From: Lawn & Lanscape
Overwintering losses of colonies has also sunk to record low for 2013/2014 winter.
European bees are much healthier than many recent publications appear to suggest. New field data from nearly 400,000 bee colonies from 21 countries in Europe and the Mediterranean show that overwintering losses of honey bee colonies – a leading indicator of general bee health – are at their lowest level in years.
Leave a Comment August 13, 2014
From: NZ Beekeepers
Hygienic behavior – what it is, when does it appear and how can we stimulate it in our hives – Translated documentary of a lecture in Austria, april 2012
Leave a Comment August 11, 2014
From: FLC NewsLine/Federal Lab Consortium for Technology Transfer
Written By: FLC Editor
The resistance of Varroa mites to currently available chemical miticides is developing rapidly. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at the Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Research Unit in Baton Rouge, La., have developed honey bees with high expression of the Varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) trait. Honey bees are naturally hygienic, and they often remove diseased brood from their nests.
Leave a Comment August 8, 2014
From: Manitoba Co-operator
Bold, apocalyptic headlines make for great front-page news stories, there’s no question. Unfortunately, when it comes to highly complex and scientific issues, these kinds of headlines usually do a disservice to the topic at hand.
Scientific research is filled with intricacies and rarely yields answers that can be conveyed in a single headline. Far too often in this day and age we’re seeing sensationalism trump science. The issue of neonicotinoids (a type of insecticide) and bee health is a prime example of this.
Leave a Comment August 6, 2014
From: Calgary Herald
By Paul Thiel, Calgary Herald
In Rebuttal
Re: “A stinging report,” Editorial, July 26.
As a leading manufacturer of neonicotinoid products to protect crops in agriculture, we felt the need to respond to the misinformation included in your recent editorial on bees. We agree that bee health is an important issue, however your editorial fails to provide an objective assessment of what is happening in Alberta, much less in Canada.
Leave a Comment August 4, 2014
From: The Orlando Sentinal
By Paul Driessen Guest columnist
Reports in the media of a coming bee-apocalypse would particularly concern residents of the Sunshine State. Florida is home to a booming $9 billion citrus industry employing nearly 76,000 locals. As several citrus varieties require honeybee pollination to prosper, any threats to our fuzzy friends should be taken seriously. Fortunately, though beekeepers are struggling with ongoing parasite and disease problems, bee populations are doing fine.
The number of honeybee hives in the United States has remained fairly steady for the past 14 years. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there has even been a slight increase of colonies from 2.63 million in 2000 to 2.64 million in 2013.
Leave a Comment August 1, 2014
From: BusinessScoop (New Zealand)
Press Release – Agcarm
Managed bee hives and honey production in New Zealand is increasing and there is little or no evidence that pesticides are affecting bee health, according to a parliamentary committee report released this week. Parliamentary report shows bee industry faces challenges, but in pretty good shape
Managed bee hives and honey production in New Zealand is increasing and there is little or no evidence that pesticides are affecting bee health, according to a parliamentary committee report released this week.
Leave a Comment July 30, 2014
Editor’s Note: The dangers from attempting to implement the precautionary principle go well beyond the unintentional threat it poses to bees. For starters, the term “precautionary principle” is analogous to the term “Holy Roman Empire” since it is neither truly precautionary, because it disregards science, nor is it an actual principle because it uses undefined terms such as “serious” and “acceptable” in vague and arbitrary ways. For an in-depth discussion of the precautionary principle, see the attached CRE paper, “Regulatory Options for Arctic Resource Management.”
From: Farmers Guardian
Leave a Comment July 29, 2014
From: University of Florida
The varroa mite, Varroa destructor Anderson and Truemann, is the world’s most devastating pest of Western honey bees, Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Although the varroa complex includes multiple species, V. destructor is the species responsible for the vast majority of the damage attributed to mites from this genus. Until 2000, it was believed that V. jacobsoni Oudemans was the mite responsible for widespread honey bee colony losses. However, taxonomic work published in 2000 (Anderson and Trueman 2000) indicated that a previously-unidentified species of varroa (V. destructor) was responsible for the damage, while V. jacobsoni was shown to be only moderately harmful to western honey bees. This publication is limited to V. destructor.
Leave a Comment July 28, 2014
From: The Globe and Mail
The reason for the higher reported bee losses in Ontario remains unclear (The Plight Of The Honey Bee – July 25). Pointing the finger at pesticides as the main culprit doesn’t serve anyone’s interests.
In Quebec and Manitoba, where insecticide-treated corn is grown similar to that in Ontario, overwintering numbers were more in line with accepted averages.
There are a number of threats to bees, including varroa mite, disease and weather. An important opportunity to find solutions to the multitude of challenges facing bee health is missed when neonics are continually singled out.
Leave a Comment July 25, 2014
