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The Pesticide Situation: Reinventing Nature

The Pesticide Situation: Reinventing Nature Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com In their never-ending battle against herbivores and parasites, plants have for eons been synthesizing toxic chemicals, collaborating with microbes, or assisting predacious insects to deter or kill pests.  Now that we’ve perhaps begun getting over our synthetic pesticide hubris, and are realizing that we’re running out of […]

2019 EcoFarm

Beekeeping 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 […]

Henderson-Tilton calculator

I 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 […]

Being Part of The Solution

Click on the link below to view a ppt presentation. Being Part of the Solution  

Randy’s Varroa Model

I 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 […]

K.I.S.S. Breeding for varroa resistance

Open 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 […]

Mite Management in Top Bar Hives

Mite 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 […]

Oxalic shop towel updates

This 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 […]

Donze 1998 A look under the cap

donze-1998-a-look-under-the-cap

DWV sampling instructions

Dear U.S. beekeeper, Recent studies by Dr. Stephen Martin and associates have found that there is apparently a benign form of DWV that can out compete the virulent form, thus allowing colonies to survive despite varroa infestation. If this is true, it raises the possibility that we may be able to minimize the effect of […]

General public presentation

Here is a slide show for general public presentation.  Contains some old 35mm photos, which I hope to soon replace. Public general presentationPublic general presentation  

Williams, et al (2015)  Neonicotinoid pesticides severely affect honey bee queens.

Updated Nov 2:  The science of the effects of neonics upon pollinators is so contentious, that I am often asked to comment on new published studies.  This study, which claimed an effect of neonics on queen mating, immediately garnered such requests.  Unfortunately, the lead author was at conference at the time, and was unable to […]

A Review of Dr. Lu’s paper on neonics in Massachusetts

A Review of Dr. Lu’s paper on neonics in Massachusetts By Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com August 18, 2015   I was recently asked by a couple of extension horticulturalists to comment on Dr. Alex Lu’s most recent publication on the neonicotinoid insecticides.  I hesitated to do so, since Dr. Lu feels that I’ve picked on him.  […]

Building a Better Mite Washer

Building a Better Mite Washer – Larry Clamp Notes from Randy: Tinkerer Larry Clamp put together a very nice set up illustrated instructions for building mite washer cups, and is generously sharing them.  Thanks, Larry! The thin black screen from package bee cages (or some older veils) is easier to work with than hardware cloth, and […]