It happens to nearly every beekeeper. You plant an array of flowering plants — from annual poppies to honeysuckle vines to crabapple trees — all tenderly selected to entice your darlings to forage. On the first balmy spring day, you watch your bees missile out of their hive and into the blue, but when you …
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Mushroom extracts might help honey bees fight off viruses, but many questions remain I can’t go for a walk in the woods without stopping to examine, poke, and sniff every mushroom I stumble upon. Every fall, I harvest as many chanterelles, hedgehogs, shaggy manes, cauliflowers, and delicious milky caps as I can reasonably process and …
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For this month’s “Notes from the Lab,” we’re going to highlight the worst-kept secret in honey bee research for the past year. If you’re a beekeeper who watches YouTube videos (which is pretty much every beekeeper I’ve ever met, including myself), you’ve probably seen Sammy Ramsey’s award-winning “Three minute thesis” video on Varroa, which can …
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From all my 50 packages bought in the 1970s, I had one kind of queen problem. Five packages had dead queens — right in their cages — seen upon first inspection. After much discussion and numerous phone calls, the cause was thought to be rough handling when the queens were caged. The cause(s) of queen …
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Imagine this scene in your mind. It won’t be difficult, we have all seen it already. At a club meeting a new-bee asks about checking on the bees’ feed situation in the spring. Without even waiting to hear the whole question, a three-year-wonder from the back of the room shouts, “You can’t open the hive …
Read MoreInternational Honey Market Report Ron Phipps – 383 Keeping It Real – Why Beekeepers and Food Manufacturers Should Join the True Source Honey Initiative Eric Wenger – 397 The Pesticide Situation: Part 4 — Pesticide Resistance and Changes in Farming Practices Randy Oliver – 409 Mite Drift Quantification: A Citizen Science Project Randy Oliver – …
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We know what you’re thinking: That’s not a honey bee, is it? And you’re right ― according to our resident expert Rusty Burlew, “This is Bombus pascuorum, the common carder bee, one of the commonest bumble bees in Great Britain.” We thought this a fitting cover to run with Rusty’s article on page 417, “Who’s …
Read MoreResearch by scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the University of Maryland released today sheds new light — and reverses decades of scientific dogma — regarding a honey bee pest (Varroa destructor) that is considered the greatest single driver of the global honey bee colony losses. Managed honey bee colonies add at least …
Read MoreThe Ashurst family of Westmorland, California, in December celebrated 100 years of involvement in beekeeping. Julian Ashurst began working as a beekeeper in 1918 in Pomona, CA, before moving to the dryer climate of Imperial Valley for relief for his asthma. There, he started his own beekeeping company, Ashurst and Son. The “Son” in the …
Read MoreDAVIS—Pesticides, parasites, predators, and a multitude of microorganisms threaten the survival of honey bees, says retired apiculturist Norman Gary of the University of California, Davis, but so do hobby beekeepers in urban environments who are rearing too many colonies for bees to “survive and thrive.” They should limit their hobby to two colonies, says Gary, …
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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