The weather forecast doesn’t look too good for this weekend with hurricane Joaquin heading to the East Coast. In expectation of high winds and rain, we have prepped our colonies at University of Maryland as best we can. The action items here are: remove unused equipment, condense weight close to the ground, strap the boxes…
On August 2 and 3, 2015, we had an amazing series of groundbreaking festivities to celebrate the construction of the new Bee and Pollinator Research Lab, that will be built on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota beginning this fall. Beekeepers and friends from across the nation came to celebrate with…
In our lab, we benefit from a diverse repertoire of individuals coming from varied backgrounds. Working at a university includes the benefit of having motivated students with unique skills ready to use their talents. Byron Mariani, a Sophomore Kinesiology Major, is one of these students who began working at the Bee Informed Partnership Lab at…
Although the official start of winter does not begin for a few weeks, bitter cold air has spread across much of the northern region. The Minnesota and Oregon Tech Teams finished up their sampling at the end of October, so the honey bee samples received this month were all from the California team (where they…
It’s the end of another honey bee season – and as the little gals are hunkering down, bracing for the cold winds of winter, our lab technicians are getting to work compiling data and publishing reports. Also coming with the end of the season is the close of our second official year of a project…
The Bee Informed Partnership would like to announce the launch of our new website for the vanEngelsdorp Honey Bee Lab at the University of Maryland, College Park. The focus of this website will be about projects specific to the lab and the University of Maryland. Our Sentinel Hive program is one of these projects. …
The APHIS National Honey Bee Survey (NHBS) is a comprehensive physical examination of apiaries throughout the United Stated. The NHBS began in 2009 in order to address rising concerns over the health and sustainability of honey bee populations. The NHBS was funded by USDA-APHIS and is a collaboration between the University of Maryland and the…
The Maryland lab has been very busy this past month! We temporarily relocated our sample processing while our lab undergoes a remodel. This remodel will permit us to process a larger number of samples. For the month of October (10/2-10/29/14), numerous samples were processed in the Maryland Bee lab. The lab examined 1448 varroa and…
The beekeeping season keeps many busy in the spring through the fall and the Maryland lab is no exception. Traditionally, September is our busiest month for sample processing as most of the tech teams are sending in the last round of samples from the field. We also are spending more time reviewing disease load trends…
Working in the vanEngelsdorp lab this past semester, I had the opportunity to help develop a procedure for extracting lipids from honey bees (the significance of which you can read about here). The lab courses I’ve taken so far have all required me to follow procedures like a recipe, which is good way to develop…
