Archives – October, 2017
From: HJNews.com
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“There is an emerging consensus that electronic beehive monitoring is the way to go, so it can help extract critical data from the hive without disturbing the hive,” Kulyukin said, sitting next to one of his four hives.
That winter, Kulyukin put the BeePi into two of his overwintering hives on private property in Cache Valley to fine-tune the device and test its systems. Since the initial testing, Kulyukin has collected hundreds of gigabytes of information as he has improved the design.
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October 18, 2017
From: Bug Squad [University of California/Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources]
Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Evolutionary ecologist Leslie Saul-Gershenz goes places where many have been but few have ever really seen.
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We remember writing about her work in April of 2013 when she addressed the Nor Cal Entomology Society (now folded) about her research on how blister beetle nest parasites cooperate to mimic the sex pheromone of a digger bee. She had just returned from the Mojave National Preserve, tracking the solitary bee Habropoda pallida and its nest parasite, a blister beetle, Meloe franciscanus.
October 17, 2017
From: Bee Informed
Written By: Karen Rennich
One of the best things about working in research is that it never fails to surprise – for good or for bad. And occasionally, it is not until much later that the surprise comes. In this case, the “surprise” arrived in the form of another Varroa-vectored, RNA virus, Varroa Destructor Virus-1, or VDV1.
October 16, 2017
From: Genetic Literacy Project
Karen Rennich
[GLP Editor’s note: Karen Rennich is the Project Manager for Bee Informed Partnership and APHIS National Survey, working out of University of Maryland’s Entomology Department. Among other things, they are studying the Varroa destructor mite, which a consensus of entomologists believe carries viruses that are the primary threat to bee health, rather than pesticides. This study provides further documentation of the dramatic spread of a particularly lethal form of a virus carried by the mite.]
October 13, 2017
From: Omaha World-Herald
By Andrea Larson / World-Herald News Service
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Both beekeepers said mites are a big challenge when working with colonies.
“When I first started, I didn’t understand the destructiveness of what’s called a varroa mite. Those things are just killing colonies like crazy. The problem with the varroa mite is it carries a lot of disease with it, so it weakens the hive,” Pofahl said.
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October 12, 2017
From: State University of New York | Potsdam
Experiential learning is the at the heart of a SUNY Potsdam education and that is no more clearly expressed than when seniors Ryan Shores, Sydney LaPan, Toni Wahl and Christina Cranwell recently donned bee suits to inspect local bee hives with university Instructional Specialist Ray Bowdish and Dwayne Belt from the Local Living Venture’s Bees & Beekeeping Group.
The four students ventured out to inspect local honey bee hives as they were looking for the presence of the Varroa Mite (Varroa destructor), a pest that regularly plagues Honey bee (Apis melifera) colonies—Causing the parasitic disease, varroosis that weakens bee hives and eventually causes the hive to die or “collapse.”
October 11, 2017
From: The Wilson Times [North Carolina]
By Drew C. Wilson
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The feral bees have been down in their numbers since the introduction of the Varroa mite, a small parasite that can attach itself to the insect.
“The Varroa mite is the main problem for the beekeepers,” Keller said. “That’s something that we can treat in the hives, but obviously in the wild, those don’t get treated. Sometimes a hive can survive for several years before it will finally succumb to the pressure of the Varroa mite. The overall health of the honeybee in the wild is unknown because we can’t get in there and look at them, but their numbers are down.”
October 10, 2017
From: National Geographic Australia
What Happens If The Honeybees Disappear?
Wild bees and Russian bees might be able to help.
By Catherine Zuckerman
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Colony collapse in general could be devastating to food production. So scientists are looking for alternatives. Most honeybees in the U.S. today are of Italian heritage and vulnerable to a pest called the varroa mite. But Russian bees are more resistant to it, and backyard beekeepers have had success with them. The problem, says Tarpy, is that Russian honeybees don’t make as much honey as their Italian counterparts and “aren’t as amenable” to the migratory nature of pollinating large-scale farms.
October 9, 2017
From: Anses [French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety]
Organised by: French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety & World Organization for Animal Health
Place : Istambul
During the 45th APIMONDIA congress held in Istanbul from 29th September to 4th October 2017, ANSES and OIE have organized a symposium on the “Emerging infectious agents in Honey bees and OIE listed diseases”. The ANSES laboratory located in Sophia Antipolis is OIE reference laboratory for honeybee diseases and the European reference laboratory for honeybee health.
October 6, 2017
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