Winter weather is well past us now, and spring blossoms beckon our bees into the fields. “Lord willing, and the creek don’t rise,” the COVID-19 winter will also soon be melting away. Northeast Pennsylvania saw high winter losses, but spring buildup looked good as of late March, and ground conditions were about normal. New York …
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Documenting and studying old beehive designs are difficult endeavors. I always want to work with primary materials. For me, that primary material is the original hive and literature written by the beekeeper explaining the original design (before others may have changed that design). To render matters more difficult, virtually all the hives I study are …
Read MoreHorsefly Bees and Pools It was the perfect time this past weekend to set up an alternate water source for our bees after we removed our pool cover where algae scum had been an oasis for them. I was encouraged after reading your January article by Joe Conti on “How to Keep Bees Away from …
Read MoreInformation on the Upcoming Amendment to the Varroacide, Oxalic Acid (API-Bioxal™) USDA and EPA are receiving questions from stakeholders regarding a recent tolerance exemption for oxalic acid, a pesticide used to control parasitic mites of honey bees (Apis mellifera). A tolerance is the legal limit for a chemical residue in or on a food. The …
Read MoreWhat Does the New Oxalic Acid Exemption Mean? Lewis Cauble – 493 Medicinal Honey for Animals: What We Know and What More We Need to Know M.E.A. McNeil – 507 Beekeeper-funded Research: A Field Trial of Probiotics Randy Oliver – 521 Queen Supersedure — Caused by Queen Pheromone or Brood Pheromone? Eric Talley – 525 …
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Our cover photo comes to us from Joan Fox, of Tucson, Arizona. “I’d never seen anything like this adorable pollinating behavior: The honey bees forage the pollen-tipped anthers of Red Bird of Paradise [Caesalpinia pulcherrima], and then use the long filaments to catapult/pole vault themselves into the center of the flower!”
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Q Shelf Life of Oxalic Acid I have several questions about oxalic acid (OA). How long can mixed oxalic acid used for drip be kept? How long will the crystals in an open foil pouch tightly wrapped last? (I cannot find this information on the containers.) Also, for both, if they can be kept, how …
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The active beekeeping season begins in our region of the Mid-Atlantic, in Piedmont Virginia, with the prominent bloom of the red maple (see Figure 1). Maple blooms, scattered through the leafless woods, brighten up the dismal gray in streaks of red. It is a welcomed sight where I have my rural apiaries. From thermal camera …
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The genealogy of honey bees in the United States. The Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, is not native to the United States. Most beekeepers know this. But do you know the genealogy of A. mellifera (hereafter, the “honey bee”) in the United States? In other words, do you know the full story of when honey …
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Long before I knew it had a name, I wrote about the Dunning-Kruger effect in beekeeping. In a blog post titled “I Was So Much Smarter Then,” I revealed the results of my one-sided, unscientific, and misguided study on the knowledge base of beekeepers as it correlates with the time they’ve been keeping bees. From …
Read More"I want the American Bee Journal to be the finest publication about bees and beekeeping in the world."
- C.P. Dadant, Editor of ABJ 1912-1938
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