Dear Subscribers:
I am back from Apimondia 46 in the City of Montreal, Canada. Some 5,000 attendees showed up to help the Canadians put on a great show. The venue, Plalais des Congres, was a perfect setting for this convention.
As I predicted in an earlier paper published in the April 2019 of Bee Culturemagazine, this congress eclipsed the previous Candian Apimondia held in Vancouver in 1999. The keynote addresses, scientific symposia and poster sessions were as the French would say, “formidable” en france. It is possible to download not only the program bulletin but also the complete abstract book presented at the event from the website. This is a welcome approach, providing a great deal of background that would be impossible to obtain otherwise. Get ready for some heavy reading.
There were a lot of surprises, including election of the first North American as President. : “Dr. Jeff Pettis has been elected President of Apimondia by the delegates of the Federation Members for a four-year mandate. Jeff has served as President of the Apimondia Scientific Commission for Bee Health from September 2015 to September 2019. Dr. Pettis comes from a farming background and fell in love with honey bees while taking a course in Beekeeping at the University of Georgia. He completed MS and PhD degrees in Entomology while researching parasitic mites of honey bees. He worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a research scientist for over 20 years and now consults on bee health globally since leaving USDA. He has been a beekeeper for over 35 years and now manages 75 hives with his youngest son Kevin in Salisbury, Maryland USA. He continues to work on queen health, parasitic mites and pollinator health. In his acceptance speech in Montreal he outlined his vision for Apimondia in three words, Communication, Diversity and Respect. He sees increased communication as vital to the growth of Apimondia, a need to capture the diversity of beekeepers and the different bees that are managed globally and finally, that we work to respect the bees.”
Contributor to the Apis Information Resource Center and Canadian Ron Miksha reported on the event via in his bad beekeeping blog, including a surprising scandal:
“Unfortunately, the honey competition didn’t go smoothly this year. Last month, the honey entries were sent to labs for adulteration and contamination testing. Forty percent of honey entries failed the tests. I don’t know which tests were done or by whom, but this was major bad news for the honey industry and for the competitors. If the best beekeepers in the world can’t produce perfect honey, who can?” There was a full symposium and “cross-cutting” round table discussion on honey adulteration and the various techniques available to test the product. We can look forward to much more on this subject over time. It is a true credible risk for the honey market in general.
Read Ron’s impromptu travel log on Montreal, which provides “home-grown” insight, given his Canadian residence.
Another event, the Coloss.org annual meeting, took place for the first time outside Europe prior to the main Apimonida event. See more about this meeting here.
Two key note addresses and a couple of symposia caught my interest. G.E. Robinson University of Illinois, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, Urbana, USA provided ideas on a concept calling “Me to We,” revealing the genetic sources of social behavior in various organisms:
“The honey bee is widely considered to be a paragon of sociality, but how did this happen? True societies are very rare in nature, but have evolved repeatedly in a group of insects that include the ants, bees and wasps. This lecture uses the honey bee and other species to show how the new science of genomics enables researchers to elucidate social life in molecular terms. We have learned that nature builds different types of social capacities in the brains of different species from common genetic building blocks, and brain systems that recognize and process stimuli that are personally rewarding can be shaped to motivate cooperation. Two additional discoveries explain how these are possible: gene activity in the brain is highly responsive to social influences, and gene regulatory networks in the brain are surprisingly malleable. These discoveries give us a new appreciation of the honey bee society.” See his Power Point presentation found here
Dr, Tom Seeley took an in-depth look at Darwinian beekeeping as an evolutionary approach to apiculture, one that seeks to provide managed honey bee colonies with living conditions that are as close as possible to those of wild honey bee colonies. The goal is to harmonize our beekeeping methods with the natural history of Apis mellifera, and thus allow the bees to make full use of the toolkit of adaptations that they have evolved over the last 30 million years. He reviewed ways in which the living conditions of honey bees differ between wild and managed colonies differed, and showed how to pursue beekeeping in a way that is centered less on treating a bee colony as a honey factory and more on nurturing the lives of honey bees.” You can see a presentation by Dr. Seeley that is for rent/sale here.
A symposium on something called “citizen science,” with respect to beekeeping, is a concept, which no doubt will be more and more relevant in the future, as citizens will be asked to contribute to large-scale projects involving data collection. One at the moment is the beehealth.guru initiative, which I am a cooperator on with Jerry Bromenshenk and his crew at Bee Alert Technology. Several others were mentioned including the Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) and something called the Insignia project . A project called Nature’s Notebook is seeking help from citizens in a number of areas as well.
I was part of a symosium entitled: The Future of Global Beekeeping: Facing New Challenges. Moderator, ex-Apimondia President, Gilles Ratia provided the following introduction to the topic:
“With an environment (climate, bee health and economy) where changes are accelerating in a negative way, beekeepers can see several possible scenarios in the near future.
1. Either they are constantly adapting – and with great difficulty – to the new pressures of the profession: globalization of diseases, parasites and predators, veterinary products becoming ineffective, placing on the market of devastating pesticides, complicated and expensive breeding of queens and drones, extreme climatic effects, stricter legislation on the quality of bee products, increasing production costs, etc.
2. Either they turn to “Slow Beekeeping”: abandoning the breeding of queens, embossed waxes, feeding other than survival, migrations, allopathic treatments, etc., but it is still necessary that farmers do so with a holistic, precautionary approach for the future of biodiversity.
3. Or, on the contrary, they engage in high-tech for a “Beekeeping 2.0”; genetically modified bee “neonic-ready”, nutritious and veterinary sustenance customized for each colony thanks to 24/7 connected monitoring, diversification of products for sale via Internet, etc.
4. Either they are no longer useful for society and politicians will let them die on the altar of progress: self-fertile GM plants no longer requiring pollinators (or use of micro-drones), cheap artificial honeys etc.
Each region of the globe will have its own answer but if the scenario n °4 comes to be generalized then one will be able to ask the question: “Which world will we leave to the future generations?”
A straw poll of those attending indicated that number 4 is only one of all the approaches listed that beekeepers and others should experimenting with going forward. Thus, the general response to the moderator’s question above is “all of the above.”
The Australian Bee Scientifics crowd has reached the U.S. mainland. You may remember this initiative, reported in last month’s newsletter, funding Jody Gerdts to make an extended tour from Down Under to visit the United States to learn how to breed Varroa-tolerant bees from some of the most successful projects in the world. This work is supported by the International Specialised Skills Institute Agribusiness fellowship, the Victorian Honey Bee Compensation and Industry Development Fund and Bee Build (pollen substitute developer).
8/11/2019: “Our second stop on the Varroa Tolerance tour brought us to Western Washington, the land of islands, rivers, mountains, and IPAs. At a friends house, we were directed to the beer fridge in the garage with the disclaimer that “there are several different beers to choose from”. In Washington, it turns out, that this translates to “there are several different IPAs to choose from.” Good luck finding a lager, or worse yet, an amber! Nothing remotely similar to our beloved Toohey’s OLD!
“Just south of the town of Coupeville, located on Whidbey Island, we visited with Sue Cobey. Sue is a queen bee breeder specialising in instrumental insemination and contributed greatly to the development of the New World Carniolian. Read a report on the bee breeding class here.” I also produced a report on Sue’s activities while she was in Ohio some time ago (2003).
The Bee Scientifics folks are now reporting from Baton Rouge (9/4/2019), where they are visiting Bob Danka and crew at the USDA Honey Bee Breeding Laboratory. Read their discussion on “tolerance” versus “resistance” when it comes to Varroa mites. They refer to a rather more complete treatment found at Science Magazine.
The latest word from Australia is that no further mites have been found at Townsend Port. That’s the good news. The bad news is that native bees die faster due to Nosema ceranae, which appear to be vectored via flowers by honey bees. Ouch!
There’s not much time left to get your plans in order for the 150th anniversary of the the A.I. Root Company to be held in Medina, Oh October 11-13. I’m a late addition to the program, which will focus on the rich history of beekeeping education and research efforts in Ohio even since the 1850s, including some discussion by L.L. Langstroth and A.I. Root, who it appears are expected to show up in person. A list of other notable personalities will be on hand. Space is limited.
Word from The American Bee Project is that it is still in operation based on my recent query to CEO Julie Julie Zahniser, Esq. The program: “…aligns the economics to favor saving bee habitat rather than destroying bee habitat. The only way we are going to move the needle in the right direction is to recognize that bee apiaries are legitimate commercial agricultural uses that should not be taxed any differently from cattle ranches or row crops. If we continue to tax bee forage higher than cattle pasture, we will get less and less of the former and more and more of the latter. I would also love to see emphasis on the benefits to landowners and beekeepers of participating in our program. Landowners not only get substantial real estate tax savings, but they also have responsible lessees keeping any eye on their land which helps reduce problems such as illegal dumping and squatting.
“This idea of moving the needle by aligning economics is being done right now in the case of the Empire State Building. There the owner retro-fitted the building for energy efficiency. They did it not only because it was the right thing to do, but because of the cost savings. In other words, they were only able to do it by making a business case for doing the right thing. Similarly, we have found that landowners, particularly in the case of companies, want to help save bees and other pollinators, but they have to be able to make a business case for doing so. That is where our project comes in to make this possible.” For more on this innovative program see the project’s website.
Contibutor Al Summers sends interesting tidbits from Japan about small-scale beekeeping in that country. There aren’t a whole lot of commercial honey producers and royal jelly also results in income for apiarists in that country. This piece in Japan Times, especially with respect to Darwinian beekeeping, being done by, without folks realizing it, is worth a read. In yet another contribution, Al reveals what Japanese beekeeping looks like. Finally, looking at this video harvesting honey from Apis cerana Al concludes: “The sheer destructiveness of the bee’s nest..and the pretty young lady’s ravenous enjoyment..are what stuck me the most. This is a good example of why I personally feel that modern beekeeping..using hives with removable combs..is a much more ‘kind’ and effective way to keep bees and produce honey. Amen!
Honey bees it turns out are not vegetarian, something I have delighted in telling everyone for many years! They appear to be omnivores: “The journal Scientific American reports Prarthana Dharampal of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Shawn Steffan, who works at the university and the U.S. Agricultural Research Service, assessed 14 bee species in six of the seven bee families.
“They found bees eat substantial amounts of microbes, enough to change how they fit within food webs – putting them in the omnivore spot, halfway between herbivores and carnivores. Steffan says any stressor that throws the external rumen out of whack could be an indirect, but no less lethal way of killing bees. ‘It may not be that heat is directly lethal for bee development,’ he concludes.
“But it very well could be that high heat knocks out the microbial symbionts in the pollen, and then the bee suffers from the lack of microbes.” Nutrition was also on display in Montreal with several papers on the honey bee’s “gut microbiome.”
In another myth-busting post, we see something else that may not be what we have thought over the years. Honey bees aren’t necessarily busy all the time.
Amitraz is in the spotlight at Project Apis m. See what is being looked at in terms of this mite treatment, along with reports on other activities at one of the most active honey bee research programs in the country, which cooperates with other entities like the National Honey Board.
Contributor Joe Traynor sent me his newsletter, suggesting there might be a shift in evangelical views on the horizon in terms of belief/feelings about “climate change.” The one thing I would add here is that I’m hearing that the planet isn’t necessarily being “ruined.” The globe will be fine no matter what happens. It’s humanity’s life on our “pale blue dot” that appears to really be on the line.
Rosanna Mattingly, Editor, Western Apicultural Society Journal has published her latest items of interest for beekeepers listed here:
€100 million German insect protection plan will protect habitats, restrict weed killers, and boost research
Genetic ‘road map’ reveals the lost birthplace of a 150-year-old butterfly
Oregon lawmakers urge EPA to protect pollinators from pesticide
U.S. Beekeepers File Suit Against Trump EPA Charging ‘Illegal’ Approval of Insecticide Linked to Mass Die-Off
Beekeepers are suing Trump administration over decision to allow wider use of insecticides
Beekeepers Confront the E.P.A. Over Pesticides
Wilsonville event sparks bee research breakthrough
Preliminary Report on Selection and Breeding of Honeybees for Alfalfa Pollen Collection
Honeybee brain upgrades may help the insects find food
Researchers Determine Pollen Abundance and Diversity in Five Major Pollinator-Dependent Crops
The COLOSS conference bridges the Atlantic
Agrivoltaics proves mutually beneficial
Understanding the Multi-functional Nature of the Countryside
Honey Bees Can Get STDs, Too
Georgians log 134,000 interactions with bugs during pollinator census
WMU pollinator house: helping the native Michigan bees survive with a bee hotel
PESTICIDE SURVEY
Help bees in lean times with a variety of blooms
Pollinating bees may be exposed to lethal levels of neonics in soil: study
Cumbria Wildlife Trust on beetles’ good work
FROM CATCH THE BUZZ
FROM ABJ EXTRA
FROM POLLINATOR-L
Check out the September 2019 Bee-L discussions: several posts look to continue the discussion on Darwinian Beekeeping. Honey dew honey is mentioned. Not a big deal in the U.S. but a major enterprise in the country of Turkey
As always, consult the latest extension efforts at the Bee Health Extension site. It looks to be recently updated with a brand new fact sheet and a set of frequently-asked questions. The home page looks at the history of the site and its suite of collaborators.
Seventy one units of Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees, second edition were sold on Amazon.com August 19 through September 15, 2019. Milwaukee and Washington DC led the way in sales.
From the editorial endorsements:
“This is one of the few beekeeping books written by a beekeeper and an extension apiculturist which bridges the gap between practical beekeeping and science of beekeeping.” — Dr. Medhat Nasr, Alberta Provincial Apiculturist, Albert Agriculture and Forestry and Past President of Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists. Dr. Nasr has retired, but I was fortunate to meet up with him at Apimondia 46.
Malcolm T. Sanford
https://beekeep.info
https://patreon.com/beeactor
