The season has been one of extremes. Earlier spring heavy rains in the Southeast and Southwest were followed by torrential rains and disastrous flooding in the Mideastern states, especially in West Virginia. Later in the spring and early summer extreme heat gripped much of the South, especially the Southwest and Southern California. Heat advisories in …
Read MoreThe 7th annual fall meeting of the Illinois Queen Initiative (IQI) will be held Saturday, October 29, 2016 from 9 am to 4 pm at the Asmark Institute Agricenter, 14171 Carole Drive, Bloomington, Illinois; Doors open at 8:30. The IQI is an organization of volunteers dedicated to educating Illinois beekeepers on rearing queens, with an …
Read MoreQ Big swarm, now what? I collected a very large swarm yesterday. It filled 2.5 deep boxes. I just happened to have 3 boxes that had all drawn comb. I did replace 5 frames with new foundation to keep them busy. My questions are: With such a large swarm, and now the queen will start …
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Genes related to hormone signaling and sex cell division let worker bees reproduce asexually PLOS Parasitic Cape honey bees exploit and overrun other honey bee colonies by triggering changes that let worker bees reproduce. This social parasitism is enabled by differences in several gene regions, including some related to hormone signaling and chromosomal segregation, report …
Read MorePurdue University WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A Purdue University study shows that honey bees collect the vast majority of their pollen from plants other than crops, even in areas dominated by corn and soybeans, and that pollen is consistently contaminated with a host of agricultural and urban pesticides throughout the growing season. Christian Krupke, professor …
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There have been a few inquiries regarding two-queen systems since my last article. There are several methods of making a two-queen colony. Some others may be more productive than the horizontal method to which I am committed. Most two-queen systems have extracted honey production as a goal. Double-queen systems date back many years. Farrar reported …
Read MoreAs a follow-up to my last article, I will continue to discuss the major stressors of honey bee colonies. I covered the main biotic stressors (pest, pathogen, predator, parasite) of honey bee colonies in my July article. Now, I will discuss the other major stressors of honey bee colonies: managed-related stressors, nutrition, queen-related stressors, and …
Read MoreIt’s hard to write a biology of the honey bee and not pause to linger over the waggle dance – one of the most celebrated examples of animal communication and a window into all sorts of questions about the honey bee’s evolution and modern functioning as a superorganism. Indeed, the waggle dance figures prominently in …
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Marking a queen with a dot of paint on her thorax is important in several ways. Queen marking makes the queen easier to find in a colony, particularly in a large populous colony, and sometimes when a queen hides (see Figure 1). The color code indicates the birth year of the queen (see below). When …
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California buckwheat, Eastern Mojave buckwheat, Wild buckwheat, Flat-top, Flat-top wild buckwheat Scientific name: Eriogonum fasciculatum. (Family Polygonaceae) To this writer, trained as an entomologist, the genus Eriogonum appears to be a large and complex genus. In the Flora of North America[9] (1991), J.L. Reveal lists 224 American species, many having several varieties. The 2012 Jepson …
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