ABJ COLUMNIST JAMIE ELLIS WINS NATIONAL EXCELLENCE IN EXTENSION AWARD

Posted December 1, 2020

ABJ COLUMNIST JAMIE ELLIS WINS NATIONAL EXCELLENCE IN EXTENSION AWARD

October 12, 2020 – University of Florida Recognizing visionary leadership and diversity in educational programming, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Cooperative Extension, and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) announced that Jamie Ellis of the University of Florida will receive the 2020 Excellence in Extension …

Posted December 1, 2020

December 2020 Contents

Time Warp: Cryopreservation of Honey Bee Germplasm Part 1: The drone contribution M.E.A. McNeil – 1307 Running Interference: RNAi and the promise of healthy bees Bill Hesbach – 1315 A Zooming Success in Georgia Jonathan Hayes and Linda Tillman – 1333 Honey Skep Cakes: An Eastern European holiday tradition M.E.A. McNeil – 1340 Mite Control …

Posted December 1, 2020

December 2020 Cover

ABJ 2020 December

Posted November 1, 2020

Queen Introduction: Part 6 A Practical Queen Introduction Method

We finish up this queen introduction series with a method that I recommend. I realize beekeepers have numerous ways to introduce queens. In historical beekeeping, even more queen introduction methods abound. In 1948, L.E. Snelgrove published “The Introduction of Queen Bees,” a book on the subject. Consider now a practical, familiar, and reliable method, drawing …

Posted November 1, 2020

Notes from the Lab – November 2020

Increasing use of land for crops in the United States negatively impacts wildlife while producing marginal benefits for farmers In any competition, there are winners and losers. This is abundantly clear in sports, of course, when one team wins the championship and the other loses. But it’s also true in normal life. For example, when …

Posted November 1, 2020

Respiration and Circulation in Honey Bees

Except for a recently discovered parasite of salmon, all animals require oxygen for survival and expel carbon dioxide as a waste product.1 Because animals are so varied, many breathing systems have evolved throughout the animal kingdom, each one designed to work in an animal’s particular environment. Depending on its size and habitat, an animal may …

Posted November 1, 2020

Don’t Panic, Its Organic! Or Is It? Demystifying the term “organic” in honey bees

Many beekeepers use terms like raw, natural, local, and organic to describe their honey. These words are great for marketing, and show that beekeepers understand that today’s consumer is savvy to honey fraud and contamination concerns. One of these terms is not like the others, however. While any beekeeper using any practice can technically use …

pesticide paradox article by Alison McAfee

Posted November 1, 2020

The Pesticide Paradox

Other insects have readily developed resistance to pesticides, but honey bees are slow to act Everywhere we look, from antibiotics to chemotherapies to miticides, we find biological resistance to our attempts at chemical control. Perhaps this phenomenon is most dangerous to us in the world of bacterial infections, where, for example, once-easily-treated pathogens like Staphylococcus …

Posted November 1, 2020

The Classroom – November 2020

Q Miscellaneous questions I use Russian stock which gets replaced by nature with Russian queens mated with local stock of unknown genetics. I am working to requeen with Russian queens every third or fourth year. Question #1: I do my splits in April, when queens are available. I use frames of brood with queen cells …

Posted November 1, 2020

Letters to the Editor – November 2020

Treatments are Harmful to Bees I do not understand why people keep on treating bees with Formic Pro and Checkmite and other things that can hurt your queens. Just look at the picture of the person with gloves and a long sleeve shirt on page 865 in the August 2020 issue. If you need gloves …

ABJ COLUMNIST JAMIE ELLIS WINS NATIONAL EXCELLENCE IN EXTENSION AWARD

Posted December 1, 2020