From MAILER-DAEMON Fri Jan 3 12:46:56 2003 Return-Path: <> Delivered-To: adamf@ibiblio.org Received: from listserv.albany.edu (listserv.albany.edu [169.226.1.24]) by mail.ibiblio.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 729E524ADEE for ; Fri, 3 Jan 2003 12:46:56 -0500 (EST) Received: from listserv.albany.edu (listserv.albany.edu [169.226.1.24]) by listserv.albany.edu (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id h03GhO3v010284 for ; Fri, 3 Jan 2003 12:46:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <200301031746.h03GhO3v010284@listserv.albany.edu> Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 12:46:54 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University at Albany (1.8d)" Subject: File: "BEE-L LOG0111C" To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Content-Length: 126824 Lines: 2720 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 10:20:27 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Dan McFeeley Subject: Mead Query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello all -- Over on the Mead Lovers Digest, someone recently posted about honey fermenting into mead in the wild in this way. He described how honey can run down the inside of hollow trees like old birch trees and then begin to ferment when water begins to collect around the root system. He described seeing "little foamy puddles around the bee tree" when he was young. Have any of you ever seen anything like this? I'm curious if this is a natural phenomena that happens often enough to be observed in the wild. Thanks for any help! <><><><><><><><><><> <><><><><><><><> Dan McFeeley mcfeeley@keynet.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 13:01:38 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Scot Mc Pherson Subject: Re: Mead Query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My being a mead brewer I can tell you some things, but being the nature of the world as it is, what I have to say is not written in concrete. Although its "possible" for what you described to happen its probably very very unlikely, and if it were to happen it would more likely result in vinegar than wine or mead. As far as brewing is concerned honey is VERY dificient in the nutrients required by yeast to start brewing. As well yeast requires a fairly specific environment to do its job well. Honey on its own is way to sweet for yeast which likes specific gravity usually less than 1.130 in order to "start" multiplying and then fermenting. Once a brew is underway, one can sometimes successfully raise the sweetness of the mixture, but that sometimes results in failure. The lack of nutrients also contributes to the honey being difficult to start fermenting even if other conditions are favourable. The stories of how people have had meads take a year to ferment although probably a misunderstanding of what was happening is never the less a result of the lack of nutrients. The yeast simply can't multiply if they don't have certain required nutrients..The most important being nitrogen. So in the wild if a honey did start to ferment after it diluted in the wild...the length of time it would require would more that likely prevent it from ever becoming mead...you might get lucky and find a fizzy honey like soda type drink, but it wouldn't be very good...but I also think that's unlikely and I think its more a tale to wet the appetite of medieval meadery customer's. If you'd like to learn about mead making I suggest making a visit first to some good winemaking sites and the wine and mead making newsgroups. rec.crafts.winemaking and rec.crafts.meadmaking. They are a huge resource of information for the potential and experienced brewer alike. Scot Mc Pherson ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 21:04:34 +0000 Reply-To: pdillon@club-internet.fr Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Peter Dillon Organization: HOME Subject: Wintering bees inside MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Having heard comments in conversation but no depth to the subject - I wonder if those concerned with the practice of over wintering bees in cellars or controlled/ enclosed buildings could comment on the health risks posed to people entering these buildings. Apparently the dead bees/ dust due to the build up from "bee bits" is hazardous! Would welcome any details regarding the subject. Peter ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 22:53:57 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: James Fischer Subject: Apiarist Spotting MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit With the number of beekeepers shrinking, a recruitment effort might be a good idea. Here's my contribution, suitable for printing out and posting on the bulletin board. Apiarist Spotting (With humble apologies to Irvine Welsh, the author of the novel "Trainspotting") Choose a life of beekeeping. Choose an apiary. Choose a breed of bees. Chose a really big extractor, choose foundation cell sizes, hive tools, bee brushes, and electric uncapping knives. Choose heat prostration, bee stings, and pulled muscles. Choose deeps and/or mediums. Choose a beginner kit. Choose a bee association. Choose a bee suit and matching veil. Choose a three-piece honey-handling system in a range of sizes. Choose DIY-woodenware and wonder why you did on a Sunday afternoon. Choose sitting on that wintertime couch thumbing through mind-numbing bee supply catalogs, stuffing comb honey in your mouth, and dreaming of spring. Choose standing in the dark 5am cold at a farmer's market at the end of fall, nothing more than an embarrassment to the family you hoped might also enjoy beekeeping. Choose your future. Choose the life of a beekeeper. jim ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 08:50:44 -0500 Reply-To: Peter John Keating Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Peter John Keating Subject: Re: Wintering bees inside Comments: To: pdillon@CLUB-INTERNET.FR MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Greetings, l winter a few colonies inside each year, between 80 and 120, mostly nucs as my production colonies winter outside and do so very well even though the temperature may descend to 40o below. My indoor facility is my hot room and is equipped with a recirculating fan (blower) and conduit to ensure that the air is well mixed. It also has an extracting fan and heater, both controlled by thermostats. The temperature is kept at plus 3oC , more or less. Most beekeepers here in Quebec enter the building 3 to 5 times during the winter to check the mechanical systems and to remove the dead bees. There are normally quite a few inches of dead bees on the floor. When l first started using an indoor facility, l did the same as the others and removed the dead bees a few times during the winter. I found that after the work l would have coughing spells for a day or so after. I subsequently used a dust mask when cleaning out the dead bees. Since a few years, l no longer remove the dead bees during the winter. I remove the hives in the spring and push the dead bees towards the end of the building as l remove each row of hives, so as not to walk all over the dead bees. Since l have been rob feeding in the autumn l find that l have a lot less dead bees in the wintering building, l presume that they die whilst collecting the syrup from the barrels. NOT in the barrels. I know that this is a long answer to a simple question, but l wished to explain how l manage the colonies and the building. I know of no research that has been done regarding indoor wintering health hazards but the presence of millions of dead dry bees being crushed underfoot cannot be good. I also know of a beekeeper that felt he was exposed to high CO2 levels while working inside the building. Peter John Keating . Quebec (still in Canada) > Having heard comments in conversation but no depth to the subject - I wonder if those concerned with the practice of over > wintering bees in cellars or controlled/ enclosed buildings could comment on the health risks posed to people entering these > buildings. > Apparently the dead bees/ dust due to the build up from "bee bits" is hazardous! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Nov 0101 16:25:40 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Mike Tooley Subject: Re: Apiarist Spotting > With the number of beekeepers shrinking, a recruitment > effort might be a good idea. From Almond Pollination Handbook by Joe Traynor(a very good book to have if you are involved with any kind of pollination) "A recruitment poster for apprentice beekeepers could read as follows: CHALLENGE YOURSELF!!BE A BEEKEEPER!!! Work outside-commune with nature,with the scent of flowers and the musical hum of happy honey bees. Why pay to go to a gym and lift weights?We'll pay you to lift honey supers.No charge for back supports;10% discount coupons at a local chiropractor. Live on the edge!Directly apply-by hand!-highly toxic chemicals that can cause permanent physical and brain damage!Gloves and respirators provided at no charge. Test your endurance-Work all day then drive a truck all night!Can you keep the truck on the road??!! Sleep under the stars while waiting to unload a truck.In the winter,sleep in the cozy comfort of a truck cab,accompanied by some of our winged workers. Get away from home.Statistics show that couples that are constantly together argue more.Our job guarantees frequent seperations from your family! Lose weight!Forget about diets!We guarantee that taking honey off hives in 100 degree weather in full coveralls will give you that slim,trim figure. Learn about litigation.With the Africanized bees coming,be on the cutting edge of lawsuits involving bee stings. Just Do It!" I would add: Choose bees.Choose an apiary in bear country so you can see wildlife up close as they destroy the equipment you spent all winter building using high interest borrowed money.Choose to climb on top of a boom loader at 3 in the morning in a lightning storm,a flashlite in your teeth,to find out why it raises but wont lower.Choose innovative ways to get a loaded truck ,buried to the axle in mud,unstuck.Choooose beeekeeeping!!Its fun!!! Mike --------------------------------------------- This message was sent using InterStar WebMail ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 13:35:32 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Mark Payton Subject: brood nest size Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed I removed the Apistan from my hive yesterday and was very surprised at the small size and apparently erratic pattern of the brood nest. We've had several weeks of very cold weather, followed by yesterday's 60 degrees so I would guess that the brood nest would be smaller than the midsummer nests I'm used to, but is this a correct assumption? And if so, what is an appropriate size nest for this time of year? The only photos I've seen have been taken in the summertime, I think. Mark Payton ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 13:38:38 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Simoneau_Andr=E9?= Subject: Wowbug(mellitobia) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit One drone and wasp keeper used for pollinisation (artificial breeding outfit) is experiencing much problem which seem to come from the wowbug (mellitobia acasta or digitata). The wowbug female lay many eggs in the larva of the host (drone, wasp or perhaps bees?) and destroy progressively all the larvae of the host. The question for the list is: Has anyone experienced this kind of parasitic problem coming from the wowbug and is there a solution to eliminate this wowbug? Any help will be deeply appreciated. André Simoneau,d.v.m. Québec, Canada ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 13:04:37 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Michael Lewis Subject: Re: Wintering bees inside MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit We winter about 850 hives indoors in single brood chambers in Manitoba, Canada. We go into each of the buildings(2) at least once a day. The spores from the dead bees only seem to bother us when we sweep the floor (a few times a winter) and only if you don't wear a dust mask. The dead bees can give you a cough and I once got a rash after sweeping the bees without a mask. We run continuous exhaust fans to prevent CO2 build-up, which would obviously be harmful to the bees and dangerous for checking the building, and also run a ducted fresh air intake constantly. We also have auxillary exhaust fans for when the weather is warmer (like now when it is plus 17 celcius outside) and we can add heat in cooler weather. Mike Lewis ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 14:36:00 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Aaron Morris Subject: Re: brood nest size MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" -----Original Message----- From: L-Soft list server at University at Albany (1.8d) [mailto:LISTSERV@listserv.albany.edu] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 1:37 PM To: Aaron Morris Subject: BEE-L: approval required (EB21AC6A) markp@pop.together.net asks about brood nest size after removing Apistan strips. Unfortunately he gave no location, hence it's pretty tough to give a proper answer. In upstate NY at this time of year I wouldn't expect to see much brood at all. Thhere may be a few capped cells from the last cycle, but at this point the queen will not be laying, and stages of brood/ developing larvae will be absent. Observations will also vary with race; Italians may have brood still, NWC definitely will not. Aaron Morris - thinking in spite of today's 65dF day, IT'S WINTER!!! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 07:35:38 +1000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: T & M Weatherhead Subject: Re: Wintering bees inside MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter Keating wrote >I know of no research that has been done regarding indoor wintering health hazards When I was at the Canadian Honey Council meeting in Edmonton in January 1995, there was paper presented by a person on what microbes etc were found inside a wintering house. It listed all the "bugs' that were found and some were not good for human health. Not sure if I still have a reference but will look and let you know. Either someone at CHC or CAPA might be able to give you a reference. Trevor Weatherhead AUSTRALIA ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 14:57:56 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Mark Payton Subject: Re: brood nest size In-Reply-To: <200111161942.fAGJgK317516@listserv.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Thank you Aaron. Your answer was very reassuring. I am in southern VT, which climatically is much like upstate NY. Are there any web based resources that discuss brood nest size variation throughout the seasons? Mark Payton ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 23:33:57 +0000 Reply-To: pdillon@club-internet.fr Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Peter Dillon Organization: HOME Subject: Re: Wintering bees inside MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Following my request for information relating to Wintering bees inside and potential health hazards, I was sent this reference via a private communication. The reference may be of use to others: A report was done in 1995 by the Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Heritage Grant Programme concerning airborne moulds. The title of the report is: Assessment of Airborne moulds as a Biological Hazard for Alberta Commercial Beekeepers by Henry Gauvreau, Lynne Sigler, Sean Abbott. You may wish to contact the library at Fairview College Fairview Alberta T0H 1L0 1-888-999-7882 Phone (780) 835-6641 Fax (780) 835-6782 Email: lsc@fairviewcollege.com for further details and availability. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 17:28:24 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: GImasterBK@AOL.COM Subject: Re: brood nest size MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark, You don't say where you are (in what state), or how much experience you have. I suspect you are a beginner and if so, you better start reading some bee books like The Beekeepers Handbook, 3rd Edition, by Dr. Diana Sammataro. Get a Christmas present and start LEARNING. Queens do not lay eggs during the late fall and very early winter; and some races, like Carniolans shut down even sooner. In my area, near Washington, DC, Queens do not lay from about mid November until mid January. Gosh, they have to rest too! George Imirie Certified EAS Master Beekeeper ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 17:19:23 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: GImasterBK@AOL.COM Subject: Re: brood nest size MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit According to MY calendar, WINTER does not begin until December 21st, or has the new computer age changed that too? 76° at my house in Rockville today, but queens have shut down laying. George ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 09:58:07 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "David L. Green" Subject: Re: brood nest size MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/16/01 2:43:32 PM Eastern Standard Time, AMorris@UAMAIL.ALBANY.EDU writes: > . In upstate NY at this time of year I wouldn't expect to see much > brood at all. Here in coastal SC, it's been consistently in the 70's with bright sunshine. Aster is playing out and mustard is beginning (would be a lot better if we could get some RAIN, though!). The bees are carrying pollen. I think mustard (actually wild radish, but everyone calls it mustard) is the key to this area's reputation for easy wintering for bees. It is available all winter, unless there is an abnormal cold spell, after which it quickly returns to bloom. Strong hives have all but shut down brood rearing. A few Italian queens will keep a small patch of brood thru winter. But weaker hives, and soon most of the strong hives will have no brood at all. By early January we start to see brood rearing again. Dave Green The Pollination Home Page: http://pollinator.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 10:02:28 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "David L. Green" Subject: Re: Pollen collection MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/13/01 8:27:52 AM Eastern Standard Time, LLOYDSPEAR@MSN.COM writes: > Howard wonders about bright-orange pollen collection in Eastern NYS, afte= > r several hard frosts. > > I live near Howard, near Albany, New York. My bees are also collecting b= > right-orange pollen and I believe it is from Aster, which is still bloomi= > ng, as it withstands temperatures down to about 20 degrees F, or -7 C. =20 > Henbit pollen is more orange than aster. Here in SC it can bloom all during a mild winter. In the North, a bit of warm weather will make some bloom open in the fall, and it is one of the earliest blooms of spring. See the site below for pics. Dave Green February flowers in SC: http://pollinator.com/gallery/February/february_flowers.htm ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 23:00:54 -0700 Reply-To: Allen Dick Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Subject: Morphometry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit (Note: this is compiled from several posts on sci.agriculture.beekeeping) From: "David Eyre" Newsgroups: sci.agriculture.beekeeping Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 8:37 PM Subject: Re: Morphometry For those interested in improving their stock. Today I hung a page on our web site dealing with a new method of plotting the salient points for Cubital Index and Discoidal shift. Ruary Rudd has designed an MS Excel spreadsheet which allows the use of a scanner and computer to plot and interpret the points necessary. This will allow you to establish the racial or strain purity or lack of, in your stock. Please visit http://www.beeworks.com and follow the links on our Home Page. My Thanks to, Ruary Rudd for the spreadsheet. Chris Slade for information. Albert Knight of BIBBA for file downloads. > Ok..but could you explain some more about 'acquiring' the plots to > add to the 'spreadsheet?' Will I need a microscope, and a tiny > ruler? Is there a URL that goes into this procedure? Perhaps you haven't used a graphics editor which would explain matters. These programs use X-Y plotting points when the cursor is placed over a photo which has been loaded off a scanner. Using that pointer system, after scanning the bee wing as described in the instructions, you add these X-Y points to the spreadsheet which does the calculations for you. Might I suggest you visit again, find the hyperlink off the morphometry page, and have a good read. It's relatively simple. I'm a 65 year old 'grey head' and I can do it!!! Regards Dave...... ******************************************** The Bee Works, 5 Edith Drive, R R # 2, Orillia, ON. Canada. L3V 6H2 705 326 7171 http://www.beeworks.com *************************************** --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.295 / Virus Database: 159 - Release Date: 11/01/2001 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 10:09:52 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Peter Subject: brood nest size Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Quote: >You don't say where you are (in what state), or how much experience you have. > I suspect you are a beginner and if so, you better start reading >some bee books >like The Beekeepers Handbook, 3rd Edition, by Dr. Diana Sammataro. Get a >Christmas present and start LEARNING. I thought this was a little rough. Our correspondent is merely asking a question, and should not be subjected to condescension. I believe that the only bad question is the one you don't ask. I would hope people would feel free to ask questions of the group, no matter the nature of the question. Having moved from San Diego with 25 years of bee experience to Upstate New York, I know how much has to be learned simply because one is in a new area. Very little of what I *thought I knew* could be translated. I have to ask questions constantly. In fact, I ask almost every beekeeper I meet "what is the main honey plant here?" In San Diego, we had a main honey plant: eucalyptus. It always yielded, rain or shine. In the 3 years I have worked in Upstate New York, the bulk of the honey has come from a different source every year. One year black locust, one year basswood, one year goldenrod. No matter what you "know" you better be on your toes and learning!! Peter Borst Ithaca, NY USA ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 09:07:03 -0700 Reply-To: Allen Dick Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Subject: Re: Morphometry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Excerpted from sci.agriculture.beekeeping --- From: "Ruary Rudd" Newsgroups: sci.agriculture.beekeeping Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2001 1:29 AM Subject: Re: Morphometry > Ok..but could you explain some more about 'acquiring' the plots to > add to the 'spreadsheet?' Will I need a microscope, and a tiny > ruler? Is there a URL that goes into this procedure? Morphometry is the process of determining the racial purity of a colony of bees by measuring external characteristics of a sample of the bees. The sample needs to be large enough to be representative, at least 25 bees on the continent, at least 30 in U.K. and preferably 50 if you really want to know. The starting point is the measurement of some of the veins and vein joints in the wings!!!, you can mount them on a 35mm slide and project the image onto a screen and measure from the image ; OR you can use a scanner with at least 1200 dpi optical resolution, and us the graphics program to tell you where you are in the picture. These co-ordinates are used to convert to give the ratios required to obtain Cubital ratio and discoidal shift. As the WebPages states there are other characteristics which should be measured. the length of overhairs can be measured by comparing it with the thickness of frame wire, the characteristics are longer than, same length or shorter than. The only difficult measurement is length of tongue which requires dissection. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 09:05:40 -0700 Reply-To: Allen Dick Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Subject: BEE-L FAQ and Guidelines (Periodic Post) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit BEE-L is a moderated discussion list with published standards & guidelines. Anyone and everyone with interest in bees is welcome to join. We do, however, have rules that everyone who wishes to post messages to the list must observe. In particular, DO NOT INCLUDE QUOTES OF PREVIOUS ARTICLES WHEN REPLYING. Contributions including quotes that are not absolutely necessary to understanding will usually be rejected *without notice*. Our FAQ is our archive of posts running back more than a decade. Every post that makes the list (and well over 90% do) goes into these archives and can be easily found by a search at any time now or in the future. We are very pleased at the high quality and wide variety of input from members all over the world. In a sense, we are writing a book together. The BEE-L archive search engine is much more powerful and flexible than most on the web. Please take time to read the help page and experiment a bit. You will be well rewarded for your time. We would like to point out to new members (and remind long-time members) that all our rules, including the sign-on messages and access to our FAQ can be found in one easy-to-use page at http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/BEE-L. The page also provides links to enable you to easily and quickly change, suspend, or cancel immediately your BEE-L membership. IMPORTANT: Please visit http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/BEE-L periodically to review our guidelines and especially before posting to the list. Please also, before posting basic questions, do a quick search of the archives (at the same page) to see if there are answers there. If not, or you are not satisfied with the answers, then by all means post your question to the list. If you post an article to BEE-L and your article did not appear on the list within 24 hours, you will also find information there on what might have happened. There are more possibilities than simple rejection by moderators. allen ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 14:46:15 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Peter Subject: Learning throughout life Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Greetings! I just want to say one more thing about continuing to learn. I think it is a grave mistake to suppose that "we already know" anything, because stuff keeps changing all the time. An example: A beekeeper who works part time for the University was told he had to take a safety training course. He was moaning about it, saying he already knew what he needed to know. I reminded him about driving around with gas in an unmarked can (it said "blower" on it, written in magic marker). He says: Well, I know what's in it. So I say: All you have to do is put it in a red can that says Gasoline and you're fine. Suppose you get in an accident and that's splashed everywhere, who's gonna know what it is? Him: I don't get in accidents. Then I told him he would learn a lot about gloves, which is important, since beekeepers use a variety of chemicals. He says: I never wear gloves. Me: Not even handling coumaphos? Him: Nope. Just grab it with pliers. Me: Not even when you open the package? That's an organophosphate insecticide that comes wafting out of the package. Why not put on disposable rubber gloves? He says: I never wear gloves. Moral of the story: when you think you "already know it all" you better start listening. -- pb http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/plb6/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 18:47:03 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: ivan pechanec Subject: Combing hives Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed I combined a hive in mid-Sept by placing the weak hive bottom brood box on the strong hive's top brood box separated by paper. The weak hive had a good supply of honey and was accepted by the stong hive. The top brood box of the weak hive was basically put into the freezer as all frames had good stores. The question I have is do I leave the three brood box situation alone until spring or should I be removing the third brood box at some point in time. The weak hive had no queen. Ivan in South Central Kansas _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 10:04:39 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Scot Mc Pherson Subject: Re: Combing hives MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Well if you get a nice warm week, I would take off the extra box...but make sure the bees have enough honey to last the winter... If you do NOT have mild weather than do NOT remove the box...the reason is that the bees will have a really hard time resealing the box even if you do it on a warm day...When did you combine the hives? Scot Mc Pherson ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 01:02:39 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Ellen Anglin Subject: Requeening in November? Help? In-Reply-To: <200111172348.fAHNmp313493@listserv.albany.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I have one very strong hive that has me stumped. Last week, I moved 5 of my hives into my back yard for the winter- they are low on stores and I'm going to have to feed them to get them thru the winter. This week, our weather here in Detroit Michigan has been unseasonably warm- reaching the mid 50's and 60's so the bees have been our flying, gathering pollen, and being busy in general. All except one very large, three story hive, that I knew had a lot of empty comb in it- the large population had eaten up much of their winter stores. I decided to see what was going on in there yesterday, and see if I could condense them down into two hive bodies. When I got inside the middle box tho, i found two frames with hand sized patches of sealed brood, about 6 ripe queen cells, (supercedure cells, in the middle of the brood patches.) one open queen cell, with the cap hanging from one edge of the lip, but the side torn open where the bees had begun to tear it down, and one unmarked queen, She was not the marked New World Carniolan queen that was put in this spring, but she didn't run around madly like the virgin queens I have seen before- She wasn't dinky, but she didn't look big enough to be doing much laying either. I don't know if she is mated, or the freshly hatched virgin who's cell I spotted. I did not spot my Marked queen, or anyother queen. Well, so I figure I have this strong hive here that seems to be trying to requeen itself in November. We may get a few more days in the 50's or 60's but it's not very likely. I did spot a few drones in this hive, but not very many- I doubt that a virgin queen will have a sucessful maing flight at this time of year. (We have snow flurries predicted for tuesday, and temperatures in the low 40's predicted for the rest of the week.) So what do I do? I have four other hiveshere- should I combine these bees with one or more of the queenright hives? What will having a virgin queen in a wintering cluster do to a queenright hive- will the virgin kill the reigning queen? Should I shake them into other hives, but force them to go thru a queen excluder to try to keep the virgins from joining the cluster? If I chance it, and give this hive a chance to go it on their own, and the mating fails, will they all become drone layers over the winter? This is a populous hive, with the cluster filling the center 5 frames of two brood boxes. I hate to lose all those bees. Still, I'd hate it worse if I combined them with other hives, had small virgins get thru the excluder and kill my good queens, and ended up with several messed up hives. I have plenty of extra equipment- bodies, excluders, etc. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know! Monday is probably the last chance I'll get to do any serious manipulations. Ellen in Michigan --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Find the one for you at Yahoo! Personals. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 20:37:00 -0700 Reply-To: Allen Dick Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Subject: Re: Morphometry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I see Dave Cushman has some files on this topic at http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/downloads.html allen ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 20:28:45 -0700 Reply-To: Allen Dick Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Subject: Beekeeping Software MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit People enquire from time to time on this list about specialized software for beekeeping. At the ABA convention, Mynista Support Services of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada had a booth and were showing off their work. They have developed in conjunction with Hat Honey Farm a good-looking beekeeping program that might fill the bill for many. The complete (very comprehensive and illustrated) help file is on the web for perusal, and free download of a trial version is available at http://www.mynista.com/beekeeper/default.htm I've looked at it and am quite impressed. I have not tried it - yet. Evaluating software is a big job and the trial version expires after only a month. I doubt I could evaluate it that quickly -- even in the busy season, when I would be able to test it with real data. The software can function in conjunction with a PDA as well as a desktop machine, I understand. See http://www.mynista.com/beekeeper/nomad.htm allen http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/Dairy/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 15:40:20 -0000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Graham & Annie Law Subject: Swarming, who stays, who goes Comments: To: Irish Bee List MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit (Cross post to Bee-L and Irish list) Have you ever wondered how swarming bees decide who goes with the swarm and who stays. I have been observing my bees over the past few years using my observation hive in our dining room (another story) and have started to form a theory. I cannot find reference to this process and I am writing to you today to seek guidance perhaps to other peoples work in this area or your own opinion. What seems to occur is this:- On the day of the swarm the bees have produced queen cells and the first cells are capped. The bees start to get 'excited' and as is also known some bees start to run through the colony on a 'buzzing run' stimulating this excitement. This is the start of the swarm and bees pour out the entrance, but who stays and who goes? It is interesting to note that not all the bees are leaving, some bees (un-stimulated ones) are actually returning against this powerful tide. Within the colony literally chaos rains with bees running very quickly in all directions continually bumping into each other. There is a bias to run towards the exit but a stimulated bee is easily diverted by colliding. The bees collide at such a rate and with such force that they cascade down between the comb in a fashion that is not unlike a waterfall. It is this 'bumping' that seems to be the key, as it keeps the bees self stimulating this state of excitement. Naturally the very youngest bees cannot fly with the swarm however the rest are chosen by this chaotic process, which only subsides when the population drops and the bees no longer bump but mostly run past each other and thus the self stimulation drops. The hive then quickly calms down with the population now split. Hope the above is of interest, has anyone any further thoughts or have I got it all wrong. cheers Graham Law 18/11/01 PS: I had no comment at all when I last wrote about observing bees moving and storing wax, am writing to the wrong groups? Please advise if this sort of thing is of little interest and I'll shut up :-) Graham Law Leicestershire UK... Email: Graham@gandboss.demon.co.uk Web http://www.gandboss.demon.co.uk/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 09:44:45 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Bob & Liz Subject: Re: Swarming, who stays, who goes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Graham and All, I cannot find reference to this process and I am writing to you > today to seek guidance perhaps to other peoples work in this area or your own opinion. > but who stays and who goes? After looking at a large number of hives after they have swarmed it is my opinion most of the older bees leave with the swarm. The split is not even and many times the swarmed from hive is left without a proper field force (almost always). I had no comment at all when I last wrote about observing bees moving > and storing wax, Bees move wax without a doubt. I use a uncapper which leaves wax cappings on the comb to help the bees move and cap wax faster. Bees move wax many times when the temperature is below the temperature at which they can produce wax (approx. 70 F.). I have never seen the bees store wax. I have seen wax left from my uncapper thrown out the front entrance when supers are put on before the honey flow in early spring. I have seen the bees remove wax from feeders of open cappings and take back to the hive to seal fall honey with when daytime temperatures are below 70F. If bees stored wax then the most obvious place would be in empty cells. I have never seen a *catch* of wax stored in cells. Maybe others have but I can't say I ever have and I have looked through a lot of deadouts. Sincerely, Bob Harrison ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 21:57:35 +0100 Reply-To: man@mbox301.swipnet.se Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Mats Andersson Subject: Queen cells safe against varroa mites? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here's a question for you guys to to think about overnight while i get my sleep: In Sweden, varroa is slowly spreading over the country. Authorities are trying to slow down the spread by some laws: the country is divided into zones. Zone 1 is where varroa has been found. No restriction on moving bees inside the zone, but absolutely no moving outside the zone or to an other zone 1 across other zones. Zone 2 to is around the borders of zone 1. No varroa found, hard restrictions on moving bees and related material. Zone 3 is a buffer zone around zone 2, with ligt restrictions on moving bees and stuff. The map of zones is redrawn a couple of times per year as varroa is found in new areas. Among other things, this is causing problems for queen breeders. Before varroa, there were mating areas, often on little islands, where there were no bees kept within at least 10 kilometers. Selected colonies were put in the area to provide good drones and then the virgin queens in their mating nucs were also put there to mate with a controlled drone population. As the queen breeders home areas became zone 1, 2 or 3, they can no longer mate their queens in mating areas outside their zone. Now here's the background to the question: There's a mating area on an island in zone 2. No varroa found, but it's found within 25 kilometers. One of these queen breeders told me, they'll be populating the mating nucs with worker bees from colonies in the mating zone and then bring in only the sealed queen cells. The theory is that varroa mites will never go into a queen cell. Is this a correct assumption? /Mats Andersson, Stockholm Sweden ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 00:07:44 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Dick Allen Subject: Insulating hives Beekeepers: In the Sept. 2001 American Bee Journal, Steve Taber writes about wintering bees referencing a study published in 1971 by the USDA "The thermology of wintering honey bee colonies". The study compares an insulated hive against a heated hive and an uninsulated check hive. The results may surprise many beekeepers. The publication, he says, is long out of print. Arizona beekeeper Dee Lusby provided a photo-copy of the study to a local beekeeper here in south-central Alaska, Keith Malone. Keith scanned the pages and posted it in 33 separate .jpg files on an internet discussion group. For anyone interested, the files can be accessed at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Norlandbeekeepers/files/ The files can be downloaded and printed from a word processing program. The print quality isn't the greatest, but is certainly adequate enough to be easily read. Regards, Dick ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 01:56:03 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Dick Allen Subject: Re: Queen cells safe against varroa mites? Beekeepers: Mats Andersson asks if "The theory is that varroa mites will never go into a queen cell" is a safe assumption. In Honey Bee Pests, Predators, & Diseases David De Jong writes: "Because V. Jacobsoni does not attack honey bee queens, queens theoretically can be transported safely..." In a paper at the Bee Master's Course at Simon Fraser U. last March Stephen Pernal writes that queen cells are usually not infested by mites. Last summer I raised a few queens here in Anchorage by elevating eggs, brood, and nurse bees above a double screen over some hives. The hives did have varroa present. Two newly emerged queens each had a varroa mite on their thorax. Were the mites present in the queen cells? Was there a shortage of young nurse bees and the new queens just happened by at an opportune time for the mites? I don't know. The queens looked healthy enough. I used a small piece of wood and pushed the mites off the queens and didn't see mites on them again. However, the queens that had been mite infested disappeared from the the nucs within about a month or so. Regards, Dick ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 01:02:49 -0700 Reply-To: Allen Dick Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Subject: Re: Insulating hives MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > ..."The thermology of > wintering honey bee colonies". The study compares an insulated hive against > a heated hive and an uninsulated check hive. It's a good article and I happen to have a copy or two of it around here somewhere. Tibor Tzabo followed up that work a few years later while at Beaverlodge, doing some studies with a similar name that compared several wrapping and entrance styles and demonstrated the importance of appropriate controlled ventilation. > The results may surprise many beekeepers. ...And fool some Northerners too if they listen to people who are too far south, or to beginners who have been lucky a year or two. It fooled me, and taught me to read those ivory-tower studies more carefully to see what is really being said. (see below). I read that article during my early years of beekeeping. I took it at face value, and it gave me false confidence. That false confidence cost me quite a bit of money and work until I realised that maybe my neighbours, who wrapped well and faithfully, knew something that did not show up in a small one-time experiment done under artificial conditions, and I learned to wrap properly. At that point I stopped having as many problems in winter and spring. I've learned on careful reflection -- and bitter experience -- that this well respected and often quoted study does not actually say what it seems to say, and, further, does not really prove what most people think it proves. Au contraire! Reading carefully, to me the most significant observation from the study is this: "A colony protected by insulation will have a less compact cluster that will fluctuate more in size with temperature change than a cluster in an unprotected colony". This allows smaller colonies to cover more area, and allows any colony access to more food. That can mean the difference between living another day and dying some dark cold windy night. Death is, after all, final, and makes the other points moot. Another significant point is this: "A cluster held for long periods under freezing conditions declines in strength...but is slower in insulated than unprotected colonies". This observation is an admission that protection noticeably reduces loss. Unprotected colonies are weakened more by winter conditions. Weak colonies die in spring if the spring is late, which it often is. The article finally says "Under *normal* winter conditions, either insulated or uninsulated colonies *should* _survive_ at Madison Wis". (Emphasis added). Although that sounds encouraging, and seems to suggest that northerners can safety forego wrapping, I realised after a while that "should" is not good enough for me. I need certainty. Also I realised that "survive" is not good enough for me either. I need "thrive"...and, as for "normal winter conditions", ask any farmer or weatherman when he ever last saw a "normal" winter... FWIW, right now we are having a heat wave; a year ago it was minus twenty. It is easy to forget that just takes one abnormal event to tip the scales and cause colony death in marginal conditions. That is the end of it. Barring that, prolonged cold weakens both the bees and the colony. I've personally observed that poorly wrapped colonies yield fewer spits in the spring, even when survival is comparable. to well wrapped hives. Who, but a researcher, can risk such losses? When we consider also that we may not have the same strain of bees, or the same conditions as that particular yard at Madison, and that perhaps the hives they selected were not just any old average hives, and maybe we don't manage our bees in quite the same way during the summer, drawing conclusions that could terminate our careers as beekeepers seems (in hindsight) to me to be somewhat rash. While it is, indeed, an interesting study, I'd not advise believing it applies to every real-world situation. After all, unless you are a researcher, the death or weakening of colonies is very bad news. Wrapping is cheap and easy and it is good insurance in northern areas even if it proves, in retrospect, to have been unnecessary some years. Once again, the rule is caveat emptor. This is just as true when reading studies as it is in advertising. allen http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/Diary/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 11:10:24 +0000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: James Kilty Subject: Re: Queen cells safe against varroa mites? In-Reply-To: <200111190721.fAJ7LD315194@listserv.albany.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 In message <200111190721.fAJ7LD315194@listserv.albany.edu>, Dick Allen writes >I used a small piece >of wood and pushed the mites off the queens and didn't see mites on them >again. However, the queens that had been mite infested disappeared from the >the nucs within about a month or so. had they started to lay? -- James Kilty ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 07:48:38 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Aaron Morris Subject: Re: Queen cells safe against varroa mites? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > The theory is that varroa mites will never go into a > queen cell. Is this a correct assumption? Yes, this is true. Queens hatch in 16 days, whereas the varroa life cycle requires over 20 days. Workers hatch in 21 days, drones in 23. Varroa prefer drones as the drones developement time is most in synch with their own and they are most successful reproducing in drone cells. Workers' developement is next in line with Varroa (I do not recall the exact time for Varroa cycle and do not have texts on hand). However, queen developement is simply too quick for Varroa to be interested in inhabiting a queen cell. I know of no documented cases of Varroa in queen cells. Sincerely, Aaron Morris ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 11:31:42 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Lloyd Spear Subject: bees in a swarm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Graham, as always, has some interesting comments from his long-term obser= vation hive investigations. I have noticed that primary swarms consist mostly of the older bees in th= e hive. This is clear from their size alone. I have always been amazed = to find a fresh swarm, sometimes one that I have watched leave the hive a= nd re-group elsewhere, with workers with pollen! While this is consisten= t with "older bees", it seems strange that the swarm attracts bees that j= ust a few minutes ago were foraging and, obviously, oriented to the hive = that they left. The Wisdom of the Hive, by Tom Seeley, contains a wonderful section on ho= w bees seem to "turn off" their orientation toward their "old" hive when = they swarm, so they can be part of the new population at the new location= . After all, not many swarms travel 3+ miles to their new home, so other= wise all the foragers would desert the new location and restock the old h= ive! Secondary and tertiary swarms contain a much larger percentage of very yo= ung bees. I am afraid that I don't know anything about the bees in the swarm consis= ting of those who have been in collisions! =20 Lloyd Lloyd Spear, Owner of Ross Rounds, Inc. Manufacturer of round comb honey equipment and Sundance pollen traps ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 11:36:50 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Lloyd Spear Subject: queen cells in November MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Ellen asks what to do with a strong hive that has queen cells in November= . I had such a hive this year, but in September rather than November. My a= ttitude was that some genetic factor may have led to this condition, and = I didn't want any part of such genetics. I combined the strong hive with = another strong hive, first killing the queen in the hive with the cells. = =20 So now I have far to large a hive that is going through the winter. But,= if they survive, they will be booming in the spring and I can them make = at least 3 hives from the one...and perhaps four. And, if genetics was a= t work, I have not allowed them any chance to produce a new queen. Perhaps, Ellen, this will be helpful in your situation. Lloyd LloydSpear@msn.com www.rossrounds.com Lloyd Spear, Owner of Ross Rounds, Inc. Manufacturer of round comb honey equipment and Sundance pollen traps ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 08:07:13 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Aaron Morris Subject: Re: Moving Wax MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" This message was originally submitted by jjbmail@SELWAY.UMT.EDU to the BEE-L list at LISTSERV.ALBANY.EDU. It was edited to remove quotes of previously posted material. ----------------- Original message (ID=55051A3F) (62 lines) ------------------- Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 18:11:59 -0700 To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Jerry J Bromenshenk Subject: Re: Moving Wax During a heavy nectar flow, bees rob wax from combs that have not been compeletely drawn out and use it to fix, cap drawn comb. We measured significant wax losses from partially drawn foundation in ~ 48 hives during the first heavy nectar flows of the summer. We also found that bees often plug out the lower brood nest with nectar during the day during a heavy flow, then work all night moving the nectar up to the honey supers. Just a guess, but this may be why upper entrances seem to be useful - those bees racing home with the goods don't want to wait to get to the top of the hive -- just drop and go out again. Jerry ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 08:27:15 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Aaron Morris Subject: Re: Requeening in November? Help? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hi Ellen, At this stage in the seasons, I'd be inclined to leave the hive alone. It's very late to be combining and/or rearranging, and you're not sure what is the condition of the hive in question. Perhaps the new queen IS mated and is fine. Perhaps the old queen is still laying and can carry over to next spring. Maybe the hive will perish over the winter. But your unknown entity is a single hive, whereas if you make the changes you contemplate your "unknowns" become multiple. In our parts (way up north) with the excepting of taking strips out if they're still in, and wrapping if you wrap, THE SEASON IS OVER! My advice (others may disagree) is leave the hive alone. Aaron Morris - thinking winter is not a date on the calendar, it's a season that's upon us! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 09:59:10 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Purring MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have been asked if I have ever heard a hive purr like a cat. The person asking says the bees can be heard from more than 20 feet away and sound just like a cat. I have not, or maybe I have but not sure just what the sound is that the person says he has heard. Has anyone heard of a bees purring, like a cat? Bill Truesdell Bath, ME ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 09:34:04 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Dave Hamilton Subject: Re: bees in a swarm Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This weekend at our state bee convention they were taking about the subfamilies in the hive and the relationship of these genetic families to "who goes and stays" when swarming. Lloyd's observation about it being the "older" bees and the notion that those that go are closer related to the "older" departing queen may be correlated. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 10:49:18 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Bob & Liz Subject: Re: Requeening in November? Help? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable -----Original Message----- From: Aaron Morris [SMTP:AMorris@UAMAIL.ALBANY.EDU] Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 7:27 AM To: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu Subject: Re: Requeening in November? Help? Hello Ellen and All, Aaron wrote; In our parts (way up north) with the excepting of taking strips out if = they're still in, and wrapping if you wrap, THE SEASON IS OVER! My = advice (others may disagree) is leave the hive alone. Although not as far north as Aaron I agree with Aaron for the Kansas = City area. All preparations other than wrapping should already be done. = I was surprised to hear how many beekeepers came to the Midwestern = Beekeepers meeting yesterday wanting to know what they needed to do to = get their bees ready for winter. Hello! Timing is many times the = difference between successful beekeeping and unsuccessful beekeeping. = I do have three yards which need strips removed. I plan to do those = Thursday. I will break the seal to pull strips rather than leave = strips in all winter. I like to leave the strips for the correct amount = of time but not a day longer.=20 Aaron writes: THE SEASON IS OVER!=20 Should be the next season has already started. Treating and = preparing for winter is the start of the next season.=20 Did you make a list of things that went wrong this year and ways to = improve? Make a list of equipment needing repair or replacement? What changes could you make next year to make your job easier? There are many other things to list but the above tops my list. Sincerely, Bob Harrison Ps. Ellen is wise to be concerned about a hive with a queen = problem. Because of our intense flows in the Midwest about 10% of = the hives are found queenless in fall. We need to find those hives and = correct the situation as they will not survive winter. Early on we = requeen and later we combine BUT NOT at this time of year in our area = (at least I don't). ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 13:44:54 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: M D Lathan Subject: How to find a New Apiary Site I can't have bees where I live, so as a hobbyist who wants to expand - I am always on the lookout for spots that could serve as my bee-yard. Even with all the so-called "development" in the area there are lots of potential sites around me. I am wondering - has anyone come up with a good (non-threatening) approach to asking the landowner about locating a few hives on his/her land? I have been asking - only to find problems with access or (mutual) concern about the family kids or dogs. Do you offer them rent in the form of honey or money? How concerned should I be about horses or llamas being stung or knocking- over a hive? What kind of problems could a 'landlord' cause me & my bees? What can I do to be a good 'tenant'? Thanks for listening! Milt L. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 14:09:05 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Purring MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Got a little more info. Turns out it was wasps. Here is the updated comment/question: I'm asking because of an odd nest of wasps that i ran across that purred. I talked to several entomologists about it, but they said hives did not make any such sound. I played some recordings of the wasps over the phone to them, but I think they thought I was putting them on. One beekeeper, a friend of a friend, came by to hear them, and noted several other odd things about the hive's activity. She had never heard of a hive making such sounds. Let me know if you run across anybody familiar with the phenomena. Bill Truesdell Bath, ME ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 14:54:28 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: waldig Subject: Re: Insulating hives In-Reply-To: <200111191257.fAJCvo319495@listserv.albany.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have found the entire discussion on how best to overwinter hives very fascinating. One comes to the conclusion that there is no one single optimum approach for all US temperature zones and one would be most grateful for a set of standardized recommendations for every zone. How is one to semi-scientifically determine if his or her clusters have optimum conditions and how does one determine, with some degree of accuracy, if one's hives have sufficient ventilation to remove CO2 and vapor H2O but has not enthusiastically gone so far as to render the hives too drafty ? This is pushing it a bit but it would be great to have a number of sensors - a thermocouple, a humidity sensor, and an air velocity meter - strategically placed throughout the inside of a hive and make adjustments by making the entrance size and any vent holes bigger or smaller. While this is quite feasible, the cost of such a real time feedback-and-adjust set-up for an average beekeeper would not justify its return on investment. So we are back to standardizing methods for every regions. I think scientific control studies are beneficial as they shed more light on what happens in hives, but one can not beat the advice from experienced, successful beekeepers in one's area. Waldemar ---------------------------------------------------- Sign Up for NetZero Platinum Today Only $9.95 per month! http://my.netzero.net/s/signup?r=platinum&refcd=PT97 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 15:32:38 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Tim Vaughan Subject: Llamas I wouldn't put hives in the same area as llamas. They are incredibly curious, and like to nibble at everything. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 07:06:25 +1000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: T & M Weatherhead Subject: Re: Queen cells safe against varroa mites ? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aaron >I know of no documented cases of Varroa in queen cells. Just for clarification, is it that varroa do not reproduce in queen cells or is it that varroa are never found in queen cells? I ask because if varroa were found in queen cells but do not reproduce, then a queen cell would be a way of carrying the varroa mite from one area to another. The varroa mite would be able to emerge with the virgin queen and then enter another cell of a drone or worker and reproduce there, thus starting an infection. In Apis cerana, Varroa jacobsoni will enter the cell of a worker but do not reproduce in them. I have found V.jacobsoni in the worker cells of A. cerana. Trevor Weatherhead AUSTRALIA ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:28:55 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: James Fischer Subject: Re: bees in a swarm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dave Hamilton said: > ...at our state bee convention they were taking about the > subfamilies in the hive and the relationship of these genetic > families to "who goes and stays" when swarming. Lloyd's > observation about it being the "older" bees and the notion > that those that go are closer related to the "older" departing > queen may be correlated. But if this were true, all (or nearly all) bees in the colony would leave with the "old" queen, since there has not been time for the progeny of the "new" queen to be anything but a tiny percentage of the total population, at most. There is much more going on than a simple division along "family tree" lines. jim ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:10:14 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Dave Hamilton Subject: Re: bees in a swarm Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I don't think you are thinking about the subfamilies correctly. The workers have some "super sisters" ( same drone dad who's mom was also your mom ), true sisters with same mom and dad and there may be as many as 10-20 other groupings called subfamilies based on the genetic source with the workers having the same mom but different dads. (Some dads may be related and some not as well). We heard of research speculation there may even be competition in the hive for which subfamilies eggs get choosen to be the new queen. I leave it up to smarted people than myself (like George) to explain how they would know. Just reporting, not explaining .. Dave >leave with the "old" queen, since there has not been time for >the progeny of the "new" queen to be anything but a tiny >percentage of the total population, at most. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 22:07:36 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Scot Mc Pherson Subject: Re: Swarming, who stays, who goes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Graham, Actually I find this very very fascinating, and I will search the archives for your earlier article. I am going to be putting together a top bar observation hive this winter and perhaps make some similar observations. The observation hive I have planned is probably a bit more substantial that a standard observation hive. It will have about 10 full combs and they will be viewed from the side. It will be interesting to see how well it does. I am hoping my design is successful from a long term tenancy point of view. Scot Mc Pherson ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 20:38:41 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Warren Nelson Subject: Re: How to find a New Apiary Site MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Milt, I usually offer a small jar of honey when I approach them. Kind of sweeten them up. I also answer any questions and concerns they have, such as pets and kids. Rent is always in the form of honey. Don't know much about llamas but you definitely don't want horses around. I have seen damage from horses that makes bear damage seem like child's play. Best to have them fenced off from livestock. To be a good tenant, make sure all gates are closed that were closed when you arrived. Don't go in after a rain and tear up the lane or the property. The best advice is leave it looking as good or better than when you got there. Best of luck. Warren ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 21:31:07 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Dick Allen Subject: Re: Queen cells safe against varroa mites? Beekeepers: In response to James Kilty's question---yes, the two queens that had mites did mate and began laying worker brood. Regards, Dick ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 09:04:10 -0000 Reply-To: Ruary Rudd Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Ruary Rudd Organization: Westgate, waterville Subject: Morphometry Comments: To: David Eyre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry Folks there is a slight bug in the spreadsheet! The data range for the scattergram MUST be altered to fit the number of data sets entered in the spreadsheet, at present it is set to include some cells with text contents which upsets the plotting. Also, if you want to calculate Cubital Indices only, then a value will have to be entered in column B of the data set. Sorry for any inconvenience Ruary Rudd ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 07:42:24 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Insulating hives MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit waldig wrote: > So we are back to standardizing methods for every regions. I think > scientific control studies are beneficial as they shed more light on what > happens in hives, but one can not beat the advice from experienced, > successful beekeepers in one's area. Even standardized methods can have varying degrees of success because of variables. The kind of bee, the location of the hives, the amount of ventilation, the type of stores, etc. I do not wrap, yet over winter successfully. Others wrap and over winter less successfully. But their preparation for over wintering is different than mine, including the race of the bees. So you would get incorrect results if you compared them to me, while another who wraps and uses the same race of bee has the same results as I do as far as honey production. I put more stock in the bee than the wrap. The best way, as you noted, is to take the advice of the successful beekeeper. I would add read books, and try different things until you find what works best for your area and method of keeping bees. Bill Truesdell Bath, ME ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 10:36:04 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Aaron Morris Subject: Re: Queen cells safe against varroa mites ? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Trevor asks, "Just for clarification, is it that varroa do not reproduce in queen cells or is it that varroa are never found in queen cells?" My understanding is that Varroa simply do not go into queen cells. I always assumed it was because the chemical enticements (phereomones. etc.) are not present in queen cells. However, I cannot cite studies or sources for this information other than stating that is how I've come to understand the interactions between Varroa and queens based on numerous sessions and presentations I've attended over the years. This is probably not sufficient to satisfy the original query, but I am confident it is the correct answer and studies exist to support the assertion. I guess this last statement makes me guilty of hearsay. I would look to the work done in Baton Rouge by John Harbo and company. Perhaps also Tibor Szabo. Sincerely, Aaron ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 09:58:53 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Lloyd Spear Subject: Castes of honeybees in a hive and swarming MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable In reply to a comment I had made concerning which bees leave in a swarm, = Dave told the list of research that had identified swarms as "mostly" con= sisting of bees from the same caste, and Jim misinterpreted this to mean = bees with different mothers. I keep referring to Tom Seeley's wonderful book, The Wisdom of the Hive, = and am about to again. While certainly not a beginners text, it should b= e read by all beekeepers! =20 Tom points out that he, and other researchers, have found that within a h= ive there are usually several castes. These have the same mother, but di= fferent fathers. What is fascinating is that bees within a caste seem to= somehow recognize each other, and will sometimes act in a different mann= er than bees in another caste! This is true with swarming. When bees swarm, most of those in the swarm will be of the same caste, an= d most of those left behind will be of different castes! This apparently= has to do with why bees are social insects...which is because they there= by have the greatest chances of perpetuating their gene pool. I recall t= hat Tom also said "more research is needed"... Lloyd LloydSpear@msn.com http://www.rossrounds.com Lloyd Spear, Owner of Ross Rounds, Inc. Manufacturer of round comb honey equipment and Sundance pollen traps ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 13:37:14 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Simoneau_Andr=E9?= Subject: Varroa jacobsoni MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In recent posts, I have noticed many people still refer to Varroa as Varroa jacobsoni. I would like to say that Varroa jacobsoni as described from Java, has been renamed We now, for sake of precision, should refer to Varroa destructor The explanations of that change can be found in the Proceedings of the 36th Apimondia Apicultural Congress, Vancouver, canada, pp.59-62, September 1999 which was a presentation by Dr Denis Anderson, Research Scool of Biological Sciences, Australian national University, Canberra. Doctor Anderson refers to evidence coming from size discrepancies between mites on the original host (Apis cerana) and those found on Apis mellifera. Then, it was discovered that V.jacobsoni found on Java could not reproduce on Apis mellifera brood. He concludes that Varroa is represented around the world by 5 separate species. Only one has spread from Apis cerana to become a serious parasite of Apis mellifera. This mite is not Varroa jacobsoni as described from Java and had to be renamed. André Simoneau, d.v.m. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:59:56 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Kenn Tuckey Subject: Re: BEE-L Digest - 14 Nov 2001 to 15 Nov 2001 (#2001-311) Indoor wintering Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I hope this is still relevant. I got distracted by other pressing matters - including a weekend! This is what Trevor referred to. Peter Dillon asked about potential dangers when wintering bees indoors. In March of 1995 Gauvreau, Sigler and Abbott published "Assessment of Airborne Molds as a Biological Hazard for Alberta Commercial Beekeepers." Gauvreau is a veterinarian and Sigler and Abbott are at the University of Alberta's Microfungus Collection. Sixteen Alberta beekeepers co-operated in the test. The report provides an impressive list of 82 molds that were collected during the study. It appears that some of the molds were innocuous but others had the potential to cause severe problems for anyone exposed. A couple of the statements from the report: "The presence of known toxigenic, potentially pathogenic and allergenic molds at all sites suggests that prudent action is needed to minimize worker exposure" "There appears to be a strong association between reported respiratory symptoms, eye, nose and throat irritation and the activities monitored (sweeping and Cleaning) where there was exposure to high levels of airborne molds". I suspect that copies of the full report would be very difficult to find but I wrote an article on the report that may be easier to find. The article is entitled "Danger in the Honeyhouse" and it appeared in the June 1995 copy of Alberta Bee News as published by the Alberta Beekeepers Association. Kenn Tuckey Provincial Apiculturist Alberta, Canada. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 11:10:43 +1300 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Barry Donovan Subject: Re: Wowbug(mellitobia) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hello Simoneau In reply to your question about the `wowbug' (Melittobia sp.), several years ago a major producer of bumble bee colonies in Europe had a severe infestation in a rearing facility. Leafcutting bees used for pollination of lucerne have also been badly attacked in North America and New Zealand. The only definitive answer that I know of (and maybe there are other better approaches that I don't know about) is to destroy all infested nests and start again. This is because it is virtually impossible to remove all Melittobia from all attacked larvae and pupae. If you miss just one developing female, then without mating she will lay 6-8 eggs, all of which will develop to males in less than 2 weeks. The female will then mate with one of her sons, and will then lay up to 100 eggs (on a leafcutting bee prepupa) which will produce about 95 females and 5 more males. The females are only about 1 mm long so are difficult to see in a bumble bee nest, and especially so because as soon as they ! emerge from an infested cell they quickly bore into and attack in another cell. Very many developing bees can be attacked before one is aware of the problem. Melittobia on bumble bees and leafcutting bees can be at least as bad as varroa on honey bees! Melittobia are everywhere outdoors where they attack a wide range of immature Hymenoptera, so it is important to try to seal the rearing facility from entry by Melittobia. This can be very difficult as an insect just 1 mm long can get through a very small crack. Good luck. Regards, Barry Donovan. New Zealand. ________ CAUTION: The information contained in this email is privileged and confidential. If you read this message and you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution or reproduction of all or part of the contents is prohibited. If you receive this message in error, please notify the sender immediately. Any opinions or views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender and may not represent those of their employer. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 08:52:41 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Peter Subject: Varroa in queen cells In-Reply-To: <200111200501.fAK51n321829@listserv.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11/20/01 12:00 AM, Aaron wrote: >However, queen developement is simply too quick for Varroa to be interested in inhabiting a queen cell. I know of no documented cases of Varroa in queen cells. Recent studies of varroa *seem* to point to the inability of varroa mites to make any assessment at all, that they are simply piggybacking to whatever locations the workers carry them. It appears that they have no way of "knowing" what sort of cell they are going in, or anything about the length of gestation etc., and end up in drone cells more because the cell is open longer than for any other reason. They certainly can't "tell" how big a drone cell is from the back of a bee (in the dark) and the notion of "odor cues" seems to be losing ground. (source: personal discussions with researchers) pb ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 17:48:01 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: BeeCrofter@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Varroa in queen cells MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have seen a varroa mite on a queen larvae in an uncapped swarm cell and I had another beekeeper with me at the time. Whether it means anything or not I dunno. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 00:32:43 +0000 Reply-To: pdillon@club-internet.fr Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Peter Dillon Organization: HOME Subject: Propolis irritation? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am cleaning the propolis off may be 400+ supers at the moment and apart from the inevitable dry skin around eye lids/ lips and fingers - have also noticed a type of "ear - throat " infection. Went to the Doc's yesterday - (( who had to put me onto his computer filing system (indicating the last time I paid him a visit - he also suggested that I got a refund from social security payments!)) He found no infection as such in throat, nose or ear but a lot of irritation in the Eustachian tube connecting throat and middle ear. Got to thinking - is it possible that breathing in dust particles from scrapped propolis is causing fore mentioned? Again, relating to bee housing in winter - the frames etc. themselves are also a prime source of fungal growth. Have any other beekeepers suffered in such a manner Peter ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 23:34:16 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Castes of honeybees in a hive and swarming MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > I keep referring to Tom Seeley's wonderful book, The Wisdom of the Hive, Agreed. Don't wait for the paperback, there may never be one. > Tom [Seeley] points out that he, and other researchers, have found that > within a hive there are usually several castes. These have the same mother, > but different fathers. What is fascinating is that bees within a caste seem to > somehow recognize each other, and will sometimes act in a different manner > than bees in another caste! Yes, I read that. > This is true with swarming. But where did Seeley say that this applied to SWARMING? I pulled out my copy of WotH, and I could find no mention of swarming and "relatedness". > When bees swarm, most of those in the swarm will be of the same caste, > and most of those left behind will be of different castes! Even if Seeley said it somewhere, I still don't get the line above. It makes no sense to me. If "most of those who swarm will have the same drone "father" (since that is how you use the term "caste"), then swarms could NOT consist of roughly 1/2 the colony, as is commonly agreed, but could only be a much smaller fraction of the colony. Let's assume that: 1) A queen mates with 10 drones 2) A swarm consists of roughly 1/2 the colony Reasonable starting points, so let's go: a) Each worker gets 1/2 its genes from the queen, and 1/2 its genes from one of the 10 drones. b) The queen cannot segregate her sperm "by drone", so we can assume the "drone component" of each worker to be a random selection, or something close to random. c) So, there are up to 10 groups (daughters of each drone) in the hive. While all workers are daughters of the same queen, each has a 1-in-10 chance of being a full sister, and a 9-in-10 chance of being a half sister to any other worker bee. d) Now, if swarms were a small fraction of a colony population, I might see a connection between drones as "fathers" and who goes and who stays. But swarms are a significant fraction of a hive (half? slightly more?) and must be daughters of more than one drone. The group that swarms cannot possibly be even mostly daughters of the same drone. So how could "which drone" makes any difference? At minimum, the daughters of more than one drone swarm with the queen, AND the daughters of more than one drone "stay". This is nothing more than simple math. If anyone wants to get into the relatedness of the drones that just happened to mate with the queen, this would be getting VERY silly and start to approach odds found only in state lotteries. Real mating yards can be assumed to have multiple drone-producing hives. Anything else would not be a decent genetic pool. It would be a genetic puddle. > I recall that Tom also said "more research is needed"... Agreed. I hope it is done by someone who can do some fractions. :) It is my personal pet theory (unverified by anyone as yet) that multiple queen hives are more common that anyone may suspect, which brings a whole new factor into the "swarming puzzle". I wish that everyone would inspect recently-swarmed hive closely for eggs, and report any eggs found the day of (or the day after) a swarm. Eggs directly after a swarm would prove that the swarming hive was a dual-queen hive before it swarmed. (Now does my question about queens [plural] make sense?) jim ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 13:42:04 +1200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Samizdat=AE?= Subject: Re: Propolis irritation? Comments: cc: pdillon@club-internet.fr In-Reply-To: <200111202342.fAKNgU321122@listserv.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" M. P. Dillon wrote: > ... no infection as such in throat, nose or ear but a lot of irritation >in the Eustachian tube connecting throat and middle ear. >Got to thinking - is it possible that breathing in dust particles from >scrapped propolis is causing fore mentioned? Propolis is IMHO the real 'sleeper' of bee products. Us chemists have fought shy of it for some reasons e.g. its composition will vary considerably depending what the gum-foragers were collecting from. But I can report that the mighty Molan lab at Waikato is moving into this chemistry. Propolis is a good broad-spectrum antiseptic. But too much of it, as dust, on certain human membranes might well irritate them. Infection might or might not then supervene. If I may proffer a suggestion to your medico, swabs for culturing would seem essential to a thorough assessment of any such irritation. As your facts stand, there's no evidence of infection. I wouldn't know whether swabs can be safely obtained from the Eustachian tubes. Also: of course it is not only propolis that gets mobilised into the air during such a big scraping campaign. R ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 17:23:16 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Bob & Liz Subject: Re: Varroa jacobsoni MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable -----Original Message----- From: Bob & Liz [SMTP:BusyBeeAcres@DiscoveryNet.Com] Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 2:58 PM To: 'Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology' Subject: RE: Varroa jacobsoni Hello All, Doctor Anderson refers to evidence coming from size discrepancies = between mites on the original host (Apis cerana) and those found on Apis = mellifera. Then, it was discovered that V.jacobsoni found on Java could not reproduce on Apis mellifera brood. In my opinion the easiest way to tell the two apart would be shape = rather than size as above. The varroa J. is round and the varroa d. = is oval shaped.=20 In one bee book the frontal picture is a varroa J. and the back side = picture is a varroa d..=20 I wondered the first time I ever looked at varroa at a Missouri state = beekeepers meeting why the varroa J. sample did not look like the = picture in the book . We have never had reason to look at varroa = under a microscope and that is the reason in my opinion we overlooked = the difference. Maybe I have never seen a varroa J. because when = Dr. Anderson pointed out the difference all I found were varroa d.. = The samples I looked at years ago were sent to our state bee inspector = in a alcohol solution and although labeled varroa j. they were in = fact varroa d. Sincerely, Bob Harrison Ps. The first small hive beetles I saw were in a alcohol solution . = All beekeeping clubs should ask for dead shb samples from a = southern beekeeper so they can show the samples at a meeting so all = can know exactly what the beetle looks like. Live SHb in a = observation hive are interesting in the south. You can not find a = shb until you shake the hive then out they come and start laying = eggs all over the place.. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 23:51:07 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Dick Allen Subject: Re: Varroa in queen cells Beekeepers: In reply to Peter Borst's recent post, Stephen Pernal gave a presentation at Simon Fraser University in BC last March on his work with varroa and odors. I see in the current edition of Canadian Beekeeping he presented his results again at Beaverlodge. Here is what the magazine says: "Using an ingenious choice test where mites are forced to walk in the direction of odours coming from two different arms of a 'Y' tube, Steve has discovered a number of bee extracts that attract and repel mites and has begun identifying active molocules that could be used in a commercial trap." On another note: the Webster & Delaplane book: Mites of the Honey Bee (p. 140) shows in the chart that even if the mite entered a queen cell at the same time a queen deposited her egg, the offspring would only develop into a single female Deutonymph and single Protonymph. The male would make it as far as the Deutonymph stage. As Aaron Morris points out, it would be impossible for reproduction to take place within a queen cell. So, I suppose the mites I discovered on my newly emerged queens had simply transferred from other bees. That isn't to say, though, that mites don't occasionally enter queen cells as the post from BeeCrofter points out. Regards, Dick ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 21:01:05 +1200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Samizdat=AE?= Subject: Re: Orange Pollen? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > I found that several dandelions had gotten their calendar >screwed up and were flowering (and being worked). At a friend's place the >other day he showed me some blueberry vines flowering , and some which had >just set fruit. I picked a few raspberries the other day. I have a dwarf cherry which has bloomed in autumn for several years. Many plants lately exhibit patterns which would be a major topic of conversation and of scientific research in a decent society. The chances are negligible of tracing any of these biological aberrations to any particular gene-splicing expt. Lack of evidence is taken as proof of safety - a grave reckless error. R ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 10:24:23 +0100 Reply-To: man@mbox301.swipnet.se Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Mats Andersson Subject: Incubators MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Can someone tell me a little about incubators for queen cells? I have the following questions: What temperature is ideal? What deviations from the ideal temperatures are acceptable to still get a successful hatching of the cells? Do you have to make special arrangements to keep a certain humidity level inside the incubator? What day in the cell lifecycle is best for moving the cells from the feeder colony into the incubator? /Mats Andersson, Stockholm Sweden ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 07:37:39 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Aaron Morris Subject: Re: Varroa in queen cells MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Peter Borst writes: > Recent studies of varroa *seem* to point to the inability of varroa mites to make any assessment at all, that they are simply > piggybacking to whatever locations the workers carry them. This is an interesting assertion, and I'm not challanging it, I'm merely stating it is an interesting assertion. What we first "knew" about Varroa j. (later we "learned" it was Varroa d.) was that it actively sought out and could differentiate drone brood. Later on we speculated that perhaps it wasn't smell but rather the raised drone cells that was the cue attracting Varroa species to drone brood. Now it's been passed on that some have asserted it might be as simple as a matter of chance based on length of time a cell is uncapped; the longer the barn door is open the more likely it is that the horse will leave (or in this case enter). Interesting assertion and certainly a more simple explanation (Occam's Razor!). Based on the assertions and observations posted in the past few days I must back off my assertion that Varroa will not be found in queen cells. I've never seen it myself, but then again I've never seen France. Aaron Morris - thinking thankful thoughts! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 09:44:23 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Simoneau_Andr=E9?= Subject: Infantile botulism from honey MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I read only once that young infants (less than 1 year of age) could be at risk for C.botulinum spores found in honey. Now I read in La Santé de l'Abeille that this potential problem is a reality in Finland. Permanent Apiculture Committee of the European Commission' president, Kari Valonen said that cases have been reported (5 or 6 since a few years) in Finland. Around 14% of imported honey had an important count of spores(5000-80000) and 8% of local honey showed a weak count (18 to 140 spores). Action taken by finnish government has been directed towards young mothers by informing them by a warning written on the label that infants less than 12 months are at risk. Seems that the Commission has been informed of the problem and are studying the case. More info on the following link http://www.elintarvikevirasto.fi/english/tiedotteet/tiedotteet/press0401.htm l André Simoneau, d.v.m. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 10:13:04 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Orange Pollen? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Samizdat® wrote: > > I found that several dandelions had gotten their calendar > >screwed up and were flowering (and being worked). > Many plants lately exhibit patterns which would be a major topic of > conversation and of scientific research in a decent society. Not much of a conspiracy here. We have dandelions bloom in the fall every year, before Genetically Modified Crops or even the UFO which landed nearby and made those neat circles. The reason they are not a major topic of conversation is because it is completely natural and normal. It is when you become a beekeeper and notice what is in bloom that it is at first new but after many years, just the flow of seasons and expected. Many raspberries can produce crops of berries throughout the whole year and are not restricted to a specific season. Some are fall bearing and bear beyond the first freeze. Again, nothing new. However, where the UFO landed, there is a coconut palm growing in the circle. That is unusual, since normally they leave these very long pods. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 14:03:40 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Kim Flottum Subject: Fall Dandelions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit There is a species of dandelion that normally blooms in the fall, same genus, different species than our familiar spring bloomer. It is found, mostly, in the northern two thirds of the U.S., with some exceptions. Of course, some spring bloomers get confused also, but by far the majority of what is being seen now are the fall bloomers. Kim Flottum Editor, Bee Culture Magazine V: 800.289.7668 x3214 Fax: 330.725.5624 623 W. Liberty St. Medina OH 44256 www.Beeculture.com -----Original Message----- From: Bill Truesdell [mailto:bhfarms@SUSCOM-MAINE.NET] Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2001 10:13 AM To: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu Subject: Re: Orange Pollen? Samizdat® wrote: > > I found that several dandelions had gotten their calendar > >screwed up and were flowering (and being worked). > Many plants lately exhibit patterns which would be a major topic of > conversation and of scientific research in a decent society. Not much of a conspiracy here. We have dandelions bloom in the fall every year, before Genetically Modified Crops or even the UFO which landed nearby and made those neat circles. The reason they are not a major topic of conversation is because it is completely natural and normal. It is when you become a beekeeper and notice what is in bloom that it is at first new but after many years, just the flow of seasons and expected. Many raspberries can produce crops of berries throughout the whole year and are not restricted to a specific season. Some are fall bearing and bear beyond the first freeze. Again, nothing new. However, where the UFO landed, there is a coconut palm growing in the circle. That is unusual, since normally they leave these very long pods. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 14:27:50 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "Van Roekel, Bill" Subject: Re: Castes of honeybees in a hive and swarming MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I don't agree with all of your comments. > > 1) A queen mates with 10 drones > 2) A swarm consists of roughly 1/2 the colony > > Reasonable starting points, so let's go: > > a) Each worker gets 1/2 its genes from the queen, and 1/2 > its genes from one of the 10 drones. > b) The queen cannot segregate her sperm "by drone", so we > can assume the "drone component" of each worker to be a > random selection, or something close to random. I could go along with you up to here. I have seen hives on a number of occasions where a large proportion of the bees were very dark(black/gray), with a substantial number of bees being uniformly golden/yellow. Although I have not seen proof, this indicates to me that the sperm is kept separate, and worker eggs are fertilized with sperm from one father for a period of time, and then from another, etc. So, your next point would not be accurate either. There could be ten groups of workers (based on fathers), but only a large number from perhaps three, the others dying off before the fourth group is laid. > c) So, there are up to 10 groups (daughters of each drone) > in the hive. > While all workers are daughters of the same queen, each has a > 1-in-10 chance of being a full sister, and a 9-in-10 > chance of being > a half sister to any other worker bee. > It is my personal pet theory (unverified by anyone as yet) > that multiple queen hives are more common that anyone may > suspect, which brings a whole new factor into the "swarming > puzzle". I wish that everyone would inspect recently-swarmed > hive closely for eggs, and report any eggs found the day of > (or the day after) a swarm. Eggs directly after a swarm > would prove that the swarming hive was a dual-queen hive > before it swarmed. Sorry, I don't think so. I believe that there could easily be more than one mated queen in the hive just prior to swarming, with all of them except the mom being 'swarm queens' (Now does my question about queens > [plural] make sense?) I looked over your post, and I can't find your question about queens. Was it in an earlier post? Would you please repeat it? Bill Van Roekel ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 15:30:58 -0600 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Dave Hamilton Subject: Re: Castes of honeybees in a hive and swarming Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 02:27 PM 11/21/01 -0600, you wrote: >> a) Each worker gets 1/2 its genes from the queen, and 1/2 >> its genes from one of the 10 drones. If you "assume" that each drone contributes an equal amount of sperm .. doubtful, doubtful .. you could just as easily "assume" the first fills the spermateca and the rest are "for fun" .. or maybe don't assume at all. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 18:25:59 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: BeeCrofter@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Infantile botulism from honey MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The human infant should probably be on breast milk until they reach a year of age. That we can circumvent the fact that mammals are made to nurse their young doesn't make it the best choice however. If the labels about infants and honey read that honey like all raw foods should not be fed to infants under one year of age It would probably be easier to accept. One billion people worldwide lack clean drinking water yet periodically large corporations who market baby formulas get caught pushing their products. In countries where the water is unsafe, a bottle fed child is up to 25 times more likely to die from diarrhoea than a breast fed child. Here is the link from th National Honey Board Webpages scroll down to the Infant Botulism paragraph for their wording. http://www.nhb.org./foodtech/tgloss.html#sectI ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 16:58:08 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Tom Swanky Subject: Timing of queen's arrival in an after-swarm During the summer, there was some discussion on this list about the timing of a queen's participation in a swarm. As it happened, the next day I was working a colony when a burts of bees issued from the one next. I recognized this as the beginning of a swarm and noted that it was 12:01. The swarm formed a cloud from the colony to a nearby fence post. I went to the post and observed the bees arrive. I spotted the queen, an unmated queen, as she arrived at 12:09. She landed near the top of the cluster and was quickly covered by the bees already there. The whole swarm was in place by about 12:15. Of course, one cannot generalize from this single observation, but this queen, a virgin queen, not the original, clearly arrived in the middle of the time line, not at either end of it. Cheers, Tom ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 15:30:59 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Adrian Wenner Subject: Varroa in queen cells Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Aaron Morris concluded: >Based on the assertions and observations posted in the past few days I must >back off my assertion that Varroa will not be found in queen cells. I've >never seen it myself, but then again I've never seen France. Perhaps the problem is one of percentages. During low varroa incidence, I know that I have to open perhaps dozens of drone cells before finding a couple of varroa. Unfortunately, we can hardly open that many queen cells in a single colony or even in a number of colonies. We thus can hardly conclude that varroa mites do not occur in those cells. (One can never prove a universal negative. Adrian Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home phone) 967 Garcia Road (805) 893-8062 (UCSB FAX) Santa Barbara, CA 93106 [http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm] ******************************************************************** * * "However broad-minded one may be, he is always to some extent * the slave of his education and of his past." * * Emile Duclaux (1896; 1920 translation) * ******************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 18:34:53 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Castes of honeybees in a hive and swarming MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bill Van Roekel said: > I have seen hives on a number of occasions where a large > proportion of the bees were very dark(black/gray), with a > substantial number of bees being uniformly golden/yellow. I'll do the best I can to answer off the top of my head, but I am using a notebook computer in the kitchen, in between monitoring 5 cooktop burners and two ovens. (Thanksgiving for 27 tomorrow, and we are on a tight kitchen schedule...) Was this the progeny of a marked, bought-from-a-breeder queen? If so, I'd bet serious money that you had a two-queen hive. If it was a supercedure queen, or a "home-grown" queen, this sounds like a result of mating between Italian and Caucasian queens and drones. Are most of your bees "light" or "dark"? What do beekeepers near you have? The answer may provide you with a much more credible reason for your coloration observations. > Although I have not seen proof, this indicates to me that the > sperm is kept separate, and worker eggs are fertilized with > sperm from one father for a period of time, and then from another, > etc. So, your next point would not be accurate either. There could > be ten groups of workers (based on fathers), but only a large number > from perhaps three, the others dying off before the fourth group is laid. All I can do is point you to is a book on basic bee biology, and suggest you look at the queen's spermateca. It is one large container. Sperm are alive, and tend to move. I don't know of any possible mechanism that might keep sperm isolated "by drone", and I must conclude that there is none. I can only conclude that the mix of sperm, and hence, use of sperm can only be viewed as "random" or something very close to random. ...and Dave Hamilton said: > If you "assume" that each drone contributes an equal amount of > sperm .. doubtful, doubtful .. you could just as easily "assume" > the first fills the spermateca and the rest are "for fun" .. > or maybe don't assume at all. Rather than assuming, lets use deduction: a) Multiple matings are a known fact. a1) I cannot discuss possible recreational sex among bees without endangering the G-rating of this list. :) b) A skilled debater might argue that the multiple matings are nothing but "insurance" against a drone with a low sperm volume. If this were the case, there would be many documented cases of a (singly-mated) queen laying nothing but identical twins (all being full sisters, the product of one queen and one drone). The opposite is true. The literature documents multiple successful matings as the norm. (By "multiple", I mean many more than two.) c) Once we consider multiple matings as "documented", and also consider the relative sizes of the queen's spermateca versus the drones' seminal vesicles, we must conclude that no one drone could ever "fill" the queen's spermateca, and conclude that multiple matings are a biological requirement to give a queen a "full stock" of sperm. d) Even without knowledge of relative sizes of sexual organs, the queen must be able to "take advantage" of multiple matings, or there would be no point to multiple matings. I hope the above explains the reasoning behind the "assumption", and makes the "assumption" more of a "conclusion", one based upon generally-accepted and well-known documented facts. Regardless, the "half the colony" nature of swarms is well-known, and has been well-known for some time. Even if one were to start with an assumption of "3 drones" or "4 drones", one STILL has the same problem with basic math. 1/3rd or 1/4th is noticeably less than 1/2, to even the casual observer. So, I'll ask again - what possible impact can "fatherhood" have on "who stays and who goes" in swarming, given that it would be very highly unlikely for 1/2 the hive to be the progeny of a single drone? I just don't buy it. "Fatherhood" does not explain the actions of roughly 1/2 the bees, no matter how one slices it. I don't claim any personal insight in any of this. All I am doing is trying to think clearly and in a non-fuzzy manner about what has been published by multiple reliable sources. jim farmageddon