When starting out, some hobby beekeepers feel overwhelmed with trying to understand what is going on in the hive and how they can best help their bees. I was really lucky when I learned how to keep bees, because I spent 40 hours per week with people who had spent years researching and keeping bees, and who never stopped asking questions to find more about bees (mainly Gary Reuter). If I didn’t understand something, there were several people who I could ask. For beekeepers that are just beginning, they rarely get access to the expertise and information that I did. There are books to read,…
Category: Around the Country
Rice Country
A couple of weeks ago, Randall “Cass” Mutters took Rob, Mike, and me on a tour of the rice industry in Northern California. Cass is the rice farm advisor at UC Cooperative Extension, Butte County with an office just down the hallway of my own. According to www.calrice.org, 95% of the state’s rice is grown north of Sacramento – my region. About 2 million tons of rice is produced annually. Driving around the area always made me wonder about rice production, especially because of the oddity of seeing fields of standing water. Northern California is notorious for the lack of rain in the summer, so it…
Moving West and Settling In
This panorama of Badlands National Park was taken about 2000 miles into our trip from Allentown, Pennsylvania to Chico, California. Rob Snyder and I were moving to Chico to join Katie Lee for a chance to work with some of the best beekeepers/breeders and scientists in the country. We left Pennsylvania Monday June 13, 2011 and arrived in Chico, California 7 days later. From the Badlands we got back on Interstate 90 and moved toward Wyoming stopping briefly at Devil’s Tower National Monument and Grand Teton National Park to take the following images: Before hitting the Tetons we did some fishing in Shoshone National Forest…
Colony, a Beekeeping Documentary out on DVD
Get out your popcorn. Film directors Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell’s bee movie “Colony” is out on DVD. Avoiding the quirky approach of “Vanishing of the Bees”, Carter and Ross allow you to experience the reality of California beekeepers facing threats of Colony Collapse Disorder and the declining US economy in 2008-2009. Certainly not a downer, the film also captures the excitement of life challenges, nature, agriculture, and successes hard fought. I had the opportunity to meet Carter and Ross over dinner at the 2007 Heartland Apiculture Society conference in Kentucky. They were just about to set out on their cinematic journey West after…
Present
I never thought I would get sick of listening to classic rock, but I did on the three day drive from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Chico, CA on a road trip with my dad. It is his favorite music, and since he was generous to come with me we listened to whatever he wanted. It was a small price to pay for his company and driving help. We left Minnesota and her terrible winter on December 1st. I was hoping to make it out of state before snow hit, but we were far too late. Our cross-mid-country trip took three days and about 2,500 miles, though…
California Bound
There are so many things that have been said and written about the state of California; the people, the places, the lifestyle...Growing up in Pennsylvania I have always dreamed of living in California. In just a few hours Rob and I will begin the 2800 mile drive from Allentown, PA to Chico, CA. This past week has been very exciting. I watched one of my younger brothers get married last Friday and went to the beach to see my other brother play in his band. I took an over night river trip with 8 of my very close friends and spent some time talking to…
Origins
On this blog, I will share the work I am doing with bee breeders in Northern California. However, I would to give a more complete story through a three-part blog of how I got here, what I am doing now, and where I hope this project will go. Origins Bee breeding if the most interesting part of beekeeping. There is so much to learn with all the complexities of how to choose breeder queens, how to maintain lines, and different ways to use the bee’s biology to raise new queen bees. I was one of Dr. Marla Spivak’s students at the University of Minnesota, and…
Weather in Northern California
Beekeepers are farmers. And like other types of farmers, beekeepers depend. on the weather. And this was a particularly stressful year for weather. Queen season started out with temperatures much lower than normal and rainy in February and March. The problem with the poor weather is the queens that normally would go out and mate did not have a single day nice enough to fly, resulting in beekeepers not being able to cage mated queens to sell. The queens had to wait two weeks until they could mate, putting the bee breeders two weeks behind their normal schedule. They had to push queen orders back,…
Honey Bee Instrumental Insemination with Sue Cobey
Travel
Traveling across the nation conducting field work has led me to many incredible places, introduced me to some remarkable people, and helped build several unbelievable experiences. The people, the places, and the things I’ve done here at Penn State have helped to create an insatiable taste for life and a broader perspective of the world and how I fit into it! Yes, a lot of the time on the road is spent doing field work, traveling from apiary to apiary, or orchard to orchard, working long hours, many miles from home, but we are handed gifts along the way. These gifts come in many forms…