Some WVBA beekeepers may remember Emily (Cross) Painter. She served as Secretary of WVBA for a couple of years, 2014-2016 while a West Salem High student. She left then to spend a gap year in England and for last four years has been an undergraduate student at the University of…

January is not a month for bee colony inspection. But that does not keep us from worrying about them. So what can we do with our bees this month (besides just worrying)? It is possible to roughly group our overwintered colonies into two groups per our last fall judgement/inspection. We…

PARASITIC MITE SYNDROME (PMS) Parasitic Mite Syndrome is a condition, not a specific disease whereby a honey bee colony dies rapidly in the fall months. The initial PMS field symptoms include reduced adult population and spotty brood pattern with dying larvae. These symptoms intensify over a short time as the…

Doesn’t this just say fall? Monarch Butterfly and Honey Bee on Sunflower Photo by Kathy Garvey

To feed bees or not to feed bees? If you read Jeremy Barnes letter to the editor (in most recent ABJ, September 2020) you might wish to hit the pause button. Jeremy summarizes studies involving feeding sugar syrup to bees confined in cages in the lab. Worker bees fed sugar…

AFB is a bacterial disease of developing honey bee brood.  AFB spores infect the larva in the earliest larval stage (newborn to 2 days old), generally through nurse bees supplying infected food. Infection spreads quickly among the larvae, as nurse bees, which carry the bacteria but are not affected by…