From: CBS News
NORFOLK — The mysterious “zombie bee” parasite that kills honeybees has reached the southern United States after scientists confirmed a case in Virginia about an hour outside Roanoke, researchers announced this week.
The discovery suggests the phenomenon is more widespread than previously thought, although researchers still know little about how many bees it actually kills.
Leave a Comment June 24, 2016
From: Phys.org
by Jan Suszkiw
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are hot on the trail of a honey bee killer, and their detective work has taken them from hives in Tucson, Arizona, to those in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Led by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) supervisory research entomologist Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, the team is staking out the entrances of victimized hives, eyeing the comings and goings of foraging honey bees that they suspect may be unwitting accomplices.
Leave a Comment June 23, 2016
Editor’s Note: Even though USDA, EPA and other regulatory agencies around the world have concluded that the parasitic varroa mite and the diseases its carries is, by far, the greatest threat to bees around the world, ‘recognised as the major factor underlying colony loss in the US and other countries’” and even the leading role of varroa in honeybee decline has been confirmde over and over again around the world, some organizations that purport to help bees prefer circuses to science.
From: Environmental America via Common Dreams
Leave a Comment June 22, 2016
From: AgProfressional
By Rich Keller, Editor, Ag Professional
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“What we know so far is that there are a handful of issues that can cause problems for bees. Severe weather, pests and disease, lack of forage and nutrition, lack of genetic diversity and incidental pesticide exposure may all be causing problems,” said Carson Klosterman, a farmer from Wyndmere, N.D., and member of NCGA’s Production and Stewardship Action Team.
Leave a Comment June 21, 2016
From: Pulse Headlines
By
Since the insect’s arrival to the U.S. in the 1980’s honey bee populations have been steadily dropping. Even if beekeeping has become a more modern practice, it is estimated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that over 50 percent of the country’s bee colonies have perished. That’s almost 3 million honey bee colonies that have disappeared, either from disease or due to human activity.
Leave a Comment June 20, 2016
From: ABC.au | Rural
Last month ABC Rural reported on chalkbrood disease.
At the time the most experienced apiarist in Alice Springs, Russell Wilson, reported that his honey yield had been cut by 80 per cent and that the CSIRO had been involved to identify the problem.
Leave a Comment June 17, 2016
From: Futurity
Scientists know more about the reproductive secrets of one of the world’s tiniest and most destructive parasites—the Varroa mite—and say what they’ve learned may bring them closer to controlling them.
“If you know your enemies better, you can come up with new ways of controlling them,” says Zachary Huang, associate professor of entomology at Michigan State University, who studies the fertility of the notorious mite. It’s devastating honeybee populations worldwide. The mite sucks their and transmits deadly viruses.
Read Complete Article
Leave a Comment June 16, 2016
From: Guelph Mercury
The farming history of an Ontario family and the memory of businessman Donald Pinchin is being honoured with a $1-million gift to the University of Guelph to help protect pollinators.
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Guzman is known for his research on honeybee diseases, especially his 2010 study that determined varroa mites are the main culprit behind mysterious die-offs of honeybee colonies in Ontario. About 35 per cent of the province’s bee colonies were destroyed from 2007 to 2010.
Leave a Comment June 15, 2016
From: Science Daily
Date: June 13, 2016; Source: Taylor & Francis
In a new study published in the Journal of Apicultural Research, scientists have compared the ability of two strains of honey bees to defend themselves against the parasitic mite varroa by grooming the mites from their bodies.
Leave a Comment June 14, 2016
From: The Science Explorer
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A research team has now figured out how the Eastern honeybees manage to survive mite infestations that are fatal to Western honeybees. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers found that a greater number of infested Eastern bumblebee larvae succumb to their mites than do their Western counterparts. Weak and dead larvae, together with their parasites, are expelled from the colony by their siblings, preventing the mites from spreading.
Leave a Comment June 13, 2016
