Cell cultures are cells that are removed from an organism and grown apart from the body in a controlled environment. Put another way, cells in a cell culture are living and reproducing, but are grown in a lab instead of as a part of a body. Cell lines are cell cultures that come from the same genetic background, meaning all cells grown from a cell line are from the same set of original cells. Cell cultures are grown in a controlled environment, allowing researchers to conduct highly controlled studies where cells can be exposed to different factors and the response of the cells is measured.…
Author: Katie Lee
I'm a part of the Midwest Bee Team based out of the University of
Minnesota. I work with commercial migratory beekeepers in North Dakota
and Minnesota to help them monitor pest and disease levels. Before I
was on the Midwest Team, I was on the CA Bee Team working for the
Northern California bee breeders. I was introduced to honey bees
during my last semester as an undergrad when I took a class on social
insects with Dr. Marla Spivak. Marla asked me to work in the U of MN
Bee Lab over the summer, and have been enthralled with bees ever
since. My main interests are bee breeding, Varroa, disease ecology,
and extension work. I received both a BS in Ecology, Evolution, and
Behavior and a MS in Entomology from the University of Minnesota.
Why your drones are getting the boot
Drones, male bees, are not physically capable of doing work around the hive. They can’t sting, can’t collect pollen or nectar, can’t take care of the larvae, etc. They pretty much do only two things: eat and mate. Queens are produced when the weather is nice enough for them to mate, preferably over 70 and not windy. When the weather turns cold, drones are unable to perform their sole function. If there are no queens around to mate with, then drones are a suck on resources and worker bees stop rearing drones. Any drones left get booted out of the hive. In fall, it is…
BIP Survey Winner: Scott Jaynes
This year and last, the commercial scale beekeepers that fill out the annual Winter Loss Survey had a chance at winning a sampling session with one of the Tech-Transfer Teams. Last year’s winner was Bob Miller in California. The year’s winner was Scott Jaynes. Scott, his brother, and his father all run bees out of the same location in North Dakota and California. The are migratory beekeepers that produce honey in North Dakota and pollinate almonds in California. We met Scott, his brother, and some of his crew at the warehouse in Tioga, North Dakota. Liz and I went out to meet Scott and sample…
Hive Assessments and Taking Notes
The purpose of a hive assessment is give you a idea of what is going on in the colony and to see if you need to do any type of management. Taking notes on the results of the hive assessments helps you remember what the colony looked like on a specific date. I gave a talk at the Eastern Apiculture Society last week where I talked about performing hive assessments and taking notes. I showed a general checklist that people expressed interest in, so I am posting it here. Here is the checklist of what I look for and record. Yard information: Date Name of…
Bee kill in St. Paul, Minnesota UPDATE
UPDATE from this blog. With help from Lucinda Swanson that commented below, we figured out what actually happened to the swarm of bees. There were two swarms that were spotted in Downtown St. Paul at almost midnight on sunday night. Lucinda estimated that both were about the size of her 6 foot tall son's torso. Because it was so late and the night before the Monday morning rush hour, the St. Paul City Police requested that St. Paul Fire remove the bees from the trees. The bees were killed by the fire crew with flame retardent foam. The whole incident was unfortunate, but the city…
Bee kill in St. Paul, Minnesota
UPDATE for this blog here. Yesterday morning, a woman and her friend were walking around downtown St. Paul. Next to a couple of small trees they noticed "snowdrifts of dead bees." The woman contacted Dr. Marla Spivak and sent a couple of pictures showing thousands of dead bees. With the huge bee kill that went on in Oregon (read Liz's blog here), we were all really worried something similar was going on. Marla went to investigate early this morning, as did the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Unluckily, there was a downpour of rain and they weren't able to get a soil sample, but they did get a dead bee and…
Bee Deaths in Minnesota
On May 7, a beekeeper in Minnesota noticed his bees were dying. I went to the beekeeper's location a few days later and saw all the below symptoms and took samples for the beekeeper. There were bees on the ground with their legs up and twitching. There were bees that, when placed on their backs, couldn’t right themselves. There were bees on willow blossoms (the first blooming plant of the year) that should have been actively collecting pollen, but would barely lift a leg when poked or were dead. There were dead bees all over one of the few remaining snow patches and in front of…
Potent Pollen
Dr. Zachary Huang out of Michigan State University recently wrote a review titled “Pollen nutrition affects honey bee stress resistance.” Frustratingly, it is one of those papers where you need to either pay $35 to get access to it or have access via a University library. Since it is hard to get ahold of, I am going to review it since I think the content is really interesting and important. Dr. Huang first talks about what makes a good pollen. There are two components that bees need: crude protein and 10 essential amino acids. The best pollens have over 25% protein and the complete set…
Sampling in the Deep South
After spending about a month in California, I flew south to meet Jody Gerdts and travel around East Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi for three weeks. While most of the bees in the country are in California for almond pollination, there are a few beekeepers that have or bring bees down to the South for producing the next generation of bees to sell. A number of the beekeepers the Midwest Bee Tech-Team works with migrate to the south for the winter, so we follow them. We visited nine beekeepers and did hygienic testing, and took samples for Nosema and Varroa for them. (Jody works on the…
How are your bees?
Most of the commercial beekeepers in the Midwest move their colonies to southern locations for the winter, primarily to California for the pollination of almonds. I get to go where the bees go. I spent the last couple of weeks sampling beekeeper sin the San Joaquin valley in California. Beekeepers from across the nation truck bees to California to place them in the almond orchards. Just driving around, you can see all sorts of bee trucks. Most often, the truck drivers will unload in holding yards or staging yards where the colonies will wait until placement in the almond orchards. I attended meetings held by…