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 sought to have mostly strong …
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 colony gets close to dying. …
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 syrup do not live as …
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 it, move from cell to …
We should seek to enhance colony growth in Spring for surplus honey but seek to flatten the growth curve of mites.
I have received a very low response this year from WVBA members (<10) for the annual pnwhoneybeesurvey. It will only be up until end of day Friday May 1. Please if you have not yet had the opportunity won’t you take a few minutes and add your overwintering success and management information so I can …
The PNW honey bee survey is now open extending to end of April. WVBA has had consistently great participation in past surveys (38 survey returns last year – loss level 46%) and I AKS PLEASE complete a survey again this year. Go to https://pnwhoneybeesurvey.om/survey To examine past survey results look for WVBA survey report on …
Winter loss survey NOW OPEN and Dead colony Necropsy Read More »
Many of you are aware that I winter 3 months in Bolivia, South America where my wife Nieves hails from. While here I do some bee classes and apiary visits. We have class beginning this Saturday in fact (it is summer her). I just finished an intense week of coarse and field work. Kerry Clark …
How do you overwinter? What do you consider the greatest challenge to successful overwintering? 38 WVBA survey respondents reported average overwintering losses of 46%, just two percentage points different from the 416 OR beekeeper average winter loss. As Figure 3 of the WVBA report illustrates (posted on http://pnwhoneybeesurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/WVBA-2019.pdf}, the average losses were the highest for …
