Quality honey and some stories behind it
http://westernfarmpress.com/tree-nuts/mechanical-pollination-rarely-supplements-bee-pollination
Elizabeth Fichtner, a University of California farm advisor in Tulare County, wrote a research paper that opens with the provocative question, “Can Mechanically-Applied Pollen Either Supplement Bees or Ensure an Almond Crop in the Event of Bee Inefficacy or Unavailability? The answer?”
The answer seems to be simply “No.”
If you make a winter honeysuckle (Lonicera x purpusii) happy, it dusts itself in creamy-white, highly fragrant flowers. Like many winter-flowering species, its scent is so strong that it carries for some distance – I’ve often found myself, nose up in …
Steven Falk’s Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland has been written for both bee novices and expert recorders and researchers and also includes photography and bee artwork by Richard Lewington. Steven, who has worked as ecology officer …and more »
http://missapismellifera.com/2015/12/13/a-beekeepers-notes-for-november
In November the leaves fall from the trees and the drones fall from the hive. The trees are preparing to rest for winter as their leaves drop to the ground, and the bees are getting ready to close the hive factory as the drones are thrown outdoors. Autumn and winter are good times of the year for consolidation. The beekeeper can take stock of the hives and colonies, clear up apiaries, clean up equipment, disturb a few spiders, and plan ahead for the next season. The ebb and flow of the seasons are not constant, however, and the points on the beekeeping calendar can move each year. The autumn syrup may be poured a month earlier in August for late summer rains. The mouseguard might be pinned to the entrance a month later in November for the workers still bringing home baskets of pollen. Wasps may be seen gliding around the creepers beside the hive, and drones found sitting on the roof as late as December. This sometimes makes the question “What does a beekeeper do in winter?” a difficult one to answer. This is because a beekeepers’ checklist is only a guide to the beekeeping year and not a set of rules. My step-nephew Sam films what beekeepers do in winter at the apiary, while Andy Pedley tells a visitor what the bees do in winter. Emily put on the mouseguards at the hive entrances when she noticed that fewer bees were carrying home pollen. The hives were wrapped around in chicken wire as a precaution against woodpeckers watching from the bare branches overhead. We tackled the task of removing the syrup from Peppermint’s hive and replacing the feed with fondant, despite a crowd of protesting workers, because the days had become cold and short. Winter also comes to London despite talk about our city’s microclimate and of bees making queens to swarm on a warm October’s day, which, of course, might happen. But if it’s true the season can sometimes be mild, overall there are fewer days when either bees or beekeepers feel like going outside. On those days both bees and humans are glad of a well-stocked cupboard, an insulated roof, and secured entrance. Every autumn and winter, Emily and I will ask each other “Shall I bring more syrup?”, “Have you got pins for the mouseguard?”, and “Do you think the fondant can go on?”, and each week our plans change as frequently as the weather. We both know that between the two of us the bees will be ready for winter as and when they need to be. We both watch the days and the bees, and tick off items from our checklist when it feels right to do so. A beekeeper’s notes for November often turn to thoughts of what we have and haven’t done, none of which matters now, and then to dreams of the bees returning in spring.
— gReader
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/other-resources-on-varroa-management/
There are a number of other resources for reliable information on varroa management, some of which I’ll include links for: The Honey Bee Health Coalition released this summary of mite management tools in 2015. Free download at Tools for Varroa Management..
I tried to overwinter a mating nuc this year for the first time. I put it inside a full size hive and padded with hessian sacking. But then the winter was too warm and they starved – too much flying, too little forage. They had filled the feed section with brace comb in autumn so it looked like they had plenty and I could not put more in for fear of drowning / burying bees on that comb.
Anyway, at the weekend I started the cleaning up task, and was quite sad to find the queen sat almost completely alone on a mini frame 🙁
http://adventuresinbeeland.com/2015/12/05/royal-jelly-a-story-by-roald-dahl
If you’ve ever read Roald Dahl’s short stories for adults, you’ll know they’re very different in tone to his more famous children’s books. My mum had both his Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch collections and I re-read them quite a few times as a child, including the story Royal Jelly. This week I was in the Barbican Library near my work and stopped to check out the returned shelves. One of the books there happened to be Kiss Kiss, so I got it out specially to read Royal Jelly again. As a child my knowledge of bees was basic, so the story had a new fascination now that I’m a beekeeper. The plot involves a married couple who have just had a long-awaited child. The mother, Mabel Taylor, is “half dead with exhaustion”, out of her mind with worry because the baby girl will hardly take any milk. This baby is eating so little that at six weeks old she weighs two pounds less than she did at birth. Then an idea comes to Mabel’s husband, Albert. He is a professional beekeeper and whilst reading his beekeeping magazine comes across an article on royal jelly. The article details the wonderful properties of royal jelly, including the tremendous weight gain of a honey bee larva fed on it. ‘Aha’ thinks Albert – and proceeds to add royal jelly to his little girl’s feed. The strategy works, with the baby greedily lapping up this new formula and crying for more – but this new enriched milk also has some unexpected side-effects. Queen larva floating in royal jelly Uncapped queen cell Swarm season Reading the story now, I was surprised by how detailed and accurate Dahl’s descriptions of bee biology and beekeeping generally were. He must have done a fair amount of research to write the story. For instance, take the articles listed in the contents page from his bee journal: Among the Bees in May; Honey Cookery; Experience in the Control of Nosema; The Latest on Royal Jelly; This Week in the Apiary; The Healing Power of Propolis. The story was first published in 1959 and yet these could be articles from a current journal. His descriptions of royal jelly were accurate according to scientific knowledge at the time. For instance, Albert Taylor explains to his wife that it “can transform a plain dull-looking little worker bee with practically no sex organs at all into a great big beautiful fertile queen”. Worker larvae receive pure royal jelly for only the first three days of their lives, after which they are fed a mixture of royal jelly, honey and pollen. In contrast a larva chosen to become a queen receives only an abundance of royal jelly throughout her larval life, so much so that she is literally floating in it. For years it has indeed been accepted opinion that royal jelly is the miracle food which has the ability to turn an ordinary female larva, laid from an identical egg to her sisters, into a queen. However, some new research published in August 2015 suggests that what really matters is what larvae chosen to become queens aren’t fed – the pollen and honey their ordinary worker sisters get. In 2008, Australian scientist Dr. Ryszard Maleszka managed to create queens in his lab without feeding them any royal jelly (by silencing a set of genes). One theory is that receiving no pollen provides chemical protection for the queen’s ovaries, as she is sheltered from the potential toxic or metabolic effects of plant chemicals. All this is a rather round-about way of recommending this story to you and also mentioning that in April 2016 I’m expecting a little drone – just in time for swarm season. Having read the story, I will not be feeding him any royal jelly! References: A dietary phytochemical alters caste-associated gene expression in honey bees (Wenfu Mao, Mary A. Schuler and May R. Berenbaum, Science Advances, 28 Aug 2015: Vol. 1, no. 7) – the scientific paper Royal jelly isn’t what makes a queen bee a queen bee (Gwen Pearson, Wired.com, September 2015) – the reader-friendly version
— gReader
http://phys.org/news/2015-12-long-range-micro-backpacks-bees-vital.html
The partner organisation is The Apiary Enterprise Limited, who are keen to fund research into honey-bee tracking in both temperate and tropical environments to identify the foraging range of the bee under differing climatic and environmental conditions.Bangor University’s bee ‘backpacks’ could give decline clues…
http://phys.org/news/2015-12-long-range-micro-backpacks-bees-vital.html
The partner organisation is The Apiary Enterprise Limited, who are keen to fund research into honey-bee tracking in both temperate and tropical environments to identify the foraging range of the bee under differing climatic and environmental conditions.Bangor University’s bee ‘backpacks’ could give decline clues…
http://deltafarmpress.com/soybeans/herbicides-not-insecticides-biggest-threat-bees-beekeeper-says
Land is purple with henbit blooming. By the end of March, it’s all gone because farmers burned it down with chemicals to try to kill everything in the field before they plant,” says Johnny Thompson, vice president of the Mississippi Beekeeping …Herbicides, not insecticides are biggest threat to bees …