Q Mystery debris in the brood Do you know what these black specks are? Chris Oster Florida, October A Great pictures, Chris! These are wax moth feces. You sent a couple of pictures so let me explain what you see in both. In the first picture (Figure 1), …
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The spring flowers have withered away, typical for a late June dearth in Piedmont Virginia. As the heat of the summer begins to surge, the bee flight in my apiaries has waned from the zeal of the spring nectar flow. Now in the mornings, the bees begin collecting water to cool their hives. I know …
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If you overuse antibiotics on your bees, your colonies may fail due to inadequate gut microbes. Nowadays it seems like there’s a new paper published every week showing how a robust gut microbiome is critical to honey bee health. Last month, we highlighted a paper showing that gut microbes shape how workers smell, which determines …
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After fielding beekeeper questions for eleven years, I have a decent idea of what confuses beginners. When it comes to puzzlement, nothing generates more than sugar syrup. On my website, questions such as “How do I make sugar syrup?” outnumber “How do I control varroa mites?” about 2:1. And there it is, one of syrup’s …
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I started beekeeping in 1981 on the family farm in Glenville, Minnesota, following my graduation from Iowa State University in Ames. In the years that followed, my beekeeping aspirations morphed and materialized into various configurations as my circumstances and continuing education allowed. In 1993, my wife and I relocated to Jackson, Missouri, to accept a …
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First spotted in North America in 2019, increased sightings raise concern that this hornet may be here to stay. On October 29, 2020, the cameras rolled as the first Asian giant hornet nest identified in the U.S. was carefully extracted from a hollowed-out tree by members of the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA). The …
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It was an abnormal 2020, to say the least. While regular folks dealt with shortages of toilet paper and hand sanitizer, beekeepers had difficulty finding … just about everything, as honey consumers (and canners) cleaned stores out of honey jars and newly-homebound workers discovered beekeeping and flooded suppliers with orders. Here’s hoping 2021 brings some …
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Encaustic Painting Makes Exhibit I’m pleased to announce that my encaustic painting that I did in March at the beginning of the pandemic was juried into the Knoxville Airport show. Out of 440 entries, only 43 were selected so it’s an honor. The piece is all encaustic which is beeswax and damar. The image below …
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Advised by: Dr. Jonathan B. Koch, United States Department of Agriculture and Joseph Wilson, Utah State University “There is a critical need to examine floral resource availability across public lands to identify the most appropriate composition of bee pasture for commercial honeybees and wild bees.” — Jesse Tabor Jesse is a graduate student at Utah …
Read MoreAdvised by: Leonard Foster, University of British Columbia “Collaboration is inextricably tied to beekeeping, you see it in mentorships in the way that knowledge is shared and passed down, and colleagues working together in the field …. and this much deeper sense of collaboration between the bees themselves …” — Abigail Chapman Abbi is in …
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