From MAILER-DAEMON Sat Feb 28 10:56:54 2009 Return-Path: <> X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.8 (2007-02-13) on industrial X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-87.1 required=2.4 tests=ADVANCE_FEE_1,AWL, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,SPF_HELO_PASS,USER_IN_WHITELIST autolearn=disabled version=3.1.8 X-Original-To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Delivered-To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Received: from listserv.albany.edu (unknown [169.226.1.24]) by metalab.unc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C9E64908C for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:21 -0500 (EST) Received: from listserv.albany.edu (listserv.albany.edu [169.226.1.24]) by listserv.albany.edu (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n1SFhrpu016524 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:52:17 -0500 From: "University at Albany LISTSERV Server (14.5)" Subject: File: "BEE-L LOG0708B" To: adamf@IBIBLIO.ORG Message-ID: Content-Length: 213938 Lines: 4696 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 00:16:54 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Brian Fredericksen Subject: Re: Removing pollen from traps Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit a mn beekeeper who ran pollen traps on several thousand of his migratory hives all season told me that some important factors to consider are not restricting air flow (use screened bottom boards) and allow ample entrance openings under the trap (large side rails on bottom board) so the bees can come and go without jamming up at the entrance. his advice made sense to me and I seem to get the same honey production as compared to adjacent hives without pollen traps. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 17:24:14 +1000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: queenbee Subject: Re: Use of Honey in Wound Healing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Honey acts as an anti-bacterial agent in three ways. Bill there is a fourth and that is antibacterial properties. Honey in Australia called jelly bush and the manuka from New Zealand have properties that are over and above the three you mention. We have some honeys with high peroxide activity but this other activity is different. I recall something on Bee-l about a month ago where some scientists in Germany, I think, claimed they had isolated the antibacterial properties from manuka. Trevor Weatherhead AUSTRALIA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 10:01:25 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Cushman Subject: Re: Removing pollen from traps In-Reply-To: <20070807.052033.24982.3@webmail10.dca.untd.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi All In reply to Ron, Waldemar said... > The bees are not deprived of pollen. Not all is taken from the bees > - it's the same as taking surplus honey from the bees. It does not deprive bees of pollen, the more pollen that you remove, the more bees are diverted to pollen collection rather than nectar gathering (although in many cases both are occurring at the same time anyway). I used to empty my traps on one, two or three day intervals according to need and/or workload. Mouldy pollen happened on odd occasions, but they were rare. One of my traps was in use all summer long, it was permanently bolted between two trestles that held five frame nucs. The colony positioned on top of the trap was swapped every week or ten days for another one out of a row of hives nearby. Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 07:13:06 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Use of Honey in Wound Healing In-Reply-To: <003601c7d98d$207827b0$5930643b@new1> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit queenbee wrote: > Bill there is a fourth and that is antibacterial properties. That also was known in the 80's, but the primary agent that does the job is the generation of peroxide at the wound/honey interface. No doubt you can classify honeys in a scale of amount of anti-bacterial agents, but sort of like saying I can add another anti-biotic to the number of pills you are taking when what you are taking is enough. Plus, the subject is wound healing, where the peroxide is predominate. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 11:52:49 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Removing pollen from traps Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>told me that some important factors to consider are not restricting air flow (use screened bottom boards) and allow ample entrance openings under the trap (large side rails on bottom board) so the bees can come and go without jamming up at the entrance. I am not sure if I followed. Wouldn't the bees by-pass the pollen trap and use the openings under the trap? Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 05:25:54 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: C Hooper Subject: US Professor to Study Antimicrobial Properties of Propolis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII US Professor to Study Antimicrobial Properties of Propolis Bees, Biofuels and Climate Change are the Focus of Three U of M, CFANS Grants Justin Ware, University News Service, 8/6/2007 http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/08/us-professor-to-study-antimicrobial.html MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL ( 8/6/2007 ) -- Three projects have been awarded $100,000 each as part of the new, University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences Grants program. The projects include: …Novel Antimicrobial Properties of Honeybee Propolis in Human and Animal Health, led by professor Jerry Cohen with two co-principal investigators, Gary Gardner and Marla Spivak... ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 08:28:31 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lloyd Spear Subject: Removing pollen from traps MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline While explaining that he has never collected pollen, Mike also said "From what I can gather from what I have read, the procedure is to trap pollen for a day or two and then let the bees bypass the trap for a couple of days. You keep alternating the trapping days and the free pass days so that the colony is not seriously deprived from the in gathering of pollen." Please, PLEASE, do not do this! Listen to what Peter, Brian, Dave and I have said. Pollen collection does not deprive bees of pollen! Turning the trap 'on' and 'off' every few day WILL HARM YOUR BEES! Whomever gives out that advice has never collected pollen! When you start collecting pollen you will note lots of confusion. The bees formerly had an unimpeded path to the brood, and suddenly there is a maze in their path. It takes 3-10 days for the bees to settle down and, of course, as new foragers go forth their only experience is with the maze so they proceed with aplomb. But, if you have the trap 'on' for 3 days and then 'off' for 3 days, etc. the bees are in a constant stage of confusion. Collection of nectar and pollen plummet. The hive gets demoralized. One beekeeper who tried this told me his foragers all absconded to an adjacent hive with a pollen trap. (I am dubious, but that is what he reported.) Remember, all it takes to be an 'expert' at beekeeping it to hold forth as such. Listen carefully, and take the path that makes the most sense. Lloyd -- Lloyd Spear Owner Ross Rounds, Inc. Manufacture of equipment for round comb honey sections, Sundance Pollen Traps, and producer of Sundance custom labels. Contact your dealer or www.RossRounds.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 15:05:38 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Timothy C. Eisele" Subject: Honey flavor - mint? In-Reply-To: <46B8B68F.4020406@tele2.se> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I harvested honey this past weekend, and noticed that it has an unusual flavor. Most years, the honey has a "fruity" flavor, but this year it tastes distinctly of mint. Quite nice, but different. There are mint plants nearby (there is a boggy area with a lot of wild mint within a few hundred feet of the hives), and we have had a dry summer, so it is quite possible that only the plants in the bog (such as mint) have enough moisture available to produce nectar. My question is whether honey made from mint plants actually tastes minty, or whether the flavor is from some other source? I am in the upper peninsula of Michigan, near Lake Superior. -- Tim Eisele tceisele@mtu.edu ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 10:05:37 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" Subject: Re: Removing pollen from traps Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dave Cushman wrote: >It does not deprive bees of pollen, the more pollen that you remove, the >more bees are diverted to pollen collection rather than nectar gathering Maybe, but I never noticed that hives on pollen traps ever stored less honey. But, I figured even if they did, the pollen was worth more than the honey. pb ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 16:03:54 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jerry Wallace Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle in NY MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >We now know that although SHB can be found in most hives in an area of known >SHB most SHB live away from the hive but enter a hive for the most part to >reproduce. Kind of like the tree borer which lays its eggs at the base of a tree. Bob, What is the average time frame that adult SHB live away from the hive? I tend to think it is not very long based on the few SHB incidents I've experienced. The adult beetle population observed in other hives increased rapidly in just a few weeks once I noted the problem hive. Also, perhaps they don't need to enter a hive at all to reproduce. I have a beekeeper friend that lives near our state farmer's market who reports SHB reproduce on rotting fruit in the dumpsters, making it very difficult to keep production hives at that location. Maybe a coincidence, but I believe he was also the first to identify SHB's arrival in GA. Jerry Wallace Atlanta, GA ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 12:29:00 +1200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Peter Bray Organization: Airborne Honey Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy Relief In-Reply-To: <20070802043541.84d281a5f2f7df0ef38485a84124037d.fb89ab04cb.wbe@email.secureserver.net> > Is eating local honey for allergy relief just an old wives' tale? Or can > the sweet relief allergy sufferers seek from their nonstop miserable > "cold" symptoms be as simple as eating two teaspoons of honey a day?... Ragweed is the single most important plant for hayfever allergies in the USA. It is widespread across the country and most importantly a wind pollinated plant. Very little if any ragweed pollen makes it into honey and due the plant's widespread nature, what little ragweed pollen may be found in honey, will be found nationwide. Honey is rarely produced from wind pollinated plants, (with the exception of a few plants with extra floral nectaries - sugar cane is one that springs to mind) and the pollen found in honey is almost exclusively (greater than 99%) from insect pollinated plants. These pollens are not a cause of hayfever allergies because they do not become windborne and therefore cannot be inhaled. Wind pollinated plants have a different strategy for dispersal to insect pollinated plants. The first produce vast quantities of of extremely small light pollen grains with almost no protein or fat content of any value to insects. Insect pollinated plants produce [realtively] much fewer, larger pollen grains that have significant levels of protein and fats that do provide a nutrional source for insects (and other animals). i.e. their chemical makeup is completely different. If local honey is of benefit to alergy sufferers, then the supposed mechanism of being exposed to small quantities of the target allergen in the honey, seems to be logically flawed - particularly when ragweed is the chief cause and so widespread. Does anyone have another mechanism in mind that could be explored/promoted, or some evidence that would add weight to the existing theory? On that note, comb honey is often put forward as a better candidate than extracted honey, but from our studies, comb honey usually has significantly less pollen than [unfiltered] extracted honey - by a factor of about 10 times. If comb honey is actually providing relief from allergens, this would indeed suggest there is another mechanism at play. Regards, Peter Bray_________________________________________________________ Airborne Honey Ltd., Pennington St, PO Box 28, Leeston, New Zealand Fax 64-3-324-3236, Phone 64-3-324-3569 http://www.airborne.co.nz peter@airborne.co.nz ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 12:40:59 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Glen Lawson Subject: Re: Time of day? In-Reply-To: <8710c8c90708070928h2abbf2ai601cee1b0f79b466@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline > > add supers? Assuming by two "foundations", you mean you have 2 deeps or hive bodies, if the frames are drawn out and are being filled, the bees will have stores for the winter. Generally, you add supers to get honey. Bees will not draw new foundation well unless there is a nectar flow or you are feeding heavily. I would recommend waiting until next spring and add them in late March or when you get maple, clover or dandelion bloom. ...morning, evening or afternoon? Mid-day can be best because foragers are out and there are fewer bees in the hive. If you have had a dry spell and the queen has shut down so there are fewer bees, any time can be good. The best time is when you have time to do a good inspection and not feel rushed. Glen Lawson Gainesville, GA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 19:20:31 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Shawn Hoefer Subject: Empty frame question MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I added a second story to my bees' hives today and I could not resist stealing a little honey... a frames worth. However, I found out after the fact that I did not have another replacement sheet of foundation. Can I place an empty frame in the hive and what are the drawback to that? Thanks -- +---- Shawn Hoefer www.laffing-horse.com +---- ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 20:47:09 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Honey flavor - mint? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Most likely Basswood. bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 21:06:59 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Small Hive Beetle in NY MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Jerry & All, I was in Atlanta last week. Very hot! Bob, What is the average time frame that adult SHB live away from the hive? Not sure but after speaking with L. Cutts and David W. (Florida) it seems the case that SHB spend most their time away from the hive. L.Cutts said his team stopped counting at around 8,000 *adult* SHB in a weak hive being infested. Once the hive starts getting slimed (for lack of a better word but fits nicely) other SHB hone in quickly. One hypthesis is all the SHB in the yard fly to the problem hive. Also from up to five miles away. Researchers have said at meetings that the SHB can locate a hive from five miles away. > I have a beekeeper friend that lives near our state farmer's market who reports SHB reproduce on rotting fruit in the dumpsters, Documentation of SHB reproducing in cantaloupes exists. Not sure of other fruit. In the fall of 1998 Horace Bell of DeLand, Florida was seeing his first SHB problems. I drove to his location to see the new pest myself. One important fact I learned was when observed in an observation hive at his place the SHB caused the bees little problems but when Horace shook the OB hive the SHB started laying eggs all over the place. When threatened the first response is to lay eggs. In the yard of the bee farm the Florida bee inspection people were catching a swarm in a live oak tree. We learned from their research that SHB will fly in a swarm of bees. Since then I have observed SHB ( and SHB problems) in many states. Sincerely, Bob Harrison Midwest -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 22:12:49 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Lyle_Greenwood?= Subject: using a frame with any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I added a second story to my bees' hives today and I could not resist stealing a little honey... a frames worth. However, I found out after the fact that I did not have another replacement sheet of foundation. Can I place an empty frame in the hive and what are the drawback to that? When you found your frame didn't have foundation, Take one of the outside frames from your upper super and replace the one you removed, in the lower super. By the time the bees need the one you removed you can have it replaced. If you use a frame without foundation they will build comb all over the place. Hope this helps Lyle from North Alabama ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 13:35:54 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Rip Bechmann Subject: "just the facts m'am, just the facts" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >>>Van Engelsdorp, who is thirty-seven, has a bearish build, thinning = blond hair, and deep-set blue eyes. He lives in the woods about thirty = miles west of Harrisburg, in a one-room cabin with an unheated porch = that he sleeps on year-round.<<< Am I missing something here? What does this portion of the quote have = to do with CCD? The only tenuous connection these "facts" might have to = beekeeping is that he, like a lot of other beekeepers on or off this = list, has been stung in the head once too often. Ad hoc committee for eliminating extraneous and excessively redundant = quoting. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 04:35:36 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: C Hooper Subject: Study Identifies Honey Component that Stimulates Immune Cells MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Study Identifies Honey Component that Stimulates Immune Cells A 5.8-kDa Component of Manuka Honey Stimulates Immune Cells Via TLR4 Journal of Leukocyte Biology, August 3, 2007 http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/08/study-identifies-honey-component-that.html Abstract: Honey is used as a therapy to aid wound healing. Previous data indicate that honey can stimulate cytokine production from human monocytes. The present study further examines this phenomenon in manuka honey... These findings reveal mechanisms and components involved in honey stimulation of cytokine induction and could potentially lead to the development of novel therapeutics to improve wound healing for patients with acute and chronic wounds. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 08:41:53 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy Relief In-Reply-To: <46BB088C.30431.C2A1D3@Peter.airborne.co.nz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter Bray wrote: > Honey is rarely produced from wind pollinated plants, (with the > exception of a few plants with extra floral nectaries - Agree with your post that it does not do anything for allergy relief, but bees will collect pollen from wind pollinated plants, since they are looking for pollen not nectar. Corn and bird feeders are classic examples of pollen only with no nectar in sight. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 13:00:34 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "deknow@netzero.net" Subject: Re: using a frame with any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit ....please don't tell my bees! we haven't used foundation in 4 years, and have about 30 hives (2-4 deep boxes) full of comb drawn without foundation. if the frames surrounding the empty frame are fully drawn brood comb, the bees should draw it straight...but remember that left to their own devices, the bees will make about 15% drone comb...and if everything else in the hive is drawn from "worker foundation", the first foundationless frame they draw will likely be all drone comb. if you pull this drone frame and replace it with another foundationless frame, they will again draw done comb (still trying to get to that 15%)...but if you move the drone frame towards the side and add another foundationless frame, they will draw worker comb. we glue popsicle sticks into the top groove to act as a comb guide, and it works quite well. michael bush has a lot of info on foundationless at his website: http://www.bushfarms.com/bees and we have some info on sc regression using honeysupercell and foundationless at our website: http://www.beeuntoothers.com deknow -- Lyle Greenwood wrote: If you use a frame without foundation they will build comb all over the place. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 09:32:16 -0400 Reply-To: Stacy L Brockett Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Stacy L Brockett Subject: Re: using a frame with any foundation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Great idea! I'd been pouring strips of beeswax into the top of the frame as a guide... Similar to what they do in Africa. This sounds MUCH easier. ;) Stacy L. Brockett SM3Pines Farm - Canandaigua, NY http://www.smthreepines.com > .... we glue popsicle sticks into the top groove to act as a comb guide, > and it works quite well. > ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 09:37:42 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lloyd Spear Subject: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Re Peter's comments concerning pollen in comb honey, pollen in extracted honey, and the 'benefits' of pollen for wind borne allergies. I, for one, am allergic to a wide range of pollens. From May until November. Not just ragweed. I had considerably more symptoms before I started regular consumption of comb honey and raw honey. So did my wife. I have two doctors who buy from me because of their family's allergies, and both are certain of the benefits re. reduction of symptoms. I have also read this is nonsense as the human digestive system cannot break down the outer coating of the pollen grain (chitin?). I tell customers that all is know is that regular consumption of small amounts of local pollen (in honey or otherwise) 'works'. I don't know how it works, and for all I know it might be a placebo effect. But there is absolutely no question, in my opinion, that it works. And that is what is important. Lloyd -- Lloyd Spear Owner Ross Rounds, Inc. Manufacture of equipment for round comb honey sections, Sundance Pollen Traps, and producer of Sundance custom labels. Contact your dealer or www.RossRounds.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 10:01:45 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Russ Dean Subject: Check out FallMeeting2007 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit West Virginia's beekeeper are having their fall meeting at Jackson's Mill. To see full details of registration, program, and other events click on, _Fall Meeting 2007_ (http://www.wvbeekeepers.org/FallMeeting2007.html) Russ _WV Beekeepers Home Page_ (http://www.wvbeekeepers.org/) ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 14:54:58 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruary Rudd Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit the outer layer of pollen is sporopollenin not chitin, it seems to very durable as that is what is used in palynology. There are apertures in this layer which could allow the contents to be digested. Ruary ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lloyd Spear" To: Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 2:37 PM Subject: [BEE-L] Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy > > I have also read this is nonsense as the human digestive system cannot > break > down the outer coating of the pollen grain (chitin?). > Lloyd > > -- > Lloyd Spear ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 15:11:34 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Cushman Subject: Re: Removing pollen from traps In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Peter >> It does not deprive bees of pollen, the more pollen that you remove, the >> more bees are diverted to pollen collection rather than nectar gathering > > Maybe, but I never noticed that hives on pollen traps ever stored less > honey. It is difficult to say in my case as all of the colonies concerned with pollen trapping were not directly producing honey, they were being used for all sorts of queen rearing duties and were constantly being mucked about, frames of brood being taken out or deposited, being made queenless or having strange queens introduced, having drawn combs filled by the trapped pollen added, cell finishing frames added, frames robbed to make up nucs, bees robbed for swarm boxes or mating nucs and so on. They did gather surplus honey, but it was not as much as if the hives had not been disturbed. I do not have a handle on the exact amounts, but colonies messed about like this only produced a couple of supers of honey all season. I have not used pollen traps on honey production colonies other than for quick testing of what crops were being foraged and in some cases using a battery driven wheel to sample pollen every fifteen minutes during the day, in either of those types of case there was no disruption of honey, but the traps were not on for more than a day at a time. Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 10:39:20 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >but remember that left to their own devices, the bees will make about 15% drone comb Technically I'd agree with the above statement as a generalization, but there are lots of exceptions, especially if we're talking about interspersing frames into an already established brood nest. "Left to their own devices" bees don't move combs around, and they DO tend to build most of the brood nest from nothing after they first swarm. So in practice, if we're talking about interspersing empty frames into an already established brood nest, especially at a time of year when the brood nest is naturally wanting to expand, I'm pretty suspicious of the 15% figure. Under those kinds of circumstances, I think 30, 35, even 40% drone comb can be realized. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 11:36:52 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Brian Fredericksen Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy Relief Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In northern USA many folks have allergies to tree pollen and these have been verfied by doctors doing sensistivity testing. Allergy season is not just August around here when the ragweed is In late March into mid June a fair amount of bee pollen comes from trees around here at least. The huge abundance of spring tree pollen is an important source for spring colonies to buildup on. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 17:10:43 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "deknow@netzero.net" Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit remember, not all big cells are made to raise drones. the bees will also make large cells to store honey if there is no room and comb must be built in a hurry (more honey can be stored more quickly with less wax in bigger cells). if a heavy flow (or feeding) is on, and there are no available cells, they will build the large cells. our bees contiune (in this season) to draw 4.9mm cell comb as we feed empty frames into the broodnest. my original comments were regarding adding one foundationless frame into a colony...in our case, where we started packages on 5 frames of HSC, all of our hives have drawn between 15-25 frames without foundation. most of these frames have 4.9mm cells in the center, and larger honey storage in the top corners, and drone cells in the bottom. in a hive full or worker foundation, the one empty frame is likely to be all (or mostly) drone. have you observed 35-40% drone comb? were these mostly filled with honey or drone brood? doesn't seem like a good survival trait to me. deknow -- Eric Brown wrote: I'm pretty suspicious of the 15% figure. Under those kinds of circumstances, I think 30, 35, even 40% drone comb can be realized. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 18:45:14 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Solar wax re-melter for candles? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Is there a pot-type solar wax re-melter to melt wax to pour the wax into candle molds? Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 18:47:38 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy Relief Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I used to get hay fever whenever mowing the lawn. Since I started eating my local honey, the problem has not re-occured. I am not suggesting local honey contains grass pollen but something in the honey makes me less sensitive. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 18:55:52 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>the outer layer of pollen is sporopollenin not chitin... There are apertures in this layer which could allow the contents to be digested. Is the cured/fermented pollen in the comb easier to digest perhaps? I certainly enjoy it that way. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 17:28:38 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" Subject: Re: "just the facts m'am, just the facts" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Rip Bechmann wrote: >Am I missing something here? What does this portion of the quote have to do with CCD? The only tenuous connection these "facts" might have to beekeeping is that he, like a lot of other beekeepers on or off this list, has been stung in the head once too often. Hi Rip You're joking, right? If we eliminated all non-factual material, the list would get pretty boring. A lot of people I know really liked Dennis, including me. I thought the excerpt added a little color to the story, which is mostly about what we don't know about CCD. I was especially irked that the researcher is suppressing his findings (regardless of his possibly justified motives). If he has really nailed a causative agent, then people may be wasting a lot of time and money chasing down other blind alleys. pb ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 16:16:42 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: Solar wax re-melter for candles? In-Reply-To: <20070809.114514.23472.0@webmail14.dca.untd.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit "waldig@netzero.com" wrote: Is there a pot-type solar wax re-melter to melt wax to pour the wax into candle molds? If you have a "good" solar wax melter, you just put the pot with the wax into the melter and it will get melted. Watch the handle though. It will be as hot as the wax is. Mike in LA --------------------------------- Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 18:51:15 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: "just the facts m'am, just the facts" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello All, New article in the September issue of Popular Mechanics concerning the Army and CCD. http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4219746.html Sincerely, Bob Harrison -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 21:57:53 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: ALDEN MARSHALL Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1; reply-type=original Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Lloyd Spear posts: Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Peter Bray Organization: Airborne Honey Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy In-Reply-To: <000a01c7da8c$e15e51c0$2101a8c0@DF9MK81J> Ruary wrote: > the outer layer of pollen is sporopollenin not chitin, it seems to very > durable as that is what is used in palynology. The allergens don't necessarily have to be on the inside of the pollen coat. When a pollen grain lands on an anther, things start to happed due to the nature (possible allergens?) of the external coat reacting with the receptors on the anther. Bill wrote: > Agree with your post that it does not do anything for allergy relief, but > bees will collect pollen from wind pollinated plants, These tend to be plants that do not seem to be the primary cause of allergies. Ragweed, grasses and some tree species would account for over 90% of pollen based hayfever causes. While some of these (mostly only trees) may find their way into honey, it is a rather hit and miss affair. i.e. the effect would only work occassionaly. Yet the effect is said to consistently work. Brian Wrote: > In northern USA many folks have allergies to tree pollen and these have > been verfied by doctors doing sensistivity testing. Allergy season is not > just August around here when the ragweed is But there is good research indicating that tree pollen produced on one side of the USA can be found in levels high enough to cause allergies half a continent or more away. i.e.the "local" aspect of all this does not seem to fit the known facts. Lloyd wrote: > I tell customers that all is know is that regular consumption of small > amounts of local pollen (in honey or otherwise) 'works'. I don't know how > it works, and for all I know it might be a placebo effect. But there is > absolutely no question, in my opinion, that it works. And that is what is > important. A lot of people believe this, and either it is a wonderful marketing job, or there is in fact a mechanism at work that has not been completely explained. This is what interests me as the current explanation does not fit the facts - which leads to.... what else could it be? e.g. most honey in the USA is packed as liquid honey. To do this (even with honies that are high in glucose and crystallize rapidly) most commercial honies have to be heat treated and filtered to remove possible crystallisation sites (pollen) to keep them liquid. Most "local" honey is likely to be short turn around (freshly packed) and so can be minimally processed. i.e. not have the pollen filtered out of it. Perhaps the effect is simply due to "local" honey being a source of a range of pollen species that collectively helps desensitize one against a range of allergies? And perhaps one doesn't have to necessarily have the target species in the mix. Like cow pox had a protective effect against small pox. And on that note of wild unsupported speculation....... Any other thoughts? Cheers, Peter._________________________________________________________ Airborne Honey Ltd., Pennington St, PO Box 28, Leeston, New Zealand Fax 64-3-324-3236, Phone 64-3-324-3569 http://www.airborne.co.nz peter@airborne.co.nz ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:20:29 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruary Rudd Subject: Beekeeprs prayer Comments: To: Irish Beekeeping New List MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I urgently need for use at a funeral the words of the 'Beekeepers' = Prayer'. Can any one help Please reply off list to rrudd@eircom.net Ruary ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:51:09 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Richard A Cartwright Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Peter wrote: >But there is good research indicating that tree pollen produced on >one side of the USA can be found in levels high enough to cause >allergies half a continent or more away. >.....Perhaps the effect is simply due to "local" honey being a >source of a range of pollen species that collectively helps >desensitize one against a range of allergies? And perhaps one >doesn't have to necessarily have the target species in the mix. >Any other thoughts? Here's a thought! Bloom times vary throughout the country. Therefore, isn't it likely that there are measurable amounts of a wide variety of pollen types present in the air we breath during a good part of the year (except Winter)?. Shouldn't this exposure serve to desensitize one against a range of allergies? I am also curious how ingesting small amounts of an allergen can help desensitize one to allergic reactions. Isn't the allergic reaction your body's response to a physical (as opposed to chemical) irritation to the membranes in nasal passages. DICK, New York ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:46:42 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy In-Reply-To: <46BC9B06.1493.6E6CE86@Peter.airborne.co.nz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter Bray wrote: > Yet > the effect is said to consistently work. Anecdotal, maybe, but your statement is a bit too universal. It certainly does not work for me nor my wife who sufferers greatly from allergies. Nor have I seen anything in any scientific papers that back up the statement. My guess is placebos would work as well, since you are usually talking about the degree of suffering. That is so subjective that your desire to suffer less could color your perception. Your mind can reduce symptoms all by itself. Suggestion is powerful. "This won't hurt a bit!" Also, since pollen and other allergens also vary in intensity or amount by season, weather, and year, it would not be difficult to ascribe reduced symptoms to honey while it may be something entirely different. Add one more point that seems to actually be truly universal. When it does not work on a practitioner who says it does, the cause is always ascribed to something else, like mold, trees, whatever, even though it may be the original allergen. So honey (or whatever) maintains its potency even though it never worked in the first place. Anecdotal evidence trumps science every time. Bill Truesdell (Ah, ahhh, ahchooooo) Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:47:52 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Russ Dean Subject: Re: Beekeeprs prayer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit _Catholic Culture : Liturgical Year : Blessing of Bees on the Feast of St. Benedict (Prayer)_ (http://www.catholicculture.org/liturgicalyear/prayers/view.cfm?id=483) Russ Dean _WV Beekeepers Home Page_ (http://www.wvbeekeepers.org/) ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:44:53 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Lloyd Spear Subject: Science MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Bill said "Anecdotal evidence trumps science every time." I love it! The French beekeepers got rid of neonicotinoids with little science. It may have been a good idea... Bees from Australia are bringing us CCD... More??? Lloyd -- Lloyd Spear Owner Ross Rounds, Inc. Manufacture of equipment for round comb honey sections, Sundance Pollen Traps, and producer of Sundance custom labels. Contact your dealer or www.RossRounds.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:35:53 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Peter Edwards Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bill wrote: > Nor have I seen anything in any scientific papers that back up the > statement. There was a paper in, I think, Bee World a couple of years ago that did back it up. Unfortunately I neglected to take a copy. Anyone have back copies? Best wishes Peter Edwards beekeepers@stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk www.stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk/ ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:05:44 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dan&jan Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Also, since pollen and other allergens also vary in intensity or amount Pollen in the local honey must be the same as the one causing the allergy I would think. Spring allergies would require spring honey etc. Grass allergies would not be affected as bee would not work most grasses as well as common and giant ragweed. I don't know if bees work sneezeweed AKA wing stem. Dan Veilleux in the mountains of NC zone 6a ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:01:26 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I should probably explain -- and this might explain the whole difference between our observations -- that the times when I saw 30-35% drone comb with no end in sight, I didn't let those drone frames hatch out, so although I was seeing a huge amount of drone brood, I was keeping the number of actual hatched out drones very low. If I were to let all those drones (and mites) hatch out, perhaps I might then see a much reduced tendency to draw further drone comb, more along the lines of what you're talking about. I don't know, and I can't see wanting to test the theory, because it seems like really poor management of the varroa situation. I find the way that small cell theories intrude on every conceivable thread extremely tedious. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:53:55 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I read a paper years ago (can't cite) that explained that your intestines are actually "leaky" enough for some pollen grains to pass through the intestinal wall (I don't know where they go from there) and thus allow the body to desensitize due to low level foreign protein challenge. I recently read another paper by a physician who stated that certain substances such as cow's milk and gluten make the intestine especially leaky, and allow allergens to pass, thus causing allergic rhinitis, even thought the substances weren't inhaled. I have no idea whether there is any truth to these reports, but thought the List might want to hear a possible mechanism. I personally am allergic to some grass pollens, but eating local honey or pollen doesn't help me. However, I sell quite a bit of both every year to people who are thoroughly convinced that it helps them. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:44:38 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "deknow@netzero.net" Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit eric, so are you talking about freezing the drone comb and putting it back into the hive, or removing one frame of drone comb and replacing it with an empty one? in either case, the bees will push towards 15% (more or less) drones in the hive...and i think the very widespread use of worker only foundation masks this concept to the point that most beekeepers don't even know this. i haven't done this particular experement, but i would imagine that if you freeze a frame of drone brood, and add another empty frame, the bees have to do a fair ammount of work to clean out the dead drones before the queen can lay in them again, which might lead them to draw more drone comb. personally, i see no point in constantly fighting with the bees about how many drones they need, and i let them hatch out...which is why i have about 70-80 deep boxes full of mostly worker comb drawn without foundation. we've been doing foundationless for about 4 years, with our best success after abandoning the "starter strips" in favor of the popsicle sticks (at the suggestion of michael bush). as far as small cell goes, i'm just talking about what we are doing...i don't think i implied that you should be doing this, or even mentioned a "theory". fwiw, we were doing foundationless long before deciding to regress to small cell (this year), and it's too early to make any conclusions as to whether it is beneficial or not...but i will say that i have not seen a single mite in a drone cell (which i check weekly) in months (and neither did the bee inspector who checked all of the hives 2 weeks ago), and even when the packages were building up, i never found more than one in a single cell, and never more than 3 out of 30 hives. i have no idea whether small cell is responsible for this or not, but it makes me feel very comfortable letting the drones hatch out. deknow -- Eric Brown wrote: although I was seeing a huge amount of drone brood, I was keeping the number of actual hatched out drones very low. ... I find the way that small cell theories intrude on every conceivable thread extremely tedious. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:22:19 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Russ Dean Subject: Re: Beekeeprs prayer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Busy little honeybee Living in your Hive Working night and day for me God makes your strive. Then upon my breakfast table >From you little bee Comes your honey so delicious Sticky, golden and yummy! So for our little worker Love for her let's send Do not bother or disturb her She's our busy friend! Russ Dean _WVBA Home Page_ (http://www.wvbeekeepers.org/index.html) ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:35:12 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >in either case, the bees will push towards 15% (more or less) drones in the hive... Is there any real evidence of this? Does the queen not have any tendency to lay any proportion of drone eggs? Does a hive not tend to maintain a certain amount of drone brood or drone comb? In other words, is the percentage of hatched out drones practically the only thing that matters? Are there not stages of development at which hives tend toward vastly different percentages? I suspect your explanation is misleadingly simplistic. Most to the point, interspersing empty frames into an established brood nest isn't natural and it leads to unnaturally high levels of drones/drone brood/drone comb/mites. That's fine, if you want to raise drones/drone brood/mites, but it's not natural, and it's probably not good for the beekeeper (short or long term). I'm not suggesting at all that you should be "constantly fighting" with your bees. Obviously, using foundation avoids the fight. But if you're not going to use foundation, I would suggest letting your nucs and swarms draw comb for you. An expanding nuc will draw (more or less) 100% worker comb, as will a beginning swarm, which makes sense, because those are the kind of hives where brood nests would naturally be built out. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:23:20 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Mike Stoops Subject: Re: Beekeeprs prayer In-Reply-To: <000601c7db48$d7825680$2101a8c0@DF9MK81J> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Ruary Rudd wrote: I urgently need for use at a funeral the words of the 'Beekeepers' Prayer'. Can any one help Please reply off list to rrudd@eircom.net Reply onlist too. I would like to know that prayer. Mike in LA --------------------------------- Choose the right car based on your needs. Check out Yahoo! Autos new Car Finder tool. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:29:52 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: Morse and Seeley on drone comb, 1976 paper MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Morse and Seeley wrote in 1976: We found drone comb on the edges of brood nests, sometimes as a peripheral band on an inner comb, other times as an entire outer comb. The grouping of drone cells into drone comb probably simplifies the honey bee's sex determination system. This arrangement frees queens from constantly switching between laying fertilized and unfertilized eggs. Table III shows the amount of drone comb in eight nests. We counted as dron= e cells only the brood nest cells with drone cell dimensions. Thus we exclude= d from our count the large cells resembling drone cells in the upper, honey storage region of the nest. This table shows relative uniformity in the proportion of drone comb among eight nests. Whereas the absolute amount of drone comb varied widely (SD 1,240 cm 2) about the mean area of 3,880 cm~, the percentage of the total comb area devoted to drone comb varied relatively little (SD 3 %) about the mean of 17 %. Although the pattern of comb use varied among nests, a general trend in com= b area allocation emerged : 55 % food, 25 % brood and 20 % empty. This predominant devotion of comb to food storage underscores the honey bee's need to store large quantities of honey to survive temperate zone winters. * * * Average cell dia. (wall-wall) x depth (mm =95 mm) : worker cell . . . . . .5.2 x 11.0 drone cell . . . . . . .6.2 x 12.5 From: THE NEST OF THE HONEY BEE By T. D. SEELEY and R. A. MORSE lnsectes Sociaux, Paris. 1976. Tome 23, n ~ 4, pp. 495-512. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:01:58 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Eric Brown wrote: >>in either case, the bees will push towards 15% (more or less) drones in >the hive... > >Is there any real evidence of this? Seeley writes: > 17 ± 3% of the comb area of natural nests of honey bees is devoted to drone comb (Seeley and Morse, 1976), the hives with drone comb were equipped with 20% drone comb, hence a normal supply. from "The effect of drone comb on a honey bee colony’s production of honey" by Thomas D. SEELEY ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 21:11:18 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy Relief MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Waldemar said: Since I started eating my local honey, the problem has not re-occured. The local honey from my area helps my allergies in summer and fall. The spring tree pollen helps in March and April. My allergies never completely go away but I do not take meds for the problem until the first killing frost of winter. bob "What we don't know is so vast it makes what we do know seem absurd" -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 04:37:15 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "deknow@netzero.net" Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit -- Eric Brown wrote: I suspect your explanation is misleadingly simplistic. >>>i'm quite sure it is a simplistic explanation, but (especially given the other data that has been posted), but i'm not really sure why you think it's misleading. Most to the point, interspersing empty frames into an established brood nest isn't natural and it leads to unnaturally high levels of drones/drone brood/drone comb/mites. >>>there is lots about beekeeping that isn't natural (ummm, foundation, smoke, movable comb, rotating and culling comb, harvesting honey, queen rearing, swarm prevention, starting hives from packages, requeening, etc)..and i do all of the above (except for the foundation thing). if you are in north central mass, i'd be happy to show you about 20 2-3 deep hives full of comb that has in the neighborhood of 15% drone comb...not 30-40....all done by feeding empty frames into the broodnest. i'm not sure on what rational the "unnaturalness of feeding empty frames into the brood nest" is somehow worse than "the unnaturalness of using nucs and swarms to draw comb for your established colonies". >>>i'm not sure why you are so quick to discount my experience, especially when you already said you've never done this and let the drone brood actually emerge. i would guess that drone production is similar to something like pollen foraging...in that just as the trapping of pollen causes more bees to forage for pollen, killing the drones leads to the impulse to rear more and more drones, and therefore encouraging the drawing of more and more drone comb. ...this is nothing more than a guess based on my own experience, and what you report. deknow ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:43:39 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Russ Dean Subject: Fwd: [BEE-L] Beekeeprs prayer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part1_cfd.16a317b1.33ee987b_boundary" --part1_cfd.16a317b1.33ee987b_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 8/10/2007 4:43:06 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, cabellwaynebeekeepers@gmail.com writes: Blessing of Bees on the Feast of St. Benedict St. Benedict is the patron of beekeepers, and many people attach medals of St. Benedict on their hives. Here is a blessing over the bees. This blessing is from the old Roman Ritual, which has been suppressed since the issue of the new Ritual. Laypersons can still use this blessing in private as personal prayer. St. Benedict's feast was formerly March 21, but it is now celebrated on July 11. St. Benedict is the patron of bee-keepers, and those who themselves have bees could not do better than mark his day by praying for their hives. Farmers can pray for their cattle and their barns; fishermen for their fishing boats and the fish in the sea, why should bee-keepers do less? In some parts of France it was, and may still be, customary for bee-keepers to have a medal of St. Benedict affixed to their hives: O Lord, God almighty, who hast created heaven and earth and every animal existing over them and in them for the use of men, and who hast commanded through the ministers of holy Church that candles made from the products of bees be lit in church during the carrying out of the sacred office in which the most holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ thy Son is made present and is received; may thy holy blessing descend upon these bees and these hives, so that they may multiply, be fruitful and be preserved from all ills and that the fruits coming forth from them may be distributed for thy praise and that of thy Son and the holy Spirit and of the most blessed Virgin Mary. Prayer Source: Candle is Lighted, A by P. Stewart Craig, The Grail, Field End House, Eastcote, Middlesex, 1945 Russ Dean _WVBA Home Page_ (http://www.wvbeekeepers.org/index.html) ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** --part1_cfd.16a317b1.33ee987b_boundary Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_23571_236372.1186778529385" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Blessing of Bees on the Feast of St. Benedict St. Benedict is the patron of beekeepers, and many people attach medals of St. Benedict on their hives. Here is a blessing over the bees. This blessing is from the old Roman Ritual, which has been suppressed since the issue of the new Ritual. Laypersons can still use this blessing in private as personal prayer. St. Benedict's feast was formerly March 21, but it is now celebrated on July 11. St. Benedict is the patron of bee-keepers, and those who themselves have bees could not do better than mark his day by praying for their hives. Farmers can pray for their cattle and their barns; fishermen for their fishing boats and the fish in the sea, why should bee-keepers do less? In some parts of France it was, and may still be, customary for bee-keepers to have a medal of St. Benedict affixed to their hives: O Lord, God almighty, who hast created heaven and earth and every animal existing over them and in them for the use of men, and who hast commanded through the ministers of holy Church that candles made from the products of bees be lit in church during the carrying out of the sacred office in which the most holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ thy Son is made present and is received; may thy holy blessing descend upon these bees and these hives, so that they may multiply, be fruitful and be preserved from all ills and that the fruits coming forth from them may be distributed for thy praise and that of thy Son and the holy Spirit and of the most blessed Virgin Mary. Prayer Source: *Candle is Lighted, A* by P. Stewart Craig, The Grail, Field End House, Eastcote, Middlesex, 1945 On 8/10/07, Russdeanapiary@aol.com wrote: > > Does anyone have or know this? > > *Russ Dean > *WV Beekeepers Home Page > > > > ------------------------------ > Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com > . > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Ruary Rudd > To: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu > Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:20:29 +0100 > Subject: [BEE-L] Beekeeprs prayer > I urgently need for use at a funeral the words of the 'Beekeepers' > Prayer'. > > Can any one help > > Please reply off list to > rrudd@eircom.net > > Ruary > > ****************************************************** > * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * > * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * > ****************************************************** > > ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** --part1_cfd.16a317b1.33ee987b_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 07:37:52 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruary Rudd Subject: Re: Beekeeprs prayer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I will compile the various prayers which I have received and send the result to the list after the funeral. Ruary > Reply onlist too. I would like to know that prayer. > > Mike in LA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 11:04:15 +0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ron & Eefje Subject: Re: Removing pollen from traps In-Reply-To: <812960.74484.qm@web53411.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Mike, I would think and expect that small time beekeepers have much more time to do these things carefully than the professional beekeepers that have to go from yard to yard and in the shortest time possible place or remove their pollen traps (and havest the pollen). The proffs would certainly not have the time to alternate between pollen traps in place and bypass every other day or so, they would let them sit there much longer. So what you read much be for the hobby beekeepers like me (and I presume you). Ron van Mierlo ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 22:14:21 +1200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Peter Bray Organization: Airborne Honey Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy In-Reply-To: <009701c7daf5$c1d31f70$0201a8c0@BLINE> > I have also read this. however I have also read that the stomach acid has > little trouble dissolving the chitin. I am inclined to accept the latter. This is highly unlikely. Palynologists (people who study pollen) use acetolysis (boiling in concentrated sulphuric acid) as a method to remove all extraneous material (including the cytoplasm) from the exine (the outer shell of the pollen grain) to aid identification. i.e. the outer coat is not disolved by *boiling* in acid that is more concentrated than stomach acid. This process is sometimes practised by melissopalynologists. Regards Peter Bray_________________________________________________________ Airborne Honey Ltd., Pennington St, PO Box 28, Leeston, New Zealand Fax 64-3-324-3236, Phone 64-3-324-3569 http://www.airborne.co.nz peter@airborne.co.nz ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 12:17:21 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Science Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Since science only can quote anecdotal evidence for honey's benefit in allergies, allow me to suggest another possible mechanism. An allergy is the response of an immune sytem in blind hyperdrive. It's an immune system out of whack. Who knows what causes the immune system to be so out of balnce but, if honey does not supply allergy causing pollens through the digestive system, perhaps it simply helps re-balance the immune system in other ways? Why doesn't it work in all cases? Perhaps the factors causing the immune sytems to be out of balance are stronger in some individuals. Science has a lot of work to do when it comes to good health. A lot of people do ask for local honey claiming that it helps. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:31:32 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruary Rudd Subject: Re: Beekeeprs prayer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A Beekeeper's Prayer Dear Lord, Please Lord, guide that beekeeper, the one so faithful, The one so proud and thankful for that golden honey so tasteful, for Lord, he puts his trust in you and in hives of honey bees, Lord with hopes that a bountiful harvest of honey he soon sees. Please Lord, send him blessings for his toil, his devotion and his trust because Lord, going to the bee yard each day is a must. And Lord whether you send hot or cold, rain or shine, He, on that day, must trust those bees to be ever so kind. Please Lord, give him strength and courage in those hard times, for Lord he knows the ladder to success is sometimes hard to climb. And remember Lord, in those hard times he always comes to you with his prayers, Lord, not prayers for himself he dares, but those for whom he cares. Please Lord, provide him and his bees with all their needs, for Lord, much of the world their labor feeds, for without those bees plants could not produce seeds, and what would we all eat with only fields of weeds. Please Lord, laden him with knowledge and wisdom, the kind only you provide, Lord, for him to recognize the work and loving support of his bride, Lord, for the joy that she brings just by being on and by his side, and too, Lord, that next to you, she is one reason for his pride. Please Lord, because life can be burdensome Lord please continue to bless his home. Fill it with laughter of children not to be so lonesome, for Lord, young beekeepers, there is need for some. Please Lord, not to make this prayer too long, please keep him and all from doing wrong, but like King David fill his heart with joyful song so Lord he won't be kicked out like a drone. (sent by Philip Earle) He is dead, busy bees He is dead, busy bees; he's dead, busy bees! Go tell the sad news to the flowers on the leas; Go tell the sad news over forest and fell, He's dead, busy bees, who served you so well. He is dead, busy bees; he's dead, busy bees! In the stillness of the night his soul found release, So soft his breath ceased no watcher could tell. So peaceful his end, who loved you so well. He is dead, busy bees; he's dead, busy bees! The winter is coming and soon it will freeze; Your stores may be low, for I've no means to tell, Now he's dead, busy bees, who served you so well. He is dead, busy bees; he's dead, busy bees! How oft he sat with you and smoked at his ease, And watched your swift flight as you flew o'er the dell, Now he's dead, busy bees; who served you so well. He is dead, busy bees; he's dead, busy bees! The crepe on your hives is astir in the breeze, Attune your low notes, as tolls the last bell, With the song of the hive, as he loved it so well. R. E. Richardson, 1948 (Sent by Maurice from Belgium) Blessing of Bees on the Feast of St. Benedict St. Benedict is the patron of beekeepers, and many people attach medals of St. Benedict on their hives. Here is a blessing over the bees. This blessing is from the old Roman Ritual, which has been suppressed since the issue of the new Ritual. Laypersons can still use this blessing in private as personal prayer. St. Benedict's feast was formerly March 21, but it is now celebrated on July 11. St. Benedict is the patron of bee-keepers, and those who themselves have bees could not do better than mark his day by praying for their hives. Farmers can pray for their cattle and their barns; fishermen for their fishing boats and the fish in the sea, why should bee-keepers do less? In some parts of France it was, and may still be, customary for bee-keepers to have a medal of St. Benedict affixed to their hives: O Lord, God almighty, who hast created heaven and earth and every animal existing over them and in them for the use of men, and who hast commanded through the ministers of holy Church that candles made from the products of bees be lit in church during the carrying out of the sacred office in which the most holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ thy Son is made present and is received; may thy holy blessing descend upon these bees and these hives, so that they may multiply, be fruitful and be preserved from all ills and that the fruits coming forth from them may be distributed for thy praise and that of thy Son and the holy Spirit and of the most blessed Virgin Mary. Prayer Source: Candle is Lighted, A by P. Stewart Craig, The Grail, Field End House, Eastcote, Middlesex, 1945 (sent by Dan O'Hanlon) Busy little honeybee Living in your Hive Working night and day for me God makes your strive. Then upon my breakfast table >From you little bee Comes your honey so delicious Sticky, golden and yummy! So for our little worker Love for her let's send Do not bother or disturb her She's our busy friend! (Sent by Russ Dean) The Beemaster's Prayer Will there be bees in heavenly places Will there be bees? Winging their way through the golden spaces To fruitify the eternal trees That yield their sweet life-giving store Month by month for ever more. Will soft bee music haunt the stream Whose waters shine with crystal glow And will they come where lilies gleam To sip the eternal nectar flow? Lord thou didst love our earthly places Birds and flowers and shady trees- Let there be Bees in heavenly places Let there be Bees Anon. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 10:12:12 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Saor Stetler Subject: Are the Bees Dying off Because They're Too Busy? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Are the Bees Dying off Because They're Too Busy? By Susan Kuchinskas, East Bay Express Posted on August 11, 2007, Printed on August 11, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/59426/ All across America, a mysterious disease is wiping out bee colonies. This malady causes all the bees in a hive to seemingly vanish overnight, abandoning their brood in the nursery, as well as their stores of honey and pollen. Other bees and pests, which normally plunder deserted honey, shun these hives. This baffling die-off dealt a financial blow to commercial beekeepers this season and raised fears of environmental and economic disaster. For farmers, no bees means no pollination. But pollination is happening like mad in Leah Fortin's tiny yard in North Oakland, Calif. Busy little bee bodies cover the clumps of lavender, salvia and roses that line her driveway. More bees work the malaleucas on the parking strip, those trees with shaggy bark that look like giant Q-tips when they're in bloom. A lot of these bees -- although surely not all -- come from the hive on Fortin's roof. The unobtrusive wooden box, barely 20 inches by 16, and 13 inches high, sits on the tar-and-gravel roof of her stucco bungalow, sheltered by the chimney. Honeybees bustle in and out of the narrow slit along the bottom, delivering bundles of pollen and droplets of nectar, then hurrying out again for more. "The neighbors call us 'The Little House on the Prairie,'" Fortin said on a recent summer afternoon. "They think I'm a kook." Fortin, who administers after-school programs, captured this wild swarm in early May, and so far it's thriving. "My book said to take two pieces of cardboard and scoop them into a five-gallon paint can, so that's what I did," she said. "I was scared shitless. I had no idea what I was doing." She covered the can with a net and drove home. "It worked, and there they are." Fortin put out a small jar of honey to make the new colony feel at home; since then, she's done nothing except peek at them once in a while. "It doesn't matter what you know and what you don't know," she said. "The bees know what they're doing." And what they do is pollinate. Honeybees aren't native to North America, so indigenous plants don't need them for pollination. If all the honeybees disappeared, we'd still have corn and wheat. But most of the imported fruit and vegetable species commonly thought of as quintessentially Californian -- almonds, grapes, plums, cucumbers, cantaloupe, asparagus -- need the help of bees to wed male pollen to female pistil. Without bees, there would be no apples, no cherries, no tomatoes, no zucchini. Even tofu would be scarcer -- soybeans depend partly on the honeybee for pollination. Most of these crops are no longer pollinated by wild honeybees. Like many indigenous insects and plants, feral honeybees have been nearly wiped out by pesticides, loss of habitat and parasites like the varroa mite. Meanwhile, commercial beekeeping has come to resemble other kinds of factory farming. While the bees themselves retain more freedom of movement than almost any other living creature raised by man, a commercial bee lot is more like a cattle feed lot than a wild meadow. Beehives are crammed close together in rows just a few feet apart; in the wild, a square mile supports at the most three or four hives. A wild colony's diet is diverse, comprising pollen and nectar from myriad plants. To compensate for the lack of forage around bee lots, bees are typically fed high-fructose corn syrup, the same stuff that's contributing to a human health crisis. And just like other agricultural livestock, bees become stressed when you crowd them together. They're more susceptible to diseases and parasites, less able to function naturally. It's all making some bee scientists wonder: Is the epidemic known as Colony Collapse Disorder real, or are the bees simply being worked to death? Big beesness If you want to put bees' value into dollars and cents, just look at California's almond industry. Almonds are the state's second-largest crop, with farmers raking in $2.34 billion in 2005. This year's yield, grown on 615,000 acres, is expected to be a record 1.310 billion pounds, up 18 percent from last year -- despite the dire statistics about Colony Collapse Disorder. If you drive through the heart of California's agriculture industry, the Central Valley, watching the miles of orchards in bloom, they look natural. In fact, the California almond industry depends on a herculean human effort to subvert the natural order of things. In nature, most flowers don't get pollinated. But you don't get a billion-pound harvest by letting nature take its course. In the old days, an orchard owner might invite a beekeeper to keep hives on his land in a mutually beneficial arrangement. The agribusiness way is to rent hives for the two-week almond pollination season. This year, growers paid $150 per hive, placing three to five hives per acre. Since 1999, beekeepers in the Pacific Northwest have earned four to five times more income from pollination than from the combined sales of honey and wax, according to a survey by Oregon State University. But it was hairy out in the fields this year, as beekeepers from around the country raced to get their hives to California before they collapsed. Some growers found themselves renting empty hives. Thousands of beekeepers had done the math and begun building up their stock. It's not uncommon for a commercial operation to run to 10,000 hives, trucking them from California to South Dakota to Florida in the course of a single year. One million hives, or nearly half of all the hives in the United States, were hauled into California this year, according to Randy Oliver, a beekeeper in Grass Valley, Calif., who has pollinated almonds for 25 years. For a honeybee, the lucrative almond pollination season comes at the worst possible time. The natural lifecycle of a bee colony follows the seasons, with a hibernationlike rest period during the winter. Unfortunately for the bees, California almond trees bloom around Feb. 10, a miserably rainy time of year. A colony may rear ten to 12 generations of bees in a year. The queen moves through the hive, laying eggs in combs toward the center of the nest. The eggs hatch in three days; the larvae are fed nectar by nurse bees until they emerge from their cells in 21 days to begin work in the hive. A few are male; they're called drones because they do nothing but hang around and eat, on call in case the queen dies and a new queen needs to mate. The females get to work, spending three weeks as house bees. They may feed the larvae, keep the hive clean, attend the queen or just fan their wings to cool the hive. Some act as sentries, attempting to chase away bears, skunks and robber bees from other hives. Then they go out to forage for another three weeks, completing their lifecycle. Elderly bees don't retire; they simply fly out one day and don't return. As the days shorten and the sun dims, the hive produces its last generation of the year. These "winter bees" must survive the cold months and live long enough to raise the vigorous new brood that will bring back the spring pollen and begin the cycle again. "Winter bees live for about six months," Oliver said. "Come spring, when the hives are moved to almonds, these same bees that survived the winter and raised the first brood then have to go out to forage. They can't do it." Instead of gathering the pollen, the exhausted bees drop dead outside the hive, Oliver surmises. Eric Mussen, who specializes in beekeeping (an apiculturalist) for the University of California, Davis, thinks malnutrition could be another piece of the syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder -- the same kind of malnutrition afflicting Fast Food Nation. Wild bees live on water, nectar, and pollen. Nectar provides the carbohydrates they use for energy and to make honey, while pollen is a rich mix of protein, fats, minerals, vitamins, and micronutrients. But just as human food can lose nutrients from overcooking, Mussen thinks adverse weather could produce tiny changes in pollen grains, resulting in one of the mysterious symptoms of Colony Collapse Disorder -- reports that the vanished bees leave behind combs rich with pollen. Too much chilling, as well as weather that's too hot and dry, can cause pollen to become sterile by killing its protoplasm. Perhaps, he speculates, bad weather destroyed some nutrients vital to the bees as well, making the pollen useless to their bodies. The normal dearth of pollen in the fall, combined with the drought that swept the country last year, could have created a season's worth of undernourished bee colonies -- colonies too weak to stand up to the strain of life in the agrifactory. "Perhaps bees in that malnourished state could have made it had they not been fed on by mites and viruses," Mussen says. Like humans, all bees carry viruses, but the immune systems of healthy bees usually keeps the viral load under control. "They haven't found a bee with less than two viruses. In some apparently healthy colonies, some bees had five to six different viruses. You can't blame the viruses, but if you have a weak bee, such things can overwhelm it." Add this to the stress of days spent bumping over the interstates, and it wouldn't be surprising that colonies can't fight off the mites and viruses that plague them. A working bee's life has become as stressful as any human cube-dweller's. Colony Collapse Disorder, then, may be no more than the result of one too many things going wrong in a bad year, surmises bee broker Denise Qualls. "Beekeepers, especially commercial beekeepers, have always lost 10 to 20 percent of their hives when they come out here for pollination," says Qualls, whose company, Pollination Connection, helps manage the annual rush of bees from all over the country that converge on California for the almond season. "Granted, the loss is higher, but -- you know, they used to just call it bad beekeeping. Now they have a name for it." Buzz in the backyard Qualls thinks inbred queens are another possible factor in collapsing colonies. The queen produces all the eggs to replace workers, and she secretes pheromones that keep the hive humming. The conventional wisdom is to purchase queens bred to be gentle and good honey producers; some beekeepers replace the queen each year, because a younger queen is supposed to be healthier. "But they keep coming from the same stock," Qualls points out, so any vulnerabilities may get reinforced. Think of all the hereditary ailments that afflict purebred dogs, and compare that with the health of your basic mutt. Maybe these queens have become the poodles of the insect world. During last year's pollination rush, Qualls says, a significant number of queens died: "They just weren't strong enough." Maybe that's what happened to Peter Scholz. For several years, he bought a starter package -- a queen and three pounds of bees -- and carefully placed them in the hive that sits on a four-foot-square perch under a tree in the backyard of his two-story Oakland Edwardian. All through the summer, they worked the flowers. But every winter, the colony dwindled away -- or, you could say, collapsed. Scholz gave up, but left the hive in place. Two springs ago, a feral swarm moved in. This colony is thriving, and he expects to get 50 pounds of honey this year. "It makes sense in a Darwinian way that the hives that flourish locally and swarm are the ones you want to adopt," he says. It's a method that's worked for commercial beekeeper Steve Gentry for nearly 30 years. He keeps around a hundred hives scattered in 14 locations from here to Santa Cruz; in winter, he takes them all to the Santa Cruz Mountains to get fat on the manzanita bloom. Every colony originated from a wild swarm. "All my hives are survivor stock," he says, ones that have managed to fight off varroa and tracheal mites, two parasites that began infecting American colonies in the 1990s. "It's survival of the fittest. If my bees swarm, there's some vitality there. Beekeepers say they don't have time for swarms. But when they don't have any bees, they'll have time." Living among the bees Swarming is the natural process by which a colony reproduces itself. Capturing swarms is a popular pastime for backyard beekeepers -- and it may provide insurance against whatever disasters are befalling commercial operators. A colony has to be strong, healthy and able to fight off disease in order to expend precious resources in swarming. The swarm is a group of hardy pioneers led by a queen who has proven herself through breeding and, perhaps, in combat with another queen. In the spring, while the hive is buzzing with newborn bees and the combs drip with honey, the colony produces a second queen. The old queen flies out with a batch of drones to mate, and then takes off with a thousand or so workers to find a new home. The swarm pauses to rest and feed, gathering en masse on a tree limb or wall, while scouts look around for an attractive site. They may stay for a day or two and then move on if they don't find a good spot. So, when Leah Fortin gets another swarm call on a hot June weekend, she throws her gear in her truck and, with neighbor and fellow beekeeper Peter Scholz, goes after it. But this mass of bees on a clump of lilies in the front yard of a house near Grizzly Peak is no longer a swarm; it's begun to set up housekeeping on several fronds of the plant. They must have been desperate; worker bees in a swarm have only three weeks to establish a new colony, lay down comb, and let the queen begin to lay eggs before they die. When it gets close to their time, they'll build comb on just about anything. But there's no way this nascent colony could have survived the winter's cold and wind. Fortin uses a special smoker to calm the bees -- this is a standard practice, although no one knows exactly why it works. She grasps the bundle of leaves clotted with wax and snips them off. Now she has a bee bouquet. She gently places it in a five-gallon bucket. Back at Scholz's house, it takes only minutes to put the bees into their new home. A standard beehive consists of a wooden box with a separate bottom and a lid that rests on top. Inside the box, nine or ten wooden frames hang from a ledge, like folders in a file cabinet. Each frame holds a sheet of foundation on which the bees will build their hexagonal chambers to hold eggs, developing larvae, pollen and honey. Bees generally fly as far as four miles in search of food, but they do best when they don't have to venture more than half a mile. Pickings should be good in this heavily planted neighborhood, even though there are at least three other tame hives and one wild colony nearby. While Fortin's North Oakland neighborhood is teeming with bees, others may have none. The yield from Bill Smith's home orchard in the Alameda County town of Hayward, Calif., doubled after he installed his first hive five years ago. It all started with the 4-H Club. Another member had a hive near horse stables and mischievous boys, a bad combination. Smith agreed to take them: "I noticed that the following year, we got a much better fruit set around here. We really were starving for bees." Smith claims he keeps bees only for pollination. But now there are the ten hives piled on a small trailer in a corner of his hilltop half-acre, plus a tottering stack of empty hive boxes waiting for new colonies. He is president of the Alameda County Beekeepers Association, and he's stockpiling honey to make mead. It's a sure case of bee fever. The engineer lives with his family in a century-old house on a former chicken ranch. You can see the successive waves of development. A few two-acre pastures still dot the hill, surrounded by 1950s ranch houses. Lately, some of those pastures have been replaced by stucco mini-mansions that fill almost the entire lot. "Don't tell the neighbors I'm here," Smith says. "They don't know." The row of yards bordering his are downhill enough that the honeysuckle-covered fence between them completely obscures their view. To the north, the hives are shielded by a thick cedar tree, and the house and garage obscure the view from the street and the south side. Like Fortin, Smith is a laid-back beekeeper. "I hardly ever work the bees," he says. "Bees know how to take care of themselves. You give them a place to live, and they go crazy on their own." Indeed, bees follow an internal timetable that's been bred into them through eons. Home beekeepers know that the less you try to do for the bees, the healthier they'll be. Is it some pheromone the bees put out that places you in their thrall? Or just that they're so fascinating, so soothing to watch? In any case, Smith is far from the first person to find that one hive leads to another. "I hear about a good deal, or someone calls me up and says, 'I just captured some bees, and I have nowhere to put them.' I guess I'm just greedy," he says. Back to nature Although Steve Gentry says bees are a sideline for him, it's a pretty robust sideline. Gentry sells 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of Steve's Bees-branded honey every year at gourmet groceries and natural-foods stores, all small-run varietals. Right now, he's featuring chamise honey, made from the nectar of the tough, white-flowered chaparral bush. He has another lucrative business removing hives from inside the walls of homes. While commercial beekeeping has become a high-labor, low-margin line of work, in the backyard it can be as natural and laissez-faire as you please. If you get a couple of quarts of honey, it's all good. But there is a middle ground, and people like Gentry are moving there. They're taking some tips from the Slow Food movement, offering high-quality, locally produced products at premium prices. Marshall's Farm Honey, based in American Canyon in Napa County, is credited with being among the first companies to take honey upscale. Spencer and Helene Marshall have taken their cues from the winemakers of Sonoma County, offering small batches of varietal honey at farmers' markets. They scatter a few hives at choice locations throughout the Bay Area and isolate batches produced by the sequential wildflower and tree blooms. They encourage consumers to appreciate the "special flavor nuances and wonderful color variations" that result. The Marshalls even offer Hood Honey, described as a middle-range amber village mix, harvested from Oakland's neighborhoods. Honey is just one product of those highly productive bees; the pollen and wax they produce are valuable, too. Exploiting them -- making use of everything possible -- is another lesson from boutique farmers. For instance, you'd never know it from Judy Casale's house in an upscale subdivision in Castro Valley in California's Alameda County, but she whips up batches of lip balm, soap, lotion, candles and specialty honeys in her Tuscan-style kitchen. There's even one hive in her lushly landscaped backyard; her remaining stock of 34 hives is dispersed on private property throughout the Alameda County areas of Livermore and Castro Valley. Like a lot of beekeepers, Casale got interested by chance ten years ago, after a presentation at a meeting of the California Rare Fruit Growers. "I liked the idea of backyard honey and pollination," she recalls. "I wasn't crazy about handling bees, but I got over it. The first time I poured a container of bees into a hive was pretty scary." She still completely suits up when she works the bees in her backyard, a colony with a cranky temperament. She branched out from selling honey seven years ago. "There are only so many candles you can make, use, and sell, and I was looking for something more creative," she says. Today, her Dominique skincare line is a thriving operation that's transitioning from a hobby to a sideline business. Casale has landed accounts at several Los Angeles spas and is looking for more in the Bay Area. Her latest concoction is mojito-flavored lip balm. Randy Oliver, the Grass Valley beekeeper, is another who looks beyond honey and wax. In fact, he looks to exploit every niche he can find. In addition to managing and renting 500 hives, he raises and sells queens and starter colonies in the spring. He teaches apiculture to bee clubs and schools, and he writes articles for journals. He's even getting into Web media, charging a small subscription fee for his website content. Oliver wants to help commercial beekeepers get off the slippery slope of using more and more chemicals that have less and less of an effect. His 500 hives are small-time by commercial standards, but enough to prove the effectiveness of a more natural approach. He aims to be a bridge between agribusiness bees and the backyard. Big operations have become monocultures, making more money from pollination than from honey -- and sometimes even killing off bees at the end of the season. Instead, Oliver advocates integrated pest-management strategies that keep mite populations down to reasonable levels without pesticides. At the same time, he acknowledges the professional's need to automate and minimize labor. For example, dusting bees with powdered sugar causes varroa mites to fall off them. If you also replace the solid bottom of the hive with a screened bottom, the mites fall all the way out and have trouble crawling back in. But sprinkling powdered sugar is a lot slower than fumigating a hive, so Oliver invented a brush/cup combo that lets a beekeeper powder down a hive in just 15 seconds. "Beekeepers, like most agriculturists, are pretty conservative and not willing to risk their operations by trying something out," he says. "They want to see other beekeepers doing something successfully and making money doing it. If they see people making money, they'll change." Freelance journalist Susan Kuchinskas covers business, technology and science. Her book, Love Chemistry: How Oxytocin Lets Us Love, Trust and Mate, will be published in May 2008. She tracks oxytocin research on her blog, Hug the Monkey . ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:52:04 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy Relief MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello All, I said: > My allergies never completely go away but I do not take meds for the problem until the first killing frost of winter. The above should have read. My allergies never completely go away ( but I do not take meds for the problem) until after the first killing frost of winter. I have learned if I do not take a tsp.of honey daily when my allergies are acting up I get the same result. Sneezing and watery eyes. Once I resume then the problem goes away but takes a couple days. Many other beekeepers have said at meetings there is no science behind what is happening however most do not have allergy problems. I NEVER had allergies until around ten years ago. Maybe not proof beyond a reasonable doubt for researchers but myself and many on this list (maybe afraid to speak up) will still keep using raw honey daily for allergy relief. Another not fully understood area is bee stings. My mother had crippling rheumatoid arthritis and arthritis runs in my family. At a family reunion I was the only older member without signs of arthritis in hands. I have not got a single sign of arthritis and even passed a test for arthritis my doubting doctor ran. However: I get plenty of bee stings throughout the year especially on the hands. I keep an immunity. I got a sting yesterday under the fingernail and did not swell. On the face I do not swell and you can not tell I have been stung except for the tiny hole the stinger went in. Was not always the case and if I stop getting stings for say six months I start swelling gain ( happened about 10 years ago after an injury and about six months without a sting). My doctor says my lack of arthritis is because the arthritis which cripples my family jumped a generation. Maybe he is right but I am not convinced. There is NO scientific proof (I am aware) of that bee stings for arthritis, ms or other problems works. Arthritis is painful and crippling but I have met others like me in the world of beekeeping which should have arthritis but do not but we have a single factor in common which is a lifetime of bee stings. I will say that those which run large bee outfits but do not work with the bees directly (getting stings) do seem to get swelling when stung. The medical profession does believe in the commercial beekeepers full immunity to bee stings. Dr. Steve Carlston ( California) isolated a substance in beekeepers blood samples( ABF convention 1993) which he said he could use to make a shot which would make a person which had anaphylactic reactions to bee stings immune for a period of time. Not sure of his progress but he spoke and took donated blood (from commercial beekeepers) at the ABF convention in Kansas City in 1993. I do not wash bee suits in the same washing machine my family uses as small doses of bee venom it seems can cause reactions in family members when stung in the future. Again we know not why. Also reports are that if I should quit getting the number of stings I do and return to the level of a hobby beekeeper ( say 3-4 stings per year in many cases) I could possible get a serious future single sting reaction including anaphylaxis. Has happened to others. Sincerely, Bob Harrison -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:39:52 +0000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Gavin Ramsay Subject: Re: Science MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi Folks Just a few observations to add to the debate on honey and allergies. Folk are quite right to say that science hasn't confirmed the effect but, as a scientist, I have to add that science isn't perfect. I'm only aware of one study that attempted to address the question in a properly controlled manner and it failed to find an effect. Could have been unlucky with the source of local honey, or maybe they didn't feed the subjects honey for long enough. For me, lots of anecdotal reports versus one negative well-controlled study leaves me thinking that the effect could still be there. There is plenty of evidence that injecting small amounts of allergen, usually starting with a tiny quantity and gradually building up over time, desensitises patients to bee venom (been through that myself), wasp/yellowjacket venom, cat dander, and even grass and ragweed pollen. There are apparently a group of cats somewhere in Germany getting shaved from time to time to recover dried saliva to inject into patients! Perhaps honey is providing an oral source of tiny amounts of allergen, and maybe that allergen is a protein sufficiently stable to cross the gut wall, become systemic, and have its desensitising effect. We're talking protein molecules rather than intact pollen grains (I think that it was Laurie Croft that put into print the completely erroneous view that whole pollen gets into the blood!) Does unfiltered unheated honey contain airborne pollen? Yup, a small amount. I've counted the pollen types in individual pollen loads coming back to a hive and noted a small number of airborne pollen grains of the abundant airborne types at the time - grass and nettle. One or two per thousand of them in pollen loads that are predominantly brassica or clover or willowherb/fireweed. Some of that will get into honey. Is it enough? No idea, but it is there. Honeybees do sometimes deliberately gather grass or tree catkin or other airborne pollen types, but clearly they also accidentally collect other pollens in the environment. Perhaps it just sticks to their bodies while they are out flying (see Jerry Bromenshenk's paper on the collection of Bacillus spores below). all the best Gavin Lighthart, Bruce; Prier, Kevin R. S.; Bromenshenk, Jerry J. (2004) Detection of aerosolized bacterial spores (Bacillus atrophaeus) using free-flying honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) as collectors. Aerobiologia 20 (3-4) : 191-195. Abstract: An aerosol cloud of Bacillus atrophaeus (previously B. subtilis variety niger) spores, an anthrax surrogate, was created in a large 0.4 ha (1 ac), bee-containing, open-mesh tent. Bees from a B. atrophaeus uncontaminated hive flying through the cloud adsorbed the spores in statistically significant quantities. [snip] It may therefore be practical to use honey bee colonies to monitor foraging areas for disease-causing spores. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 07:34:03 -0400 Reply-To: james.fischer@gmail.com Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: James Fischer Subject: Re: Honey flavor - mint? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Most years, the honey has a "fruity" flavor, > but this year it tastes distinctly of mint. While I suspect Bob is correct about your honey being from Basswood, I'd like to point out that "minty" tasting honey can be sold at premium prices these days if one infuses some Peaches into the honey. Everyone seems to want Peach-Mint these days. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 07:57:48 -0400 Reply-To: Rick Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Rick Subject: Bees working grass Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit One foggy morning in July when the grass was full of pollen I saw bees working it hard. Never saw bees working grass before, I always said they didnt but those bees turned me into a liar, which seems to happen more then I would like to admit. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 08:49:56 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: Science In-Reply-To: <234783.88640.qm@web86205.mail.ird.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit There is some fairly good science on arthritis and bee stings, not so much from this country but China. Bee stings do work, mostly on the symptoms if you have it and on the immune system to keep it working properly. Arthritis is an autoimmune disease so bee stings tend to correct the problem. Good science also on your bee suit causing sensitization to stings for family members. There is lots out there on the fact that even if stung often there can be one that results in a severe allergic relation. It does not happen often and my guess is it has less to do with the sting but what you have in your system at the time. For example, do not take ibuprofen when working bees. There may be other things that we do not know about. I did find a study done by A UCon professor which I sent to the list but seems to have disappeared. He originally thought it worked and recommended everyone take a spoonful a day, but ran a further controlled study which showed it did not. Science is not perfect but it sure beats testimonials. I have tried honey for a variety of issues and found it does not work for allergies and several other things it is touted for. Others say it does. The problem with this kind of issue its it lends itself to the desire to want to believe in order to relieve whatever might be wrong. Add to that, the power of suggestion, so you can have relief and feel better when, in truth, there really is no change. Plus, we are all not built the same way. Some recent studies on antioxidants showed that you can get serious heart problems with too high an antioxidant level. The body regulates the amount and when it does not, additional antioxidants actually can harm. Now the new buzz word is "reductive stress", which leads to less antioxidants. Moderation in all things. We take for granted scientific truths, such as the earth revolves around the sun, but reject it only when it interferes with what we experience. King Lear did. Some cancer patients do. We might be right, since science is not infallible, but we tend to want to turn back the tide more often than not. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:43:05 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?windows-1252?Q?J._Waggle?=" Subject: Re: Honey flavor - mint? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Timothy C. Eisele wrote: Most years, the honey has a "fruity" flavor, but this year it >tastes distinctly of mint. Hello Tim, I would also investigate the possibility that it may be Alfalfa. Alfalfa is “white to amber-colored, with a pleasant minty flavor” (Lovell) Best Wishes, Joe Waggle ~ Derry, PA ‘Bees Gone Wild Apiaries' FeralBeeProject.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:49:10 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?windows-1252?Q?J._Waggle?=" Subject: Re: Bees working grass Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Rick wrote: >One foggy morning in July when the grass was full of pollen I saw bees working it hard. Never saw bees working grass before, Is it possible they may have been collecting moisture from the fog, which may have a tendency to collect more on the flowers of the plant? Joe Waggle ~ Derry, PA ‘Bees Gone Wild Apiaries' FeralBeeProject.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:18:40 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?windows-1252?Q?J._Waggle?=" Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification Comments: To: Randy Oliver Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit randy oliver wrote: >Horizontal transmission is greatly decreased since colonies that die from >mite stress during the winter are not immediately robbed, and the mites >within are killed by the cold. Therefore, there is a strong selective >pressure for mites NOT to kill the colony. Hello Randy! There is no doubt strong selection pressures on the varroa side. However I do have some difficulty with such tremendous weight being placed on the non-virulent mite theory,,, IMO, lopsided in consideration of other potential contributing factors, because it leaves the impression that honeybees are at the mercy of the mites selective pressures,,, ’feral bees surviving only because of the selective pressure on the mites side?‘. My question is,,, Is there any consideration 'out there' for the existence of varroa resistance in honeybees playing a role in the feral resurgence? IMO, it would be important to identify what traits are leading the way to varroa resistance in feral honeybees, which are generally free from the too often misguided selective pressures found in domestic beekeeping. Best Wishes, Joe Waggle ~ Derry, PA ‘Bees Gone Wild Apiaries' FeralBeeProject.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:05:21 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: Science MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Science is not perfect but it sure beats testimonials. Not perfect or even close science: The world was flat. The sun rotated around the earth Little science has been done on the honey/allergy subject but many of us are convinced (due to our own suffering) of the value. Of course the large drug companies would like to see us all on Claritin/allegra or taking a 12 hour cold medicine all summer such as Sudafed(yes many allergy sufferers use cold medicine for allergies all summer). One of my honey customers used to take four prescription medicines all summer for her allergies. It took both taking the fresh local pollen and local raw honey *every day* and a period of time but now she is off all medicines for pollen allergies. To those reading on the list with pollen allergies all I say is try the *raw local * honey for a 30 day period when your allergies are the worst and if you get relief then slowly wean yourself off the prescriptions. If no relief then honey still is good on pancakes! I put my daily dose on waffles today and on toast if in a hurry. What have you got to lose allergy sufferers? bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 13:05:26 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Joe & All, Joe asked: any consideration 'out there' for the existence of varroa resistance in honeybees playing a role in the feral resurgence? Absolutely! The Russian bee is truely a varroa survivor and many swarms of Russian bees have went into the trees. IMO, it >would be important to identify what traits are leading the way to varroa resistance in feral honeybees, which are generally free from the too often misguided selective pressures found in domestic beekeeping. I have observed many queen breeding attempts to find a truly varroa tolerant bee. Only one attempt has impressed me. Dann Purvis (Purvis Brothers Apiaries) in Georgia. Dann uses the "live and let die" method of breeder queen selection. Adds varroa pressure to his possible breeder queens ( in other words adds varroa to the hive to increase the varroa pressure) and uses a six way instrumental insemination closed system to keep his varroa tolerant line pure. You can read about the Purvis Brothers methods in the January 2004 (I think the year was 2004 but sure January) ABJ. Dann and sons on the cover and article by Bob Harrison. I also had an article on the Russian bee the same month only in Bee Culture. The "live and let die" method is tough and requires further weeding out of undesirable genetics later on. However each journey starts with the first step and over time I believe Dann will come up with a line of bees which will tolerate varroa and other problems AND also be gentle, good honey producers and have other desirable qualities. Purvis Brothers queens shipped into our area this year performed well but too early to tell about varroa issues. Those on the list which are getting Russian bees from the program (now that selection has started between lines) have any comments on this or last years USDA-ARS Russian queen release? bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 14:31:30 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Walter Zimmermann Subject: disappearing queen cells MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I thought I'd share this story with you folks to lighten things up a bit. -just finished a round of queen rearing and had good success using the jenter >From the mating nucs I had removed the hatched cells and the dozen queen cells that hadn't all still attached to those plastic cups. I took them into my honey room which is spotless and placed the unopened queen cells on the corian counter top. That evening I opened one to see at what stage the dead queen was. My intention was to open them all the next day . The following morning they were gone. I looked around totally bewildered thinking it's old timers disease hitting me but and then I saw one behind the table on the floor. There were mouse droppings there also. The rest were gone. I found I had forgotten to close the floor drain near the extractor . I guess I'll find them one day at the bottom of the hill since it's down hill drainage Walter Ontario ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:33:00 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_L._Borst?=" Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification Comments: To: "J. Waggle" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:18:40 -0400, J. Waggle wrote: >However I do have some difficulty with such tremendous weight being placed >on the non-virulent mite theory Well, the fact that the theory was proposed by Tom Seeley may account for why many of us sit up and listen. Tom has studied honey bees most of his life, and as a scientist, he has proceeded with a minimum of bias. That is to say, he has no particular agenda to promote other than the goal of science, which is: to understand. When he proposed that bees in semi-isolated parts of New York could possess traits that made them resistant to mites, I was skeptical. I don't believe these bees have the degree of isolation nor enough time to develop into a population that has any traits that make them significantly different from the bees down the road a mile or two. Believe me, there are commercial apiaries near the Arnot Forest; I know where they are. But again, when he embarked on the study, I was ALL EARS. So, I was listening when he said that when these bees were brought into Ithaca and placed alongside other hives, whatever resistance they were showing in the woods evaporated. It doesn't take a geneticist to realize that the effect may be due to some other factor besides genetic resistance. This is not to say that bees couldn't have heritable traits that could help them resist varroa or other diseases. This has already been shown possible. The problem is getting and maintaining resistant lines. The difficulty in maintaining them is obvious: once a hives self-requeens, the traits are already becoming diluted. I think that getting resistance is a bit more difficult than rummaging the woods for wild bees. The US government spent millions of dollars going to Siberia to find bees that had the degree of isolation and sufficient time to have developed some resistance to varroa. This just gives us an idea of what is really needed to get and keep resistant bees. However, recent work by Seeley and his associates have raised an entirely new angle: the possibility that genetically diverse sisters in the colony produce a more vigorous colony. Perhaps line selection has caused more problems than it has cured. Certainly there is ample evidence that excessive selection in livestock can be harmful to their health and vigor. Perhaps the new model of the honey bee colony will attempt to have queens and drones reared from as many different lines as possible, instead of the narrowing which normal occurs by using a few selected breeders. If the desire effect is to have more vigorous bees, there appears to be several possible approaches. Personally, I believe that collecting feral swarms is the least promising. After all, you can get the same results by simply making splits and letting them requeen themselves. I talked to a commercial beekeeper recently who does exactly this. Very quickly you will have a hodge-podge of "local" bees, and without the risk bringing in diseases like AFB. Wild bees are definitely a vector of AFB. Further, in many parts of the country the ferals are all presumed African and subject to eradication. The real problem with wild bees of any kind -- not just honey bees -- is that any new pathogen can very quickly wipe them out. That is why I would put my money behind managed bees to supply the pollination this country requires. I think we have to move forward to get healthier bees, not spin our wheels trying to get back to something that may in fact be a mirage. pb ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 18:25:11 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: HONEYDEW OR NOT? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello All, We have got a bit of a mystery here in the Northwest Missouri/ Northeast Kansas area. Many beekeepers have been getting a dark honey of an amber to actual walnut brown color. The honey does not taste bad at first taste but then has an after taste. In certain areas of clover all the supers are the same color and tainted. The bees brought in the whatever from June 15th. to June 30th. we believe and the flow was intense. The bees were slow to seal the combs. We have seen the honeydew/honey before but only in isolated areas but when found barrels were produced. Many opinions have been put forward to me by area Missouri/Kansas beekeepers and also from Nebraska and Illinois beekeepers we have shown the "whatever the product is " to. The supers I have had of the above have came off with a high moisture content even if fully sealed which does not fit the honey plant book description of OAK & Hickory honeydew (which we think is the possible source and one beekeeper has reported sticky leaves in the area of one of his hardest hit apiaries) Several plant sources other than honeydew have been suggested by beekeepers. Can the list help with their observations of hickory & oak honeydew? These trees are plentiful in our area. Is there a simple test for honeydew other than a sample being sent off to test the sugars? If not I believe I will send a sample to a friend at a bee lab for the answer. Thanks in advance! bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:11:01 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Yoon_Sik_Kim?= Subject: Re: HONEYDEW OR NOT? Comments: To: Bob Harrison Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bob: As I have already emailed you off list, I believe the dark honey you are describing comes from sumac, aboundant across the region, if not across America. Their flowers come in bundles of super tiny greeny-yellow blossoms. They are in full swing within the period you desceibe and they produce dark honey; the nectar itself is light-green; however, the super abundant yellow pollen is overwhelmingly orange. (Bees will make yellow foot- prints all over and around the entrance when the sumacs are in bloom, a sure sign of their blooming) Hence when you spin the frames in the centerfuge (extractor), the orange pollen mixes with and darknes the otherwise light honey, making it overall look orange-red. Shine the sun light through the honey jar: the liquid shines like the rising sun, indeed. Magnificient! Hence I dubbed it “The Rising Sun” brand. Dark honey, it has a full-body after taste, like red wine, and some would love it, as I do. The sumac blooms in June ending in mid July around here, and they are abundant along the shoulders of the roads and highways. This year’s abundant rain helped more sumacs to bloom than usual. This is what I tell my customers who buy my Rising Sun brand. Go to the grocery store and buy one of those French loaves coming in a twist-open can. Bake it in the oven and then halve it in the middle, dig a hole where you cut, and then put real butter and honey in it. This way the uncut bottom will hold the molten lava inside. Eat it piping-hot. It beats biscuit and honey anytime. Regards, ysk ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:46:12 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Jerry Wallace Subject: Re: HONEYDEW OR NOT? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I've only had one occasion where I believe my bees collected honeydew. The spring was extremely wet with rain every day in April and up to last week of May when the rain stopped. I ended up harvesting several supers of very dark honey that the bees produced from late May to mid June after the rain stopped. The honey was very dark with a tangy almost molasses like aftertaste. I have a sample that has not gone to sugar and shows very little granulation going into the 5th year nor has it spoiled. Speaking of a weird honey, I've received several reports coming from North Georgia that beekeepers there are finding hives with supers of a clear water white or yellowish honey with a motor oil smell/awful taste. Ended up being identified as mountain laurel/rhododendron, a honey with toxic effects if too much is ingested. Very unusual, but a late frost killed many normal nectar sources and I suspect dry weather also contributed to a dearth of other nectar plants. Jerry Wallace Atlanta, GA ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:05:52 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Cushman Subject: Re: Science In-Reply-To: <001501c7dcfa$96fac4e0$2dbc59d8@BusyBeeAcres> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Bob > The sun rotated around the earth This was the 'best fit' observation, until it was noticed that the planets moved oddly, then the knowledge was refined to fit the newer information in addition to the old, this is what science is about... Constantly finding out more and refining our ideas and models to know more than we did before. Back in history the queen bee was thought to be a king, but somebody noticed eggs being laid and ideas were modified. Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:28:48 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Raw Local Honey Recommended for Allergy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>Palynologists (people who study pollen) use acetolysis (boiling in concentrated sulphuric acid) as a method to remove all extraneous material... This made me wonder how the bees' digestive system handles pollen. I'd assume it's without any difficulty. Does anyone know the precise process? Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 12:44:10 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>It doesn't take a geneticist to realize that the effect may be due to some other factor besides genetic resistance. Like the natural comb? >>Perhaps the new model of the honey bee colony will attempt to have queens and drones reared from as many different lines as possible... I think this would be great for scientific reasons. Such crosses might prove less productive than the existing lines and, therefore, be not embraced by the industry. >>Personally, I believe that collecting feral swarms is the least promising. After all, you can get the same results by simply making splits and letting them requeen themselves. True but the only difference is human aid does not help ferals survive the winters and mites. If they survive on their own, they have perservered on their own. If you make and keep splits, you will help them perserve. I do. >>Wild bees are definitely a vector of AFB. Do you find a lot of AFB in the ferals by you? I have yet to find one with AFB here. Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 09:27:40 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>>in either case, the bees will push towards 15% (more or less) drones in >>the hive... >> >>Is there any real evidence of this? > >Seeley writes: > >> 17 ± 3% of the comb area of natural nests of honey bees is devoted to >drone comb (Seeley and Morse, 1976), the hives with drone comb were equipped >with 20% drone comb, hence a normal supply. Peter, thanks for the reference. I wouldn't dispute that fact at all, but the problem I have with the initial statement above has to do with the details. Saying a broodnest in the wild normally has ~17% drone comb isn't the same as saying a hive somehow recognizes the percentage of drones (particularly as opposed to the amount of drone comb or drone brood) and thereby determines whether the next foundationless frame interspersed into the brood chamber will be drawn as worker or as drone comb. The clearest way to demonstrate this point is that if you take a nuc comprised of two standard size frames and enlarge it to 3 frames by adding a foundationless frame -- even if you first eliminate every last drone in that nuc -- that 3rd frame will likely be drawn into nearly perfect worker comb. Similarly, if you took a hive with 6+ frames of pure worker comb and added an empty frame -- even if the hive already consisted of 17%+ drones (raised in cmobs that weren't or weren't any longer in that hive) -- wouldn't the bees draw that next frame to drone comb? So I'm not really disputing the 15%/17% figures. What I'd dispute is how uniformly those figures can be applied. The devil is in the details. Is it really appropriate to dismiss all the limitations on how that 17% figure is applied? I would also dispute how strictly the 17% figure is tied to the number of hatched out drones (and therefore independent of the amount of drone comb, drone brood, proportion of drone eggs laid, etc.) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:26:45 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Yoon_Sik_Kim?= Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification Comments: To: "Peter L. Borst" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Peter’s late post purports for creating healthier bee stocks by using kept/managed colonies because 1) vigorous sisters “bred from as many different lines as possible” will help them fight against varroa and other pathogens and 2) any new pathogen can and will “wipe out” the ferals once it finds its niche among them. Precisely the reasons, Peter, why we need the ferals. Feral bees will, indeed, 1) mate with as many different lines as possible, unlike kept and bred bees in isolation, and indeed 2) a new pathogen will wipe them [the ferals] out clean, making them a lean and mean survival machine, a do or die somersault rendered by relentless nature “red in tooth and claw” that could not care, one whit, if they survive or perish. What coud be more scientific or objective or impersonal than this brutal cut-throat experiment? Life is 50/50; you either eat or don’t. A pathogen, however mighty, clever, and enduring, cannot and must not and should not and will not wipe out its host completely, a self-defeating, self-anihilating process because its own survival depends on the very viability of its host. What is it going to eat when all the bees are gone? A cod? (They are pretty much gone, too) Just as in beekeeping, following nature, the pathogen must strike a sembiotic relationship with bees, never one side dominating the other; the current practice of industrial beekeeping is more like a mushrooming monocrop of a few selected stocks dominating the cropland, lacking the very diversity you speak so well of, on and off. This type of monoculture will be wiped out sooner than the wild variety of, say, rice growing along the Mississippi river bank, for the latter has never been treated or medicated by all-knowing and caring humans. It took care of itself, a simple yet brutal and brilliant fact. Any so-called disease-resitant strain itself, bred in managed colonies, en masse, will soon dominate the landscape, succumbing, given time, to yet another pathogen like CCD, defeating the very diversity you are seeking because every Joe Sixpack in the land will want it and have it. Recall the Dutch Elm Disease (DED) that has wiped out nearly all the Elms in America (There are more streets in our beautiful America named “Elm” Street than “Main” Street, in fact; similarly, a large elm often serves as a symbolic backdrop in many American plays). Well, guess what? They are coming back, gradually, like the ferals; the pathogen could not wipe them completely out, and the staggering survivors can now withstand the DED, verified by a side-by-side experiment. The elms are bouncing back thanks to non-human intervention: no IPM and no Intensive Care Unit for the sickly and dying elms. To help bees, we too should do absolutely nothing. Let them bee! Only those who walked, barefoot, across burning charcoals of Hades and River Styx shall inherit the earth, just as we are the descendants of the survivors of the Plague. We inherited those mutated DNA strains (the importance of diversity, again) against the rodent-borne pestilence that worked on us during medival period, like a human CCD (many deserted the colony, disoriented though no cell-phones yet invented, unattending the young at home and the crop in the field; no other humans robbed the empty nest full of store for a while; and milions perished nearly overnight). Yet the Plague impacted on us differently at the individual level due to different leves of mutation among us. Most perished; some lingered, and others survived thanks to the shuffling of genes via sex, the biological gambling that shuffles and reshuffles the deck against the potential pathogen yet unforeseen, a continual struggle for existence for most living organisms. There will be more pathogens like mites and CCD’s in the future. For example, SHB is a new kid in town. Sure, we lose some; they lose some in this game of give and take. There will be a day when we can do a similar side-by-side experiment between kept bees and the ferals. The sooner we stop medicating the sick and the sickly, the quicker the necessary trainsition will come. Again, nobody kept IPM or Intensive Care Unit for sick elms. They just died or fought back on their own. Killing off the dying and the sick happens all the time in the plains of Serangade. Intergrated Pest Management (IPM) maintains the Intensive Care Unit to sustain the sick and the sickly on tubes and inside the bubble, prolonging the sickbed unduly, however unwittingly, promoting a germ-bed that will kill others and the ferals. It was not the ferals that came down with mites in the first place; if they are not healthier than the managed hives, they have long gone: they should have. Give me an example where a feral colony gave managed colonies mites; it could very well be the other way around. Left alone, the ferals may have now learned to coexist with mites, a status of equilibrium between the predator and prey. The day of ferals may have already arrived, espeically in the south, for the AHB’s have rendered yet another DNA-spin on bee’s gene pool. Hence, collecting feral swarms, with or without AHB strains, is promising, for they must harbor that rare combination or mutation in their DNA, which have helped them survive and hang on, tooth and nail, in the wild. These bees are telling us, “Thanks, but no thanks” to our scientrific “help.” Speaking briefly of science, scinetists have long identified that the aggressive gene in AHB is a dominant trait and the gentleness in EHB, recessive; thus, all their cross will be aggressive. Not so simple. I live in AHB-affected area DNA-identified since 2004, but we have not had a single incident of mass-stinging common elsewhere. How come? I have also seen EHB’s as aggressive as any AHB’s in my practice before the arrival of the latter. Could it be that AHB’s aggressiveness is being diluted at the level of individual colony? Or truly nasty AHB’s have already been eliminated in Texas before they hit Oklahoma? In other words, are we not already a factor in their selection and survival process as we always have been? A firm beliver of science, I trust the ability of science to correct itself in time, always fearing any absolute statement coming from science, because absolutism belongs to religion, not science. A good science admits its shortfalls, periodically, as we have moved, painstakingly, from Arsitotle’s physics to Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galilleo, Keppler, Newton, Einstein, and finally to Quantum Mechanics, for the time being. Regards, ysk ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 14:35:01 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: Bees working grass Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >One foggy morning in July when the grass was full of pollen I saw bees working it hard. Never saw bees working grass before... There is a broadleaf plant - plantago - that occurs in grass that produces good pollen for bees. Could your bees have been working it? My bees have been working it for the past couple of weeks. Plantago is treated as a broadleaf lawn weed. It is a herb though with beneficial benefits including anti-inflamatory and wood-healing. European folk medicine says plantago reduces heyfever allergies, asthma, and its good for easing bee stings. I found the last one interesting! Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:43:02 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > i'm not sure on what rational the "unnaturalness of feeding empty frames into the brood nest" is somehow worse than "the unnaturalness of using nucs and swarms to draw comb for your established colonies". That's not my point at all, but it's a good point: calling one beekeeping practice better or worse because it's more or less "natural" rapidly leads to absurdities. My point isn't that any practice is "bad" because it's "unnatural"; my point is that "unnatural" practices can lead to "unnatural" circumstances (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.) For example, it's "natural" for a colony to have one queen, but by "unnaturally" separating a colony with a queen excluder, one could run a two-queen hive. Comparably, if we "unnaturally" intersperse empty frames into an established brood nest, it's possible to wind up with "unnaturally" high levels of drone comb. Whether that's good or bad to have unnaturally high (or low) levels of drone comb is a separate question. On that separate question, I believe low levels (even unnaturally low levels) of drone comb are generally desirable for honey production, particularly because of varroa. >i'm not sure why you are so quick to discount my experience, especially when you already said you've never done this and let the drone brood actually emerge. That's not exactly true either to say I've "never done this." My 30-40% example/experiment was done differently, but I've tried lots of things -- some more systematically than others -- and my experience leads me to doubt that what you're saying would apply very broadly at all. I guess I could say I also wonder if your 15% figure is an under-exaggeration. Is that just an eyeball figure? ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 12:51:13 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: randy oliver Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="Windows-1252"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Yoon, You make good points re ferals. I'd like to add a caveat to one of them: >Intergrated Pest Management (IPM) maintains the Intensive Care Unit to sustain the sick and the sickly on tubes and inside the bubble, prolonging the sickbed unduly, however unwittingly, promoting a germ-bed that will kill others and the ferals. In the business world of beekeeping, few beekeepers are willing to allow the vast majority of their colonies to die in order to weed out the less fit. IPM allows them to keep their colonies alive for the business year. The point is then to kill off all queens of colonies that needed help the previous year, and only breed from those who didn't (or needed little). This way we get the best of both--an income, plus better bees each year. Randy Oliver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:14:11 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?windows-1252?Q?J._Waggle?=" Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Peter L. Borst wrote: Very quickly you will have a hodge-podge of "local" bees, >and without the risk bringing in diseases like AFB. Wild bees are definitely >a vector of AFB. Hello Peter, That’s not what the restuts of this study say: It seems to suggest that it is more likley domestic colonies are a vector of AFB, and perhaps placing feral colonies at risk. Incidence of American foulbrood infections in feral honey bee http://www.rsnz.org/publish/nzjz/1994/26.pdf “Samples of forager honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) taken from the entrances of 109 feral colonies in New Zealand were tested for spores of Bacillus larvae (White), the causative agent of American foulbrood disease. Seven (6.4%) of the colonies tested positive, all with relatively low numbers of spores compared to foragers taken from managed colonies with American foulbrood disease. This suggests that the feral honey bee population in New Zealand may be relatively free of American foulbrood disease and is therefore not a major risk to managed colonies.” “The feral colonies with known ages had an average age of 6.7 years. Seven of 109 (6.4%) feral colonies tested positive for B. larvae spores (Table 1). The number of B. larvae colonies on the plates ranged from 1 to 3 1. All the samples of foragers taken from the 15 managed colonies tested positive for B. larvae spores (Table 2). Six of the colonies had only one larva each exhibiting clinical symptoms of American foulbrood disease. Only one of the feral colonies had a higher B. larvae colony count than the lowest colony count from the managed colonies.” “Few of the feral colonies we tested were positive for B. larvae spores. Those that did test positive had very low spore counts compared with the samples taken from managed colonies with clinical symptoms of American foulbrood disease, suggesting that most of the feral colonies may not have been diseased at all.” Here in the USA: “…an examination (methods unspecified) of about 100 feral colonies (number unspecified) in Sussex, England, did not reveal any cases of American foulbrood disease, although it was present locally in managed colonies (Bailey 1958).” “Miller (1935) reported that, of the many feral colonies killed in Michigan, U.S.A., none were infected with American foulbrood disease, although 13% of the local beekeepers' colonies were infected.” Best Wishes, Joe ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:35:56 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello All, > To help bees, we too should do absolutely nothing. Hard to believe we still have got a few beekeepers of the above mindset. A few existed when the mites first arrived but after total outfits were wiped out Yoon is the first I have seen present the above viewpoint in many years. I guess we will have to "agree to disagree" > Left alone, the ferals may have now learned to coexist with mites, There is no proof of this. Only hypothesis. No way to document ferals so statements like the above are put forward. I have taken many ferals from buildings trying to find a survivor and in the end they all succumbed to mites when left alone over a time span. Many of these experiments are in the BEE-L archives. In a couple of the cases the home owners said the bees had been in the building for around five years continually. Once home I found one of my marked queens in each. Swarming away from mites/problems is also a bee survival mode. When the hive swarms at height of brood production only a small percentage of mites go with the swarm as most mites are in the cells or on nurse bees or in the area of brood production trying to enter cells. bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:47:05 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: George Fergusson Subject: Re: Science In-Reply-To: <46C01EF0.7090208@lineone.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dave Cushman wrote: > >> The sun rotated around the earth > > This was the 'best fit' observation, until it was noticed that the > planets moved oddly.. It's still a good fit! A modern astronomical ephemeris includes orbital elements for the sun, not the earth. As far as the practical astronomical calculator is concerned, the earth really is at the center of the solar system. I'm not sure what this means except perhaps that many old and erroneous ideas persist in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary, because they fit what we see happening. Sometimes, anecdotal evidence really does trump science. George- Whitefield, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:16:33 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "=?windows-1252?Q?J._Waggle?=" Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bob Harrison wrote: >> To help bees, we too should do absolutely nothing. …. Yoon is the first I have seen present the above viewpoint in many years. >I guess we will have to >"agree to disagree" Hello Bob, I interpret the statement to mean do nothing in the areas of propping them up with treatments and stimulants. ‘Good old fashioned breeding from your best stock’ as yourself and other breeders do I would think still applies here. I like the statement as Yoon may have intended it to be understood. ,,,I have taken many ferals from >buildings trying to find a survivor and in the end they all succumbed to >mites >when left alone over a time span. I have experienced this also, and it can be very discouraging. BUT I have found that ferals are not created equal. I have discovered that I need to assess the ferals and weed out on average 50% of the duds 'OR more' depending on remoteness of acquired ferals. THEN, get these 'selected best stock ferals' out into a separate apiary and away from the mite pressure from other domestic colonies ASAP. I have managed to establish a self-sustaining apiary of ferals by doing this. I believe Seeleys study of ferals in the Arnot Forrest illustrates that if you can get you best stock of honeybees off into a separate area AWAY from colonies with poor resistance, they will do much better with mite resistance at the colony level. Conversely, I attempted to establish self-sustaining colonies in another apiary where I assess newly acquired feral stock, by bringing in a daughter colony from my most preferred stock. Much the same as Seeley discovered, this colony seemed to loose its resistance and succumb to mites in 2 years. Best Wishes, Joe Waggle ~ Derry, PA ‘Bees Gone Wild Apiaries' FeralBeeProject.com ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:37:33 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bob Harrison Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello All, Randy said: >The point is then to kill off all queens of colonies that needed help the previous year, and only breed from those who didn't (or needed little). A quick look at commercial beekeeping: I monitor what I call "dinks" during the year. Each hive is rated on every visit. Then at the end of the season (or close to it) I kill off the queen and give the brood to another colony or simply depopulate if not up to my standards. I keep excellent genetics and switch queen sources every year from my suppliers. Out of a yard of 24 hives this morning I only put the hive tool to four first year queens. My worst yard this season has 7-8 needing culled. I do not keep a queen over two years. Only the best queens/hives are kept for winter. Many first year queens are done in and some second year queens are left alone. Because of supercedure I do not want drones from "dinks" in my yards. Almost all my queens are marked and many times I will cull supercedure queens in spring if not building like I think they should be. My system is my own design and unlike my commercial beekeeper friends. Once the season starts I do not try to solve a queen problem ( as too costly and time consuming) but simply note the problem and provide a solution at this time of year. "dinks" are counted when figuring average production but as long as enough bees in the hive to prevent pest problems I deal with at this time of year. The only time I leave a hive to die would be in a special yard looking for survivor queens but *now* I can buy those survivor genetics from Glenn Apiaries etc. ( most likely better than I could find in my own bees) so I keep each *production unit* ( hive) healthy (through IPM) and kept pest levels low. If starving I feed. If they need pollen I give pollen but I like moving onto other flows a better solution and well worth the fuel cost and labor involved. The above yard is ready for a move to fall flower sources. The bees were trying to rob the supers on the truck and were pulling down honey into the brood chamber from the bottom super. Two signs a move is needed to better forage . Management is the reason I make money at beekeeping. Leave alone beekeeping would be a disaster. Sincerely, Bob Harrison Ps. I will be at the Missouri State Beekeepers booth at the Missouri state fair ( air conditioned Agriculture building) all day tomorrow as will the owner of Bell Hill Honey. Stop by and talk bees! Bring your questions and pull up a chair and we will try to provide information. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:54:44 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Scot McPherson Organization: McPherson Family Farms Subject: Re: Science In-Reply-To: <46C0FB89.10005@sweettimeapiary.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Not quite. The planets always were noticed to move oddly and strange mathematic formulae were developed to predict their movement across the sky. Galeleo and Copernicus both tried to introduce the concept of a helio centric model, which was rejected at those times...at quite some cost or threat. The ephemeral charts do not describe the orbit of the sun around the earth, but rather where the sun should be relative to earthly perspective. An ephemeris for navigation and where to find objects in the sky if you are on the surface of the earth, where I presume you are. Scot McPherson McPherson Family Farms Davenport, IA ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 08:30:16 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: fulfilling the famous Einstein prophecy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline A pathogen, however mighty, clever, and enduring, cannot and must not and should not and will not wipe out its host completely, a self-defeating, self-anihilating process because its own survival depends on the very viability of its host. What is it going to eat when all the bees are gone? A cod? (They are pretty much gone, too) Just as in beekeeping, following nature, the pathogen must strike a sembiotic relationship with bees, never one side dominating the other; I am glad to see that so many people on this list believe in evolution, but there are a few aspects of evolution that seem to be overlooked in these discussions. One, evolution cannot move toward a goal. Nature does not have capacity to see into the future and create improved life forms in this manner. Certainly, something as simple as a mite has no ability to regulate itself in order to prevent the killing of the host. Over time, however, mites may be *selected* which do not kill the host. This is not a given, however. Plenty of parasites kill their hosts and perish with them. The point being: while varroa mites kill individual colonies, they obviously cannot kill off the species, as there are strains of honey bees that can coexist with the mites. The mites will not wipe out the whole honey bee population (fulfilling the famous Einstein prophecy). It could be that only tropical bees like Africans and Asians adequately hold down the mite populations. It is conceivable that Northern areas will have to continually restock their hives with bees from the South, but that's nothing new. * * * A parasitoid is an organism that spends a significant portion of its life history attached to or within a single host organism which *it ultimately kills* in the process. Thus they are similar to typical parasites except in the certain fate of the host. In a typical parasitic relationship, the parasite and host live side by side without lethal damage to the host. Typically, the parasite takes enough nutrients to thrive without preventing the host from reproducing. In a parasitoid relationship, the host is killed, normally before it can produce offspring. This type of relationship seems to occur only in organisms that have fast reproduction rates (such as insects or mites). Most biologists use the term parasitoids to refer only to insects with this type of life history, but some argue the term should be used more embrasively to include parasitic nematodes, seed weevils, and certain bacteria and viruses all of which obligately destroy their host. -- Peter L. Borst Danby, NY USA 42.35, -76.50 picasaweb.google.com/peterlborst ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:58:55 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: C Hooper Subject: Video: Bees Trained to Search Out Specific Scents MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Video: Bees Trained to Search Out Specific Scents Bees to Help Landmine Search http://apitherapy.blogspot.com/2007/08/video-bees-trained-to-search-out.html A new technique using honey bee to sniff out landmines is being developed in Croatia. View the video. The technique of training bees to search out specific scents is described by Russian scientist N. Yoirish in books such as "Curative Properties of Honey and Bee Venom." ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 08:47:45 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Cushman Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Eric > The clearest way to demonstrate this point is that if you take a nuc > comprised of two standard size frames and enlarge it to 3 frames by adding > a foundationless frame -- even if you first eliminate every last drone in > that nuc -- that 3rd frame will likely be drawn into nearly perfect worker > comb. This is a totally erroneous example, 3 frames is not a colony, it is even smaller than most swarms or casts, so it's first priority for survival is more worker brood, which it will produce until it becomes a viable 'stand alone' colony. Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:35:49 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Cushman Subject: Re: fulfilling the famous Einstein prophecy In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Peter > Over time, however, mites may be *selected* which > do not kill the host. I am not knocking what you say, but for the selection process to work, we need variability in offspring and Varroa are essentially clonal in their reproduction, so the only variations that exist are a few chance ones due to atomic particle collisions in egg DNA. But my glass is still half full and I would like to see bee colonies kept rather closer to the knife edge, being more heavily challenged by varroa than they are with hard chemicals or high percentage knock down methods. So that at least the chances are more in our favour. Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 09:41:49 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Peter L. Borst" Subject: A Nuc is not a colony MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dave Cushman wrote: >This is a totally erroneous example, 3 frames is not a colony Correct, of course. Langstroth coined the term "nucleus" -- shortened to nuc -- to refer to a minimum amount of bees that can be used to begin a new colony. A nuc does everything in its power to reach the critical mass that the colony needs to survive. Just what size that is was studied at length by Tom Seeley and described in his paper: > The natural honey bee nest was studied in detail to better understand the honey bee's natural living conditions. To describe the nest site we made external observations on 39 nests in hollow trees. We collected and dissected 21 of these tree nests to describe the nest architecture. Nest cavities are vertically elongate and approximately cylindrical. Most are 30 to 60 liters in volume (median volume = 45 liters*) and at the base of trees. > We studied in detail only nests in hollow trees. Because we considered nests in man-made structures as unnatural and open air nests as atypical, we did not examine these nests in detail. We encountered nests in many man-made and two other natural nest sites besides tree cavities. Man-made sites included walls of buildings, chimneys, birdhouses, a barrel, an ironstove, an overturned armchair, and wooden boxes. Two other natural sites were a cave and open tree branches. * Believe it or not, this is the size of the Langstroth hive! An ordinary hive body set on a bottom board has a capacity of about 2730 cubic inches or 45 liters. Seeley went on to use this fact in building bait hives. He simply used ordinary hive bodies with plywood nailed on top and bottom and a hole bored in the end. SEE: THE NEST OF THE HONEY BEE By T. D. SEELEY and R. A. MORSE lnsectes Sociaux, Paris. 1976. Tome 23 ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:00:56 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Ruary Rudd Subject: Re: CCD in Ferals? swarm identification MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="Windows-1252"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit But isn't this what we have been hearing for years AFB is a disease which is hard to infect a colony, beekeepers, however are very good at doing just that! Ruary ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:16:40 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "Timothy C. Eisele" Subject: Re: fulfilling the famous Einstein prophecy In-Reply-To: <46C1AFB5.2070906@lineone.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dave Cushman wrote: > I am not knocking what you say, but for the selection process to work, > we need variability in offspring and Varroa are essentially clonal in > their reproduction, so the only variations that exist are a few chance > ones due to atomic particle collisions in egg DNA. I don't think this is necessarily true, because if you get *two* Varroa mites entering a single cell, then the male offspring of each one can mate with the female offspring of the other, so there is some opportunity for genetic mixing to go on. It's just that this opportunity for genetic mixing mostly happens when the mite population is pretty high. -- Tim Eisele tceisele@mtu.edu ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:40:05 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: =?windows-1252?Q?Eric_Brown?= Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >This is a totally erroneous example, 3 frames is not a colony, it is >even smaller than most swarms or casts, so it's first priority for >survival is more worker brood, which it will produce until it becomes a >viable 'stand alone' colony. How is that an "erroneous example"? What's the total error? In my example I didn't even call a 3-frame nuc a "colony," and I really don't see (nor am I trying to open a discussion as to) why it matters whether you do or don't want to. The facts of what that nuc will do are as you confirmed above. The facts aren't erroneous, so what is? The fact is honeybees can be manipulated to draw approximately 100% worker comb. Honeybees can also be manipulated to draw at least 30-35% drone comb. My point was that there are all sorts of exceptions to the 15% rule. I purposefully gave as extreme an example as I could think of such that the point would be unambiguous. Obviously, we could come up with all manner of intermediate examples, too. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:52:17 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Cushman Subject: Re: A Nuc is not a colony In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Peter Changing the subject a little... > (median volume = 45 liters*) > * Believe it or not, this is the size of the Langstroth hive! An > ordinary hive body set on a bottom board has a capacity of about 2730 > cubic inches or 45 liters. Similarly the size of BS brood chamber, although smaller in volume than a Langstroth one, is perfectly suited to the bees that it was designed to house (AMM), I would have expected in Langstroth's time that there was still a high proportion of AMM genes in US bees, as the deliberate selection against them was mainly throughout the 1900s, so would the box have been too big at the time of inception ? I have been lead to understand that the Langstroth box was based on the size of available candle boxes or champagne crates rather than any experiments as to suitability. Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:58:06 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Cushman Subject: Re: fulfilling the famous Einstein prophecy In-Reply-To: <46C1B948.3030506@mtu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Timothy > if you get *two* Varroa > mites entering a single cell, then the male offspring of each one can > mate with the female offspring of the other, so there is some > opportunity for genetic mixing to go on. It's just that this opportunity > for genetic mixing mostly happens when the mite population is pretty high. Unfortunately the varroa mites throughout the colony are so closely related that they are effectively clones, so even if two do enter a cell there is no genetic mixing, because the all the males and all the females exhibit the same genes. Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:07:22 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bill Truesdell Subject: Re: fulfilling the famous Einstein prophecy In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter L. Borst wrote: > A pathogen, however mighty, clever, and enduring, cannot and must not and > should not and will not wipe out its host completely, a self-defeating, > self-anihilating process because its own survival depends on the very > viability of its host. What is it going to eat when all the bees are > gone? This assumes that a parasite is specific to one and only one host. If it can go to other species, it can wipe out one of them and still survive very well on the other. The other problem with this is that it is not the Varroa that does the killing but the virus. Varroa have little control over them, since they start with the bee. It is the virus that the bee has to be able to control to survive. Birds in the NE US are declining at a fairly high rate because of West Nile virus. Virus tend to operate in cycles since they kill off most hosts until the host population grows large enough for the virus to spread. Since bees are already in that state every year, virus will tend to kill more bees off more often. Add that many bacterial diseases can remain dormant for long periods so they also care little about their host. Virus can cross species, so they are also not on the "only want to get along" list. Neither has read what they are supposed to do. There are some interesting papers on "the balance of nature" that argue, persuasively, that it is a myth. Nature is never in balance otherwise we nor any other species would exist, since nature would have been in balance and all would stop with single cell organisms, if it even got that far. It would be nice to assume that a host/pathogen relationship would exist to allow a species to survive, but the extinction record does not bear it out. Lot of fossils out there. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:11:22 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: "waldig@netzero.com" Subject: Re: A Nuc is not a colony Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I'd say that a nuc is or can be a self-sustaining colony if a colony is defined as a laying queen with a bunch of brood and workers on comb. Sure they will cast many crowding swarms but they are likely to do well and overwinter in many locales. >>We studied in detail only nests in hollow trees. Because we considered nests in man-made structures as unnatural... Man-made structures may not be natural but I've removed colonies from spaces smaller than a nuc. I always marvel and try to study, at least superficially, how the bees adopted their nest to their unnatural cavity. Their decision-making process is most interesting. For instance, unnatural cavities make thermodynamic control often more challenging -- bees will often build buffering curved combs in sections that prove particularly drafty. Dormer structures often result in the most intricate nests. One had the combs spiraling around various rafter and jack beams up towards the ridge... What teamwork! [And what a long, nightmarish removal! :)] Waldemar ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:42:56 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Dave Cushman Subject: Re: using a frame without any foundation In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Eric Your original statement... > The clearest way to demonstrate this point is that if you take a > nuc comprised of two standard size frames and enlarge it to 3 > frames by adding a foundationless frame You made it to illustrate what a colony may or may not do when a gap was made in it's nest structure, it is not a valid statement to make in the context of the thread, that is why I called it "a totally erroneous example", no malice or flaming involved, the statement itself is true, but not relevant to the case under discussion. Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:38:01 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Russ Dean Subject: moving hives alone? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Most have used a wheelbarrow to move stuff including beehives. But I've taken the bucket part off and made a flat wooden rack to mount in it's place. On MY hives stand it's ideal to get under the edge of a hive and scoop up a hive to move. I've not done it with a real heavy hive since this is the proto type. (Made out of an OLD wheelbarrow) But thought you might want to make one. Russ Dean _WV Beekeepers Home Page_ (http://www.wvbeekeepers.org/) ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:41:19 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Russ Dean Subject: Re: [ML] honey question MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I hadn't thought about it but those little pills or balls are pollen. But I suggest getting it from a local beekeeper. The more local the better. And from what I hear it take a while before it starts helping. So need to take it each day from what I'm told. But it is good for you. Russ Dean _WV Beekeepers Home Page_ (http://www.wvbeekeepers.org/) ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:19:37 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Peter Edwards Subject: Re: fulfilling the famous Einstein prophecy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Timothy wrote: > I don't think this is necessarily true, because if you get *two* Varroa > mites entering a single cell, then the male offspring of each one can mate > with the female offspring of the other... This is irrelevant in a clonal animal as the *two* mites will carry the same genes. Best wishes Peter Edwards beekeepers@stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk www.stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk/ ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ****************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:53:45 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: BEE-L@listserv.albany.edu From: Bruce Raver Subject: need source for 12 oz. flat panel bear label SHEETS MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm looking for 8.5" x 11" SHEETS of blank, white, self-adhesive laser (or ink jet) labels that are 1.5" x 2.25" for use on flat-panel 12-oz. bears. I am not interested in the pre-printed labels available through Betterbee or other such sources, and have already checked Avery, Staples & OfficeMax. I know that I could also print multiple label images on the sheets where one label covers the entire 8.5" x 11" page then cut out the individual labels, but I'd prefer not to have to do that. Does anyone have any leads? Thanks. B. Raver ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************