Tripping Through the Sunflowers: How I flip-flopped on a research paper

Posted November 3, 2025

Tripping Through the Sunflowers: How I flip-flopped on a research paper

Back in 2023, a paper appeared in the Journal of Economic Entomology about how honey bee colonies exposed to sunflower pollen had fewer varroa mites than colonies not exposed to sunflowers.1 The story got a truckload of press, and beekeepers all over North America were told that scattering a few sunflower seeds around their apiaries …

Posted November 3, 2025

The Ageless Alley Queen and Drone Trap

I want to tell you a bee swarm story I have a swarm story that I have relived many times, but it requires some painful background. I want to tell you the tale here. My wife went through a debilitating illness for a bit more than three years. I readily devoted most of my time …

Posted November 3, 2025

A Small Colony of Queenless Bees: A Closer Look

This article shows some of my work with bees from the apiary to the bee house. Here I am handling bees that ordinarily would be merely united with another colony under normal beekeeping practices. Here, the reader can see how I handle bees when I want to study other options. During the spring of 2025, …

Posted November 3, 2025

Letters to the Editor – November 2025

Comment on USDA Reorganization The proposed closing of BARC [The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center], the decentralization and dismantling of USDA will be devastating to agriculture, threatens our food supply, the $15 billion value of crops dependent upon honey bee pollination. This highly collaborative research team, with its global reach addresses the multifaceted, complex threats and …

Posted November 3, 2025

USING RESEARCH TO CHANGE REGULATION: HONEY BEE RESEARCH IMPACTS EPA LABELING

Seeing impacts from your research can be a long, laborious and tedious process. But testing a hypothesis and discovering a fact that ends up impacting everyday people — that’s a crowning achievement for a scientist. University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Assistant professor Cameron Jack was able to do just that. After …

Posted November 3, 2025

EPA APPROVES VADESCANA A NEW VARROA TREATMENT

September 25, 2025 — Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is releasing a final registration decision for one technical and two end use products containing the new pesticide active ingredient Vadescana for control against varroa mites (Varroa destructor) in honey bee hives. EPA prioritizes pesticide applications that target varroa mites to provide beekeepers with a …

Posted November 3, 2025

Contents – November 2025

THE CLASSROOM Jamie Ellis – 1181 BEEKEEPING BASICS Screened Bottom Boards, Honey Bees, and Mites Tina Sebestyen – 1187 Do Bees Survive a Sugar Shake? Mary Woolford, Robyn Underwood, Jennifer Tsuruda, Geoffrey Williams and Selina Bruckner – 1191 Sustainable Beekeeping Using Stock Derived from a Local Feral Population Kevin J. Gross – 1195 THE CURIOUS …

American Bee Journal Volume 165 No. 11 November 2025 Cover Callouts: Do bees survive a sugar shake? - 1191, About sunflowers and bees - 1201, Assessing differences in stinging behavior - 1227

Posted November 3, 2025

ABJ NOVEMBER 2025 COVER

Bulbine frutescens is a drought-tolerant perennial native to southern Africa, where it thrives along river banks and sandy hillsides. Bulbine does best in full sun to partial shade, with foliage growing to a foot or so tall and flower stems standing another foot above. Sap from its leaves is often used medicinally, similar to that …

Posted October 1, 2025

The Classroom – October 2025

Q: Queen influence over hive defensiveness I recently requeened two defensive colonies with Pol-line queens. Placing them in these colonies usually takes me 10 days to secure acceptance. What I have noticed is that within two days of a queen cage placed in these colonies, their temperament completely changes. The queens are still in their …

Posted October 1, 2025

Stress Reduction

October, the time in many parts of the United States when we need to prepare our bees for winter. It might be tempting to think that the bees can handle whatever comes their way, because, well, they usually can. After all (people always say), bees survive just fine in the wild, so why are we …

Tripping Through the Sunflowers: How I flip-flopped on a research paper

Posted November 3, 2025