International Honey Market Report Ron Phipps – 23 Winter Reads Dewey Caron, Frédéric Eggers de Villepin, Carl Hrusovszky, Julia Mahood, Tina Sebestyen – 29 THE CLASSROOM Jamie Ellis – 37 BEEKEEPING BASICS Invisible Bee Communication Tina Sebestyen – 45 Vadescana: Using Synthetic Biology to Control Varroa Bill Hesbach – 51 THE CURIOUS BEEKEEPER Night Flight: …
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Propolis pants: We’re accustomed to our bees walking around with “pollen pants,” but we seldom get to see proplis balls on their corbiculae. Ryan Williamson caught our cover girl on one of his weathered plywood lids in Earlysville, Virginia – apparently preparing to start sealing off the feeder hole.
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Q: Composition of bee venom Do you think the winter bee biological/chemical makeup makes the stings more potent? Are the stings’ chemical makeup stronger because of the biological makeup helping bees live six months instead of 41 days? Have there been any studies? I think that there would be a simple chemical breakdown at different …
Read MoreA subtle kindness when one’s first bees come from a package, or even from a nuc, is that the frames are easy to remove from the hive body. Then as the new beekeeper gains experience removing frames and handling them, the bees are collecting propolis, attaching the frames to the hive body more firmly. Gradually …
Read MoreA small bee operation A small bee operation is not necessarily a subpar bee operation. Time and again, when I was conversing with beekeepers, they would say something like, “I only have three colonies,” as though that demeaned their contribution to beekeeping. Yet, it does seem to be a bit true. Beekeepers sometime speak with …
Read More“Do weeds have stem cells?” The question coming from my phone was a non sequitur, so unexpected that the only stems I could picture were the sort that support flowers, so I wavered. “Yes. No. What?” “I’ve been pulling weeds for days,” my husband complained, “and under the soil surface, there’s this white nodule. If …
Read MoreOne December I was having coffee with someone I was mentoring when he asked a question that stopped me mid-conversation. He asked what I was planning to do with my bees in the next beekeeping season. There was an awkward pause while I frantically searched my mind for an answer that sounded halfway intelligent. The …
Read MoreDon’t Blame Hobbyists for Tropilaelaps Charles Linder in his column (ABJ August) wrote about biosecurity in the bee yard and the risk for Tropilaelaps arriving at ports. He commented on an East Coast port allowing local “hobbyist” beekeepers to remove “imported” swarms from the port. I don’t know which East Coast port Mr. Linder is …
Read MoreThe mysterious population decline of the imperiled Franklin’s bumble bee, which once flourished in a small area of northern California and southern Oregon, is not due to pathogens, but most likely to population bottlenecks and environmental issues, such as fire and drought stressors, according to newly published museum genomic research in the Proceedings of the …
Read MoreSeptember 2025 update Since its detection near Newcastle, New South Wales in 2022, Varroa destructor has extended its geographic range in spite of strong quarantine and movement restrictions on hives. At the beginning of September 2025, the mite was detected in an almond plantation in the Riverland area of South Australia. The infested hive was …
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- C.P. Dadant, Editor of ABJ 1912-1938
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