic predisposition to act, either sooner or later, to a stimulus. Some bees tend to jump on the bandwagon early in delivering their venom payload to the unsuspecting beekeeper, seemingly before a genuine need exists to become defensive. If this behavior is excessive beekeepers blame the queen. Of course it may, in fact, be the genetics passed on from one or more of the multiple drones she mated with on her nuptial flight. But regardless, she gets the blame and is sought out for execution for this undesirable trait. The beekeeper replaces her with a queen of better disposition and through normal attrition of her progeny, and the more gentle temperament of the new queen’s offspring, the colony takes on a different personality.
And where in the above is anything other than the title of this article, “Biology dictates behavior.” There are no feelings involved. There is no sorrow for the old queen within the hive. There is nothing but the now of queen-rightness, the sensed reality of queen-lessness, and then the resumption of being queen-right. It’s stimulus response. Should a beekeeper kill the old queen without a replacement the bees simply initiate the replacement process. No rituals exist, no beliefs cloud the process, no judgement, and no processing of the loss. The bees carry on and make plans for the colony’s survival without missing a beat. The hive may fail but they will, through their genetics and biology go forward pushed by urges provided by pheromones (or lack thereof) and their genetic predispositions. Biology dictates behavior.
The beekeeper may wish to mourn the loss of a valued queen but that mourning is for the beekeeper alone. And the new beekeeper does mourn – at least the ones I have met. I too found it difficult to kill the queen early in my beekeeping. The mourning, whether for a queen or a colony, takes it’s emotional toll on some. I’ve met those that said they got out of beekeeping after losing a couple hives because, “It was too hard losing the bees.”
New beekeepers resist what is while the bees do not. Truly to understand the bees we need to learn from them. To force our understanding of them into our mental framework removes the beekeeper from a true understanding. Understanding them through our rose colored glasses discredits the bees and moves us further from what they offer us.
15 Friday Jun 2018
Posted in beekeeping, ecology, honey bee biology
Robert Frost’s “A Prayer in Spring” reads in part: “And make us happy in the happy bees / The swarm dilating round the perfect trees / And make us happy in the darting bird / That suddenly above the bees is heard.”
We know honeybees produce the sticky, sweet nectar that we spread on toast or pour into recipes. More than 4,000 species of bees are native to North America.
Some consider bees pests. Some unwittingly kill the good bugs and bees while using broad methods to kill true pests. It’s important to know the difference and how and why to prevent extinction of the tiny things that matter.
Birds & Blooms magazine calls all bees unsung heroes that work hard to keep our food web functioning: “One in every three bites of food we eat is courtesy of pollination, and 85 percent of flowering plants and trees rely on pollinators for survival.”
Read full article here: Gardeners can ‘bee friendly’ with little effort — Day by Day
20 Tuesday Mar 2018
Posted in beekeeping, biology, honey bee biology
Planning a Garden With Bees in Mind –
The sweeping vista of flower filled meadows is a sight to behold yet aesthetics are a side effect to the flowers true intent. Flowers are not seeking human admiration but seeking the attention of pollinators. Through visual cues, the flowers are shouting… “Pick me! Pick me!” A closer look reveals that over evolutionary time flowers have gone to extreme lengths to get the attention of their preferred pollinators: whether insect, bird, bat or wind. Many factors come into play in regards to attracting any pollinator including colorful (or not colorful) petals and sepals, nectar guides, good or bad smells (or lack of) and overall shape and size. These features are often characterized as pollinator syndromes and understanding them can clue you in as to who might be most likely to visit a particular flower. If you are planning a garden that caters to our native bees it important to understand the type of flowers that they are most attracted to. Here are a few pointers to understanding the bees-eye view of the world.
Read full article at: A Bee’s Eye View of the Garden — Native Beeology
04 Sunday Mar 2018
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee behavior, honey bee biology
Source: Bee Behavior – Festooning
Bee behavior is my favorite part of beekeeping. It’s such a neat experience to watch and learn from the bees. It’s also interesting to have scientists explain (or in this case fail to explain) what is going on inside the mind of the bees.
Festoon is defined as “adorn (a place) with ribbons, garlands, or other decorations.”
In this case, that decor is the bees themselves, dangling like chain inside the hive. The video below shows a short clip of this activity.
At one point or was hypothesized that this pose promoted the production of wax from the wax glands – that has since been debunked.
It’s purpose is deemed unknown to scientists and although there are speculations. Bees tend to do this when building new comb in their hive – some people think it’s a type of acrobatic scaffolding, that they’re measuring to build the comb the proper size, or that they’re just beat friends clustered together. Either way, it’s pretty neat bee-havior.
Source: Bee Behavior – Festooning
02 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in beekeeping, swarms
Tags
The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.
~Jacques Yves Cousteau
Just at closing one day this week, a coworker at the Garden sent an email alerting everyone to a swarm of honeybees just outside the back gate. I was getting ready for programs the next day so wasn’t able to get down there for an hour or so, but finally grabbed the camera and went out to see if I could find it. I asked a couple of people that were standing there talking if they knew the location of the swarm, but they had not seen it. About then, I saw some flying insects, and quickly found a ball of bees about 12 feet up on a small tree trunk.
Read more here: Swarming Season — Roads End Naturalist
14 Thursday Dec 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology, honey bee genetics, management
Tags
African Bee, Apis mellifera, beekeeping, Buckfast bee, Cardovan bee, Carniolan, Caucasian Bee, choosing honey bee stock, German Black Bee, honey bee biology, Italian Bees, management, Minnesota Hygienic Bee, Russian bee, Survivor Stock Bees, Varroa sensitive hygienic (VSH) Bee
In my experience, selecting bee stock is the most important decision when starting in Bees. If you choose the wrong type, you can wind up with an aggressive bee or a disease ridden colony. Here is a quick-start guide to help aid you in your search for the perfect strain for you.
Apis Mellifera is the main scientific classification for European Honey Bees. There are several sub-species and hybrid species available. We will start our journey with the German Bee.
Read more of this at: Lesson 1: Selecting Honey Bee Stock by deltavalleyapiary
19 Thursday Oct 2017
Posted in beekeeping, biology, honey bee biology
Some social insects have proved to be adept invaders. Assisted by the international trade of the modern world, these species have spread far beyond the ocean and mountain barriers that once determined their distributions. In some cases, these range expansions have brought previously isolated sister species back into contact. What happens when such species try to mate?
We were interested in this question of interspecific mating in the case of two honey bees: the Western honey bee Apis mellifera and the Eastern honey (or hive) bee, Apis cerana. These species diverged from a common ancestor at least 6 million years ago, with A. mellifera native to Europe and Africa and A. cerana native to Asia and India. Western honey bees have of course since been transported, in association with agriculture, to every human-inhabited continent on earth. Eastern honey bees meanwhile, have been quietly expanding their range too in recent decades, invading both Papua New Guinea and Australia. Thus what were allopatric (or separate) ranges for millions of years have suddenly become partially sympatric.
Read entire article at: Sex between species: what happens when invasive honey bees meet the locals? — insectessociaux
12 Thursday Oct 2017
Posted in beekeeping, biology, honey bee biology
Honeybee larvae develop into workers but not queens, in part, because their diet of beebread/pollen is enriched in plant miRNAs. While miRNAs are generally negative regulators of gene expression in eukaryotes, they also negatively regulate larval development when honeybee larvae consume beebread/pollen and take up plant miRNAs. Xi Chen and Chen-Yu Zhang’s group in Nanjing University, report this finding on August 31, 2017 in PLOS Genetics.
How caste has formed in honeybees is an enduring puzzle. Although queens and workers are genetically identical, queens are reproductive and have a larger body size, develop faster and live longer than workers. Prevailing view is that differential larval feeding determines caste differentiation: royal jelly stimulates the differentiation of larvae into queen, whereas beebread and pollen consumed by the rest of the larvae lead to the worker bee fate. However, it is still not fully understood how alterations in diet modify so thoroughly the developmental trajectory of honeybees.
In previous studies, Chen-Yu Zhang’s group has reported a striking finding that plant miRNAs are ingested from plant diets and pass through the gastrointestinal tract, enter into the blood, accumulate in tissues and regulate endogenous gene expression in animals. Their findings suggest that ingested exogenous miRNAs can regulate endogenous gene expression and reshape animal phenotypes. Interestingly, since the components of beebread/pollen are mainly plant materials and royal jelly is a glandular secretion of nurse bees, the diets for worker- and queen-destined larvae are differentially derived from plant- and animal-sources. Therefore, Xi Chen, Chen-Yu Zhang and colleagues decide to investigate if miRNAs from different larval diets may have distinct impacts on honeybee development.
Here, they report that plant miRNAs are more enriched in beebread/pollen than in royal jelly. While plant miRNAs of beebread/pollen are fed to larvae, they cause developmental delay and reductions in body and ovary size in honeybees; in contrast, miRNAs in the royal jelly are not sufficient to reach a functional level, therefore queen-destined larvae evade this regulation. Mechanistic studies reveal that amTOR, a stimulatory gene in caste differentiation, is the direct target of miR162a. Interestingly, ingested plant miRNAs have a similar inhibitory effect on fruit fly development, even though fruit fly is not a social insect. In summary, this study uncovers a new mechanism that plant miRNAs in larval diet of worker bees delay caste differentiation and keep ovaries inactive, thereby inducing sterile worker bees.
The findings of this study are important for the following reasons:
Read full article at: Cross-kingdom regulation of honeybee caste development by dietary plant miRNAs — Save The Bees Concert
11 Wednesday Oct 2017
Posted in beekeeping, biology, honey bee behavior, honey bee biology, honey bees
A beehive is a busy place; many bees are working together to produce honey. Working so hard makes bees tired, and they need to rest. Lovely honeybee on a flower, pollen baskets loaded to the gunnels
Same as humans, bees get rest by sleeping. But, even though that seems logical, up until 1983 scientists didn’t know that bees sleep. The scientist who discovered that bees sleep is Walter Kaiser. He noticed that bees sleep by bringing their head to the floor and their antennae stop moving, some bees even fall sideways. The beehive seems like a hectic place, so it makes you wonder, where do bees sleep? But, before getting into that, we should explain why is sleep so important for bees. What happens if bees don’t sleep?
Read full article at: Where do bees sleep? — BEEKeeperTom’s Blog
08 Sunday Oct 2017
Posted in beekeeping, biology, honey bee biology
Larva floating in royal jelly By Waugsberg (Own work)
Today’s beekeeping vocabulary word is, “Royal Jelly.”
From Wikipedia:
Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion that is used in the nutrition of larvae, as well as adult queens.[1] It is secreted from the glands in the hypopharynx of nurse bees, and fed to all larvae in the colony, regardless of sex or caste.[2]
When worker bees decide to make a new queen, because the old one is either weakening or dead, they choose several small larvae and feed them with copious amounts of royal jelly in specially constructed queen cells. This type of feeding triggers the development of queen morphology, including the fully developed ovaries needed to lay eggs.[3]
Royal jelly has long been sold as both a dietary supplement and alternative medicine. Both the European Food Safety Authority and United States Food and Drug Administration have concluded that the current evidence does not support the claim of health benefits, and have actively discouraged the sale and consumption of the jelly. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has taken legal action against companies that have used unfounded claims of health benefits to market royal jelly products. There have also been documented cases of allergic reactions, namely hives, asthma, and anaphylaxis, due to consumption of royal jelly.
Source and to read more: Wikipedia
03 Tuesday Oct 2017
Posted in beekeeping, biology, honey bee biology
@AuburnAg‘s Bee Lab and biologists from @acadiauniversity recently published a paper in the journal Ecology & Evolution about the quality of food encountered by bees in agro-ecosystems.
Unsurprisingly, diet quality and pesticide exposure heavily depends on crop type!
Check out the full Open Access article here!
02 Monday Oct 2017
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping management, biology, honey bee biology, queens
The death of a monarch is never simple. There’s a vacuum of power that needs to be filled, an anxiety of influence that requires the successor to establish their power quickly, and a challenging period in which the memory of the deceased is negotiated and shaped (in some cases — hello, French Revolution! — this phase can last centuries). In a lovely essay at Nautilus, John Knight explores the war of succession that followed the death of the original queen in his Brooklyn-rooftop beehive. It’s a conflict not just between a wannabe-queen and her reluctant subjects, but also between human and insect, each following their own complex protocols for survival.
Read the full story here: Changing of the Guard, Bee-Style — Longreads
24 Sunday Sep 2017
Posted in beekeeping, biology, honey bee biology, queens
Tags
Queen bee with attendants by Pollinator at English Wikipedia
Today’s beekeeping vocabulary word is, “Queen.”
Queen honey bees are created when worker bees feed a single female larvae an exclusive diet of a food called “royal jelly“.[35][36]Queens are produced in oversized cells and develop in only 16 days; they differ in physiology, morphology, and behavior from worker bees. In addition to the greater size of the queen, she has a functional set of ovaries, and a spermatheca, which stores and maintains sperm after she has mated. Apis queens practice polyandry, with one female mating with multiple males. The highest documented mating frequency for an Apis queen is in Apis nigrocincta, where queens mate with an extremely high number of males with observed numbers of different matings ranging from 42 to 69 drones per queen.[39]The sting of queens is not barbed like a worker’s sting, and queens lack the glands that produce beeswax. Once mated, queens may lay up to 2,000 eggs per day.[36] They produce a variety of pheromones that regulate behavior of workers, and helps swarms track the queen’s location during the swarming.[36]
Source Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee#Queens
22 Tuesday Aug 2017
Seemingly indestructible Varroa mites have decimated honeybee populations and are a primary cause of colony collapse disorder, or CCD. Michigan State University scientists have found genetic holes in Varroa mites’ armor that could potentially reduce or eliminate the marauding invaders. Credit: Zachary HuangMichigan State University scientists have found genetic holes in the pests’ armor that…
Read full article here: Varroa mites—bees’ archenemies—have genetic holes in their armour — BEEKeeperTom’s Blog
20 Sunday Aug 2017
Having had great success with recipe Saturdays, I’ve decided to add Vocabulary Sundays. Short and sweet vocabulary building for beekeepers and those interested in learning more before taking the leap.
Today’s word is: Larva
Three days after the queen lays the egg, it hatches into a larva (the plural is larvae). Healthy larvae are snowy white and resemble small grubs curled up in the cells (see Figure 2-12). Tiny at first, the larvae grow quickly, shedding their skin five times.
These helpless little creatures have voracious appetites, consuming 1,300 meals a day. The nurse bees first feed the larvae royal jelly, and later they’re weaned to a mixture of honey and pollen (sometimes referred to as bee bread). Within just five days, they are 1,570 times larger than their original size. At this time the worker bees seal the larvae in the cell with a porous capping of tan beeswax.
Source and read more on the lifecycle of the honey bee at: Tracking the Life Cycle of the Honey Bee By Howland Blackiston
08 Tuesday Aug 2017
Posted in beekeeper education, beekeeping, education, honey bee biology
Perhaps you’ve seen the 2015 video from photographer Anand Varma (and shared again last week via National Geographic), a time-lapse of bee larvae hatching and growing in their cells: Watch: larvae grow into bees in this mesmerizing time-lapse https://t.co/JvRbXDMl2e — National Geographic (@NatGeo) July 19, 2017 What you can’t see in that video—in fact, what […]
Read more about this fascinating topic here: The Microscopic Spines That Many Bee Species Use to Hatch — Entomology Today
03 Monday Jul 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology, honey bee genetics
In my previous blog, I spoke about the Kinship theory. This theory states that the more relatedness there is between a group of individuals, the more likely to exhibit altruistic behavior the individuals are to be. Honeybee sisters share 75% of the same genetic material. This genetic similarity is what drives the honeybees to take […]
Read more here: Honey Bee Genetics — by deltavalleyapiary
15 Thursday Jun 2017
Posted in beekeeping, feeding bees, honey bee biology
Amino Acids are building blocks of proteins. All amino acids are comprised of 4 groups. The first three are common in all amino acids. They are: Alpha Carbon (C-H) Amine Group (N-H-H) Carboxyl Group (O-C-OH) The last is the R Group. The R Groups are what defines the individual amino acids. Some are polar […]
To read more visit: Amino Acids —
14 Wednesday Jun 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology
Bees have amazing vision that is very different from ours – here’s how they work!
Read more at: 5 Eyes – A Study — Prime Bees – College Station Bee
07 Sunday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping history, honey bee behavior, honey bee biology, season, seasons, swarms
A Facebook friend’s post this week told how a large honeybee swarm had taken up residence in an empty hive on his property. All on its own! He’d left the hive out all winter, “seasoning it with lemon grass every month,” (rubbing lemon grass into the wood), and the day before saw a scout bee […]
Continued here: In the Spring a Not-So-Young Woman’s Fancy Lightly Turns to Thoughts of Bees — florasforum
19 Wednesday Apr 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology, varroa, varroa mites
By Meredith Swett Walker Imagine a parasite about the size of a grapefruit, and it’s latched onto your back where you just can’t reach it. Now imagine that parasite is sucking your blood and that its cronies are reproducing rapidly in your home and attacking your family. This horrifying scenario is essentially what the mite […]
via Mite-Resistant Russian Honey Bees Might Not Prevent Varroa Infestations — Entomology Today
10 Monday Apr 2017
Posted in beekeeping, education, honey bee biology
By Constance Lin Varroa mites, pathogens, or climate change? What exactly causes the honey bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)? Honey bees (Apis mellifera) offer us critical pollination services. In the United Kingdom, for instance, data from the British Beekeepers Association estimates that approximately one-third of the nation’s food supply is dependent on pollination, and more […]
via A Neuroscientist’s Approach to Entomology — Entomology Today
28 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee behavior, honey bee biology, management, queens
It’s bee season again! As your going through your hives, you may notice they are putting on queen cells. There are three types of cells you will see: Swarm Cells, Superscedure Cells, or Emergency Cells.
The swarm cell is typically the one you will see. This type cell is an indicator that your hive is preparing to swarm. The beehive is a super organism, and bees are eusocial. This means that each individual bee can not survive on its own for very long. Superorganisms reproduce in different ways. Honey Bees do this by swarming. They will raise a new queen, and after that queen hatches, the old queen and a number of the worker bees will leave the current hive in search of a new home. Swarm cells are typically located on the bottom of frames or around the edges. There can be several in a hive at one time.
Supersedure cells are different. These are made to replace an existing queen. Sometimes the hive views the queen as inferior. There are many reasons for this. I have had hives do it when I put in marked or clipped queens. Sometimes they do it when the think she is not laying enough brood, or is not mated properly. These cells can be anywhere on the face of the frame. Typically there are 1-3 at a time. There has been some debate over whether the workers put the eggs in, or if the current queen lays in the cell cup.
Emergency cells are easy to spot. They are made in the absence of a queen. The worker bees realize there is no queen within an hour. They respond by selecting a couple of eggs that are the correct age. The reform the wax around that egg into a queen cell. These cells can be anywhere on the frame, and are usually somewhat recessed into the frame. There is some debate over the quality of these queens. However, I have had some good success with emergency queens. I raise some of my own queens, and when the season is over I purchase them. However, sometimes a quality queen from a reputable source is not available. So I let thousands of years of evolution do what it has learned to do.
Recognizing what type of queen cells are in your hive can help you to make decisions about your hive. Sometimes it can mean the difference in whether or not you loose the hive. If you are new to beekeeping, and are unsure, ask your mentor, or take a picture and send it to another beekeeper to find out what’s going on.
Remember, swarm cells are a great time to make increase. If you have a good supply of brood, honey, pollen, and bees you can make at least one split with a swarm cell.
Source: Types of Queen cells
08 Wednesday Mar 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology, inspections, management, queens
For a beekeeper, queen cells can symbolize success and failure simultaneously. Personally, it’s one of my favorite things to find during a hive inspection. Something about opening up the hive and seeing multiple, healthy queen cells reminds me that our bees will, more often than not, do just fine without us.
There are three different “types” of queen cells –
Using Queen Cells to start a new colony can be a great way to utilize your apiary’s natural resources. You can carefully remove select queen cells and place them in the hive that needs a queen. This is best done on day 14 or 15.
One of the best resources for queen rearing that we’ve found online came from Glenn Apiaries – he’s got the best and most simplistic diagram so we’ve included that and the explanation he has along with it below:
Day 1 – Give breeder hive an empty dark brood comb to lay eggs in.
Day 4 – Transfer (graft) larva into artificial queen cell cups, from the breeder comb. Place the frame into a strong colony (cell builder) made queenless the day before.
Day 14 – Remove completed cells from cell builder. Leave one cell behind to replace the queen. Keep queen cells warm (80-94 F) until they are placed in queenless hives (mating nucs).
Day 22 – Virgin queens are ready to mate. They require nice weather (69 F), and an abundance of drones to mate with. A few colonies within a mile are adequate for providing drones for mating.
Day 27 – If queens mate without weather delay, they should now be laying eggs.
Weather delays in mating will add days to the process, after 3 weeks delay, virgin queens may start to lay unfertilized eggs.
Time your activities so that warm temperatures and drones are available when the queens are ready to mate.
Source: Queen Cells
06 Monday Mar 2017
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping equipment, equipment, honey bee biology, management
Good weather broke out, finally, in July. This is news at Brookfield Farm Bees And Honey here in Maple Falls Washington. The month of June gave us 5 days of sun, 5 days of overcast, and all the rest was rain. So when the sun started shining on July 4 (after 2 inches of rain on July 3) it was actually a cause for celebration – and the sign that I could return to painting bee boxes, tops, and bottom screens.
But that’s a bit dull to read about. Some musings, and studies, on what colors bee see would be a bit more interesting.
Honeybees Do Not See The Same Colors We Do
Bees get to see in the ultraviolet world. We can use photographic techniques to mimic that world, but all resulting colors are approximations of what a bee MIGHT see. (More photos by scientist-cameraman Bjorn Roslett can be found at his web site NaturFotograf.com (click on Infrared in the left side menu)
We can never see colors the way bees see them.
Bear in mind that not all the studies agree on the exact colors or preferences bees see, but they all agree red is black
Some studies propose that honeybees see orange, yellow, and green as one color (green in that group surprised me). Blue, violet and purple are seen as a second color.
Ultraviolet being their third color.
Honeybees Do Not See Red
It’s not that they don’t get angry (as in “to see red”), but honeybees see the color red as black.
Honeybees Versus Humans : A Breakdown
(Courtesy of West Mountain Apiary, where a very good write-up about color can be found)
| Humans | Honeybees |
| Red | Black |
| Yellow | Yellow-Green |
| Orange | Yellow – Green (darker perhaps than yellow) |
| Green | Green |
| Blue | Blue plus Ultraviolet blue |
| Violet | Blue plus Ultraviolet |
| Purple | Blue |
| White | Blue-Green |
| Black | Black |
Their Favorite Colors?
Their favorites are said by some to be: purple, then violet, then blue (which all look different to them). I could not find the study that came to this conclusion, but I like it, as my favorite colors are purple, violet, and then blue.
How Do We Know All This?
We don’t know it all; studies vary. However:
Bee’s color sense was partially demonstrated by Karl von Frisch. In 1915, he showed that bees could discern green, yellow, orange, blue, violet, and purple. He did this by using colored cards and bee feed. He imprinted the bees with the idea that feed could be found on a blue card, but not the other colors. When he removed the feed, the bees still went to the blue card. He then tried this with green, yellow, orange, violet, purple and red. The only color it did NOT work with was red.
In 1927, Professor A. Kuhn took the study of honeybees’ color sense further. He tested bees using the visible spectrum for humans, but also used longer and shorter wavelengths : the ultraviolet and infrared. The infrared was black to the bees, but ultraviolet was a color.
You CAN Try This At Home
A very nice PowerPoint presentation at this Link from the University of Nebraska, will walk you though an experiment on which colors in our visible spectrum honeybees can see. Sorry, there’s no test for ultraviolet.
Back To Painting Bee Gear
As you can see over time I have used purple (ok blue to them, but I like purple), yellow, orange, blue and green. It turns out this is helpful to the bees as it distinguishes their hive from the others in the yard. I did it because I thought the bee yards looked prettier with all the colors and red has never been a particular favorite of mine.
My most current bee hive top color choices of mariposa lily orange and forest green (the husband says it’s British Racing Green) came from long, diligent thought (kind of). The green was in the hayloft, left over painting trim on my house. The orange was last year’s color, and I had a bit left. That paint ran out before I was done with the tops and the Stockton’s Paints, my favorite paint store is an hours drive away (one way).
That’s my one tip on painting: if you are going to take the time to paint your bee gear, use good quality paint. Primer and two coats of color, just like a house. I’ve bee gear that I painted over a decade ago and it is still just fine, even in our 8 month rains.
That’s the news from Brookfield Farm Bees And Honey in Maple Falls, Washington. It’s still bright and sunny, so I’m back to painting bee boxes…
What colors have you chosen for your hives? Why did you make those choices? I think the colors in a bee yard are one of the fun parts of beekeeping.
21 Tuesday Feb 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology, pests
Tags
The science and politics of saving America’s bees gets messy. And the bees continue to die.
Source: Buzzkill: Will America’s Bees Survive? | DiscoverMagazine.com
11 Saturday Feb 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology
A few months ago I wrote about problems encountered with laying workers, and ways to overcome those problems. Laying workers occur when a colony lacks sufficient open brood pheromone to suppress egg laying by the workers. One solution, though not one I favour, is to repeatedly add frames of open brood to suppress egg laying and then either add a queen, or allow the colony to raise their own.
The article was titled ‘drone laying workers’ and, in the comments, Tim Foden correctly pointed out that the prefix ‘drone’ was probably superfluous. Since the workers were unmated they would only be able to lay haploid eggs which would inevitably develop into drones.
Without intervention a laying worker colony is doomed. However, drones from a laying worker colony are fertile. Therefore, from an evolutionary perspective you could consider the rearing of drones is a last-gasp effort to pass on some of the genes to successive generations.
The Cape honey bee (Apis mellifera capensis) is a subspecies usually restricted to the Western Cape region of South Africa. Laying workers of Cape honey bees can lay eggs that develop into workers (or queens). Since these ‘mother’ workers are unmated and their resulting progeny workers are diploid, this takes some genetic trickery. This mechanism is snappily titled thelytokous parthenogenesis.
Parthenogenesis is most simply defined as reproduction without fertilisation. Thelytoky is derived from the Greek thelos, meaning ‘female’, and tokos, meaning ‘birth’. The next time you’re asked to define thelytokous parthenogenesis in the pub quiz your team will have the edge – it means giving birth to females without reproduction. The female progeny capensis workers produce can be reared as workers – essentially clones of their mothers – or, with a change in diet for the early larvae, queens.
The genetic trickery involves the haploid pronucleus of the egg fusing with one of the polar bodies that are generated during oogenesis (egg production). Polar bodies are small haploid cells that bud off during ovum development. Fusion of the two haploid cells creates a diploid, which can go on to become a female bee.
Quite the opposite. You’d think that by encouraging this type of activity in Cape honey bees your laying worker problems would be a thing of the past. In fact, your problems become a thing of the future. Laying workers of capensis are socially parasitic. They invade – through drifting for example – unrelated neighbouring colonies, such as those of Apis mellifera scutellata (another subspecies, the African honey bee). Once there, the eggs they lay are reared by the new colony, but the resulting workers do not contribute to foraging or other hive activities. Instead they also become laying workers (worker laying workers that is 
), eventually leading to the collapse of the host colony.
Capensis has been spread widely from its original range through migratory beekeeping, leading to large-scale colony losses and significant economic impact to the beekeeping industry in regions of South Africa distant from the Western Cape. Capensis also hybridises with scutellata in areas where their ranges overlap.
Honey bees are social insects. Cape honey bees, for all their unsociable parasitic activities are also social. However, their unsociable activities aren’t restricted to parasitism. They also exhibit a trait called worker policing. A Cape honey bee colony might contain several laying workers. The workers they rear are able to discriminate between eggs laid by their ‘mother’ and those laid by her half-sisters – effectively their aunts – in the same hive. Once they detect a foreign egg, they either eject it or eat it.
This worker policing can lead to sub-division of the hive, with territories being established in separate parts of the hive, each containing genetically clonal populations of laying workers. However, unless the colony rears a new queen its long-term prospects are very limited. The prodigious egg-laying ability of a queen far outstrips that of even multiple laying workers, meaning the colony – and all its sub-divisions – will eventually dwindle and be lost.
Worker policing is an interesting phenomenon and has some relevance to queen rearing and larval selection which I’ll address later in the season.
Laying workers colonies in the UK characteristically rear large numbers of drones. This is why Tim Foden correctly commented that the prefix ‘drone’ is superfluous. However, to be absolutely pedantic it is needed. This is because, irrespective of the strain of bee, up to 1% of eggs laid by laying workers are diploid. All bees exhibit thelytokous parthenogenesis but it’s only in capensis the trait is common.
Why is it only in capensis that this trait is common? It’s been suggested the selection for thelytokous parthenogenesis is due to the strong winds that occur in the southern region of South Africa in which capensis is the native honey bee. As a consequence of this, queens are often lost on mating flights, rendering the colony queenless. Without “worker laying workers” – or, more correctly, diploid laying workers from which new queens can be raised – colonies would be doomed.
Capensis queen mating flights have been documented at wind speeds in excess of 30 mph … another adaptation to the climate of the region. In contrast, scutellata queens, from more northerly regions in South Africa won’t go on mating flights if the wind speed exceeds ~12 mph.
Cape honey bees are wonderfully well adapted to the Western Cape Fynbos region of South Africa. They are the strain beekeepers choose to use for honey production and pollination in an area with huge biodiversity and ~6000 endemic plant species. In trials using alfalfa, capensis-pollinated plants set twice as much seed as those pollinated by scutellata. This suggests they are particularly thorough plant ‘visitors’, a conclusion supported by their ability to collect pollen which was also twice that of scutellata. They have additional unique characteristics. In a publication pre-dating the introduction of Varroa to South Africa, Hepburn and Guillarmod (PDF) describe how readily capensis absconds in summer and migrates in winter, both characteristics the reflect adaptation to the climate and the regular wildfires in the region, and not seen in other strains of bees.
Finally, in much the same way that moving capensis colonies elsewhere has caused problems, the introduction of American foulbrood to the region in 2008 (again through beekeeper activity) has resulted in the loss of 40% of Cape honey bees.
06 Monday Feb 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology, management, pests, varroa, varroa mites
Source: Our Hives They Are a-Changin’ by Bees with eeb
Aside from a single white morning this winter, we have had very little snow in Virginia. The weather is unusually warm and the bees seem to get a flying day once a week or so. I suspect the insect population will be robust this year, from small hive beetles to other assorted insects, due to our lack of cold weather. Soon the bees will start ramping up for spring, and I have been keeping an eye on the mite populations in Mars and Jupiter.
I have screened bottom boards on Mars and Jupiter and count the mites every few days to determine the average daily mite drop. It is nice to track this number through the winter and have a sense of overall hive infestation. As you can see, the mites were high in Mars and had starting creeping up in Jupiter in mid-November. I did an oxalic acid dribble (OAD) on Nov 28 to knock them back. Oxalic acid is an organic compound found in rhubarb, spinach, and a number of other plants. Varroa mites react poorly to it, while the bees have a natural tolerance. I treated every hive in the apiary, which is recommended since the bees (and mites) will drift from hive to hive.
Right now the mite counts are low, around 1 to 2 mites per day. Soon, as the hives start to raise new workers, the mites will increase. Last year the uptick started in mid-February, so we’ll see when it starts changing this year.
Speaking of our most dreaded pest, it appears that nationwide mites are starting to show some resistance to the most common synthetic pesticide, amitraz. I wouldn’t touch the stuff, but many commercial beekeepers use it. This could create some serious trouble for these outfits as well as crops such as almonds that heavily depend on bee pollination. The situation prompted Randy Oliver at Scientific Beekeeping to create a series of articles calling for a new focus on developing mite-resistant honey bees. Visit his articles by publication date page to see the series so far: part 1 through part 4 as of this posting.
The articles provide an in-depth look at why varroa mites are a problem and what we should do about it. Varroa is a vehicle for deformed wing virus (DMV) and other viruses, and as the mite population increases it spreads DMV and other ills among the bees. Colonies will typically collapse from these viruses before the mites become a serious threat.
The most interesting section for me is part 3, where Randy discusses why varroa mites and DMV are getting progressively more virulent. Since commercial beekeepers tend to use bees bred mainly for growth and honey production, the resistance to varroa and DMV in these bees is rather low. This coupled with the fact that hives are kept close to each other encourages more dangerous forms of the virus to develop. If a hive collapses quickly, other bees will rob it out and bring the mites and viruses back to their hives.
If beekeepers insisted on more mite-resistant stock, the virus would spread less quickly. Hive collapses would be more likely to occur during winter, rather than before it. Virus and mite transmission would then more frequently occur in swarms and splits, which would favor less virulent strains of the virus.
Randy does a better job explaining the science (which I may not have completely correct), the point is that the majority of beekeepers would need to insist on mite-resistant stock. In fact, according to Randy, that is exactly what happened in South Africa. The beekeepers there did not have the resources to purchase miticides when varroa arrived. After devastating losses for a few years, the bees recovered and now beekeepers in South Africa do not generally worry about varroa mites. We are unlikely to eliminate the mites, we need to evolve into a more stable relationship between honey bees and mites.
It is a great series, and I look forward to future installments. Check it out.
This 1964 song by Bob Dylan was the title track on the album of the same name. Dylan wrote the song to capture the feeling of change in the 60’s, and numerous bands have performed the song as a cover since then. In 1984, Steve Jobs recited the second verse of the song during the Apple shareholders meeting, where he famously unveiled the Macintosh computer.
For this post, the times are changing for me in a number of ways. Aside from the seasonal change of the bees as we move from winter to spring, I just left my prior job this past week after over five years with the company. My new position starts on Monday, February 6, so cross your fingers for me.
We can also hope that the sense of change will take hold in the beekeeping world. It is difficult for any one beekeeper, especially a hobby beekeeper, to make an impact on the genetics of North American honey bees. We need the major queen breeders to start selecting for mite resistance, something they tend not to do today. So keep your eyes open and don’t speak too soon, cause the times they are a-changing.
May you prosper and find honey.
Source: Our Hives They Are a-Changin’ by Bees with eeb
25 Wednesday Jan 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology, queens
School kids need a new lesson about royal jelly.
The kids in the Grade 5 classroom knew all about royal jelly.
“The bees feed it to their babies and they turn into queens.”
And so it is. We think. Royal jelly – countless journal articles (and Wikipedia) tell us – stimulates the latent she-ness in a female larva. It removes her from a future life of weary drudgery as a worker destined to live six short weeks, then die wedged between some dusty stigma and anther. Royal jelly gives the lucky larva a future life as a queen employed in monotonous drudgery as an egg-laying machine destined to deposit progeny for three years in a crowded dark den, then die in a palace coup. There’s not much of an advantage in the queen’s life. But it’s longer. And there must be a crown or something that comes with the job.
View original post 608 more words
21 Saturday Jan 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology
For decades, scientists thought an excess of something special, a substance called royal jelly, elevated a regular honey bee larva to a queen. New research suggests we had it backward: It’s what future queens aren’t fed that matters.
Royal jelly, which also is called “bee milk,” looks like white snot. More than half of it is water, the rest is a combination of proteins and sugars. Special glands in the heads of worker bees secrete the stuff, which gets fed to babies.
A developing queen bee is fed royal jelly exclusively—not pollen and honey like her proletarian sisters. Some describe withholding royal jelly from worker bees as nutritional castration. These bees don’t get the special Food of the Gods. Or, perhaps, food of genetic monarchies. And so, we thought, their ovaries shrivel, and they don’t become a queen. Read more here.
Source: Gwen Pearson at www.wired.com
19 Monday Dec 2016
Posted in beekeeping, honey bee biology
This gallery contains 3 photos.
Originally posted on Adventuresinbeeland's Blog:
If you’ve ever read Roald Dahl’s short stories for adults, you’ll know they’re very different in tone…
Beekeeping365 