American Bee Journal

Temperature stress can damage the sperm stored in queens, but different queen packing strategies reduce this risk. It’s hard to imagine that by the time this issue arrives in your mailbox, it will be almost time to start making splits. Maybe past time, depending on your region. As I am writing this, it’s the middle of February and Canada is…

Long before I knew it had a name, I wrote about the Dunning-Kruger effect in beekeeping. In a blog post titled “I Was So Much Smarter Then,” I revealed the results of my one-sided, unscientific, and misguided study on the knowledge base of beekeepers as it correlates with the time they’ve been keeping bees. From my extensive research, I discovered…

The genealogy of honey bees in the United States. The Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, is not native to the United States. Most beekeepers know this. But do you know the genealogy of A. mellifera (hereafter, the “honey bee”) in the United States? In other words, do you know the full story of when honey bees came to the USA,…

The active beekeeping season begins in our region of the Mid-Atlantic, in Piedmont Virginia, with the prominent bloom of the red maple (see Figure 1). Maple blooms, scattered through the leafless woods, brighten up the dismal gray in streaks of red. It is a welcomed sight where I have my rural apiaries. From thermal camera readings done during the winter,…

Haploid drones are mortally sensitive to environmental stress, but this could actually lead to stronger colonies Drones might look robust, with their wide bodies, large eyes, and powerful wing muscles. But despite their skookum appearance, they are shockingly sensitive to environmental stress. Compared to workers, they are more likely to die from exposure to disease, toxins, or temperature stress. New…

A new high-throughput method to assess risk from pesticide co-exposures Honey bees are almost always exposed to pesticides. For example, in a recent survey of 198 beekeeper hives throughout New York, we found pesticides in comb wax from 197 of the hives (Wheeler et al. 2018). On average, wax from the hives contained 6 different pesticides. And this is actually…

A split is simply a division made by taking an existing colony and separating it into two or more parts. As elementary as that sounds, endless variations exist depending on the desired outcome. Splits can create more colonies, produce nucs, raise queens, prevent swarms, or control mites. An experienced beekeeper will often have a signature split, one he’s used successfully…

Q Boardman feeders to supply water I have three hives in my back yard and I supply them with plain water via a front entrance Boardman feeder and a quart Mason jar filled with water (that I boil first and let cool) for each hive. When the jar is empty, and I take if off to re-fill it, there are…

Naturally-built queen cells, occurring from swarming or queen supersedure, can be used to rear new queens. When naturally-built queen cells are not available, or when we want them at certain times, we can use the Miller queen rearing method. Dr. C.C. Miller of Marengo, Illinois, devised this method of queen rearing (see Figure 1). He shared this method with his…