I missed charging you lucky patrons again last month, but think I finally got the situation sorted out. We shall see if the proof is in the pudding as they say with publication of this July issue.
Florida continues to be an epicenter of COVID-19 infection. The most frightening thing is the current status of our curve noted in this article: The data all across the state is problematic. The firing of Rebekah Jones, who didn’t agree with her supervisors, and quickly developed her own corona virus dashboard is fortunate and unfortunate at the same time, adding perhaps some reality to the situation, but risks confusing everyone. In Gainesville, we won’t really know what’s going on until the expected flood of students begins to show up for the fall semester at the University of Florida.
Meanwhile the bee college hosted by the University’s Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory is going virtual, just a few short days from now. This trend continues across the nation as many beekeeping associations are also moving in that direction. The Georgia State Beekeepers Association is one
Recent deaths in the beekeeping community have emphasized the tradition of the telling of the bees, which I’m doing here. These include Ann Harman, quintessential columnist for Bee Culture Magazine and pioneer in the Eastern Apiculture Society and American Apitherapy Society among other organizations, and Carl Webb, pioneer queen breeder and member of the Russian Bee Breeders Association. Carl had a distinguished career in the U.S. Military, was President of the international honor society Xi Sigma Pi, and worked for Firestone Rubber Company, serving as a Forest Manager in Africa for several years. He retired from the U.S. Forest Service after 33 years of service, becoming a full-time beekeeper and fan of Russian honey bees.
The death of Bill Wilson brings back a load of memories for this author. He spent 37 years of his career as a research leader and teacher in universities and U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, working in many states. During his career, he visited numerous foreign countries with work programs in Mexico, Guatemala and Morocco. He was senior or junior author on more than 250 publications. He served as assistant professor at Colorado State University and adjunct professor at University of Wyoming and Texas A&M University. His specialty was control of diseases and parasites of honey bees.
Bill was a controversial figure in some respects, perhaps best known for pioneering the development of grease infused with antibiotics known as “extender patties” to control American Foulbrood. See a resume he wrote on the 45-year history of this disease: The technology was taken up by many in the beekeeping industry, but had its downside in possibly developing antibiotic resistance.
Potential antibotic resistance issues have in fact led to a complete overhaul of the role of veterinarians in beekeeping in 2017. Whereas before they were not involved at all, there is now what has been called an “arranged marriage,” between the groups that is getting stronger as time goes on.
A book is about to be released that looks closer at the relationship. Dr. Ryan Kane recently co-edited the forthcoming book “Honey Bee Medicine for the Veterinary Practitioner” with Dr. Cynthia M. Faux, a professor of veterinary science at the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine. The book is a collaboration among veterinarians, entomologists, toxicologists, and a pharmacologist. It is set to be released in 2021. In addition, something called the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium is running educational programs for veterinarians.
Mark Winston, known for his several books on honey bees and a reviewer of Storey’s Guide To Keeping Honey Bees once characterized the Africanized honey bee as the “pop insect of the 20th century,” given it was overblown by the press as the “killer bee.” Now comes the 21st century’s pop insect, the so-called Murder Hornet. Yikes! Still over sensationalized as telephone calls are swamping extension offices and a lot of native valuable insects are paying the price. As this passage concludes…” Actually, coverage appeared last December, but lacked something. A New York Times headline read ‘Asian Giant Hornet Invasion Threatens Honey Bees in Pacific Northwest.’ From Washington state, ‘Hunt is on for giant, bee-killing hornet.’ The hornets did not go viral then; other than the Times article, they were barely mentioned outside the Pacific Northwest. The word ‘murder’ did not show up anywhere in those articles, much less the title. Add that word, and a story that the media mostly ignored when it happened became a nationwide obsession months later.
“The biggest problem with Murder Hornet Hysteria, however, is that it has caused a massacre of innocent American insects. People certain that they’ve killed one in states including Arkansas and North Carolina, nearly as far from Vancouver as possible in the U.S., have flooded experts with calls.
“Every single call has been wrong. Many have confused the Asian giant hornet with the European hornet, a smaller but similar relative that arrived here in the 1800s. Others have killed yellowjackets, paper wasps or bald-faced hornets; non-aggressive wasps such as cicada killers or mud daubers; or bumblebees, honeybees — even wasp-mimicking beetles, moths and flies.
“When we read and hear these stories about “murder” hornets and “killer” bees, they can trigger a generic fear of stinging insects. Unfortunately, we hear much less about the role this highly diverse group of organisms plays in our local ecosystems. We need to stop panicking and recognize the many positive aspects of our native wasps. They are among the most common pollinators, a group that many individuals and communities have been working to protect recently.”
A Bee Culture Catch The Buzz looks at the history of rock art in Australia. This passage caught my eye:
“Australia’s Aboriginal populations have been creating rock art for at least 44,000 years. Typically when stenciling, the artist held their hand or other object up to the rock and sprayed pigmented liquid onto it, leaving behind a life-size negative on the wall.
“But the red-rock overhang at Yilbilinji features much smaller figures: 17 minihumans, boomerangs, and geometric patterns—all too tiny to have been modeled after a painter’s hand or a real object. One of the new study’s co-authors remembered seeing Aboriginal people using beeswax as a kind of clay for making children’s toys resembling cattle and horses. Might the ancient rock artists have used beeswax to form stencils?
“Working with representatives of the local Indigenous Marra people, the researchers attempted to replicate the ancient art using only materials native to the region. By heating and molding beeswax, sticking it to the rock, and spraying it with a white-pigment paint, they managed to produce rock art exceptionally similar to the originals found at Yilbilinji, they report today in Antiquity.” A researchers are wont to say, “this requires more study.” Unless I’m wrong, honey bees came to Australia from Europe and have not been in Australia all that long. Maybe there are some other bees/insects that are the source of the wax?
Another Catch the Buzz looks at honey bees in Rome in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic:
‘For three years, members of the carabinieri—the military police which has a special force charged with protecting forests and the environment—have been tracking the approximately 150,000 bees living in three hives on the roof.
The coronavirus epidemic offered a unique opportunity for research, as traffic, pollution and noise in the sprawling city virtually stopped overnight in early March after a nationwide quarantine was ordered. How would the bees react?
“They’ve been happy,” said Raffaele Cirone, president of the Italian Apiculture Federation.
“We see they’ve been more numerous and healthy, and those are indications of the nutrition they’ve been getting,” he added
“The quality of the bees’ honey has visibly improved,” Cirone said.
“Tests show that the bees have been sampling 150 different flowers in the area, compared with the 100 varieties seen before the lockdown.
“Lack of air pollution means the bees have been able to smell the flowers that attract them from 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) away, double the normal distance, he said.
“There are an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 hives in Rome, and the city’s bees were already happier than their comrades in the countryside,” said Cirone, where bees must contend with toxic chemical products used in agricultural production.”
Is anybody surprised? Why? Just another piece of evidence for the effect of the anthropocene.
A recent American Bee Journal Extra looks at reduction of defensive behavior of honey bees in Puerto Rico. A major article on the subject is published in the Journal’s August 2020 edition. There have been reports of this now over quite a period of time. Now, however, the mechanism behind this is being explored in genetic detail, with analysis of three specific genomes from different parts of the globe. Puerto Rican bees are more long-lived it seems and require less nutrition. Some of this comes from the aftermath of Hurricane Maria . In summary, it appears that the honey bees of Puerto Rico are becoming “their own bee.” . The full analysis is found in a paper behind a paywall.
The Israelis are known for their scientific acumen. Famously, they pioneered drip irrigation when their water was about to run out. “Broad utilization of drip irrigation technologies in Israel has contributed to the 1600 percent increase in the value of produce grown by local farmers over the past sixty-five years. The recycling of 86% of Israeli sewage now provides 50% of the country’s irrigation water and is the second, idiosyncratic component in Israel’s strategy to overcome water scarcity and maintain agriculture in a dryland region.
The sustainability of these two practices is evaluated in light of decades of experience and ongoing research by the local scientific community. The review confirms the dramatic advantages of drip irrigation over time, relative to flood, furrow and sprinkler irrigation and its significance as a central component in agricultural production, especially under arid conditions.
In contrast, empirical findings increasingly report damage to soil and to cropsinmentally and agriculturally sustainable over time, waste water reuse programs must ensure extremely high quality treated effluents and ultimately seek the desalinization of recycled sewage.”
An outfit entitled “No Camels” is now looking at pollination in some detail. what’s coming down the line is pretty exciting.
“Across Israel, there are over 500 beekeepers caring for over 120,000 hives around the country. Israel is home to over 1,100 species of bees, and Israelis on average consume 600 grams of honey per person during the whole year. See my report on the country’s beekeeping when I visited in 2008.
“In order to protect Israel’s diverse and extensive bee population, companies are working to protect crop yield rates while helping bee populations, from artificial pollination to beehive trackers to robot beekeepers.
“Here are seven Israeli startups working to protect bees and agriculture for a more sustainable future.”
Closer to home a Bee Culture Catch the Buzz features five ways to help pollinators in general through something called Project Blossom:
“Because pollinators help grow the pumpkins, apples and cranberries used to make Beyond, a sustainability-minded natural pet food, the team has collaborated with The Nature Conservancy to initiate Project Blossom, with the mission of helping protect the declining population of pollinators. Purina’s Beyond has donated $100,000 to The Nature Conservancy to help its mission to support a healthy planet, to protect pollinators.
“The Nature Conservancy works around the globe to protect pollinators from challenges such as the loss and degradation of habitat, climate change and more,” said Chris Helzer, director of science for the Nature Conservancy in Nebraska. “By partnering with Beyond and being a part of Project Blossom, we are advancing our work to support a healthy planet for pollinators and all the other species we rely on for a healthy ecosystem.”
A Bee Culture Catch the Buzz looks at The North Carolina Certified Honey Producer Program:
The North Carolina State Beekeepers Association (NCSBA) is pleased to announce their Certified Honey Producer. “The program is designed to inform customers concerned about the quality of the honey available to them and to help North Carolina beekeepers connect to those customers. The program has strict membership requirements to ensure adherence to its guidelines which call for honey produced by honeybees within North Carolina.
“In addition, no adulterated honey, no removal or addition of pollen, no feeding of sugar or corn syrup during nectar flows, no beekeeper-applied additives or flavorings, and no enzyme-destructive heating are allowed. Only pure natural honey from North Carolina honeybees. CHPP members also are held to a monitored higher standard and are expected to follow established and reasonable beekeeping practices, employ sanitary and healthy honey extraction procedures, and follow proper labeling and marketing of their honey.
“Thus, most international, national, or out-of-state honey producers, distributors, importers, and sellers are not allowed to display the NCSBA Certified Honey symbol. Only members of the Certified Honey Producer Program can legally display this symbol.” Kentucky also has a program https://kybees.org/ckhp-program-2/. We no doubt will see more of these. The impetus is probably coming from the fallout from last year’s Apimpondia meeting in Montreal.
The so-called “virgin gene” has been discovered. In the Cape honey bee the gene has allowed worker bees to lay eggs that only produce females instead of the normal males that other honey bees do, according to a recent release:
“But this method of reproducing also causes problems as it leads to rivalries over who will be the next queen of the colony.
“Professor Benjamin Oldroyd in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences from University of Sydney, said: ‘It is extremely exciting. Scientists have been looking for this gene for the last 30 years. Now that we know it’s on chromosome 11, we have solved a mystery.’
“The ability to produce daughters asexually, known as ‘thelytokous parthenogenesis’, is restricted to a single subspecies inhabiting the Cape region of South Africa, the Cape honey bee or Apis mellifera capensis. Several other traits distinguish the Cape honey bee from other honey bee subspecies.
In particular, the ovaries of worker bees are larger and more readily activated and they are able to produce queen pheromones, allowing them to assert reproductive dominance in a colony. These traits also lead to a propensity for social parasitism, a behaviour where Cape bee workers invade foreign colonies, reproduce and persuade the host colony workers to feed their larvae.
“Asexuality is a more efficient way to reproduce, suggest experts (Getty) Professor Oldroyd added: ‘Sex is a weird way’ to reproduce and yet it is the most common form of reproduction for animals and plants on the planet. ‘It’s a major biological mystery why there is so much sex going on and it doesn’t make evolutionary sense. Asexuality is a much more efficient way to reproduce, and every now and then we see a species revert to it.’
“Every year in South Africa, 10,000 colonies of commercial beehives die because of the social parasite behaviour in Cape honey bees. Professor Oldroyd said: ‘Males are mostly useless. But Cape workers can become genetically reincarnated as a female queen and that prospect changes everything. ‘Instead of being a cooperative society, Cape honey bee colonies are riven with conflict because any worker can be genetically reincarnated as the next queen. ‘When a colony loses its queen the workers fight and compete to be the mother of the next queen.’ The existence of Cape bees with these characters has been known for over a hundred years, but it is only recently, using modern genomic tools, that we have been able to understand the actual gene that gives rise to virgin birth.
Professor Oldroyd said: ‘Further study of Cape bees could give us insight into two major evolutionary transitions: the origin of sex and the origin of animal societies.’ Perhaps the most exciting prospect arising from this study is the possibility to understand how the gene actually works, researchers said. Professor Oldroyd added: ‘If we could control a switch that allows animals to reproduce asexually, that would have important applications in agriculture, biotechnology and many other fields. ‘For instance, many pest ant species like fire ants are thelytokous, though unfortunately it seems to be a different gene to the one found in Capensis.’ The study was published on Thursday in Current Biology.”
Where this might go is not readily apparent. Although the mechanism was unknown, the world-shaking promise of what might occur should the Cape bee be introduced elsewhere is readily apparent, according to a University of Florida Featured Creatures: “Beekeepers in South Africa often consider Cape bees more of a threat to their colonies than the varroa mite. Because of this, researchers globally have taken notice of Cape bees. Many fear that if Cape bees ever spread outside of South Africa, they may be a significant problem for beekeepers worldwide.”
Billed as the “sweet science of honey,” a release looks at the health benefits of the sweet: “Honey has many health benefits but choosing the right one is important,” writes Meera Murugesan
“THERE are more than 300 types of honey in the world. The colour, aroma and taste of each is highly dependent on the types of flowers the bees visited.
“Which honey is the best? This depends on your needs. Monash University Malaysia’s head of school, pharmacy, Professor Gan Siew Hua says sourwood honey has a low sugar content but is rich in vitamin C (giving it a sour taste) and may be useful for diabetics.
“On the other hand, manuka honey has high calcium levels and may be needed by individuals with osteoporosis.Rubber tree honey is rich in iron and suitable for anaemics while cinnamon honey contains a compound that has an estrogen-like structure and may be more suitable for women (to combat premenopausal symptoms).”
“Darker-coloured honey indicates that it has a high antioxidant content. Therefore, many consumers have a preference for it,” says Gan.
“Honey is a rich thick sweet substance made by bees. The bees collect nectar from flowers and regurgitate it back to be mixed with their saliva which contains enzymes. Besides nectar which is a carbohydrate, bees also collect pollen as a protein source. Some types of bees (such as the stingless bee) may also collect a third substance called resin to build their hives.
When resin is mixed with bee saliva, a substance called propolis which is high in antioxidants is produced.
“Among Malaysian honey, sourwood and tualang honey (taken from the tualang tree which is one of the tallest trees in Asia) have high antioxidants, as confirmed by their high phenolic and flavonoid contents.
“Unfortunately, both types of honey have sustainability issues since both are becoming scarcer with time, due to the rampant chopping down of trees for development.
“Gan says this has led to meliponiculture or bee rearing, and the species that is often reared is the stingless bee. Stingless bees are very different from honey bees. Unlike the honey bee, it does not sting and is of a smaller size.
“The species can be reared at home or in farms. The bees keep their honey in pots made of propolis.
“Since propolis has three times more antioxidants than honey and the honey is contained in the propolis pot, the antioxidants are transferred into the honey.
“Furthermore, these small-sized bees can go deep into the flower to get nectar, inaccessible to honey bees (which can be two to 10 times bigger, depending on the species).
“Therefore, stingless bee honey is considered to be superior to tualang or sourwood honey,” says Gan.
“Bees are good pollinators, she adds. It is believed that the presence of bees in a farm may increase crop yield including banana and star fruit, by 2-3 times.”
The discussion about “resin” in this release is interesting. Calling it “propolis” might be problematic. The fact that antioxidants are transferred into honey from the material is new to me, but could happen in the tropics I suppose, perhaps because stingless bee pots are made of the stuff. Stingless bee honey is often considered preferable; this might be simply because it is relative more scarce than European honey bee honey and therefore more dear. See a much further discussion of this topic here.
The 2020 Trip Cuban trip is still on for November 7th to 15th Space is limited and filling up. Cuban Airports are expected to open in August:
“Cuba, has implemented many of the same precautionary measures implemented around the world to minimize the spread of COVID-19 including the use of face masks and social distancing measures, restricting travel to the island until further notice, and closing schools. Additionally, Cuba has deployed it’s national health services to local communities around the country with reports of medical volunteers going door to door to check temperatures and provide guidelines for residents to stay healthy. By all accounts, they have minimized the impact of COVID-19 on the population due to intelligent management of the crisis. The infections have been relatively small, and the deaths minimal.
“We’ve been in constant contact with our partners and friends in Cuba. Like us, they too are sheltering at home with their loved ones, their livelihoods temporarily on hold. We’ve shared the many good wishes of our past and future travelers, and true to the Cuban spirit, and despite many hardships there, they are sincerely concerned with their friends in the U.S. and wish to convey their thoughts of wellbeing and safety, with you.”
Benita Lubic
Transeair Travel LLC
2813 McKinley Place NW
Washington, DC 20015
ph: 202 362 6100
https://www.gtp.gr/TDirectoryDetails.asp?ID=10524
See the facebook page commemorating previous trips 2018 and 2019: . Also consult my report on the inaugural 2017 trip.
One hundred units of Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees, second edition, were sold on Amazon.com June 22 to July 19, 2020. New York and Detroit led the way in sales.
From the editorial endorsements:
“Confused by all the different opinions on how best to keep bees? This guide will provide a bright light on your beekeeping journey.” — Marla Spivak, McKnight Distinguished Professor in Entomology, University of Minnesota
Malcolm T. Sanford
https://beekeep.info
https://patreon.com/beeactor
