It was a couple weeks ago that Heather, Jennie and I were talking about using drone comb as Varroa management in a colony. Drone larvae are particularly attractive to Varroa mites. By adding drone comb to a hive, a beekeeper is creating a lure for the mites in the hope that they will go to the drone larvae instead of infecting precious worker larvae. Once the drone brood is capped, the beekeeper removes the frame and freezes it, thoroughly killing the pesky mites. While it is apparent that Varroa are attracted to drone larvae, it occurred to me, why is this so? What makes drone…
Month: April 2012
Eric Mussen
If you want to learn more about Eric, start here. Also, don’t forget to take the surveys!!
Survey Time: An Appeal to Our Greater Good
For a great many of us, it is as easy to slip into apathy as it is to succumb to eating our children’s Easter candy – especially the chocolate peanut butter cups. We sometime remove ourselves from involvement and responsibility of the larger social structure because, well, we think someone else will take care of what needs doing; however, this cannot be the case now. It is survey time at the Bee Informed Partnership and that means involvement FROM EACH AND EVERY BEEKEEPER. Whether you manage 1 hive or 10,000 hives, we want to hear from you. I’m making it easy on you. Here is…
Coordinated BIP effort aims to cut in half annual bee colony losses.
BEE Informed Partnership: Coordinated BIP effort aims to cut in half annual bee colony losses. by Richard Lehnert Good Fruit Grower magazine article, March 15th, 2012. "After five years of annual colony losses near or above 30 percent, beekeepers have settled in for the long haul in their struggle to find solutions to the problem of unsustainably high honeybee death losses. Scientists have also settled in to help them..."continue article here...
Queen Bee Identification
Over the past few months we have been sampling and assessing colonies throughout queen breeders operations. We looked at colony size, weight, brood pattern, bee color and queen status. I had a chance to photograph some different Italian queens (Apis mellifera ligustica) and Carniolan queens (Apis mellifera carnica). Both species are usually gentle and can be kept in areas with people without problems. There are many differences between the two subspecies of bees; some say the Carniolan queens are better for colder climates. Despite these differences, queen breeders generally breed for some of these characteristics below. I have also included photographs of some of these…