Dan Gordon, a hobby beekeeper and his wife, Becky, were kind enough to have me over for dinner last week. Besides cooking the best squash dish I ever had, he gave me a jar of honey. This was no ordinary honey. He purchased it from the only commercial beekeeper in the small country of Samoa […]
Several of us on the Bee Informed Partnership team also work on the USDA/APHIS US Honey Bee and Pest Disease survey and have been part of this work since it started in 2009 with 3 states (HI, CA and FL). It grew to 13 states last year and we have welcomed 33 states this […]
After months of hard work and dedication from our Penn State University team, all of the 875 kits for the National Honey Bee Disease Survey have been boxed and are ready to be shipped out to 33 states. We did encounter some problems in trying to obtain supplies and equipment for sample kits. Most were […]
It has been nearly four years since I began working for Penn State University under the supervision of Dennis vanEngelsdorp. I have done just about every task, duty, or job in our lab since then. My responsibilities as a technician range from collecting and analyzing samples to shipping and receiving samples, as well as cataloging, […]
This post comes in from Rob Snyder. This is a gigapan of Pat Stayer’s Queen Production operation. In the image they are breaking up large colonies into smaller nucleus colonies. These nucleus colonies will have a queen cell placed inside each hive. The nucleus colonies are then located in apiaries called “Mating Yards.” This yard […]
One of the queen producers I work with, Joy Pendall, recently told me of some pest problems she’d been having in a few of her yards. When she first told me about the damage these critters were causing I couldn’t believe it – these mammals are not usually much of a pest for beekeepers to […]
To keep healthy bees, beekeepers must monitor their colonies for harmful pests and diseases. This commonly includes testing for the presence and abundance of Varroa, Nosema, and (less frequently) a number viruses and pesticides. To perform these tests beekeepers need to sample their bees. It is not that hard to sample bees, but doing it […]
Anyone who has been involved in beekeeping quickly comes to realize that there is a lot of ‘stuff’ involved, particularly things that are only used for a portion of the year and must be stored for the rest. While brood chambers, bases, and lids are used year-round, things like supers, escape boards, top feeders and […]
What is a Breeder Queen? A breeder queen is selected to be the mother of multiple queens that will then head nucleus colonies “nucs” or other colonies made by splitting existing ones. Mated queens may also be sold to other beekeepers. A breeder queen’s genetics will be passed onto these new queens and, hopefully, her […]
