New plans to help beekeepers protect their hives from pests and reduce losses of bees have been unveiled.
Defra has outlined proposals which build on the success of current policies to support beekeepers in identifying and managing pests such as the potentially devastating Varroa mite which is considered the single greatest problem for beekeepers. A consultation has been published today seeking views from all beekeepers on how best to provide more support to improve honey bee health.
From: The Southwest Times, serving Southwest Virginia
By MELINDA WILLIAMS
If you’d like to become an apiarist, or beekeeper, now’s a good time to get started.
With many honeybees having been lost to colony collapse disorder over the past few years, the 2012 Virginia General Assembly hoped to rebuild the population by creating a new program, The Beehive Grant Fund, that offers funds for the establishment of new bee colonies.
NORTHERN Ireland’s beekeepers are doing their bit in the battle against the greatest challenge ever to the existence of the much-loved and hard-working honey bee.
Members of Dromore Beekeepers Association geared up for the war on the potentially lethal Varroa mite by recently attending a talk on the parasite’s control.
Honey bees play a low-key but essential role in all our lives, whether we realise it or not. They pollinate many commercial food crops and are much valued by fruit growers. Their honey is used as a food and a medicine and beeswax is found in most homes in some form.
WHERE would you expect to find a barbecue on 29th December? Australia? No! Tullyhenan Fort Apiary, on a hilltop near Banbridge.
Vanessa Drew, from Ballyroney, is currently conducting an Intermediate Beekeeping class in Dromore High School on behalf of the Ulster Beekeepers’ Association and, among other things, is teaching Varroa control.
Varroa is the parasitic mite which is now endemic in Ireland and is wreaking havoc with honeybee colonies. Colonies which are not properly treated will die.
Happy new year to everyone and farewell to the old year. In most farmers’ views, one of the most challenging years of late, possibly in living memory.
From the dry start, through the declaration of a drought (we hadn’t had enough rain over the previous few years), then the weather broke and we had a wet end to Spring and into Summer. Then on it was, grab the sun whilst you could and the crops grew and the rain continued to fall, well into harvesting time, putting that further back for most. The quality of the crops were generally poorer than usual and it continued enough to delay planting too.
Getting stung by a bee can hurt, but losing bees forever can hurt even more. It may be hard to see why bees are so important to us, but did you know that 1 of every 3 bites of food we take comes from a pollinated plant or an animal that depends on bee pollination? And yet, since the mid-2000s, bees have been mysteriously vanishing.
RALEIGH — The positive outlook of North Carolina State University Entomologist Dr. David Tarpy is admirable in the face of science’s methodical collection of clues to answer Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) across America among honeybees.
“I think there are several silver linings in the importance of CCD and public awareness is right up there among them,” said Tarpy. “The media’s frantic coverage really presented the importance of bees to our food supply in a way to the public that persists even after the coverage has receded.”
Q: How are the honeybees doing? I don’t hear as much about colony collapse disorder these days.
A: When it made headlines in 2006, colony collapse disorder alarmed entomologists and beekeepers alike. Entire honeybee colonies were dying, threatening beekeepers’ incomes and the farmers and fruits that depend on bees for pollination.
Biologists searching for an effective way to monitor the world’s bee population may have found their answer in simple pan traps.
Changes to global bee populations have been of particular concern recently due to the rise of colony collapse disorder — a phenomenon where worker bees disappear from hives. With around 35 percent of the world’s food supply (around $200 billion-worth) dependent on pollinators like bees, decreases in their number could lead to significant problems with human food crops.
