Hosted by: Apiary Inspectors of America and Auburn University Spring has sprung in most parts of the country, which means it’s time to take the pulse of the beekeeping industry by recording managed honey bee colony losses and beekeeping practices across the United States. Results of colony loss and management surveys are important in many ways, from helping to raise awareness and resources for beekeeping, to setting research directions within our great network of land-grant universities. Because the Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) is no longer administering an annual survey, Auburn University ..read more

Honey Bee Warranties and getting to the bottom of the “Million Hive Bee Boom” with Blake Shook Are there really a million more honey bee colonies in the U.S.? Project Apis m. Executive Director, Danielle Downey, sat down with the owner of The Bee Supply and Desert Creek Honey, Blake Shook, to discuss the 2022 Census of Agriculture in which a significant increase in colonies in the U.S. was reported. Image of Blake Shook, Beekeeper and Owner of Desert Creek Honey and The Bee Supply. It will take time to completely understand what is behind the reported increase, but it does seem possible that ..read more

UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH Queen Bumblebees Can Survive Underwater, Finds New U of G Research University of Guelph researchers have made an unexpected discovery that bumblebee queens are remarkably resilient to flooding – a finding that sheds light on the extraordinary adaptations of these vital insect pollinators. The study led by postdoctoral researcher Dr. Sabrina Rondeau and School of Environmental Sciences professor Dr. Nigel Raine marks the first investigation on the ability of bumblebee queens to survive prolonged periods of complete submersion while overwintering und ..read more

National Honey Board Funds Food Competiton at Purdue….Honey Sweet, syrupy, golden liquid twirls over the end of grooves in wooden wands and into everything from yogurt to baklava to fresh, steaming sopaipillas. It’s no secret that honey is more than a spoonful of sugar, but the National Honey Board says that American consumers prefer it over any other sweetener on the market. In the past few years, specialty sauces like hot honey combined the classic warm, sweet feeling with a bright, spicy kick and have taken over market trends. To encourage more innovation with America’s favor ..read more

Episode 162: Amitraz Resistance in Varroa In this episode of Two Bees in a Podcast, released on April 30, 2024, Dr. Jamie Ellis and Amy Vu speak with Dr. Frank Rinkevich, a Research Entomologist at the USDA-ARS Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana about amitraz resistance in the US varroa population. This episode concludes with a Q&A segment. Check out our website: ufhoneybee.com, for additional resources from today’s episode. Listen here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ufhbrel/episodes/Episode-162-Amitraz-Resistance-in-Varroa-e2j16nq/a ..read more

https://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/No-Honey-Needed.mp3 Click Here if you listened. We’d love to know what you think. There is even a spot for feedback! Read along below! No Honey Needed By: Stephen Bishop After a few years of writing a monthly humor article for a beekeeping magazine, you begin to exhaust your ability to generate material, and you have to rent a heavy-duty excavator to dig up ideas with even the most tenuous connection to apiculture. And then sometimes you still can’t think of anything. Hence, I have decided to write about buttermilk biscuits, not because my ..read more

https://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/The-Honey-Bee-Egg.mp3 Click Here if you listened. We’d love to know what you think. There is even a spot for feedback! Read along below! The Quiet, Quick Life of the Honey Bee Egg The critical, but unassuming development stage By: James E. Tew The quiet beginning The beginning stage of a honey bee’s life is the smallest and quietest of any of the four developmental stages – egg, larva, pupa and adult. In fact, many beekeepers have problems even seeing eggs at all, but that’s not a criticism. Even the best of eyes can have problems seeing a ..read more

https://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/GMT20240404-154914_Recording_640x360.mp3 Click Here if you listened. We’d love to know what you think. There is even a spot for feedback! Read along below! Minding Your Bees and Cues Nature’s Timing By: Becky Masterman & Bridget Mendel Phenology is the scientific study of when things happen. When fruit trees bloom, when drones first appear in the colony, when basswood or black locust nectar flows start, when bees begin to swarm. By tracking these external and internal events each year, patterns—and deviations from patterns—in the timin ..read more

Part 2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.55406/ABRC.4.24.2 Pesticides and Acaricides Control of Varroa destructor with Lithium Chloride: Efficacy and Side Effects Rein, C1; Rosenkranz, P1; Traynor, K1 1 State Institute of Bee Research, University of Hohenheim, Germany The parasitic mite Varroa destructor remains the greatest threat to honey bee health. Once established in a country, beekeepers must typically treat against Varroa to keep the colony alive. New, highly effective and easy to apply varroacides with limited unwanted side effects are thus highly desired. Lithium chloride (LiCl) has shown excel ..read more

Green biomanufacturing of edible antiviral therapeutics for managed pollinators Vincent A. Ricigliano, Alexander McMenamin, Allyson Martin Ewert, Daniela Adjaye, Michael Simone-Finstrom & Victor P. Rainey npj Sustainable Agriculture volume 2, Article number: 4 (2024) Abstract Managed bees are important agricultural pollinators threatened by declines linked to multi-host RNA viruses. Here, we developed a novel antiviral platform for bees using the edible photosynthetic cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973. Cyanobacterial biomass was eng ..read more