Scientific Beekeeping

The Status of Our Industry Regarding Varroa Management and What Can We Do About It? Part 2 First Published in ABJ August 2023 Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com   CATCH UP Last month I wrote about the options (legal or unapproved) that beekeepers are taking to deal with varroa as it evolves resistance to amitraz. In this The post The Status of…

A Study on Bee Drift and Mite Immigration Part 6 Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com First published in ABJ July 2023     In our 2018 study in the California foothills, we confirmed that bees indeed drift from collapsing colonies to other hives, even to those at considerable distance. And that drifting can result in a substantial The post A Study on…

Tips for Using the XXX cup for Monitoring Varroa TAKING THE SAMPLE Use an 18-quart dishwashing tub and a stainless-steel half cup (125 mL) measuring cup (for measuring live bees, a deep cup is more accurate than a shallow cup). Take the bee sample from a frame (or frames) adjacent to the broodnest, but not The post How to use…

Updated 8 Jan 2023.  I continually update this page, so please refer to the current version.  For mite treatment options, search “Varroa Mite Management” Beekeeping in a Nutshell I’ve attempted to distill 50 year’s of beekeeping experience into a short set of instructions for starting out with bees in the Sierra Foothills.  This page provides The post First year beekeeping…

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 The post The Status of…

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 The post Natural Beekeeping: A…

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 The post A Study on…

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. The post The Evolution of a Beekeeper appeared first on Scientific Beekeeping.

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: The post A Study on…

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 The post A Study on…