Get ready! A new quarterly magazine about bees and other pollinators is about to emerge from mailboxes across the country, fully formed and ready to fly. 2 Million Blossoms: protecting our pollinators is the newest creation from bee scientist and advocate Dr. Kirsten Traynor, former editor of American Bee Journal and IBRA’s Bee World. Instead […] Read more
While humans were busy squabbling over the border between the United States and Mexico, a tiny black immigrant bee was discreetly homesteading in California. A new sighting of a Central American native bee, a member of the genus Plebeia, was recently reported in a genteel area of Palo Alto, some 500 miles to the north […] Read more
Vince Poulin, a beekeeper in Vancouver, British Columbia, sent me an idea he had for feeding nucs that were stacked one atop another during the winter. This is a problem I’ve wondered about but never actually solved. It’s nice to be able to stack nucs or small colonies with a double-screen board (Snelgrove board) so […] Read more
Lots of myth and misinformation surrounds high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and whether it is bad for bees. I decided to do some research to find out what the experts are saying about this American food staple. I came up with a short Q&A. Q: What is the difference between regular corn syrup and high-fructose corn […] Read more
Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words could have been thinking of this one. You can see the glee in the wasp’s eyes as she makes a beeline for the all-you-can eat cafeteria. Michael Skeels, a regular reader and frequent contributor to this site, lives in Montana and owns the hive on the […] Read more
Dogs. Cats. Mice. Your next-door neighbor. What do they all have in common? One answer is a moveable lower jaw. In fact, lots of creatures have one movable jaw—known as a mandible—and one stationary jaw or maxilla. But your bees, along with many other invertebrates, have two movable jaws, both known as mandibles. Not only […] Read more
Wasps can be a problem for beekeepers in the autumn of the year. In fact, we usually don’t think about wasps at all until they begin casing our hives, looking for fresh meat. The biggest threat comes from eusocial species—those that are “truly social,” like yellowjackets. In all but the warmest regions of North America, […] Read more