Working bees in November in Hawai’i? YES, PLEASE! BIP Tech Team Field Specialist Ben Sallmann and I pounced on the opportunity to leave Minnesota and Michigan's dreary November weather. We tackled all of the logistical challenges and hopped on a plane to Hawai'i to conduct fieldwork for the state's contribution to the National Honey Bee Disease Survey (NHBS) . National Honey Bee Disease Survey The National Honey Bee Disease Survey (NHBS) is a federally-funded, nationwide, annual honey bee survey. This survey has been conducted since 2010 and is a joint effort between the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and…
Author: The Bee Informed Team
The Bee Informed Partnership is a collaboration of efforts across the country from some of the leading research labs and universities in agriculture and science to better understand honey bee declines in the United States. Supported by the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, we’re working with beekeepers to better understand how we can keep healthier bees.
The key to our success is the true partnership we maintain across a wide range of disciplines including traditional honey bee science, economics, statistics, and medical research that makes all these tools available to this important research. And just as important as the tools are the people. We not only have the leading researchers in the honey bee industry, we also have advisory boards from the commercial beekeeping industries, almond and other commercial growers, as well as naturalists and conservationists from across the country.
Sentinel Apiary Program 2021 Wrap-Up and 2022 Sign-Up
Authors: Rachel Kuipers, Jeri Parrent & Nathalie Steinhauer Here at Bee Informed Partnership, we are excited to announce that registration for the 2022 Sentinel Program is open now through the end of April! Don't delay - register today by completing the quick and easy online registration form here. This past season, there were 92 Sentinel participants who sampled over 500 colonies across 129 unique locations. The University of Maryland Honey Bee Lab processed 2,312 samples from Sentinel colonies throughout the season. That’s a lot of samples—a record for the program! We also reached eight of the nine NOAA climatic regions, as well as the non-continental…
Highlights From The 2021 California State Beekeepers Association Annual Convention
This November, several BIP team members headed to beautiful Santa Barbara, California, to attend the California State Beekeepers Association Annual Convention. The convention site was right next to the beach, the weather was perfect, and beekeepers were primed for an amazing in-person meeting, after having to go a year without due to 2020 COVID-19 restrictions. For Anne Marie, Matt and Rob it was really good to visit with so many California BIP member beekeepers, and to meet a few new beekeepers too. We especially enjoyed talking shop – in the hallways at the convention by day, and in the evenings over a drink, under a…
BIP’s 2nd Annual Virtual Auction Happening Now!
Here at Bee Informed Partnership, we are often asked what people can do to help us make a positive impact on honey bees. Well, here is the perfect way for you to support our efforts to improve honey bee health and take home some great gifts to boot at BIP’s 2nd Annual Virtual Auction happening now! Until November 8th, 2021, you can bid on one or more of over 80 auction items and services that have been generously donated by the beekeeping industry and other friends of BIP. This includes a variety of beautiful, handcrafted items, such as encaustic paintings, bags, jewelry and gift boxes.…
United States Honey Bee Colony Losses 2020-2021: Preliminary Results
Embargoed until Wednesday, June 23th, 2021, 12.00 PM Noon CST Note: This is a preliminary analysis. Sample sizes and estimates are likely to change. A more detailed final report is being prepared for publication in a peer-reviewed journal at a later date. Download .pdf version here Nathalie Steinhauer1, Dan Aurell2, Selina Bruckner2, Mikayla Wilson1, Karen Rennich1, Dennis vanEngelsdorp1, Geoffrey Williams2 1Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 2Department of Entomology & Plant Pathology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA Corresponding Authors: nsteinha@umd.edu (NS) & williams@auburn.edu (GW) The Bee Informed Partnership (http://beeinformed.org) is a non-profit organization that works alongside beekeepers to improve honey bee…
Time flies when you’re having fun – we’re into the last week to take the annual survey!
By Selina Bruckner, Geoff Williams, Nathalie Steinhauer The Bee Informed Partnership Colony Loss and Management Survey month is almost over – time flies when you’re having fun preventing swarming, installing packages, and adding your supers! Have you taken the survey yet? If not, don’t miss out on even more fun! This year’s survey is the shortest it’s ever been! Take the survey here. Time also flies in terms of the years that the BIP survey has been conducted; it is celebrating its 15th birthday! The survey has come a long way since 2006. Here, we review some of the survey’s outputs so far. In total,…
We’ve listened to you: a shorter, better survey for professional beekeepers
Commercial and sideline beekeepers − the Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) Survey Team has worked hard to make our annual survey more relevant for you! We met with a group of commercial beekeepers to get input, and were given two major requests: First, to move away from an arbitrary April 1st survey start date. Second, to reduce the length of the survey. We then went to work! We addressed both of these requests, and also changed the focus of some questions to better reflect the concerns of the industry. Since its beginning in 2006-07, the BIP survey has used April 1st as the cutoff between winter…
This year’s Survey is mostly ‘new hat’!
Consistency is important. Not only in research but also in our daily lives and beekeeping. For example, as beekeepers we should consistently inspect our colonies for disease, for food stores, for adequate space! This is especially important at this time of the year when bees feel the urge to swarm. Another consistent activity we hope is in a beekeeper’s calendar: taking The Bee Informed Partnership’s Annual Colony Loss and Management Survey. As usual, the online survey went live on April 1st. In the first week, almost 2,000 beekeepers have participated. If you haven’t participated taken it yet, please consider doing so here: Take the survey.…
BIP National Loss and Management Survey Open!
The 2020-2021 Annual Loss and Management Survey is live! The Bee Informed Partnership team, in collaboration with the Auburn University Bee Lab, are enthusiastically inviting all U.S. beekeepers to take part in this year’s survey. The survey is open from April 1 to April 30, 2021. Take the Survey Today! The BIP survey is the longest national effort to monitor honey bee mortality rates in the U.S. The Loss survey was initiated in 2006 by the Apiary Inspectors of America. Then in 2010 the Management section was added in collaboration with the vanEngelsdorp Bee Lab at the University of Maryland. The survey not only estimates the…
Hot off the press: BIP’s State Specific Colony Losses!
This blog comes to you from the Southern part of the U.S. - Alabama specifically - where beekeepers are currently sweating away as they diligently check their colonies for food and mites! They’re preparing for winter already! As you know, these past months has been unusual in many ways. For example, lots of beekeepers report difficulties finding sugar right now. Another example comes from the 2019/20 BIP Colony Loss Survey results. If you’ve read this year’s abstract or watched the news, you already know that we recently reported that beekeepers experienced the highest honey bee colony summer losses on record last year (2019). It was…