Dear Subscribers:
Thanksgiving proved to be a welcoming time for all here in Gainesville, Florida. We had a long-awaited-for taste of the cold weather that much of the eastern U.S. experienced. In retrospect, this looks to be an understatement for the actual conditions in much of the rest of the country, which were considered a record. Let’s trust everyone in that cold zone had their honey bees ready for winter. We are also wetter than normal it seems for this time of year. The fire fighters out west clearly could have used that excess moisture. No doubt some beehives burned up in those fires that exploded as the rainy season approaches.
I wanted to go to Cuba on a reprise visit this November via Transair Travel’s tour, but couldn’t do it. Maybe mext year. Reportedly some 30 people signed up, an increase over last year’s crowd. I was interesting in building on the basics that I learned last November. One thing those on the tour are doing is putting some more time into visiting queen producers on the island; I hope to get detailed information on this activity from my colleague from last year’s tour, Stephen Andrijiw <s_andrijiw@icloud.com> who was able to make the trip. He moved out west from the Carolinas this year and now runs Front Range Sustainable Apiaries our of Ft. Collins, Colorado.
Stephen will also be in consultation with Cubans about the current status of small hive beetle on the island. That insect was not brought up last year during our trip. The COLOSS small hive beetle workshop I reported on last month in this newsletter brought this to my attention. The task force is looking into using molecular diagnostic tools in an attempt to determine the possible source of the small hive beetle introductions around the world.
The effects of Hurricane Michael continue to pile up in Florida’s panhandle. The current newsletter of the Florida State Beekeepers Association discusses potential and current assistance it is providing to colleagues in west Florida. The gofundme account set up by the association has raised over $7,000, donated by beekeepers in the Sunshine State and elsewhere. See a recent Bee Culture Catch the Buzz concerning the situation
The untimely death of Apimondia President, Philip McCabe is shocking. Not well known in the United States, Irishman McCabe became odd man out when Frenchman Gilles Ratia (currently a contributor to The Apis Information Resource Center) was elected president in 2009 in Montpellier, France. However, in 2015 Mr. McCabe was finally chosen to lead the association, first presiding in Istanbul in 2017.
The Apimondia Executive Council has agreed to commemorate Mr. Mcabe on December 7, which is St. Ambrose’s Day, the patron saint of beekeepers. No doubt there will be more recognition of Mr. McCabe at the 46th Apimondia, meeting next year in Montreal, Canada.
Here’s an issue that has flown under the radar so far, but look for it to become a big deal in 2019. A Bee Culture Catch the Buzz discusses, the fate of the U.S.D.A. budget, with an ultimatum of a five percent cut next year:
“The budget-writing process for next year is already well underway across the federal government. In the past, Thanksgiving has coincided with the White House ‘pass back,’ often with directions for alterations, of agencies’ first-round proposals for outlays in the fiscal year that will not begin for 10 months. The White House typically unveils its budget proposal soon after the annual State of the Union speech.
“ ‘It sounds like a replay of the levels proposed this past spring and the year before that, and I suspect many of the proposals will look familiar — cuts to agricultural research, cuts to rural business development, cuts to nutrition, and cuts to conservation even while they are spending $12 billion to make up for the tariff war they started, and even while the farm bill languishes due solely to the intransigence of the House GOP leadership and the White House,’ said Ferd Hoefner of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a small-farm advocate.
“The budget package released last spring included the ill-fated ‘America’s Harvest Box’ for SNAP recipients, a 33-percent cut in spending on crop insurance, elimination of the USDA’s first green-payment program for land stewardship, elimination of the Rural Business and Cooperative Service, and large cuts in the Economic Research Service and the Agricultural Research Service.”
Some may remember that the Obama administration’s White House Pollinator Health Task Force Initiative provided increased funding for both honey bees and wild pollinators. This could be severely prejudiced under the new budget. Time will tell and the wagons will probably need to be circled across the agricultural community to address this situation because the new farm bill failed to pass.
Contributor to the Apis Information Resource Center Randy Oliver recently sent a Thanksgiving message to his followers entitled “Nine new articles posted to Scientific Beekeeping.” He summed up the situation this way: “You may have noticed that I hadn’t uploaded any articles to http://scientificbeekeeping.com for a while. My stumbling block was that the new editor at American Bee Journal and I have been learning how to work together. She feels that my articles could be better written, and sometimes does not agree with me on scientific interpretation. We’ve reached an agreement for her to simply put a disclaimer at the end of my articles, and allow me to write pretty much as I please, as I had long done when Joe Graham was editor.”
I have included the list here if readers have not seen the original message:
Selective Breeding for Mite Resistance: 1000 hives, 100 hours
An Objective Assessment of the Neonics
The Varroa Problem 16a–Bee Drift and Mite Dispersal
Modeling Nuc Buildup
The Varroa Problem: Part 17a — Treatment Free Beekeeping and Being Part of The Solution Rather Than Part of The Problem
The Varroa Problem: Part 17b — The Evolution of Bees, Mites, and DWV
The Varroa Problem: Part 17c Being Part of the Solution
Determining the Relative Value of Hives for Almond Pollination
Extended-Release Oxalic Acid Progress Report — 2018 California Field Trial
Thanks again to Rosanna Mattingly (rosannamattingly@gmail.com) for continuing the efforts that Fran Bach put in over the years to bring the Western Apicultural Society’s News From the World of Bees to the wider beekeeping community.
I list below the contents for each of the linked documents. They cannot be accessed directly from this newsletter. Some of the links may also be referenced in the actual text of this document.
Honeybees and Drought
Animal of the Month: More to the bee than just honey
Moths are key to pollination in Himalayan ecosystem
Pollination in an agricultural landscape
Temperature and food preference
The U.S. imports this bee by the gallon
Bee Understanding
Orlando Teen Has a Brilliant Plan to Save the Bees
GEAC approves field studies of GM mustard on honey bee
The Great CSU Bug Migration
Messing with Fruit Fly Gut Bacteria
WASBA is on Facebook
Roundup weed killer lawsuit hits a snag
46th Apimondia International Apicultural Congress in Montréal
FROM CATCH THE BUZZ
1. Panhandle Beekeepers and Hurricane Damage
2. USDA Spending Cut
3. Bees during a Total Eclipse
4. Hours of Service for Livestock Drivers
5. Glyphosate and Honey Bee Larval Development
6. Expansion of Flupyradifurone Use
7. Honey Adulteration in Australia
8. 2018 North American Pollinator Protection Awards
WAS President’s Message, November 2018
Ruhl Bee Supply Transition
Tracking How Pesticides Harm Bee Colonies
Artificial Intelligence and Bee Declines
Bee Diversity in Utah
Aussie Pollinators
Data-Driven Applications
Innovative Work in Arizona
Moths Evading Bat Detection
Airport Bees as Sentinels for Pests
Pollinator Partnership Poster Art
Penn State Bee Campus
Ordering Milkweed
International Pollinator Biology, Health, and Policy Conference
Organic Beekeepers Conference
FROM CATCH THE BUZZ
1. BC Funding for Bee Health
2. New Zealand Levy
3. Impacts of Non-Native Plants
4. Plant Movement
5. Helping BIP
6. USDA and IPM
7. California Bee Bandits
FROM POLLINATOR-L
Request for Proposals
Graduate Student Fellowship
Graduate Student
Postdoc Position
Assistant Professor Position
Welcome to Ron Misksha, recently signing on as a contributor to the Apis Information Resource Center. In postings to his badbeekeeping blog Ron has provided some interesting obituaries recently. These include Dr. Richard Taylor, Dr. Warwick Kerr and Sue Hubble.
Finally, his posting on the “King in Waiting” is worth a read; turns out Prince Charles and his wife are competing by selling their own brands of honey. For a listing of other beekeeper personalities, see this web page.
Gilles Ratia, noted above as ex-president of Apimondia, has also become a recent contributor to the Apis Information Resource Center and is listing on his website my Treatise on Modern Honey Bee Management, the patreon site, which features my Beekeeping Digest, and also the second edition of Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees in the listing of beginners’ books section. Check out the most recent posts on his homepage in English. No other website is available in four languages or has a more extensive international reach.
Honey adulteration continues to be a global problem according to the November 2018 International honey report in American Bee Journal. It concludes:
“The offer prices cited earlier illustrate the fact that, as 2018 races to its chaotic conclusion, the two-tiered honey market persists. A market persistently involving both authentic and adulterated honey has deep implications to American agriculture, global food security, and ecological sustainability. This situation will not elude notice by retailers, who believe in social responsibilities and consumers, who demand food safety and an end to food fraud.
“With discussions started by Dr. Joseph Bowden, Prof. Vaughan Bryan, and others, it has become clear that due to the diversity of the chemical and physical profiles of honey, the industry needs a very vigorous and more comprehensive traceability system. A system which goes beyond mere geographic movements in the buying and selling of honey. Those enhanced traceability systems require reference to floral sources, regions of production, modes of extraction,modes of processing, climate and other variables. These variables must be open and readily available.”
A Bee Culture Catch the Buzz contains details on the current situation with reference to honey quality from Down Under.: “The new study on the global honey industry conducted by Macquarie University scientists and peer reviewed and published in the Nature journal, Scientific Reports, looks at testing undertaken by the National Measurement Institute, the same high-security government lab used to test drugs seized by Border Force. The study found that almost one in five of 38 Australian honey samples sourced from supermarkets and markets had been adulterated by mixing honey with other non-honey substances. The adulterated honey was sourced from Victoria, Queensland, NSW and Tasmania, while samples sourced from South Australia and Western Australia tested pure.
“’Manufacturers have been producing adulterated honey, which is typically bulked up with sugar syrup or other products, to boost production artificially,’ according to IBISWorld Senior Industry Analyst, Nathan Cloutman. Previous controversy initiated discussions about honey testing methods but now with the latest report showing honey sourced along the eastern seaboard of Australia including boutique brands, to be fake, this global scandal over the impurity of honey is growing.
“Results of the study are expected to put pressure on authorities to start testing local honey. In Australia, only imported honey is tested.
In the U.S., testing of honey is done by the Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). This is a fee-for-service situation. The website does not mention specific grades and standards for honey. Most fruit and vegetable grading is “voluntary.”
Some U.S. producers are noticing the situation and taking action. One initiative called True Source is an “effort by a number of honey companies and honey industry participants to call attention to the problem of illegally sourced honey; to encourage action to protect consumers and customers from these practices; and to highlight and support legal, transparent and ethical sourcing. The initiative seeks to help maintain the reputation of honey as a high-quality, highly valued food and further sustain the U.S. honey sector.”
A pioneer in this field is Airborne Honey, a three-generation firm still going strong in New Zealand, which has a unique “Trace Me” program. The honey from that company is tested for the amount of pollen, levels of hydroxmethyfurfural (HMF) and correlated with specific bee yards.
We’re now seeing more information about veterinarians getting involved in beekeeping. This was precipitated by a change in regulations surrounding use of antibiotics by beekeepers in January of 2017. Veterinarians are now increasingly getting the message as this release from the American Veterinarian reveals: “Bees are insects, but few veterinarians realize they are also classified as food animals,” Dr. Mayer said. “They are the only managed animal species whose food cannot be provided or controlled by the farmer.” During a presentation at the Indiana Veterinary Medical Association’s 2018 annual meeting in Indianapolis, Dr. Mayer highlighted the important role of veterinarians in bee health. This article provides a good summary of what the veterinarians can do to establish and keep relationships with the beekeeping community.
A Bee Culture Catch the Buzz publicizes the following call for research proposals: “The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) is seeking proposals for research related to improving the health of honey bees. Proposals should focus on research to understand, manage, suppress and eradicate Varroa mites, small hive beetles, and other pests, pathogens, and diseases contributing to colony losses. Summaries of previously funded projects can be found at http://pollinator.org/honeybee_health.htm. Review and selection of proposals will be conducted by members of the Honey Bee Health Task Force.”
This is but one research initiative in the search for answers to current honey bee health challenges. It is a continuing legacy of the consequences of massive coverage of in the press of Colony Collapse Disorder , often simply known as CCD.
September 1 turns out to be the first day of Spring in New Zealand. On that auspicious date in 2018 the folks over at Kiwiimana have produced a podcast featuring Nigel Costley as the guest for number 129 in their series. This is worth a listen for a number of reasons, but especially concerning the topic of American foulbrood or AFB. I wrote about the New Zealand experience with this disease some time ago, and at the time there was discussion of perhaps completely eliminating the disease from the country. The conversation with Mr. Costley reveals that appears to no longer be the case.
Mr. Costely’s radio production featuring L.L. Langstroth, and his discovery of the importance of the “bee space” is also worth listening to. The idea that managing honey bees is somehow therapeutic from both a scientific and religious point of view is broached by Mr. Costley, when discussing Langstroth’s challenges with depression, probably bipolar disorder. This is something that still appears to ring true for post traumatic stress disorder and other current conditions faced by military veterans. Also the presentation veers into an area not well covered in either the beekeeping or lay press, the concept of the human beekeeper’s sometime not-so-beneficial results from management colonies for maximum production. See more on this topic from the bee’s own voice via letters from the hive.
November’s Bee-L discussion list include 19 messages on the Bee Informed Partnership’s recently completed survey and 14 messages on record keeping . But the lion’s share of the discussion (44 messages) concerned treating colonies with oxalic acid vapor for Varroa mites.
As customary, readers are urged to check out the Honey Bee Health Extension page. It features an article on integrated crop pollination. Note that this effort may also be at some risk should deep cuts in the U.S.D.A. budget take place as noted elsewhere in this newsletter.
Fifty five units of Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees (second edition) were sold on Amazon. Com, October 22 to November 18, 2018. New York and Tacoma, Washington led the way.
From the editorial remarks about the second edition: “This book belongs in every beekeeper’s library. The authors have successfully blended the science and art of beekeeping in a book suitable for beginning and experienced beekeepers.” — Hachiro Shimanuki, retired Laboratory Director of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Service.
