I’m late this year with the November issue of this digest. All the doings around Thanksgiving got in my way. We’ve had some wonderful fall days here in North Central Florida. The bees are still foraging on an almost year-around blooming plant here, Bidens alba (begarticks) . It will freeze back with cold weather probably, but we should see it back in the Spring. Hurricane season is coming to a close and we are sighing in relief, but with the current increasing weather instability, we can’t let our guard down. Three percent of hurricanes occur post season.
An American Bee Journal Extra posting reveals that Sioux Honey Beekeepers Establish Central California’s First Anonymous All-Hours Food Pantries at the best time of the year when need is greatest.
“Little Free Pantries take a crowd sourced approach to meet immediate local needs by encouraging people to ‘take what you need and leave what you can.’ The pantries are meant to be an anonymous, 24/7 option for communities. They are a spin-off of Little Free Libraries and began in 2016 with Jessica McClard, a mother in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Today hundreds exist across the country.
The continued use of something called Varroa sensitive hygiene appears to be making headway against these mites. A Science Magazine post reports: “It’s been slow, laborious work. Since the mite jumped from Asian honey bees (Apis cerana) to the common domesticated European honey bee (A. mellifera) more than a half-century ago, researchers have discovered some bees can keep the mite in check through behaviors such as fastidious grooming and removing mite-infested larvae. But identifying bees able to mount these responses is tedious.
“A standard way to evaluate grooming, for example, is to count how many mite legs have been chewed off by vigilant bees. And the complexities of bee reproduction make it cumbersome to combine mite-resistance traits with others valued by apiarists. Although researchers and breeders have created bees that require fewer pesticides, even these colonies can be overrun by mites—and very few lines can yet survive without any treatment. “’There is progress, but not very significant,’ says Benjamin Dainat, a bee researcher and breeder at the Swiss Bee Research Centre in Bern.”
New molecular tools, however, “promise to accelerate those efforts. A new protein-based test, for example, would allow beekeepers to simply send a laboratory a few dozen antennae, plucked from their bees, to learn whether the insects have mite-detecting powers. Other scientists are sequencing the genomes of huge numbers of bees, hoping to create a relatively cheap and easy way to identify bees that carry genes for the protective behaviors. Such a test ‘is almost the Holy Grail’ of anti-Varroa research, Fernhout says.
“A success would help secure the future of the multibillion-dollar honey bee industry, which supplies honey and enables the largescale pollination of high-value crops, such as almonds. If breeders can spread resistant bees, then ‘the long term is looking good’ for controlling the mite and stemming the bee die-offs, says John Harbo, a retired biologist and bee breeder in Baton Rouge. ”
For a history of this hygienic technique in warding off pests and predators, see this website. A major player at the moment in this technique is .
In spite of what appears to be good news with respect to Varroa mite control, the December issue of the Bee Informed Partnership’s Sentinel Hive report is less optimistic: “Welcome back to yet another Sentinel Apiaries update. We’re coming to you in the spookiest month of the year with some pretty scary stuff: mites, mites and more mites! I spent an embarrassing amount of time in photoshop to drive this point home (see above). As we always do in September, we saw a pretty significant jump in mite loads last month. Over 50% of states were above treatment threshold. You can see a lot less yellow (below threshold states) on our Varroa heat map below.
“Mite loads in Sentinel apiaries were much higher this September than last year (see below). If you have yet to check or treat for mites, now is the critical period before winter sets in. You want your mite loads to be as low as possible before overwintering, because those winter bees have to live until spring and may not make it if they’re sharing their space with these unwelcome guests.” Finally, take a look at the results of the 2019 Mite a Thon, published by the Pollinator Partnership.
Given the current focus on the microbiome’s effect on human health, it was only a matter of time for this to be looked at in honey bees. See this digest’s posting on the subject.
A Canadian effort to develop a “probiotic,” which is designed to “improve” the honey bee microbiome appears to be coming to market. ‘Probiotics aren’t just for humans,’ said Reid. ‘Our idea was that if you could use beneficial microbes to stimulate the immune response or attack the pathogens that are infecting the hives, then maybe we can help save the bees.’”
“Based on previous research into fruit flies, the team determined the best combination of probiotics for honey bees and fed it to them in the form of a BioPatty. Feeding bees a protein patty is common practice for bee keepers during times when their natural food source is scarce. For the study, they also had a hive with a BioPatty with no probiotics and another with no BioPatty.
“The results showed in the hives treated with probiotics a 99 per cent reduction in pathogen load and an increased rate of survival. They also found the bees treated with probiotics had an increased immunity to the bacteria that causes American Foulbrood.
“’Long term we hope to add a viable, practical and available treatment alternative to chemicals and antibiotics that beekeepers can readily adopt into their bee-keeping habits to help prevent colony collapse,’ said Thompson.” Perhaps, but the article doesn’t explain exactly what’s in the BioPatty, which at the moment should raise a few eyebrows.
We can expect more concerning this topic it seems. Recently, I received this message: “I would like to present our product HBEEX that stimulates bee hygiene instinct, helps prevent CCD, increases honey yield and improves winter survival. If you are interested in receiving a free HBEEX 2ml vial, which is enough to supply 10 bee colonies, please send me a message with the delivery address provided. Please find attached basic information and instructions for use.” The web site shows the product contains the hop constituent xanthohumol.
Here’s what contributor Randy Oliver says about his experiences with probiotics and honey bees, published November 4 as a Bee-L post, “At every trade show I ask the manufacturers for supportive evidence. I’ve yet to be shown any. I’m not saying that they can’t, but if they did, it wouldn’t be at all difficult to demonstrate in a simple field trial or two.”
It had to happen sooner or later I suppose: “Instagram gained a new French influencer and her name is B. She does what all good influencers do — takes carefully posed selfies, posts enviable travel shots and answers cheeky Q&As. There’s just one thing that separates her from all the other influencers. She’s a bee. That’s right. B. has two wings, six fuzzy legs, and a sweet little dusting of pollen all over her yellow and black thorax.
“Created by the French philanthropic network Fondation de France, @bee_nfluencer is a whimsically creative way to increase awareness for threatened bee populations and raise money for the cause.”
And how about a reality show based on beekeeping? Yep, “Charlie Bee Company” is a new, unscripted, 8 x 30 min, episodic public television series about a quirky bunch of Texas beekeepers who rescue killer, africanized honeybees from desperate and dangerous situations; with each painful sting, raising awareness for our planet’s most important pollinator.
Previous discussion about adulterated honey and the post on this digest concerning that situation is now faced with real fake honey it seems out of Israel: “With the global population of bees in decline, honey could become a rare commodity on supermarket shelves. A team of 12 students from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has been working for the past year on the development of a bee-free honey. It’s produced by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which ‘learns’ to make honey following reprogramming in a lab.
“Their efforts have paid off sweetly: The team won a gold medal at the recent iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) competition held in Boston.Some 300 teams from universities around the world took part. This is the sixth gold medal Technion students have won at iGEM since it was established in 2004 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to give students the opportunity to experiment in synthetic biology.
“In addition to developing the science, an equally important component of iGEM involves creating a real business enterprise. The Technion team created its own website and a catchy company name: BeeFree.
“Our vision is to create a sustainable BeeFree honey using engineered bacteria, which will process a nectar-like solution using secreted enzymes that mimic the honey stomach environment,” the website states.
A Bee Culture Catch the Buzz begins: “We are writing to inform you about the ‘Beescape’ bee management and conservation platform. You can access Beescape by visiting Beescape.org. If you visit Beescape.org and click ‘Get Started’, you’ll be met with an interactive map that allows you to ‘get a bee’s eye view of your landscape’
“In the Beescape interactive map, you can enter your address or click on your location to obtain metrics on local landscape quality for bees. You can get these metrics at either the 3 km or 5 km radius scales (this can be edited with the ‘Foraging Range’ menu). These metrics include:
1) Floral Resources in Spring (“Spr. Floral”), Summer (“Sum. Floral”), and Fall (“Fall Floral”) 2) Predicted Insecticide use and toxicity levels in the surrounding landscape (“Insecticide”) 3) Nesting resources for wild bees (“Nesting”)
These intuitive indices can help inform you about the landscape — higher values of “Nesting”, “Spr. Floral”, “Sum. Floral”, and “Fall Floral” mean BETTER resources for bees. Likewise, higher “Insecticide” values mean GREATER exposure to insecticides for bees which, as you might expect, are understood to be WORSE for bees.
You can select which sites are the best for your honey bees, or see how your current site stacks up for supporting honey bees and wild bees. Beescape was first released in spring 2019, and our interactive map is now available for Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, New York, West Virginia, Michigan, and Wisconsin!
We also invite users of Beescape to provide us with information about how their bees are doing by completing a fall and spring survey so we can assess winter survival. Based on our analysis of winter survival data provided by the Pennsylvania Beekeeper Association Survey, Varroa management and weather are the main factors influencing winter survival. With your help, we hope to refine these models so we can add tools on Beescape to predict winter survival in your specific location. Please consider registering with Beescape and contributing to the Beescape team!
It’s not too soon to contemplate attending the Western Apicultural Society (WAS) conference July 9-12 in Missoula, Montana. See the full program in the November 2019 edition of the WAS newsletter. President Jerry Bromenshenk invites one and all to attend the event and on the heels of this meeting stay for the next edition of Bee and Hive Monitoring Workshop on Monday, July 13, 2019. I hope to attend the 4th edition of this event, having reported on both the second and third event of this nature.
The Bee Aware Newsletter for November 2019 out of Australia has been published. It contains information on a variety of subjects connected with beekeeping. See it in all its glory here See also the Australian Government’s take on importing honey bee semen
As always, consult the latest extension efforts at the Bee Health Extension site. Read about how the bee health community began: “In response to high death rates of bee colonies in the winters of 2006-2008 and the emergence of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), researchers and extension specialists pooled their resources to engage this new challenge. The phenomenon of CCD coincided with the 2006 release of the National Research Council report, “Status of Pollinators in North America” which outlined declines in all pollinators. These two events created wide awareness of the need for sustainable pollinator management strategies to ensure diverse populations of bees for natural and agricultural plant communities.”
This gave rise to the USDA-ARS Areawide Project to Improve Honey Bee Health https://bee-health.extension.org/usda-ars-areawide-project-to-improve-honey-bee-health/ and internationally to a Coordinated Responses to Honey Bee Decline in the USA published in Apidologie. A paper I wrote back in 2018 also provides insight into the situation:
“In conclusion, It looks like the fallout from the year 2006, when CCD was first detected, and subsequently named the “beepocalypse,” is a mixed bag. Proclaimed first a disaster for honey bees and beekeepers, which continues to be raised in some circles, that “banner year” would also mark the beginning of a wave of concern about the future of all pollinators. Paradoxically, it would signal a future of great promise, via the ramping up of scientific effort all across the research spectrum, in the continued search for a healthier honey bee and more prosperous pollinating enterprise.”
Sixty four units of Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees, second edition were sold on Amazon.com October 28 through November 24, 2019. Detroit, MI and Porland, OR led the way in sales.
From the editorial endorsements:
“A well-balanced and extremely thorough guide for new beekeepers.” — Hilary Kearney, Girl Next Door Honey
Malcolm T. Sanford
https://beekeep.info
https://patreon.com/beeactor
