After mosquito spraying in his neighborhood, Jim Metrailer of Little Rock, Arkansas, discovered a pile of dead bees. He wondered if his bees got into the spray itself or if they ate poisoned nectar. He also wondered if his bees had succumbed for another reason entirely. Many choices The answer to the first question is […] Read more
Silence is a powerful thing. I was on my way to the compost bin when I noticed an enormous mound of dead bees in front of my strongest hive. No buzz issued from the landing board. No industrious thrum from above. The absence of sound shattered the morning. I was dumbstruck. When I opened that […] Read more
Every now and then I decide to bury my head in the sand and pretend I don’t notice the headlines. Invariably, this approach doesn’t work because dozens of people will ask my opinion until I’m more or less coerced into saying something. Then, the something I say is dissected, splintered, and ridiculed until, once again, […] Read more
One day in August I was sitting in an Adirondack chair midway between a busy bee hive and a large stand of lemon balm. I had a notebook and was trying to outline my next post. “You are so noisy, I can’t think!” I complained aloud. But I wasn’t addressing the hive, I was speaking […] Read more
Two papers published in the journal Nature earlier this week are causing quite a stir in the bee world. The first, “Seed coating with a neonicotinoid insecticide negatively affects wild bees” by Rundlof et al. is unique in that the authors were able to perform controlled field experiments. This is often difficult to do because […] Read more
Sometimes, what we hope will be a good thing, turns out in the worst possible way. Here’s a perfect example of completely true—but totally misleading—advertising. If you recall, last year a number of home and garden retailers were called on the carpet for selling “bee-friendly” plants that were, in fact, treated with systemic neonicotinoids. Consumers […] Read more
Many beekeepers are convinced that raising smaller, natural-sized bees is the answer to controlling Varroa mites. According to one theory, smaller bees mature faster—in about 19 days instead of 21. This shorter cycle means there is less time for the offspring of a Varroa mite to mature and mate before the adult honey bee emerges […] Read more