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Randy,s Posts

What’s Happening To The Bees? – Part 2

CONTENTS We Are Two Adaptive Species Honey Bees Are Designed For Rapid Adaptation The Human-Facilitated Realized Niche Of The Bee The Natural Limiting Factors Of The Honey Bee Population Limiting Factor: The Weather Limiting Factor: Predation Limiting Factor: Competition For Nest Cavities Limiting Factor: Carrying Capacity Of The Habitat Limiting Factor: Reproductive Success Rate Limiting...

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Queens For Pennies

Queens for Pennies Originally published in ABJ March 2014 Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com I’ve been encouraged in recent years by the number of beekeepers who appear to be successfully keeping locally-adapted stocks of bees without treatment for varroa.  I am a strong supporter of their efforts, and see them as the wave of the future. But...

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Sick Bees – Part 18F7: Colony Collapse Revisited – Pesticide Exposure

Pesticide Exposure Oh No, Not Pesticides Again! Reality Checks The Two Worlds of Beekeeping Pesticides and Bee-pocalypse A Comparison To Some “Control Groups” The Four Horsemen And The Tip Point Could Pesticides Cause Colony Mortality And CCD? Short Memories The Heart Of The Hive – The Nursery Industry’s Arguments But Don’t We Already Know That...

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What’s Happening To The Bees? – Part 3

CONTENTS Setting The Stage: The Origins Of The Players Early Changes in The Honey Bee Niche Due To Humans The Human Deforestation Of Europe Adaptation And Change In Business The Creation Of A Niche For Bee-keeping The Domestication Of The Honey Bee The Price Of Domestication Acknowledgements Citations and Footnotes What’s Happening to the Bees?...

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GMO Updates

GMO updates Please don’t parrot misinformation–learn the actual facts! Introduction “GMOs” are a hot topic these days, due mainly to the media attention given to a few advocacy groups, as opposed to those who actually understand the science involved in the development of genetically-modified plants. I find this unfortunate, since the future of many species...

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Bear Fence

Updated parts list: May 23, 2014. In my area, our apiaries need to be protected from black bears.  Over the years, I’ve developed a simple and effective electric fence design.  You can download a pdf of plans and photos here: Bear Fence PDF  (updated 11 June 2023).

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Pesticide exposure pathways

Sorry for the low resolution of this snip of this Powerpoint slide that I created for a presentation.  I’ve color coded the ellipses and arrows.  Red is the pesticide active ingredient.  Blue is the initial mode of exposure.  Orange are the ages/temporal tasks of the bees involved.  Green are the contaminated foods or combs. Note...

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International Websites of Interest

I’m open to suggestions for interesting websites on beekeeping in countries other than the U.S. to link to–please email me suggestions. Ukraine:A commercial honey sales website, but with a nice summary of the history of beekeeping in that country http://www.honey-export.com/  

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Tips for Citizen Scientists

Tips for Designing Bee Research Projects Beekeepers are known for being of curious and experimental minds. Since factors affecting beekeeping are continually changing, new unanswered questions are bound to arise; the beekeeper “citizen scientist” can often answer them himself by performing a well-designed experiment, and then share those results to the benefit of everyone. But...

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Wheelchair beekeeping

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Idaho beekeeper Randy Geile, who has come up with a clever home-built modification of Langstroth hives that allows those who are wheelchair bound to practice beekeeping.  View his video here. Thank you, Randy!

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What’s Happening with the Bees 2015

2015 What’s Happening Auburn

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Colony Demography

Seasonal demographics of a colony headed by a vigorous young queen, shed wintered in Manitoba.  Each band of color represents the proportion of bees in each 12-day age class at any time point.  Red (0-12 days of age) through green (61-72 days) age cohorts represent short-lived “summer bees,” which rarely live longer than two months. ...

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Oxalic Acid Dribble and Sublimation Updates

  Update 28 Oct 2018 Beekeeper Nick Kingan let me know that there’s a nice livestock syringe available from Tractor Supply that can be adjusted to dispense 5 mL per squeeze.  I find the squeezing of this sort of syringe to be tiring to my hand if I’m treating a large number of hives, but...

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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...

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Monitoring varroa

The concepts of monitoring pest population levels, and taking action as such pest levels approach seasonally-adjusted treatment thresholds is integral to integrated pest management, no matter whether we are speaking of varroa or any other agricultural pest. When brood is present in a hive, varroa increase is nearly always exponential from Day 1–in non resistant...

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