Bee Disease Reduced by Nature’s ‘Medicine Cabinet,’ Dartmouth-led Study Finds

Posted April 1, 2015

Bee Disease Reduced by Nature’s ‘Medicine Cabinet,’ Dartmouth-led Study Finds

HANOVER, N.H. – Nicotine isn’t healthy for people, but such naturally occurring chemicals found in flowers of tobacco and other plants could be just the right prescription for ailing bees, according to a Dartmouth College-led study. The researchers found that chemicals in floral nectar, including the alkaloids anabasine and nicotine, the iridoid glycoside catalpol and …

Posted April 1, 2015

April 2015 Cover

Rebecca Eldridge, 2015 Indiana Honey Queen, sent us this beautiful photo of a honey bee working buckwheat blossoms. Besides being a talented photographer, Rebecca helps her family maintain 70 to 100 hives. Read more about Rebecca on page 357 of this issue.

Posted April 1, 2015

Family Chenopodiaceae: The Goosefoot Famil

The Chenopodiaceae consists of about 1500 species and about 102 genera distributed around the world. They are nearly hopelessly variable in the characteristics that are usually used to define a family, and for that reason, field identification is not easy. The family consists primarily of succulent annual or perennial herbs, some are shrubs, and only …

Posted April 1, 2015

April 2015 Table of Contents

Swarming Causes & Controls Roy Hendrickson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …

Posted March 1, 2015

U.S. Queen Rearing History

We think of the modern queen rearing industry in America as a southern enterprise with important western and Hawaiian contributions. In the 1800’s queen rearing was done mostly in the northeast before its southern shift. Back then to increase queen production, beekeepers needed new methods besides simply dequeening colonies and harvesting the resulting emergency queen …

Posted March 1, 2015

The Mysterious Case of the Self-Sacrificing Worker

Among the many “Wow I didn’t know that” moments that confront a new beekeeper is the lesson that a worker bee dies after she delivers a sting. It’s true. Her barbed stinger implants in the skin of her adversary like a harpoon, tears away as she leaves, and its attached poison sac keeps throbbing away …

Posted March 1, 2015

Pesticide Spraying

I was asked by my friends at the local beekeeping club and some of our master garden students to address the issue of pesticide exposure avoidance for honey bees. The reason this article is appropriate now is that planning ahead is essential to avoiding pesticide kills of honey bees. I reside in an area where …

Posted March 1, 2015

The Basic Start-up Costs Associated with Keeping Bees

Beekeeping is not a free endeavor. Very few people inherit bees and all of the equipment needed to keep them. There are costs associated with becoming a beekeeper, and these costs can be unpredictable to, and perhaps unanticipated by, the new beekeeper. I sympathize with new beekeepers. They often jump right into an endeavor that …

Posted March 1, 2015

The Classroom March 2015

Q Fungicides in Bee Hive Paint I have a suspicion that fungicides that are used in paints are contributing to CCD. What are your thoughts? Harold in Missouri A Thank you for the interesting question about fungicides in exterior paint and possible contribution to CCD. It sparked a curiosity and opinion if you don’t mind. Here …

Posted March 1, 2015

Spring Management Tips and Shortcuts

Spring is the busiest time of the beekeeping year. Anything you can do to improve your work productivity and increase colony efficiency is an absolute necessity. Every experienced beekeeper has an assortment of tricks and shortcuts acquired through years of practice and experience. Unfortunately a large portion of this information never makes it into print …

Bee Disease Reduced by Nature’s ‘Medicine Cabinet,’ Dartmouth-led Study Finds

Posted April 1, 2015