USDA/AIA Survey Reports 2010/2011 Winter Honey Bee Losses http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2011/110523.htm
UCCE to Lead Technology Transfer in New Honey Bee Health Initiative
http://ucanr.org/news/?uid=1386&ds=191 UCCE to lead technology transfer in new honey bee health initiative: The technology transfer component of a newly funded nationwide initiative designed to monitor and maintain honey bee health will be hosted by UC Cooperative Extension in Butte County... UCCE news story: http://ucanr.org/news/?uid=1386&ds=191
Nationwide Partnership Seeks to Halve Honeybee Losses
News story at: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2011/2011-05-19-092.html UNIVERSITY PARK, Pennsylvania, May 19, 2011 (ENS) - A new nationwide network to monitor and maintain honeybee health is being created by the Bee Informed Partnership. Their goal is to help honeybees to recover from assaults such as mites, fungii, pesticides, competition by alien species, the disappearance of flowering plants, air pollution and climate change that have caused bee colonies to collapse not only across the United States but around the world....
PSU Leads Multidisciplinary Effort to Save Honeybees
News story at http://www.pamatters.com/2011/05/26/psu-leads-multidisciplinary-effort-to-save-honeybees/ Researchers from seven universities, beekeepers in every state, economists, epidemiologists and others have joined the Bee Informed Partnership. Senior extension associate at Penn State Dennis vanEngelsdorp is leading the project, and tells us honeybees are essential to agriculture. “About one in every three bites of food we eat is either directly or indirectly pollinated by honeybees,” he says.... News story at http://www.pamatters.com/2011/05/26/psu-leads-multidisciplinary-effort-to-save-honeybees/
BIP at farmdocDAILY
Read farmdocDAILY's May 2011 article about Honey Bee Health and the Bee Informed Partnership http://www.farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2011/05/honey_bee_health.html
How to collect bees
Before going out to collect bees there are a few things that you will need. Some of items are essential for collecting faster flying specimens. You should have small lidded containers to place the bees in. If you put small pieces of tissue in the container, those pieces give the bees something to hold on to and prevent the bees from becoming wet from regurgitated nectar. Using a net is the easiest method to collect bees. Try to avoid decapitating flower heads when collecting bees. One way to do this is to watch the direction that the bees fly away from the floral source and…
Samoan Honey
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 in the South Pacific. The beekeeper has one of the best jobs you can do from home, owning the Tropical Honey Company. The jar label reads “This is pure natural tropical honey, with a unique flavor, is gathered from a variety of nectar sources found in the plantations and rainforests…
…Continued: Eggs, Larvae, Pupae, Queen
Over the last few weeks I have been writing about the importance of hive inspections and field notes covering some of the attributes of the hive one might choose to identify, observe, interpret, and record. I introduced the attributes in a blog that included an example of the field data sheets we use during our inspections. In the weeks following the initial blog, entitled “Field Notes and Hive Inspection”, I briefly touched on how to estimate a hives’ adult population in terms of frames of bees and how to spot eggs in the cells of the brood nest. The previous blog on eggs, larvae, pupae,…
Ocelli or “Simple eye”
The word ocelli is derived from the Latin word ocellus and means little eye. The ocelli are simple eyes that bees use to orientate themselves towards the sun. Located in a triangular shape are two dorsal ocelli and one central ocelli. They are located dorsally on the bees head (see images above for location). The ocelli are simple eyes, meaning they collect and focus light through a single lens. These simple eyes assist bees with sun orientation so they can navigate well during the day. Some bee species are crepuscular meaning they are active from dusk until dawn. These species have enlarged ocelli which detect…
When we turn to one another for counsel…
"When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies" -Khalil Gibran We are in the thick of our fall sampling which started in late September and will go until the end of November. The idea behind the fall sampling is to give each of the sixteen beekeepers involved in the Bee Informed Partnership a “snapshot in time” of some of their hives before heading into winter. The hives will be reassessed and sampled again in January and February to see how they have come through the winter. Providing hive history through regular inspections and sample collection over the course…