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• The Status of Our Industry Regarding Varroa Mgmt and What Can We Do About It?

  Contents Introduction: A Reality Check on the American Beekeeping Industry’s Varroa Control Predicament 2 The Lead Up. 2 The Elephant in the Room.. 2 Our Conundrum.. 3 Our Predicament 3 A Personal Note. 4 Rationalization and Lack of Unreasonable Risk. 4 How the EPA Can Help Us 4 Our Current Arsenal: The Registered Varroacides 5 […]

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• Natural Beekeeping: A Reckoning

  There is a great deal of argument about how “naturally” we beekeepers should manage our colonies.  But the mere act of “keeping” bees implies that it is unnatural.  Truly natural “beekeeping” would be to set out empty cavities (hives or other hollows) for swarms to move into (but not more cavities than would “naturally” exist […]

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• A Study on Bee Drift and Mite Immigration: Part 5

  Contents A Deeper Look into our Data. 1 Was Robbing Involved with Mite Immigration?. 6 Discussion on Robbing. 8 Study Wrap Up. 9 Review.. 10 Next Month. 10 Acknowledgements. 11 Citations and Notes 11     A Study on Bee Drift and Mite Immigration Part 5 Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com First published in ABJ June 2023 […]

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• The Evolution of a Beekeeper

  I liked this article by Ernie, since it well reflected the typical learning curve of a newbee.  The article originally appeared in the Summer 2023 edition of BeesCene, the journal of the BC Honey Producers’ Association, and is here included by permission.

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• A Study on Bee Drift and Mite Immigration: Part 4

  Contents Distance that Worker Bees will Drift 1 Effect of Distance upon Bee Drift 4 Hive-to-Hive Variation in Captured Tags 7 Validating our Methodology. 8 Mite Immigration: Results of the Stickyboard Counts. 10 Cumulative Mite Immigration. 11 Next Month. 12 Acknowledgements. 13 Citations and Notes 13     A Study on Bee and Mite Drift: […]

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• A Study on Bee Drift and Mite Immigration: Part 3

  Contents The Donor Colonies 1 Tagging. 1 Results and Discussion. 2 Did the Tagged Bees Behave Normally?. 2 Progress of the Colonies. 4 Answering our Questions 4 Observations from the Donor Hives. 5 Correlation With Varroa Infestation. 6 Tag Recovery by Date. 8 Timelines of Recovery of Drifted Bees 9 Relevance to Mite Immigration. 10 […]

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• Suggested wording and pitch for an Own Use Exemption

  DRAFT IN PROGRESS updated 24 June 2023 Suggested Text for an Amendment to FIFRA I have zero legal background, but suggest that we pitch a short and sweet amendment to be placed in the Farm Bill.  There is already a section in FIFRA 40 CFR 152.25 regarding exemptions. § 152.25 Exemptions for pesticides of a character […]

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• A Study on Bee Drift and Mite Immigration: Part 1

    Contents Introduction Was Another Field Study Justified? Background Research The Biology Behind Mite Transfer Between Hives How Much Mite Immigration Actually Occurs? How Do the Mites Get Transferred? How Important is the Drifting of Drones? How Much Drift is There of Worker Bees? How Important are the Guard Bees? Do Mites and Viruses Cause […]

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• A Study on Bee and Mite Drift: Part 2

   Contents Questions to Answer 1 Materials and Methods 2 Placement of the hives 2 Preparation of the Mite Donor Colonies. 3 Tagging the bees 3 The Control Group. 7 Preparation of the Mite Receiver Hives 7 Eliminating the mites. 7 Magnetic tag recovery. 9 The stickyboards. 10 The hive scales. 10 Layout of the Donor […]

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• Screenshots of hive weights

  Supplementary material for A Study on Bee and Mite Drift, Part 5 Due to unfamiliarity with data preservation for the scale hives, we lost all our raw data when we removed the batteries from the scales at the end of the trial. Luckily, I had been following the weight data during the course of the trial, […]

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