“BEE CLUB” NOVEL WINS GOLD MEDAL AT APIMONDIA

Posted December 1, 2025

“BEE CLUB” NOVEL WINS GOLD MEDAL AT APIMONDIA

“Bee Club,” a novel by bee journalist Mea McNeil, has been awarded a gold medal at the 2025 Apimondia World Beekeeping Awards. The presentation ceremony was a highlight of the Apimondia International Apicultural Congress in Copenhagen. Entries came from countries around the globe, celebrating “innovators, artisans, and visionaries shaping the world of beekeeping.” Among 20 …

Posted December 1, 2025

Contents-December 2025

THE CLASSROOM Jamie Ellis – 1303 BEEKEEPING BASICS Just Keeping Your Bees Alive? Tina Sebestyen – 1309 Apimondia 2025 Kris Fricke – 1315 Organic Colony Management … Managing Non-varroa Pests and Pathogens in Your Organic Apiary Laura C. McHenry, Margarita M. López-Uribe, Robyn M. Underwood – 1321 Oxalic Acid Titration Randy Oliver – 1327 THE …

Volume 165 No. 12 December 2025 Cover American Bee Journal. Cover features a queen bee surrounded by worker bees. Cover Callouts: Managing pests and pathogens organically - 1321 Stem cells, weeds, and bees - 1337 Lower-energy beekeeping-1343

Posted December 1, 2025

ABJ DECEMBER 2025 COVER

On the 12th day of the Christmas: A royal retinue! Jennifer Rasico of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, just took “a quick photo” for her bee-curious neighbors, and accidentally captured this classic queen retinue. They’re not always this cooperative, but it sure makes Her Majesty easy to find!

Posted November 3, 2025

The Classroom – November 2025

Q: Spotted Lanternflies Recently spotted lanternflies have started to make a frequent appearance where I live in Southwestern Virginia. I have read that they have been spreading in the U.S. for the past decade, but I am just now hearing about them. A lot of people I know are worried about what their impact could …

Posted November 3, 2025

Screened Bottom Boards, Honey Bees, and Mites

The cost of a screened bottom board is not that different from that of an assembled and painted solid one, though the Ultimate Screened Bottom Board1 (well worth the money) is a bit more, so the real question is, which one is better for my bees, and will it help keep mite numbers low? We …

Posted November 3, 2025

Tripping Through the Sunflowers: How I flip-flopped on a research paper

Back in 2023, a paper appeared in the Journal of Economic Entomology about how honey bee colonies exposed to sunflower pollen had fewer varroa mites than colonies not exposed to sunflowers.1 The story got a truckload of press, and beekeepers all over North America were told that scattering a few sunflower seeds around their apiaries …

Posted November 3, 2025

The Ageless Alley Queen and Drone Trap

I want to tell you a bee swarm story I have a swarm story that I have relived many times, but it requires some painful background. I want to tell you the tale here. My wife went through a debilitating illness for a bit more than three years. I readily devoted most of my time …

Posted November 3, 2025

A Small Colony of Queenless Bees: A Closer Look

This article shows some of my work with bees from the apiary to the bee house. Here I am handling bees that ordinarily would be merely united with another colony under normal beekeeping practices. Here, the reader can see how I handle bees when I want to study other options. During the spring of 2025, …

Posted November 3, 2025

Letters to the Editor – November 2025

Comment on USDA Reorganization The proposed closing of BARC [The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center], the decentralization and dismantling of USDA will be devastating to agriculture, threatens our food supply, the $15 billion value of crops dependent upon honey bee pollination. This highly collaborative research team, with its global reach addresses the multifaceted, complex threats and …

Posted November 3, 2025

USING RESEARCH TO CHANGE REGULATION: HONEY BEE RESEARCH IMPACTS EPA LABELING

Seeing impacts from your research can be a long, laborious and tedious process. But testing a hypothesis and discovering a fact that ends up impacting everyday people — that’s a crowning achievement for a scientist. University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Assistant professor Cameron Jack was able to do just that. After …

“BEE CLUB” NOVEL WINS GOLD MEDAL AT APIMONDIA

Posted December 1, 2025