NORTH AMERICAN BEE STRATEGY UNVEILED TO PROTECT POLLINATORS AND STRENGTHEN HONEY MARKET

Posted January 1, 2026

NORTH AMERICAN BEE STRATEGY UNVEILED TO PROTECT POLLINATORS AND STRENGTHEN HONEY MARKET

— December 2, 2025 Four major North American beekeeping organizations released the first-ever North American Bee Strategy this week, a coordinated, continent-wide plan to protect honey bees, strengthen the viability of professional beekeeping, and safeguard food security across the United States and Canada. The strategy is the result of a cross-border collaboration between the American …

Posted January 1, 2026

Contents – January 2026

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: …

American Bee Journal Volume 166 No. 1 January 2026 Cover Callouts: Invisible Bee Communication - 45, Vadescana: A new varroa control - 51, The impacts of pollen trapping - 61 Cover depicts a honey bee with propolis on its legs.

Posted January 1, 2026

ABJ JANUARY 2026 COVER

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.

Posted December 1, 2025

The Classroom – December 2025

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 …

Posted December 1, 2025

Removing the First Difficult Frame from the Broodnest with All the Frames Welded in Tight with Propolis

A 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 …

Posted December 1, 2025

Lower-energy Beekeeping: Making do with less

A 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 …

Posted December 1, 2025

Stem Cells, Weeds, and Honey Bees

“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 …

Posted December 1, 2025

Just Keeping Your Bees Alive?

One 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 …

Posted December 1, 2025

Letters to the Editor – December 2025

Don’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 …

Posted December 1, 2025

PNAS PAPER: FRANKLIN’S BUMBLE BEE DECLINE NOT DUE TO PATHOGENS, ACCORDING TO MUSEUM GENOMIC RESEARCH

The 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 …

NORTH AMERICAN BEE STRATEGY UNVEILED TO PROTECT POLLINATORS AND STRENGTHEN HONEY MARKET

Posted January 1, 2026