Beekeeping Through the Eyes of a Biologist
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Pesticides in the News Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com First Published in ABJ in August 2019 Our beleaguered Environmental Protection Agency, tasked with protecting man and the environment, is caught between an unsupportive Administration and a public that is becoming more and more concerned about the effects of pesticides and climate change. I plan to return to […]
Read MoreContents Effects of nosema upon an individual bee. 1 Effects of nosema upon the colony. 2 Colonies can fight back. 2 Nosema and almond pollination. 4 Nosema and the queen. 7 How concerned should you be about nosema?. 8 The take-home message. 10 Coming. 11 citations and notes. 12 . Nosema Part 4: Nosemosis […]
Read MoreContents Requisites for nosema to gain a foothold. 2 The importance of pollen to Nosema transmission and reproduction. 4 The connection between nosema and dysentery. 6 putting it all together. 7 Coming. 8 citations and notes. 8 The Seasonality and Effects of Nosema Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com First Published in ABJ in Aug. 2019 Nosema […]
Read MoreBelow are links to some classic beekeeping publications: Farrar 1944 Productive-management-of-honeybee-colonies USDA 1967 Beekeeping in the United States Scroll down to Moeller’s “Managing Colonies for High Honey Yields” Beekeeping-in-California_1987 I also recommend (or have had recommended): Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees, 2nd Edition: Honey Production, Pollination, Health, Malcolm Stanford. Malcolm has an easy-to-read writing […]
Read MoreContents The invasion of Nosema Ceranae. 2 How did ceranae get into the U.S.?. 5 Signs of nosema infection. 5 A key finding. 8 Next. 9 citations and notes. 9 The Enigma of Nosema Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com First published in ABJ July 2019 I’ve recently read Raquel Martin-Hernandez’s excellent review of our state of […]
Read MoreContents Selective breeding for mite resistance. 4 The 2018 season. 4 A visit to France. 12 My spring surprise. 13 Selection vs. Bottlenecking. 16 Choosing the breeders. 17 The big question ― heritability. 18 The importance of the drone pool 19 A Primer on Bee Genetics. 19 Bottom line. 21 Acknowledgements. 22 References. 22 […]
Read MoreThe Pesticide Situation: Part 2 Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com First Published in ABJ, February 2019 The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act requires that a pesticide will generally not cause any unreasonable risk to man or the environment — taking into account the economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits of the use of […]
Read MoreBeekeeping is more difficult today than it used to be. Our changing agricultural landscape provides less forage, and growers still apply pesticides to freely (although the pesticide situation for bees today is far better than it used to be in the ’60s and ’70s). The main problem for honey bees worldwide is the recent invasion […]
Read MoreI created a handy spreadsheet in Excel for calculating Henderson-Tilton efficacies. Here’s a snip of it: If you wish, you can enter your raw data into the blue unprotected grid, and then calculate the means or medians (and standard errors of the means if you wish to display them) there. Then enter those calculated values into […]
Read MoreClick on the link below to view a ppt presentation. Being Part of the Solution
Read MoreI feel that our industry and research community has long needed a useful, accurate, and user-friendly varroa population model–so I spent a year of early mornings and weekends creating this one. You can use this model to predict what sort of mite management strategy will work in your area. For Joe Beekeeper, the model is […]
Read MoreOpen the link below to view the annotated pictorial presentation. 2017 KISS Breeding and if you want to see us doing smokin’ hot mite washin’ in real time, Rachel surprised me by figuring out how to prop up her cell phone to take a video of us washing a yard–to see the 36-second video, click […]
Read MoreMite management of top bar hives The varroa mite does not care that you’re keeping your bees in a top bar hive–colonies in top bar hives are just as susceptible to the mite. Unless you are running a truly mite-proof bee stock, you can expect the same sort of buildup of mite populations as in […]
Read MoreThis page is for the sharing information on the extended-release method for oxalic acid application–by dissolving it in glycerin, and then applying to the hive on a cellulose matrix. You can view my article on the subject here: Beyond Taktic. A big thanks to EPA, ARS, and CDPR for working with me toward registering this application method […]
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