HONEY BEE HEALTH COALITION MEMBERS RELEASE CORN, CANOLA GUIDES FOR BEE PROTECTION

Posted May 1, 2019

HONEY BEE HEALTH COALITION MEMBERS RELEASE CORN, CANOLA GUIDES FOR BEE PROTECTION

National Corn Growers Association, U.S. Canola Association partner with Coalition to develop best practices growers can use to reduce risk to honey bees, other pollinators Two Honey Bee Health Coalition member organizations — the National Corn Growers Association and the U.S. Canola Association — recently unveiled best management practices for growers to help protect bees …

Posted May 1, 2019

FIELDWATCH® ANNOUNCES TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS, NEW MEMBER STATES

Innovative row crop mapping system benefits FieldWatch usersin Arkansas and three additional states as California and Maryland join the national registry ST. LOUIS (March 5, 2019) – FieldWatch, Inc®, a non-profit company that enhances communication and stewardship among diverse agriculture stakeholders, expands its online mapping system technology and welcomes California and Maryland as new member …

Posted May 1, 2019

Foolproof Splitting

The biggest challenge I faced as a new beekeeper, and well into my beekeeping career, was splitting my colonies successfully. Some methods resulted in too few bees staying with the split. Some were not effective in preventing the bees from swarming. Even after I figured out how to make the split successful for both the …

Posted May 1, 2019

Honey, Let Me Tell You About This City

Honey bees don’t just bring home nectar — they also bring home pollution, making honey an excellent indicator of environmental contamination As I stir a teaspoon of honey into my coffee, I humbly dwell on the effort that went into creating that sweet spoonful. How many bees touched that nectar? How many flowers? Across what …

Posted May 1, 2019

May 2019

What’s Eating My Bees? Arthropod Enemies of Bees in Greece – Part 4 – Spiders John Phipps – 525 Nosema and Dysentery: Are They Really Related? Randy Oliver – 547 Bee Club Activity: Making Oxalic Acid Vaporizers for About $30 Steve Winchell – 551 The Pesticide Situation: Part 5 — Reinventing Nature Randy Oliver – …

Posted May 1, 2019

May 2019 ABJ Cover

Catching a swarm is about the most fun you will have as a beekeeper. You occupy a front-row seat to one of nature’s most fascinating shows. You’re held in awe ― even celebrated as a hero ― by those who called you in. And, with any luck, you come away with free bees! Photo by …

Posted April 1, 2019

The Classroom – April 2019

Q FIRST YEAR Casey Buckles here, first time/first year beekeeper. Just a few quick questions: Is it normal to have carpenter ants greeting you each time you take off the telescope cover? There are little strips of mold between the second brood box frames and the top of the inner cover, should I leave it? …

Posted April 1, 2019

Letters to the editor – April 2019

MY PROPOLIS CLEANING CREW I live on the beachside in east-central Florida just east of Melbourne (town of Indialantic). Although there are a few negatives to beekeeping here (e.g. wild colonies are often Africanized, woodenware rots much faster, and queens wear out twice as fast), there are some decided positives as well. These include beekeeping …

Posted April 1, 2019

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA WEBSITE TO MAP PESTICIDE DRIFT

Interactive maps offer information about reported pesticide drift cases in Iowa, presented to illustrate hazards and to provide guidance to reduce future drift cases. In recent years, Iowa farmers and rural residents have raised concerns about pesticide sprays drifting off of intended fields. Since 2016, farm organizations and rural citizens have contacted researchers in the …

Posted April 1, 2019

WAS FIPRONIL THE CULPRIT?

New work suggests that fipronil, not imidacloprid, caused mass mortalities of honey bees: Mass mortalities of honey bees occurred in France in the 1990s coincident with the introduction of two agricultural insecticides, imidacloprid and fipronil. Imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, was widely blamed, but the differential potency of imidacloprid and fipronil has been unclear because of uncertainty …

HONEY BEE HEALTH COALITION MEMBERS RELEASE CORN, CANOLA GUIDES FOR BEE PROTECTION

Posted May 1, 2019