========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 12:52:54 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andy Nachbaur Subject: Re: Using BEE-L postings in a local beekeeping publication In-Reply-To: <199810211545.IAA10888@mx1.thegrid.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 08:34 AM 10/21/98 -0800, you wrote: All of this tread may seem far from the inside of your bee hives but it is of great concern to me and others who are now or for the future wantabee INTERNET BEE KEEPERS, in a new century form for beekeeping. I have trashed several of my long posts on this subject since the tread started and I am happy to see in this group several people who really have a handle on what copyrights are all about and will try to add the Internet connection here. Please excuse if this effort is less then adequate but this is a subject that has in the past filled many hard drives with information and because its requires a translation from legalese to plain English there are many directions or paths that can be followed. In a few words its "mind boggling!" >"Fair use" is another issue, and kind of sticky. Fair use usually only >applies to select passages of a work. Small ones. You'd have a very >hard time arguing that reproducing an entire posting from the net >counted as fair use. FAIR USE, Is being argued today in court in the city of Lost Angeles as we discus it., A big national billion $$$ newspaper corporation vs FREE REPUBLIC, http://209.67.114.212/forum/t1000208.htm a Internet forum with a conservative bent and $500.00 total income (1997) and about one million readers a month. I believe the readership is the problem or basis for these suites such as THE DRUDGE REPORT, sixteen million visitors a month, http://www.drudgereport.com/ ,both take away from the visits to the so called main stream news sites and they want to stop it at any cost. One way to do this is by using the copyright laws which are always a contentious issue in our court system. Interesting even if not part of the Free Republic's case is the individuals who are being sued are both very active in conservative causes, skilled in Internet programing, from Fresno, Calif., and both live as normal and very skilled a life as they can from the confines of wheel chairs. Other copyright issues are also current including the US federal law extensions of copyright protections to years (50) after a author dies which has caused on the net a black out of some Internet free press sites in protest, some are still black today. Try reading Maeterlink "Life of the Bee" at http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/mm/b.html .. Both of these should concern all who use the Internet but as a blooming web master I am more concerned maybe then the average user and having been involved in one suite myself for what I have written in the past know a little more about protecting myself then most would want to know but far from everything. In the first filing for the FREE REPUBLIC case a loss of income is alleged. What is interesting is that in the short history of Internet journalism no one has made a profit including the complainants who do charge for "archives" but not for access to their public news web sites. In pretrial correspondence they offered that if URL's were provided, with the text, from their sites no cause for action would be made. (the FAIR USE standard liberalized) >If you want to reuse someone's posting in any medium other than the list >or newsgroup, net or otherwise, then ask the original poster for >permission. Its as simple as that. You certainly won't fall afoul of any >laws that way, and its the safe, ethical, *nice* thing to do. Safe is always better then sorry and I would add that the re use with permission does NOT give up any copyrights of the holder. All should be aware that some sites on the Internet do require posters to surrender their copyrights and these should be avoided by those who value their copyrights. ttul, Andy- Los Banos, Ca (not Canada) http://beenet.com/bnews.htm ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 07:49:08 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andrew & Tiffany Dubas Subject: Re: wintering MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit -----Original Message----- From: Paolo Bentivoglio To: BEE-L@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU Date: Wednesday, October 21, 1998 5:24 PM Subject: wintering >I am a new beekeeper in west central New Hampshire who has been reading with >great interest the debate on wintering bees with or without insulation. A >local old timer has recommended to me a winter box filled with three inches of >wood shavings around the hive. I would love to hear of others experiences >Thank you >Paolo Bentivoglio > I have about 70 colonies about 45 minutes north of Philadelphia and I've been keeping bees since 1985 in this area and never once wrapped my hives. and I picked up 40 or so hives 2 years ago that were in bad shape the bees were fine but the boxes were at least 30 years old , holes all over the place. some fairly large and today some are still like that and I have not lost any in the winter due to them being cold. God has created a Fine insect :) as long as they have enough honey to last,and some ventilation they'll do just fine. now I know that if I was a hobbyist and only had 1-5 colonies I probably would wrap them just for the enjoyment of taking care of the ladies. as long as the wrapping did not cut off all the vents needed to remove any condensed moisture that may collect in the hive. you decide, they will fair either way :) enjoy your day. Andrew ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:10:59 GMT+0100 Reply-To: Anthony.Morgan@iet.hist.no Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Anthony Morgan Organization: HiST/AIN/IET Subject: Drone Brood In the Spring MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Hei! Here in mid-Norway we are dependent upon pollen being available from hybrid willows that flower early for a rapid spring colony build up. I should add here that virtually without exception all colonies are Carniolan. It is normal here to help the colonies to start their expansion by giving patties of sugar-soya flour. Nobody I know collects or buys pollen for this purpose. The results are somewhat variable, some colonies do not seem to use the patties at all. Occasionally a large proportion of the earliest brood is drones (in worker cells sealed with a domed cap). At a recent meeting an experienced beekeeper attributed the occurence of large quantities of such drone brood to the use of the soya patties and said he now never used them but instead saved up frames with large amounts of stored pollen taken out during rutine hive inspections and put these into the hives before winter feeding so that the bees "found" stored pollen available in the spring. In itself this seems like a good idea. Comments? But what about the soya patties results in drone brood idea, is there any connection or is it just that opening up the hive to put a patty in chills the queen? Or is there some other reason for the production of early drone brood? (other than a failing queen that is) cheers Tony ------------------------------------------------------ Anthony N Morgan, Forsteammanuensis Institutt for Elektroteknikk Hogskolen i Sor-Trondelag N-7005 Trondheim, Norway anthony@iet.hist.no Tlf. 73 55 96 04 Fax. 73 55 95 81 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 11:39:14 +0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Rimantas Zujus Subject: Re: Wax and Microwaves Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-4" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Beefriends I'd like to remind you how the microwaves (MW) heat. MW is a high frequency electromagnetic (EM) field. Every EM field induces the same frequency electric current in any conductor placed inside the field. Flowing electric current heats the conductor. The heating ability depends on the power of the EM field (i.e. MW oven power), and the electroconductivity of your foodstuff. The best electroconductors are metals. They are too good (DANGEROUS !) to be placed in your oven. Usually your food is wet. Pure water isn't good electroconductor. The chemical combinations ( salts, acids,...) raise the electroconductivity and therefore the MW oven works. The lower the electrconductivity, the deeper electric current penetrates into a conductor. A current in the metals flow only on their surface. Conclusion: 1. Dried foodstuff (evaporated), electric insulators ( pure wax among them) can't be heated (from the practical point of view). 2. Low degree electric conductors (wet food) are heaten all volume simultaneously. 3. Metal (metalized) stuff damages your MW oven. 4. A case with bee wax confirms this theory - you must add some water. Good luck As electronic engineer in this case :) Rimantas Zujus Kaunas LITHUANIA e-mail : zujus@isag.lei.lt http://www.online.lt/indexs.htm http://www.lei.lt 55 North, 24 East ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 23:26:58 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andy Nachbaur Subject: USA HONEY LOAN INFO Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Please pardon this commercial announcement but I have news of interest to all US beekeepers who have not sold their 1998 honey crop. The details from the FARM BILL I have found, down loaded (all 4000 pages), searched, copied and added to the beekeeping news page at my web site in total the part pertaining to honey loans. No copyrights involved here as this government information is ours to use as we want. Surprise, it was disappointing small,...both in print and duration of the program which is only one year. I could put it all in the space I have used here but some may not want to read it and I want all to get used to checking my web pages for the latest news so when I need bail money some of you will not forget all the good beenews you found first on my web site. http://beenet.com/bnews.htm Also want to pass on the news that "all copyrights have been extend 20 years" by a midnight change of the law. I am not sure anymore if that extends the copyright time to 60 years or what, but those who are publishers will know soon enough and its effect remains to be seen, or maybe less will be seen later rather then sooner. ttul, the OLd Drone PS/// I went to post this and found my IP was constipated or something or my wonderful winds of 98 duel modem connection is plugging up so you will not see it right away. (c)Permission is given to copy this document in any form, or to print for any use. (w)OPINIONS are not necessarily facts. USE AT OWN RISK! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 21:09:19 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Bill Truesdell Subject: copyright and the list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It struck me, when reading the informative and helpful responses to my post on use of info from this group in our beekeeping newsletters, that we all often use the quote feature of our browsers when posting. Since we do not have the permission of the origional poster, are we in violation of copyright laws? It would seem so, based on what has been posted so far, but there must be a legal reason why it is not a violation of law. If there is a reason, then how does it differ when using the exact same quotes in a non-profit newsletter if used in the same way as a statement and commentary? Would appreciate legal experts comments. Bill Truesdell Bath, ME -- If there is a zz before clinic.net, remove it to reply directly. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 08:43:17 +0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Rimantas Zujus Subject: Re: "Bee bee" Tree Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-4" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Peter Dalby & All It must be an usefull tree. What is a limut of the area to north? Rimantas Zujus Kaunas LITHUANIA e-mail : zujus@isag.lei.lt http://www.online.lt/indexs.htm http://www.lei.lt 55 North, 24 East ...the botanists have now renamed it Tetradia daniellii >I have a supply of trees available in England. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 21:05:13 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Bill Bartlett Subject: poem Comments: To: apitherpy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This poem was forwarded to me. I thought it was appropriate for this list. billy bee End Notes for a Small History Betty Lies "Southern Poetry Review" Summer 1998 Vol. XXXVlll No. 1 page 33 When the last bee died, nobody noticed. Nobody put on black or made a dirge for the death of honey. Nobody wrote an elegy to apricots, no one mourned for cherries. When the last bee died, everyone was busy. They had things to do, drove straight to work each morning, straight back home each night. The roads all seriously hummed. Besides, the pantries were still packed with cans of fruit cocktail in heavy srup, deep deep freezers full of concentrated grape and orange juice, stores stocked with artificial flavoring. When the last bee died, nobody saw the poppies winking out, nobody cried for burdock, yarrow, wild delphinium. Now and again a child would ask for dandelions, quickly shushed: That pest! And everyone is fine. The children healthy, radish-cheeked. They play she love me/not with Savoy cabbage leaves, enjoy the telling of the great myths, peach and peony. No one believes in apples any more. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 08:36:08 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "(Thomas) (Cornick)" Subject: Re: wintering Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/22/98 7:58:56 AM Eastern Daylight Time, dubees@ENTER.NET writes: > > >local old timer has recommended to me a winter box filled with three inches > of > >wood shavings around the hive When I visited some beekeepers in Maine they had a super filled with shavings and screened on the bottom on top of the hive bodies. They claimed it served as a moisture and condensation reducer. It probably insulates pretty well also. Tom in CT ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 08:18:21 -0400 Reply-To: lacelle@sympatico.ca Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Paul Lacelle Subject: Re: wintering MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Paolo Bentivoglio wrote: > > I am a new beekeeper in west central New Hampshire who has been reading with > great interest the debate on wintering bees with or without insulation. A > local old timer has recommended to me a winter box filled with three inches of > wood shavings around the hive. I would love to hear of others experiences > Thank you > Paolo Bentivoglio -- Hi Paolo;I have been in the bee business for only five years and have wintered my hives with and without insulation.Both work fine depending on where your hives are located.I do use a plywood box filled with 3"shavings when wintering nucs.I simply set it on top of my regular hive and fill it up with shavings.But insulation or not if the bees have enough winter food they will do fine.Try and keep them in a location where there out of the wind.Paul. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 09:13:02 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Rick Hough Subject: Bee Pictures on the Net -Reply Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Ross Peters asked about web sites w/photos to help diagnose colony problems.... Check out the Educational Materials section of http://apicultureNE.cas.psu.edu/ - Maryann, Jennifer & Scott have put up some GREAT pictures. Rick Hough, rshough@tasc.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 15:41:04 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Re: Pollen and allergies Hi All Ken asked about the mechanism of how eating honey with a bit of pollen in it, from ones area may reduce hayfever symptoms. Lloyd, Robert, Barbara, Tim, Ted, Stan, all mentioned a bit about this. I would like to add mine. Pollen mainly causes allergies through it's accidental germination in the nasal cavities, as well as the lungs if things go wrong, where it, being a small specialised plant grows out a pollen tubule in search of a femal egg to fertilize. This it does not find, but it does often find a blood vessel or some tissue into which is grows and is eventually popped by certain unspecific immune reponses - releasing all sorts of foreign particles into the blood stream and tissue. Your body becomes sensitive and develops a response to this. The response is due to a range of cells that produce the allergic response antibodies, IgE's - which are in much lower concentrations to others like the IgG's which usually get rid of most infections. If one eats a lot of pollen - even a teaspoon full of honey will have million times more pollen than a room full of air - about what we filter a day - your body is posed with a huge exposure to pollen particles that do the hayfever thing all the way down your throat. In some people this makes them throw up - my girlfriend cannot eat bluegum honey. I have to give her honey from the desert where no bluegums grow. I cannot use a super that has had eucalyptus honey in it otherwise she gets nauseus - a strong allergic response. However, for most of us, the exposure to lots of pollen makes us develop a population of cells producing IgG to that stuff, as well as special cells which control the cells which release histamine - and the allergy goes away. Just like exposure to a cold for two weeks make's it go away, and so does flu and everything else. One just has to watch out for conmen during this time period. Alternatively, one can go and have 'this or that pollen' desensitization shots - administered by doctors who are educated in institutions that would close down if it were not for the 'donations' they recieved from the pharmaceutical companies - ie doctors are told - if somebody has hayfever give them celestamine and desensitizing shots at 1% of their anuual income or whatever. The celestamine will cause possible permanent psychological problems if taken for too long, and the expense will as well. Honey on the other hand is cheap and nobody gets royalties for it except us beekeepers who are not important as a tax base at all - and we don't donate millions to universities that train doctors. So my answer - yes sell people honey as an antidote to hayfever. If it does not work, at least it won't damage their brains like antihistamines do - even although these don't really work either!! Keep well Garth Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:39:44 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "(Thomas) (Cornick)" Subject: Re: Pollen and allergies Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/22/98 10:04:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time, g95c6713@WARTHOG.RU.AC.ZA writes: > So my answer - yes sell people honey as an antidote to hayfever. If > it does not work, at least it won't damage their brains like > antihistamines do - even although these don't really work either!! > I tell my customers that I can't prove that honey works for allergy relief. I also tell them that it tastes better than bennedryl or sudafed and that the drug companies won't make anything from it because it is food. Tom in CT ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:55:38 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "Bozard, Charles Emmett (Mick)" Subject: BEE BEE TREE MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" HI EVERYBODY, MARVIN WALKER PUT A GREAT POST OUT ON THE BEE BEE TREE (EVODIA "TETRADIUM" DANIELLII) AND THANKS FOR IT ! AND NOW WE GOT SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TREE 1. HOW TALL DOES IT GROW 2. HOW BIG AROUND 3. WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE 4. DOES IT COME IN DIFFERENT COLORS, ETC 5. PLEASE POST A FULL SCOOP ON IT PLEASE, THANKS A LOT FROM SOUTH CAROLINA ! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 08:02:20 -0700 Reply-To: ryarnell@orednet.org Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Richard Yarnell Subject: Re: copyright and the list By no means do I consider myself an expert on the subject. However, two points come to mind: 1) The reply function on most mail programs identifies the source of "quoted" material. The best ones name the original poster and date of the post. They also, by convention, mark the source material with ">." 2) As the net gets faster, and as users deal with more and more material, the convention of deleting most of the quoted material saving only enough to make the response meaningful (I'll try to do it below) smacks of the fair use provisions. This having been said, most people post/respond in a news group or on a list server knowing they are entering into a dialogue. It is one thing to post and respond in the context of the newsgroup/listserve and another to find that your material has been removed from that site and transferred to another medium or another site. The first is voluntary and the second is not. [As I write this, I notice that this mail server, while marking the original post, does not carry the "from" line into the body of the reply. The news reader supplied by this internet provider does a better job of identifying the original post.] Bill Truesdale wrote: >...we all often use the quote feature of our browsers when posting. Since >we do not have the permission of the origional poster, are we in >violation of copyright laws?... >Bill Truesdell >Bath, ME -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 05:09:01 -1000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Pat Franklin Subject: Re: Uli's Gold MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just Watched Uli's Gold again. Does anyone know who makes the great hive loader on the truck Uli used? Thanks, Pat Franklin pat@aloha.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 08:52:33 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Adrian Wenner Subject: Pigeon and bee homing Comments: cc: beekeeping.guide@miningco.com, Leo.Turley.lturley@net1.nw.com.au, Leo.Turley.lturley@net1.nw.com.au, greenber@WSUHUB.UC.TWSU.EDU, buchmann@tucson.ars.ag.gov Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sherry Medders asked for input, as follows: >Leo Turley asked: I am currently dealing with the homing ability of >pigeons and >there has been >many studies of this complicated process and it has now occurred to me that >the process used by bees to locate their hive if very likely to be the same, >or a similar process as used by pigeons. The thought has occurred to me that >Bee Keepers may have struck on the solution through working on a miniature >scale >and with what certainly appears to be with a great deal more >scientific study >than has been devoted to the pigeon homing aspect. I >was wondering if you would >be kind enough to point me in the right direction for any articles on >the subject (assuming there are such articles) relating to the homing >ability of bees. Leo Turley lturley@net1.nw.com.au ******** Just about every hypothesis under the sun has now been proposed to account for the homing ability of pigeons and honey bees. William Keeton obtained some experimental results that he published in 1956. From those results he concluded that pigeons could orient by means of the Earth's magnetic field. He himself could never obtain similar results, and he died before he managed to publish a retraction. B.R. Moore obtained all of Keeton's results from the widow and did a comprehensive re-examination of the problem. By combining all of Keeton's results, the statistical significance in favor of magnetic orientation had disappeared. See: Moore, B.R. 1988. Magnetic fields and orientation in homing pigeons: Experiments of the late W.T. Keeton. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 85:4907-4909. Once a hypothesis like that gets entrenched, though, it may well remain in the popular literature for decades --- despite publication such as that of Moore. Just two weeks ago, about three-fourths of the thousands of homing pigeons engaged in a competition got lost, according to accounts I read in two newspspers. ********* An excellent study examined honey bee homing behavior: Edward E. Southwick and Stephen L. Buchmann. 1995. Effects of horizon landmarks on homing success in honey bees. The American Naturalist. 146:748-764. The beginning sentence of their abstract reads as follows: "A hypothesis is proposed and field data presented indicating that in long-distance navigation, honey bee foragers use horizon landmarks to determine the direction of their home site." Adrian Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home phone) 967 Garcia Road (805) 893-8062 (UCSB FAX) Santa Barbara, CA 93106 ************************************************************************ * "...in the drift of the years I by and by found out that a Consensus * * examines a new [idea] with its feelings rather oftener than with its * * mind. You know, yourself, that is so. Do those people examine with * * feelings that are friendly to evidence? You know they don't." * * * * Mark Twain * ************************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 09:39:13 +0000 Reply-To: pkoski@muse.sfusd.k12.ca.us Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Paul Koski Organization: Washington High School Subject: Re: Beekeeping in SF Bay Area MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Laura Lemay asked about beekeeping in SF Bay Area. You can contact Paul Koski, current Pres. San Francisco Beekeepers Association for referrals. Email him at the From address of this message. PAUL ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 09:24:15 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andy Nachbaur Subject: DING HOW ///Get your strips from China? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" FYI...Still waiting for a honest broker scientific report on these cheep strips. Have no personal knowledge but for some reason I do believe they are about the size of queen tabs...hope I am rong again and this is a real good deal for everyone. Maybee we could get them to load up one of those rockets we helped them with and have a quick backyard delivery. ttul, Andy- Ripped off without permission from the sci.agr.beekeeing group: On Wed, 21 Oct 1998 00:53:01 -0500, Elroy Rogers wrote: >> > An ad in the latest ABJ said to check varroa.com. So I did as I was told >> > and went to: >> > http://www.varroa.com >> > Lo and behold the Chinese are selling fluvalinate strips for less than >> > $.40 US each. >Well this is good news for the little guy! If I was into the apistan thing I >would sure be gettin over there to varroa.com. These US chemical companies >ripped us off long enough the only way to breakup the monopoly on apistan is >to go elsewhere for awhile, then watch the price fall. BEEWARE, Chinese chemical belong to same Tong as Swiss or US chemical companies. >As far as testing I would mind spending $40 per 100 strips versus $160 per 100 >strips, I think I could test em just as good as the so called pros. What I >would do is order from both sources and find out which works the best. But the >I don't use apistan or other chemicals in any of my 80 colonies. The mineral >oil has worked for me for two years now, by the way last spring I only had 28 >colonies. I am with all who would save money but this OLd Drone learned long ago if the price is too good to be true, its not. It could be that any beekeeper could take a strip and cut it into 10 or 20 small strips and cut his costs. And it might even work, maybe we should try this as we wait for our packages from China to clear coustoms. Gosh and these strips are what size? I want to beelieve, but I have little trust in products from China today, or what they have to say, and personally would not trust them with my credit card numbers so I wait to hear of others good fortune, As they say in China, Ding How! or Whoo Flung daa Dung? ttul, the OLd Drone Los Banos, Ca (not Canada) http://beenet.com (c)Permission is given to copy this document in any form, or to print for any use. (w)OPINIONS are not necessarily facts. USE AT OWN RISK! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 11:17:50 -0700 Reply-To: pbc@teleport.com Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Paul Cauthorn Organization: Cascadia Hop Company Subject: Re: Uli's Gold MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I believe it's a Paine loader. I don't think they're made anymore, but there are still a bunch around. Does anyone know of any companies that currently make good hive loaders? Paul Cauthorn Bee Friendly Pat Franklin wrote: > Just Watched Uli's Gold again. Does anyone know who makes the great hive > loader on the truck Uli used? > Thanks, Pat Franklin > pat@aloha.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 13:54:41 -0400 Reply-To: dublgully@worldnet.att.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: David Gaida Subject: Fw: Modification of Barry's recipe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ---------- > > I used Barry's recipe a number of times. Tastes great. I couldn't get it > to firm up enough to take it to meetings without the refrigeration. So I > covered the taffy with chocolate. I have both dipped the refrigerated > taffy into chocolate using melted chocolate coatings and a toothpick. I > have also put a glop of melted chocolate coating into a candy paper cup, > then a glop of taffy, then another glop of chocolate to cover. > > Everyone says these are the best. > > Judy in Kentucky, USA ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 20:26:22 PDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Ernest Gregoire Subject: Lady Bugs keeping warm in hive MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hello Gang, A slew of lady bugs have gathered under the screened inner cover in my hives. They can not get in due to the screen on the inner cover hole. I assume they are just trying to find a warm home for the winter. Aphids are about the same size as Varoa mites, do you think that these Lady Bugs will eat Varoa? de AA1IK, Time the accursed enemy of man, cursed by youth for going to slow Ernie Gregoire and by the old for going to fast. R.R. 1, Box 221, South Rd. Beekeeper Canaan, NH. 03741 Fly fisher & tier, Promise Keeper. E-mail address: gregoire@endor.com packet address: AA1IK@WA1WOK.FN43FE.NH.USA.NA ------------------------------------- 10/19/98 20:26:22 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 14:46:44 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Lloyd Spear Subject: Ladybugs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ernie asks "Aphids are about the same size as Varoa mites, do you think that these Lady Bugs will eat Varoa?" Dream on...On the other hand, why not let the Ladybugs in and find out? It is for certain they won't hurt your bees. Let's see, fluvalinate should be pulled by now in NH, but even if it isn't, what I recall of the chemical makeup tells me that it will not hurt ladybugs. Neither should essential oils. While it is a different species than we have in the East, just think of the millionaires there will be in Calif. if they determine that the clustering ladybugs they have out there will eat varroa! Lloyd LloydSpear@email.msn.com Owner, Ross Rounds(tm) the finest in comb honey production. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 21:34:20 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Symbiotic Bacteria in Bees produce antibiotics Hi All Stumbled accross the following in the J. Applied and Environ. Microbiology, June 1994, p. 2164-2167 Bacillus DNA in fossil bees: an ancient symbiosis Raul Cano, Monica Borucki, Mary Higby Schweitzer, Hendrik Poinar, George Poinar, Kerri Pollard. Abstract: (note - translated afterwards) We report here the isolation of DNA from abdominal tissue of four extinct stingless bees in dominican amber, PCR amplification of a 564 bp fragment of the 16s rRNA gene from the Bacillus spp. and the corresponding nucleotide sequences. These sequences were used in basic local alignment search tool searches of non redundant nucleic acid data bases, and the highest scores were obtained with 16s rRNA sequences from bacillus spp. Phylogenetic inference analysis by the maximum likelihood method revealed close phylogenetic relationships of the four presumed ancient bacillus sequences with B.pumilus, firmus, subtilus and cirulans. These four extant Bacillus spp. are commonly isolated from abdominal tissue of stingless bees. The close phylogenetic association of the extracted DNA sequences with these bee colonizers suggest that a similar bee-bacillus association existed in the extinct species P.dominicana. In plain english what this says is they got a fossil stingless bee, took the DNA out Jurassic park style, used a special but routine enzyme technique to amplify the DNA so they had enough to work with. They then plonked it into a machine that told them the DNA sequence. They found a peice that codes for the ribosome - the thing that tranlates information into protein. If this mutates much it results in loss of the ability to make protein - hence it mutates very slowly.( As humans, despite the variation in us our ribosomal RNA is pretty much the same). So 16sRNA is important for identifying and they were able to show that this ancient bacteria is similar to the ones that live in our bee guts now by comparing the sequences for percentage difference. Legally I cannot reproduce the rest of the text, so I will summarize it.(it would also take ages to type) They mention that most bees have symbiotic relationships with Bacillus species(bacteria). These are reported to help with digestion and fermentation of pollen and food provisions, protection of food storages from microbial degradation, production of antibiotcs!!, and disease prevention. The bacteria reside in the abdomen of the workers. Apparently in 338 honeybees examined 110 Bacillus isolates were obtained belonging to 13 species. (I predict these were alcohol preserved as when I have streaked out bee guts I got more than 110 isolates from one little piece of bee gut). The bacteria quoted in the abstract were dominant. It is also mentioned that the bacteria were found in the haemolymph, trachea, and digestive tracts of the workers (healthy workers). The amber samples were 40 million years old. So, my question is, given that bees have had these symbioses for at least 40 million years, and that the bacterial species involved are pretty much the same animals now as they were then, are we being really stupid feeding an antibiotic that kills Bacillus spp. to our bees as a prophylactic treatment when it is not always neccessary? Could the North American problem with nosema be because the natural defence ecosystem in the guts of the bees has been denuded by years of bacterial decimation? Could the success of the tracheal mites and varroa bee because these defensless bees were so 'tasty' as they had none of the bacillus species in them any more?? Just some thoughts. Antibiotics always remind me of using a herbicide - if you spray a herbicide on a forest it kills everything - but only the weeds grow back. Keep well Garth Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 14:05:55 -0400 Reply-To: dublgully@worldnet.att.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: David Gaida Subject: US Farm Program MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just got a call from a local beekeeper(?). Said he had bought a hive in the spring but really didn't like them. So he was just gonna let them swarm or something. Then he heard on Rush Limbaugh that the US gov't was going to pay beekeepers $100,000 for each hive they would keep. Each year. He called us because he figured it would be a good idea to save the bees and could we come and look at them for him. The box was sitting on the ground. Weeds were growing up all around, including in front of the entrance. There was only one single brood box. No one had opened the hive since they were put in in May. Lots of healthy bees. About 9 frames of capped honey and some pollen. The bees were beginning to fill the brood combs with honey as soon as the bees came out. We suggested that the bees should definitely be treated for diseases and mites. They appeared to be healthy but there is nothing like prevention. This beekeeper asked if we could treat for him. (He took off running, screaming and waving when the disturbed bees started buzzing. Our 6 year old grandson asked if that was what Grampa means when he says to not panic.) The guy said for $100,000 maybe he should keep them. I said I thought he needed to look into the information a little better. I think he either misheard Rush, or Rush misstated. But he should definitely check into it before he makes his application for his $100,000. Judy in Kentucky, USA ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:01:46 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Adrian Wenner Subject: Pigeon and bee homing Comments: cc: beekeeping.guide@miningco.com, Leo.Turley.lturley@net1.nw.com.au, Leo.Turley.lturley@net1.nw.com.au, greenber@WSUHUB.UC.TWSU.EDU, buchmann@tucson.ars.ag.gov, sandler@auracom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" After sending off information about homing pigeon and honey bee orientation studies earlier this morning, I came across an article sent to me by Stan Sandler, a frequent contributor to BEE-L. He had asked for my opinion of an research article, as follows: Kenneth P. Able. 1996. The debate over olfactory navigation by homing pigeons. The Journal of Experimental Biology. 199:121-124. The last paragraph of that paper placed into perspective some of the problems with research on this topic: "The overall situation with regard to olfactory navigation by pigeons is reminiscent of that with magnetic orientation some years ago. The weight of a large amount of evidence supported magnetic orientation, but there were some conspicuous inconsistencies and failures of replication. If we required unanimity of results in studies of bird navigation, we would be confident of almost nothing. Today, virtually everyone in the field accepts magnetic orientation as a matter of course. In the case of olfactory navigation, I think that the burden of proof clearly rests with those who stll believe that odors play no role in homing." Supportive evidence, no matter how massive, does not count in science until hypotheses have been REALLY tested. Did Able include mention or cite the 1988 Moore study, of which I provided the citation in my last posting? No, Able did not. That is not surprising; those engaged in behavior studies commonly ignore experimental results that do not conform to existing dogma. The last sentence (above), though, really gives it all away. Able has it wrong --- the burden of proof in science clearly rests on those who wish to believe in a hypothesis. Remember, in my earlier posting, the vast majority of homing pigeons became lost during a competition --- despite favorable weather conditions at the time. Did this (effective) test deter those who would believe in magnetic or olfactory navigation? No, some immediately began to offer excuses (e.g., there must have been an electrical disturbance). Adrian Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home phone) 967 Garcia Road (805) 893-8062 (UCSB FAX) Santa Barbara, CA 93106 ************************************************************************ * "...in the drift of the years I by and by found out that a Consensus * * examines a new [idea] with its feelings rather oftener than with its * * mind. You know, yourself, that is so. Do those people examine with * * feelings that are friendly to evidence? You know they don't." * * * * Mark Twain * ************************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 15:02:21 PDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Ernest Gregoire Subject: Plan Bee for 1999 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hello Gang, I hereby submit my plan for hive management for 1999. Please examine it and write to me with your likes and dislikes and the reasons why. After a great deal of reading, here on the Bee-L as well as in nunerous books, magazine articles, and medication instructions, I have devised a plan to manage my apiary next year. My location is in farm country in the mountains, elevation 1100 feet. Spring is wet, both wet snow and rain, then it gets hot. Last year Dandilions were in full bloom on May 15, and Spring in general came early, by 2 weeks or there about. I kept temperature records for the whole year. Durring the weeks from August 15 through September 4 , daytime temperatures held in the mid 70's to the mid 80's. The breed of bee is New World Carniolan. 1999 PLAN BEE Week # Date Activity 1-4 Jan Check colonies on a warm day 11 Mar,15 Apistan IN 11 Mar.15 Fumidil-B 14 Apr.5 Feed 1:1 syrup and Pollen substitute 15-15-17 Target dates for NUC arrival 17 May,2 Apistan OUT 18 May,3 Reverse Brood chambers 18 May,3 Add Ross Round supers 19 May 15-16 Make splits on the Dandilion flow 27-28 July 5-12 Pull off crop 29-30 New queens arrive and placed in nucs 30 Aug,1 Kill old queens 31 Aug,4 Install nucs with recaged queens 32 Aug,15 Menthol IN 35 Spet.4 Menthol OUT 35 Sept,4 Fumidil-B 39 Oct.2 Apistan IN 47 Nov.27 Apistan OUT 47-48 Thanksgiving weekend, button up for winter. Grease patties, (not to be confused with extender patties), will be kept on the top bars all year long. de AA1IK, Time the accursed enemy of man, cursed by youth for going to slow Ernie Gregoire and by the old for going to fast. R.R. 1, Box 221, South Rd. Beekeeper Canaan, NH. 03741 Fly fisher & tier, Promise Keeper. E-mail address: gregoire@endor.com packet address: AA1IK@WA1WOK.FN43FE.NH.USA.NA ------------------------------------- 10/22/98 15:02:21 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 14:23:44 -0600 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Allen Dick Subject: Re: Wax honey water ? In-Reply-To: <22002226811061@systronix.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > Regarding the query on melting wax in water. Bee aware that water added > to wax saponifies, i.e. goes soapy, and cannot be retrieved. The only > water that should be used is rain water or distilled water and even then > I would not recommend boiling the two together... Water with a little acid added does not do this. Add a few spoonsful of vinegar. Allen --- Newsflash! Visit http://www.beekeeping.co.nz/beel.htm to search BEE-L archives the easy, easy way or to update or change your subscription options. --- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 23:10:25 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Stan Sandler Subject: Re: Hive Loaders (was: Uli's Gold) Comments: To: pbc@teleport.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I believe it's a Paine loader. I don't think they're made anymore, but there >are still a bunch around. > >Does anyone know of any companies that currently make good hive loaders? There are pictures of hive loaders at some of the websites of bee-l contributors such as Allen Dick, Andy Nachbaur, and P.O. Gustaffson. For my own part, up until this year I had a homemade loader that would lift single hives. I had one hive that I lifted with a spring scale on and it was 440 pounds. I used to strap each hive with a ratchet strap, and then strap each line of hives on the truck. I had four hives across the truck and often put a second tier on top (just used one strap for both tiers). It was a lot of strapping. I made a hive cradle from a description and pictures that Allen Dick kindly sent to me. It worked great and clamped the hives nicely, but they still had to be strapped so they wouldn't shake apart on the rough tracks in the blueberry field (many of which are fairly recently cleared land). This year I changed my loader entirely. Don't limit yourself to "hive loaders" is my recommendation. Think "knuckle boom". These are a much more common piece of second hand equipment and very versatile. There are knuckle booms that are made for loading logs and there are a whole variety of folding up knuckle booms that are made to mount either behind the cab of a flatbed truck or at the end of the bed. I got one off a truck that used to work in a quarry. It is a real heavy sucker (probably a ton and a half) but I don't have it on the truck, it is mounted on the front of a twenty foot trailer, so I don't have to carry it except when I am moving hives. I sure am glad I don't have to jack up the trailer to put it on, though! I just hook up the hydraulics to the truck before I hitch it and raise it up with its stabilizer feet, then back under, and let it down. I did have to massively reinforce the front of the trailer and put extra springs on the truck. The boom will load the whole twenty foot trailer, and will swivel around and load the whole truckbed as well. It has no trouble lifting a ton (or a tonne) at its maximum extension! I never liked the idea of keeping bees in a square pattern on pallets, and I already was keeping them in lines of five on stands eight feet long. The only modification I had to make was to go to "migratory" covers as opposed to telescoping (a cover with cleat on front and back only). My bottom boards already had cleats under them to keep them from sliding forward or back on the hive stands. One advantage of this arrangement is that one strap will secure the whole five hives, and because of the weight and the fact that they span the whole trailer or truck bed and are pushed up tight to the stand in front and behind, I don't even have to strap the stand onto the truck or trailer. And one lift loads five hives at once. I made a lifter that has a cage that comes down to secure the hives, but I only had to use the cage for the very biggest of hives. I moved some yards to near home wintering locations with honey unpulled. One stand had five hives on it each with five deep boxes. That really pushed the stabilizer foot on the load side into the ground a little ways! Another advantage is that I have a combination of super sizes and have not standarized my brood nests. So some hives might be in two deeps, or one deep and one medium, or three or four mediums, or one deep and two mediums. But it makes no difference when I strap them, they will be secure with just one strap as long as the lower hives are to the outside and the taller hives are in the middle. (If you don't want to shift the hives on the stand you can add empty boxes or feeders or whatever to the lower ones to make the height arrangement. If you wanted to put a second tier of stands on the truck or trailer then you would have to have standardized hive sizes. For my part, I think that eighty hives together with the heavy boom and twenty eight cement blocks is about all my truck will haul. It is a simple matter to slide the hives together for moving and then slide them apart a few inches for ease of working during their stay in that location. I also slide them together for heat sharing during the winter. I have heard that hives on pallets sometimes get ants nested in between the hives. Ants are a real problem in blueberry fields, so I keep the stands on two cement blocks and when they are slid apart I never have any problems with ants nesting between them. It also makes skunks expose their bellies, and gives space to get the lifter under the stand. There are rails on the truck and trailer to give this clearance. One nice feature of my knuckle boom is that the hydraulic controls can be operated from either side of the trailer. Another is that if you get the truck stuck in the mud you can put down the stabilizer legs enough to lift the wheels right off the ground and put some of the rocks (that were intended for cover weights) under the wheels. Regards, Stan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 00:04:48 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Ian Watson Subject: Fireweed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all Does anyone know if Fireweed honey makes a nice smooth creamed honey? I took a colony up north to the Muskoka area of Ontario (Canada) for the late summer and have extracted three supers, two of which were empty when the colony arrived there and fireweed was starting to bloom at that time. So I assume it is mainly fireweed honey. These two supers of honey have started to crystalize in the buckets and seems smooth at this point. So I wondering if I should bottle it into some cream honey containers or not. Regards, Ian Watson ian@gardener.com real estate agent baritone gardener beekeeper---> 11 colonies ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 23:26:57 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Holly Subject: Re: Pollen in Honey and Hay Fever In-Reply-To: <199810211542.LAA19855@post-ofc02.srv.cis.pitt.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The truth is that the placebo effect is quite powerful. "The consumption of pollen or unrefined honey containing traces of local pollen has been widely believed to help reduce the symptoms of hay fever. Although testimonial evidence abounds to support these beliefs, rigorous experimental investigations have revealed, at best, only marginal improvements in patients who consume pollen. Although some positive effects resulting from ingestion of pollen appeared in individuals with simple hay fever without asthma, the overall benefits were so marginal compared to the clear benefits of subcutaneous pollen injections (allergy shots) that oral treatments were not justified. These results indicate that if allergies are severe enough to merit medical attention, the best treatments are subcutaneous allergy shots; but if they are not that severe, there is no reason for an individual not to enjoy locally produced or raw honey and pollen products--and if the hay fever is helped, that is an added benefit." This info is according to J. Schmidt and S. Buchmann in their article "Other Products of the Hive" in the 1992 edition of _The Hive and the Honey Bee_, so check that out for the references. Holly ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 17:49:05 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Marvin Walker Subject: Re: BEE BEE TREE MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable this is the description from Forest Farms catalog: A handsome species in flower & fruit, this tree (to 50') has long 9-15" cmpd lvs & produces flat-topped clusters of sm white fls, enjoyed by bees in late summer., followed by reddish to black fruits. The tree is from north China and has almost a gray smooth bark. The leaves look like a pecan and have the same green color. Hope this helps. Marvin Walker Springdale, Arkansas -- MZ=90 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 19:36:17 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Christopher Slade Subject: Re: NZ queens Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Tom, My MP, Oliver Letwin, said he would ask a written parliamentary question this week and let me have a reply when available. My view is that we have too many viruses already, that the effect of some of them is greatly magnified in the presence of Varroa and that it would be utter folly to allow another one in if it can possibly be avoided. The reason for allowing packages in is said to be to make up for losses caused by varroa. This action may well increase the losses. If people up north in freshly affected areas want packages of bees why not talk to beekeepers in the south where we have had varroa for years and are generally able to cope with it? We are not currently geared up to producing packages but I am sure it could be done if the demand is there. It has to make more sense than shipping bees half way around the world. It was moving bees internationally that brought us varroa and the Americas "killer bees". Chris Slade ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 19:36:19 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Christopher Slade Subject: Re: Bee keeping in Portugal Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I hope soon to visit the Algarve area of southern Portugal. Does anyone know of any sites of beekeeping interest there? I understand they sometimes use oak bark hives and would love to see one in action. Also a local supplier of equipment would be of interest to me. Chris Slade ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 16:39:27 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Tang Johnston Subject: What happens to the honey? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Can someone please tell me at what temperature the enzyme is killed in the honey when it is heated? I know the properties are changed in the heating, but am wondering what exactly is it that happens in the process?? Thanks, T.J. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 23:16:24 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Computer Software Solutions Ltd Subject: Using BEE-L Postings for Irish Beekeeping Magazine Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi All Certainly the feathers flew! I am very thankful to all the contributors who waxed eloquently on the subject! I ended up asking permission from specific contributors to use their material and I am glad to say that this was given without hesitation. Again thank you one and all for your contribution. Sincerely Tom Barrett 49 South Park Foxrock Dublin 18 Ireland e mail cssl@iol.ie Tel + 353 1 289 5269 Fax + 353 1 289 9940 Latitude 53 Degrees 16' North Longitude 6 Degrees 9' West of Greenwich ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 15:26:28 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andy Nachbaur Subject: Re: Pigeon and bee homing In-Reply-To: <199810222212.PAA27271@mx1.thegrid.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:01 PM 10/22/98 -0700, you wrote: > Did this (effective) test deter those who would believe in magnetic or >olfactory navigation? No, some immediately began to offer excuses (e.g., >there must have been an electrical disturbance). All this chat about the science of homing has me confused as our pigeon's also seem to be except when it comes to hitting my car from high altitude bombing runs. Anyway a friend many years ago won some BIG, big bucks in a high stakes pigeon race when everybody's pigeon's got lost or ended up in someone's pot or belly. Today I read that these same problems has increased at an alarming rate and tens of thousands racing and homing pigeon's are disappearing in major races around the world. What's up? Must be sun spots or something but I sure hope our queen bees continue to find their way home. The drones never have as I guess they have no real welcome home anyway. ttul, Andy- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:01:11 +0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Rimantas Zujus Subject: Re: BEE BEE TREE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-4" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, Beefriends Mayby, you know when does it bloom: What season or/and between what widly known plant Marvin Walker writes: >this is the description from Forest Farms catalog: > Thank you Rimantas Zujus Kaunas LITHUANIA e-mail : zujus@isag.lei.lt http://www.online.lt/indexs.htm http://www.lei.lt 55 North, 24 East ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:04:12 +0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Hugo Thone Organization: Alcatel Telecom Subject: Re: Plan Bee for 1999 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ernest Gregoire wrote: > 11 Mar,15 Apistan IN > 11 Mar.15 Fumidil-B > > 14 Apr.5 Feed 1:1 syrup and Pollen substitute > > 17 May,2 Apistan OUT > > 30 Aug,1 Kill old queens > > 32 Aug,15 Menthol IN > > 35 Spet.4 Menthol OUT > 35 Sept,4 Fumidil-B > > 39 Oct.2 Apistan IN > > 47 Nov.27 Apistan OUT > > Grease patties, (not to be confused with extender patties), > will be kept on the top bars all year long. > Hi Ernest, Are you running a pharmacy store or an eradication camp ? ;-) Serious now : I should not apply Apistan in the spring unless you see an obvious varroa infestation. One treatement a year (in summer after last crop) should keep the disease under control. cheers, Hugo -- Hugo Thone (VE144) | email htho@se.bel.alcatel.be | do bee do bee do ALCATEL TELECOM | phone (32) 3 240 94 52 | (\ F.Wellesplein 1 | fax (32) 3 240 99 49 | {|||8- B-2018 Antwerp | | (/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 14:20:58 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Re: Chinese agro chemicals Hi All Andy, thanks for posting the bit from Sci.Agrobee onto the group. Just a few things: The original poster rekons he could test by seeing how well they work. I am sure it would be easier to just go to a local university and befriend somebody there and get them to run an extract of a conventional strip (as in the one people pay too much for now) and a sample of the Chinese one and compare the fluvalinate peak. I am sure in any High pressure liquid chromatography catalogue there is a value for the retention time for fluvalinate on a specific column so one could check the concentrations on the stip quite easily. If they are below par the number of stips can be adjusted. But then again how can one decide on the dosage of a pesticide for something as variable as a beehive?? In my world things made in China tend to be of reasonably good quality and often far better value than things made in other countries. Often here we could buy three chinese items for the price of one german or america item (say a power tool). All the armaments donated by the US and Russia to african countries fall apart within weeks. Chinese stuff still works. Remember - in china one does not pay a researcher in dollars, but rather a far weaker currency. Hence, for the same investment in China one gets maybe thirty times the work. Given the natural work ethic of chinese people this translates to a lot of research. Given also the very high education standards in china it helps as well. Unfortuneately the chinese have a little problem with communism that tends to colour the impression the western media dictatorship gives us - just like what we hear about India - the country with the biggest middle class - and therefore tax base - in the world. So I would go with those strips if I believed the value of research being conducted by the patent holders on the present product was below par - a bit like how in the '80s I would have bought an IBM clone - why support a behemoth that is sitting on a twig on the edge of a cliff? Just my two cents Keep well Garth Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 13:26:27 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Madeleine Pym Subject: Re: Bee keeping in Portugal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Chris, I used to live in Portugal back in the early 1980's, up in the Sierra de Monchique, on one of the two mountains there. We were up on Picota, which at that time was the more unspoilt of the two. And yes, I kept bees there, although I had precious little equipment and got stung frequently, so I would say they mostly kept themselves. At that time if you were to walk for any length of time along the mountain tracks you would see rows of hives tucked under the pine, or eucalyptus, or out on the scrub land. This whole mountain is the most wonderful bee garden, with tree heathers, cytisus, and all manner of wild herbs, oregano, etc, and the smells were absolutely heavenly after the rain, mixing these with the smells of pine, eucalyptus, and mimosa. The whole area is a micro-climate and has an isect population the like of which I have never seen anywhere else. Several types of praying mantis, scorpions, thousands of species of moth and butterfly, plus colorado beetle and a fair few other farmers 'pests', not to mention snakes, lizards, newts, salamanders. The honey is divine, and if you go into Monchique itself, which is the market town nestled in between the mountains, there used to be a honey shop selling hive equipment, and honey from all over Portugal, you can also get eucalyptus honey in there, which the Portuguese use medicinally. The layout of the town has changed since my time there, but it was on the road that takes you out of the town and up to the top of Foia, the other of the two mountains, at that time there was also a wood yard which was quite close by, and a shop selling pots and pans, not to mention cafe's etc. If you don't speak Portuguese then take some sort of visual clue to show what you are looking for, they will treat someone who is not just a tourist far more sympathetically. Times change I know but my experience of these people then was that if you were interested in talking to them about anything to do with farming they loved you. They were always the most friendly and tolerant people. I gather that things have changed somewhat since those early days, and they are more suspicious of foreigners, but I would stake my life that an interested beekeeper will always be welcome. Perhaps you can take something along to 'prove' yourself, and I think they will welcome you. Beekeeping in that region is part of the whole of their smallholding style farming. They work terraces for beans, corn, oats, potatoes, and grow every manner of fruit, figs and vines. All exotic fruit and veg is sold off at market and they live very frugally. But the neighbours I had at that time were ever curious about new farming ideas, methods, and I bet they would love a look at catalogues, etc. They are still immensely practical and will make most things for themselves. My neighbour even showed me how to repair disposable lighters so that you need never buy another. I felt very uncomfortable at the time about bringing new 'ideas' and 'things' into their culture, but they are doing that for themselves (I say this because I am worried that I shall be shot down for suggesting that you take anything that will 'interfere' with their culture.) and many of them had TV's that ran off lorry batteries when I lived there. Which was more than I had. Regarding oak bark hives... I never saw anything like this when I lived there, and I travelled extensively through the whole of Portugal, but my bet would be that these would be found in the Alantego area to the north of the Algarve, as that is where the great cork oak and cattle plains are. I have an Italian friend who kept bees with his Grandfather in Italy and they used cork oak bark which peels straight from the tree in great fat strips perfect for the job. You can get through to the Alentego through the mountains of Monchique, or further to the east up from Faro, but I suspsct you'll not have time for that. I recommend taking a long hike around the mountains, the views over the foot hills and down to the sea some 20 kilometres away is stunning. Just let's all keep that a secret though. Good Luck, I'm green with envy, Tell us all how you get on, Madeleine Pym ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 08:37:21 -0400 Reply-To: beeworks@muskoka.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: David Eyre Subject: Re: Buying queens MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > agriculture. Yet the majority of contributors to this list (who may not be a > representative sample of US beekeepers) seem to buy queens annually from > Florida where conditions may be ideal for queen rearing but are as different > from typical foraging conditions elsewhere in the US as it is possible to get. > that buying queens is recommended as good practice. I wonder if it is the > producers of the queens who do the recommending. Leaving aside any economic > considerations, for the amateur, rearing your own queens and making the best > of the bees that have succeeded locally is FUN. I am no genius at queen > rearing and have as many failures as successes but it is very satisfying to > have a queen you have known from an egg do well. The problem is that one can > become too sentimental about her to kill her in due course but you will still > have her daughters and grand daughters to play with. From across the pond comes some common sense. As a queen breeder/rearer I have been qestioning the sense of using Southern queens in Northern areas. In fact it was the basis of a talk I gave at EAS this summer. It hardly makes any sense to use semi-tropical bees in our harsh winters. As a gardener I know that I can't grow oranges up here, so what makes me think 'orange grown' bees will do well up here? There might be some hope! I sold a number of queens to a breeder in Florida this fall, and he's promised to let me know how they do in his outfit. Talk about 'coals to newcastle'! I don't know of a bee keeper, as opposed to a box keeper, who likes to kill queens, I know I don't, and it's only just lately that my wife plucked up enough courage to 'murder' her first queen. ***************************************** The Bee Works, 9 Progress Drive, Unit 2, Orillia, Ontario, Canada. Phone (705)326 7171 Fax (705)325 3461 David Eyre, Owner e-mail http://www.muskoka.net/~beeworks **************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 07:34:09 -0600 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Allen Dick Subject: Re: Wax honey water ? In-Reply-To: <5438-363066FD-8368@mailtod-141.iap.bryant.webtv.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > I'M from Fla and it is very common for beekeepers to mix water and wax > togeather. We have done this with 100's of lbs of wax and our water is > very hard. Hard water can be acidic, neutral, or caustic. Only caustic water will make soap of your wax. A little acid added does two things: keeps your wax hard, not soapy, and lightens the colour. Allen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 09:36:24 -0400 Reply-To: dublgully@worldnet.att.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: David Gaida Subject: Symbiotic bacteria MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In plain English, huh? Sounds like you may have hit on a realistic answer. However, in order to overcome the continuous use of those anitbiotics, we must have someone, such as yourself, extract some of that stingless bee DNA and start us all over again. This, of course, is based on the assumption that all the feral colonies of bees that remain are descendants of some queen/drone that had been treated. Perhaps a more realistic approach would be to test a feral colony that is of known age against a boxed colony that has been treated for generations. Would the feral colony recover the organisms over time? Could the feral colony survive long enough to recover those organisms? Is it possible? Judy in Kentucky ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 09:51:53 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Kate Rothacker Subject: Re: US Farm Program Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Judy in Kentucky writes "he heard on Rush Limbaugh that the US gov't was going to pay beekeepers $100,000 for each hive". This is now the second time I have heard about the Rush Limbaugh program mentioning U.S. government incentives for beekeepers. My mom's version was that anyone with beehives on their property wouldn't have to pay property taxes. Does anyone know what these people are talking about? I realize there is no real Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny doesn't exist, but I figure this list is the place to find out if there is any truth at all to the above rumors. Kate Pennsylvania ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 11:19:23 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Herb Isaac Sales Subject: Bee Loaders MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit With reference to the discussion about bee loaders. There is a new bee loader being marketed in the US & Canada. It is the "Billett Easy Loader". The loader was designed by an Australian beekeeper Mr. Trevor Billett who won the "Inventor of the Year Award 1986". The folks who manufacture the loader (Darrell & Karen Copeman) had a display at the American Beekeepers Federation convention in Colorado Springs last year and also attended beekeeping convention /meetings in Canada afterwards. It is our understanding that they plan to be in attendance at the ABF convention again this year. There are several different models available. All models have: electric winching, full leveling system (manual or hydraulic), split booms (allows easy maneuverability around obstacles), fully extended boom reach to 4.8m/15ft.9in. (governed by width of truck), lifting cradle is winch operated and is fully adjustable to take various box heights, fork tynes on cradle are easily removed and relocated for different positioning on boxes, "hand hold" lifters can replace the tynes for lifting boxes with hand inserts. We have information available about this loader and order forms should anyone be interested further. Herb & Naomi Isaac Herb Isaac Sales, Sinclair, Mb. Canada ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 11:46:52 +0000 Reply-To: cmichel@pbmo.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "M. C. Michel" Organization: Snap Shot Subject: Re: US Farm Program MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kate Rothacker wrote: > Judy in Kentucky writes "he heard on Rush Limbaugh that the US gov't was > going to pay beekeepers $100,000 for each hive". Wow, with the number of hives I have, I'd have enough money to turn into a Republican... On second thought no thanks, I'd rather be me... I'll keep the bees Chris Michel ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 11:27:12 -0600 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Allen Dick Subject: Jumbo Pierco? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I was asking and was told that Pierco would need to sell 200,000 jumbo frames to justify going into production of jumbos. I wonder how many would purchase them. IMHO. the jumbo is the best possible brood chamber, and would be much more popular if it were not for the difficulty in getting and maintaining such a large frame surface perfectly flat. Seems to me that Pierco would solve that problem. I think if I could get jumbo Pierco that I might consider using only jumbos for brood chambers. Comments? Allen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:54:46 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: mcmanus Subject: Re: Fireweed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ---------- > From: Ian Watson > To: BEE-L@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU > Subject: Fireweed > Date: Friday, October 23, 1998 12:04 AM > Does anyone know if Fireweed honey makes a nice smooth > creamed honey? Hi Ivan I use Fireweed all the time for creamed honey. It makes a good product and my customers seem to like it. Give it a try, in fact try several kinds. Joe McManus Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Jassim AL-Mughrabi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_01BDE019.FF27BB00" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_01BDE019.FF27BB00 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1250 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by CS101.riyadh.zajil.com id UAA06152 Greetings BEE-L'ers. I would like to lett all of you know that I'm a new member to this list I was viewing the posts for the past few days,=20 I'm from Saudi Arabia, Professional Beekeeping Technicain. I've been taken many training courses related to beekeeping and honey bee diseases, I also take bee keeping as my part time pleasure. I'm Looking forward to enhance being into a Bee Lovers atmosphere : )=20 Regards to all of you, =A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4= =A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4 Sincerely, Jassim. AL-Mughrabi =20 Honey Bee Technician , Saudi Arabia=20 P.O.Box 42332 , Riyadh 11541=20 FAX : +966-1-(458)3348 Minstery of Agriculture and Water Kingdom of Saudi Arabia =A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4= =A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4 ------=_NextPart_000_01BDE019.FF27BB00 Content-Type: text/html; charset=Windows-1250 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Greetings BEE-L'ers.
I = would like to lett all of you know that I'm a new member to this list I = was viewing the posts for the past few days,
I'm from Saudi Arabia, = Professional Beekeeping Technicain.
I've been taken many training = courses related to beekeeping and honey bee diseases, = I also take bee keeping as my part time pleasure.

I'm Looking forward to enhance being = into a Bee Lovers atmosphere : )

Regards to all of = you,

=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4= =A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4   Sincerely,
=             &= nbsp;        &n= bsp;      Jassim. AL-Mughrabi =  
Honey Bee Technician , Saudi Arabia
P.O.Box 42332 , Riyadh = 11541
FAX  : +966-1-(458)3348
Minstery of Agriculture and = Water
Kingdom of Saudi = Arabia
=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4= =A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4=A4= =A4=A4


------=_NextPart_000_01BDE019.FF27BB00-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 15:52:46 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Sherry Medders Subject: Re: Bees and Pigeons Hi Everyone, Mr Turley, asked me to thanks everyone whom sent in answers to his request. He greatly apprecitaed all your help. If anyone else has any more information please send it to him. I'd like thank you too for helping him and for reponding. You all are great. :) L Turley lturley@net1.nw.com.au (this is the email he sent me) Kind Regards, Sherry Medders beekeeping.guide@miningco.com http://beekeeping.miningco.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 20:14:30 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Peter Dalby Subject: Re: "Bee bee" Tree MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit : Rimantas Zujus re Tetradia writes >>It must be an usefull tree. What is a limut of the area to north? . I have no experience of this tree outside England There have been a number of articles on this tree in the USA bee magazines which may be worth looking up. We live in a valley and are prone to ocasional late frosts. These often burn off the young growth which sets the plant back a bit. However the plants have always recovered in a few weeks and made fresh growth. There are a couple of Tetradias in this area that have reached 20ft or so in height and are flowering regularly. These are 10 or 12 years old. There used to be a very old speciman in the Chelsea Physic Garden in London but I believe it was destroyed in a storm a few years ago Peter Dalby ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 20:25:11 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Peter Watt Subject: Pollen cleaning MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Bee-l, We have identified a possible market for pollen enriched honey. Can anyone suggest methods for cleaning trapped pollen. Are there machines sold anywhere to do this? Can anyone suggest a good pollen trap design? We have Langstroth hives , both timber and polysyrene types. Regards Pete and Moira Watt. E mail prwatt@ifb.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 20:46:46 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: P-O Gustafsson Subject: Re: Symbiotic bacteria MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Sounds like you may have hit on a realistic answer. Now Judy, that's something I can agree on. This discussion turns up now and then about the "medication" of beehives that's going on in some parts of the world. Just some thoughts on how some of us see it on this side of the pond. Too me it seems as stupid to continuously pour antibiotics into a bee hive, as it would be for me to take it myself every day. Apart from that it's illegal to use ANY antibiotics in beekeeping in Sweden, we would soon loose all possibility to find and breed from the bees showing signs of resistance to the disease. And when we can't see if there is any infectious matter in the hive, and clean it out in time, we would soon have it all over the place and be forced to prophylactic use of drugs just to keep in business! And when we got there it would be no return..... we would have to keep on medicating when all material would be so contaminated with nosema and AFB spores that the bees might not make it otherwise. I rather stick to the old way, survival of the fittest, that's taken us to where we are now, and let nature work for me instead of working against evolution. Said that, I must accept that some big operators can't stay in business without using antibiotics. BUT, I can't agree on the use of it as a prophylactic! When there is established that a hive needs it, the medication should be used to cure THAT HIVE only. We have reports coming more and more often from hospitals and researchers that one or the other bug gets resistant to antibiotics and can't be treated anymore because of the use of it as a general cure to everything. When we really get sick there is no cure as the bugs got the chance to build up resistance to antibiotics due to the excessive use. I'm sure the same thing is happening with bees. What I don't like to read here is the advice often given to a newbee to use all kinds of drugs "just in case"! Instead he/she should be encouraged to be careful with antibiotics and learn how to give the bees the best possibility to make it without drugs. I'm only a small fish in the beekeeping ocean with a few hundred hives, but to this day I haven't had a case of AFB in my hives. Some hives now and then with nosema problem, but they are requeened and that's the end of that. > However, in order to > overcome the continuous use of those anitbiotics, we must have someone, > such as yourself, extract some of that stingless bee DNA and start us all > over again. No, I think it's up to all of you out there to stop and think if it's worth it; to save a little bit of time now (but paying the drugs), or to stop using antibiotics unless there is a need and have the chance to find resistant strains of bees, and make antibiotics useful a few more years (and save money). It's easy to say wait until someone else fix it for you. But if no one does.....? Can we afford to make antibiotics useless before we got something else? -- Regards P-O Gustafsson, Sweden beeman@algonet.se http://www.algonet.se/~beeman/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 16:39:54 -0400 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Alen Banks Organization: http://www3.sympatico.ca/honey.road Subject: My Beekeeping Homepage is now Open Comments: To: "1631@nethawk.com" <1631@nethawk.com>, Allan Bowers , "beeman@kingston.net" , "Bruce W. Martin" , David Scott , Eleftherios Pantelakis , HarrisonRW , "jlhamil@atcon.com" , Karen Banks , "Keeler, Lisa" , Keith Ash , Kevin Frechette , Kristine Kiviaho , malcolm macaulay , "mccaw.duffy" , Robert Rushworth Customer , "shmccarthy@hotmail.com" , Tom Barrett , tammy ryan , "trivium@muscanet.com" , blee@bimchemi.com, gmardon@bimchemi.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Check out my newly restored Beekeeping Web Page http://www3.sympatico.ca/honey.road Formerly at www3..../sgt.tibbs ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 09:34:34 -0400 Reply-To: tvf@umich.edu Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Ted Fischer Subject: Re: Buying queens MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Eyre wrote: > >From across the pond comes some common sense. As a queen > breeder/rearer I have been qestioning the sense of using Southern > queens in Northern areas. In fact it was the basis of a talk I gave at > EAS this summer. > It hardly makes any sense to use semi-tropical bees in our > harsh winters. As a gardener I know that I can't grow oranges up > here, so what makes me think 'orange grown' bees will do well up > here? However, as a matter of fact it does work, and it works well. Northern grown queens are just not ready to install the last week of April. And as for the point about wintering - these queens and their progeny will winter just fine if they are kept healthy. The last argument made here is precisely like comparing "apples (bees) and oranges". Ted Fischer Dexter, Michigan USA ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 17:39:08 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: John Edwards Organization: Hayden Bee Lab, USDA-ARS,Tucson, Arizona Subject: Re: Pollen cleaning MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter Watt wrote: > Can anyone suggest a good pollen trap design? The OAC (Ontario Agricultural College) design has always proven superior here in Tucson. John Edwards, USDA-ARS Bee Lab, Tucson, Arizona ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 21:45:44 -0400 Reply-To: vcoppola@froggernet.com Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Vince Coppola Subject: Re: Buying queens Comments: To: beeworks@muskoka.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Eyre wrote: > > > agriculture. Yet the majority of contributors to this list (who may not be a > > representative sample of US beekeepers) seem to buy queens annually from > > Florida where conditions may be ideal for queen rearing but are as different > > from typical foraging conditions elsewhere in the US as it is possible to get. > > > that buying queens is recommended as good practice. I wonder if it is the > > producers of the queens who do the recommending. > >From across the pond comes some common sense. As a queen > breeder/rearer I have been qestioning the sense of using Southern > queens in Northern areas. In fact it was the basis of a talk I gave at > EAS this summer. > It hardly makes any sense to use semi-tropical bees in our > harsh winters. As a gardener I know that I can't grow oranges up > here, so what makes me think 'orange grown' bees will do well up > here? Hello David and all, The traits that a queen passes along to her workers are determined by the genes she possesses. It does not matter where she is raised. It does not even matter where the selection work is performed as long as tests for the desired trait can be accomplished. It is not the raising of queens in Florida that impairs the performance of many southern queens in the north. Its the fact that selection for the traits necessary for wintering performance is seldom done there. In other words just being in Florida does not soften a queen or even a line of bees. If the queen has the right stuff and you control mating, the results will be the same no matter where they are raised. This is similar to what some beekeepers think about the use of anti biotic and bees susceptibility to disease. These are not necessarily connected. One may just as easily select for resistance to a disease, AFB or tracheal mites for instance, from bees that are being treated for the disease as from bees that are not. Treating with anti biotic or miticide does not change their genetic makeup or somehow weaken them. And not treating does not toughen them. They either have the genes necessrary to resist a disease or they do not. I know someone is going to say something like... if you are treating how can you know if they could resist the disease. In a nutshell the lack of symptoms of a disease are not an indication of resistance or suseptability. Vince ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 21:41:56 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: George W Imirie Subject: Re: Symbiotic bacteria Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I should keep "my big mouth shut", but I just can't do it. 1998 is my 65th year of beekeeping and I have never used Terramycin a single time. In those 65 years, I have only had American Foulbrood a total of 4 occasions during which I had to destroy (by burning) a total of 5 colonies. During this time, I had anywhere from 30 to 150 colonies. Since Terramycin DOES NOT KILL the AFB spore, and if one colony gets infected, by next year EVERY colony in your apiary including the neighbors probably have AFB, but the beekeeper is unaware of the infection because the Terramycin HIDES the symptoms. I wish we could ban the use, sale, and production of Terramycin for bees. Thank God, neither menthol or Apistan are antibiotics, and thankfully, menthol (provided it is used in very warm weather) KILLS Tracheal mites and Apistan does KILL Varroa mites. I surely hope we find additional killing agents to use legally before menthol or particularly Apistan cease to be effective because our careless beekeepers are leaving strips in colonies over the winter and other abuses that make the mites resistant. All I can do is keep trying to "spread the word", but I am but one voice. among the many who take the easy way. However, not only do I have healthy bees, but I have never lost a colony to mites, so that satisfies me. George Imirie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 20:58:24 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Paul Nicholson Subject: Beekeeping in Saudi Arabia In-Reply-To: <199810231812.LAA19579@alto1.altonet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 7:58 PM +0000 9/14/98, Jassim AL-Mughrabi wrote: >Greetings BEE-L'ers. >I would like to lett all of you know that I'm a new member to this list I >was viewing the posts for the past few days,=20 >I'm from Saudi Arabia, Professional Beekeeping Technicain. >I've been taken many training courses related to beekeeping and honey bee >diseases, I also take bee keeping as my part time pleasure. > >I'm Looking forward to enhance being into a Bee Lovers atmosphere : )=20 > >Regards to all of you, Hi Jassim, Welcome to the list. Tell us a about beekeeping in Saudi Arabia. What variety of bees to you use, and what sort or foraging do you have in your hot dry climate? Paul Paul Nicholson Electronic Imaging Systems, Inc. TEL 805 532 1068 5148 Commerce Avenue, Unit F FAX 805 532 1065 Moorpark, CA 93021 U.S.A. paul@eisusa.com http://www.eisusa.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 07:33:42 -0600 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Organization: The Beekeepers Subject: Fondant MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Murray & I have been chatting privately and -- since it seems that some of this info will interest list members -- I am forwarding some of it to BEE- L -- FYI. AD >I have heard good things about fondant. I gather you buy it from >confectionners or some such source?. Are there any problems at all with >impurities and or the heat used in candying the sugar? Or am I maybe >misunderstanding what it is? I've been told that it comes in blocks and >that one merely slices off what is required. True? > >I have some light hives that may need a little supplement in March and >was thinking fondant at the time of adding patties might be the answer. >Hope you can shed a bit more light on this. MM >The fondant we use is a mechanically manufactured paste, set solid, of icing sugar and glucose and invert syrups. It is VERY VERY important that you ascertain that what you are getting contains no ingredients derived from acid inversion processes, otherwise dysentry is the result. We demand it in writing at the start of every fondant using season. There have been disasters in the past. Bakery supplies companies are the best source for it here, as bakeries use it for making icing. It comes in 28lb blocks, inside plastic bags, inside a cardboard carton. We cut it into 7lb (approx) blocks, each is then placed inside a high density poly bag, the neck twisted tight then sealed. My two men can cut and bag a tonne (320 blocks) in about an hour but it did take them a while to arrive at this technique using a bucket of hot water and a new garden spade. You can store it cut and bagged like this for months if need be until required in the field. On arrival at the bees you decide how many blocks are needed to span the cluster so that each seam of bees is in contact with the fondant. You take a sharp knife and slash two parallel cuts across one face of the fondant bag, peel back the strip of polythene, and place the fondant down on top of the cluster. It is important that the cut is running across and not along the top bars, and that sufficient blocks (always either 1 or 2) are put on so that the whole viable cluster is spanned. The correct time to do it is just when the cluster has eaten its way up sufficiently to begin arriving at the top bars. However, you could just as easily put on a sufficient number of blocks (probably 2 to 4) now and just leave them to it till spring. You have far colder winters than us and doing this could be better as you will not need to go into them in freezing conditions. Watch out in spring though! It does get them going a bit and they can catch you out by drawing wild comb up in the head space, plus, the candy bags are a nice warm insulating layer for the bees and the like to draw little bits of comb inside them as they clean them out (which they do beautifully : there is almost no waste), and it is amazing how often you can find the queen running about inside the bag. You really do need to watch out for that when removing the bags. Several years ago we used to use pollen supplement patties and we just put them on at the same time as feeding fondant, and it seemed to work fine. Bagging the fondant is important as it prevents it drying out and becoming difficult for the bees to use. AD >I'm still having a little trouble visualizing the dimesions of the >blocks before and after they are cut. I guess that this will be obvious >when I get some, but for now, I wonder if you can give me rough >dimensions... and an idea of what type of cover or lid you place over >top, if any. I trust your hives are wrapped? Maybe not. Pictures of >mine in winter and spring may be seen at: >http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/spring.htm > >I'm also thinking that some of this fondant information might be of >interest to BEE-L readers and if I might excerpt this interchange for a >BEE-L post? MM>The fondant blocks in our normal use are 31cm long by 16 cm wide and are 17.5 cm deep and weigh 12.5kg. You can cut this up as you see fit and dimensions of cut blocks are up to you. The product is not hard (some batches are actually pretty soft, but the bees don't mind) and the cut blocks can be squeezed into the shape you need. We are also experimenting with a 15kg block from Germany this year which is supposed to be a special balanced formula specially devised for bees. It is about 5cm longer and 4 cm wider, but 2cm less deep. The normal type has about 78% solids, and the German stuff 82%. We do not wrap for winter here, our RECORD cold is only about -22 deg C (twice this century!), and average winter temperatures are actually slightly above zero. We can get long freezing spells but they are a rarity. We also get relatively low snowfall locally as this is one of the driest parts of Scotland. To get a snowfall of over 6 inches would be something that happens once or twice in a 5 year period, and it normally melts in a few days. Winters tend to be long, grey, and dismal ( come to think of it, that also describes summer 98). Hence feeding fondant throughout the winter is not a major trouble. Mud in access tracks is our biggest difficulty. We just put the fondant as previously described down in our selected place(s) on the top bars, add some box on top of the brood nest, be it an empty super, upturned hive top feeder, spare brood body, or whatever. We then just leave it like that with the crown board and roof as the only other covering. We also have some we are trying with covering over the fondant and top bars with a double thickness of bubble wrap to give insulation and keep more warmth in. The fondant is of course already covered by being bagged. The Danes I visited 'tent' it with a single sheet of heavy guage polythene larger than the hive top area so that it is held down over fondant by the weight of the empty box, roof etc. This prevents the drawing of wild comb in the head space in spring, but also acts as a heat trap. I worry about condensation using polythene/bubble wrap, especially in the wooden hives. They are using mainly polystyrene or polyurethane hives with screened floors and claim that condensation is not a problem. As you can see the blocks are not all that large physically. Some people, especially in Europe, feed no syrup at all and just invert a whole carton of fondant over the cluster (it needs an empty brood body to accommodate that) and don't look near the bees till spring. It seems to work for them but we find that it gives many colonies far too much and leads to waste. It works for us though, and saves us worrying about having to get syrup into them by a certain time because it can be done at any stage of the winter. Try a few only though, because your climatic factors could produce very contrasting results. I'm going off to look at your winter pictures. We are going to have a site of our own soon and I'll get some photos of ours posted up there... By all means use this on Bee-L... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 09:43:23 EDT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: David Green Subject: Re: Buying queens Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/23/98 8:50:52 AM Eastern Daylight Time, beeworks@muskoka.net writes: > > From across the pond comes some common sense. As a queen > breeder/rearer I have been qestioning the sense of using Southern > queens in Northern areas. In fact it was the basis of a talk I gave at > EAS this summer. > It hardly makes any sense to use semi-tropical bees in our > harsh winters. As a gardener I know that I can't grow oranges up > here, so what makes me think 'orange grown' bees will do well up > here? Your problem is not "orange grown" bees, but orange grown breeders. The genetics of the queen can, and should be selected according to the stock adapted to the area. If you want good queens for the north, select from stock that does well in the north. Good southern breeders who breed for the northern market do just that. The great advantage of queen rearing in the south is that they can be raised early, thus effectively giving another season. When I worked in northeastern apple orchards we always tried to get our nursery stock into the ground in mid April. When you compared this stock to what the neighbors planted in mid-May, you could see that that month really equaled a year's growth! Likewise, if you are starting new hives, by the time you can raise queens in the north, your new hive has insufficient time to build for the spring flow, and you have to start looking for later flows. Sometimes you get into a holding pattern, where you've got a new hive, but no income until you get it into its second year. Commercial beekeepers can't afford that. > There might be some hope! I sold a number of queens to a > breeder in Florida this fall, and he's promised to let me know how > they do in his outfit. Talk about 'coals to newcastle'! That's exactly what a good queen breeder does, cater to his market. I wonder if it was legal in this case though. I know that when a state puts up a quarantine against a product from South Carolina, it is legally reciprocal, in other words that state cannot send any of that product to South Carolina. Not too many people know that, and the bee quarantines between North and South Carolina, for example, were frequently ignored, even by people who knew about them. I had the general understanding that this was also true at the federal level, ie, a country that quarantines against a US product would not be allowed to sell that product here either. Do we have any legal experts on the list? There are three chief factors in making a good queen; genetics, mating and nutrition. The location of rearing is not a factor in genetics, as stock can be selected and imported from other areas. Mating is not location specific. It depends on the breeder supplying the proper drones in the proper quantity and having good weather. But nutrition is very location specific. And it depends on the quality of pollen. Queen breeders can feed pollen supplements, or even pollen, but they are never quite as good as fresh pollen. There is a pollen belt across the southeast that provides the best possible conditions for spring rearing. If you put a pin in a map of the southeast for each of the breeders that advertizes in the journals, you will find that almost all of them fit into a belt which runs just inland from the ocean and gulf from North Carolina to Texas. Breeders who are outside this belt, go to it for their queen rearing. The belt is only 30-60 miles wide. Within this belt, bees build explosively in the spring, because the pollen sources are so rich, and nice fat queens are the rule, not the exception. Central and south Florida is an exception to this rule. Bees and queens are raised there, not because the pollen is good, but because the beekeepers are there, because of the tropical climate for wintering, and for the orange flow. We can bring queen cells from Florida as early as March 1, and groups of beekeepers from this area have had one be a courier to make a "cell run." But we do this, knowing that their nutrition will be so-so and some of these queens will have to be replaced before the season is over. I have gotten later queens from Florida, as well, and have been disappointed. This is really the source of David Eyre's complaints about "southern" bees. I would suggest that the beekeepers look for quality breeders in the "pollen" belt for the best fed spring queens you can get. Don't look for the guy who's trying to make orange blossom honey, and raise some queens on the side. Look for those who have been sorted out, over the years, as the best queen breeders in the business. They will be either in the pollen belt, or raise their queens there. BTW, I am not trying to sell queens, so I can speak on this from a neutral point of view. We use the few I raise for our own use or for sale locally. Pollinator@aol.com Dave Green Hemingway, SC USA The Pollination Scene: http://users.aol.com/pollinator/polpage1.html The Pollination Home Page: http://www.pollinator.com Jan's Sweetness and Light Shop (Varietal Honeys and Beeswax Candles) http://users.aol.com/SweetnessL/sweetlit.htm ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 08:04:40 -0600 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Organization: The Beekeepers Subject: Re: Symbiotic bacteria In-Reply-To: <22053998200374@systronix.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Well, Aaron figured I must be dead -- or worse -- last summer because I did not rise to the bait when conjecture was rampant about oxytet use and wild ideas about grease patties were bandied about, linking resistant AFB to patty use. NO mention was made of the idea -- first heard right here from this very scribe -- that resistant AFB would soon appear in the USA, and that it would be imported with South American honey. Those of us who use oxtet are busy people with little time to waste. I'm only goint to say a few words here and they are along the line of 'READ THE FINE LOGS'... The question of the use of oxytet has been beaten to death over and over on this list. That is not to say that something new and worthwhile has not come up each time the topic has been discussed, but I must say that the abuse of the users of oxytet by some list members using words like 'stupid' and the subsequent piling on of emotive posts is likely to generate far more heat than light. Much of what is to be said has already been said and said well; I strongly recommend searching the BEE-L logs for 'AFB' AND 'oxytet' OR 'TM' OR 'Tetracycline' or some such keys using the URL at the end of this post. Then, choose whether you want to believe those who use calm reasoned words backed by ample experience or those who make unsubstantiated alarmist statements unbacked by anything but conjecture, non-sequiturs and bad reasoning. You'll find the former group are busy people, taciturn after having once spoken, and unwilling to argue the same old matters over and over. The latter group seems to have endless time to spout conjecture about things in which they have little experience. There ARE good arguements for both sides, and conjecture does have its place, but... Allen --- Newsflash! Visit http://www.beekeeping.co.nz/beel.htm to search BEE-L archives the easy, easy way or to update or change your subscription options. --- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 17:03:35 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Re: bacterial helpers in bees Hi All Thanks Judy, George and P-O Gustafsson for your interesting follow on to the original post about ancient and present day bacteria that help bees. As the original paper mentioned it has been found that bees have a complete ecosystem of bacteria within them performing various tasks ranging from treating pollen, to proccessing it to producing antibiotics and things that deter tracheal mites. Judy asked what the present status of these symbionts is in commercial hives. I am sure in 90% of africa they are OK. I am sure in much of europe they are not, and most of the US definitely not. I am sure that in central and south america they are OK. I am sure that in Australia they are reasonably healthy, and probably not so good in many other areas where bees are treated a bit like China etc. This would be based on a history of treating bees in these countries based on AFB and EFB presence. Many remedies are available for treating negative infections of bacillus. seeing as only one strain of bacillus is causing a problem one only wants to get that one. Things like bacteriophage (bacterial viruses) that make bacteria temperature sensitive spring to mind - application of a phage rich solution of honey in spring would wipe out any bacillus in the guts of bees that went into the brood cluster and got warmed to the point where the phage became active. Phage are super specific to bacterial hosts and are easy to produce in huge amounts. They are non-toxic to humans and as soon as resistance begins to show in the target it is very easy and cheap to breed new and better phage. Why is there no such remedie? Because it is too easy to do, because the return is too low and because a specific strain would last a maximum of two years - so agro companies would not be interested. This is the same as the development of bacillus biopesticides for citrus crops - it is difficult to get big companies interested in such technologies. So once again I wish to draw an analogy to show why I believe antibiotics are bad. If in human soceity it was discovered, by a species that kept us in city like boxes, that when we had too many beer trucks driving around in our streets we developed diahorrhea and could not raise our young without them being deformed. If this species then applied some form of chemical on us that meant we could no longer 'synthesize' trucks it would in the long term lead to us no longer being able to produce antibiotics and ship medical supplies in trucks. We would have to use cars and planes -raising the short term cost. If an enemy attacked, say a giant water or oil sucking beast we would not be able to use trucks in amnufacturing armaments to treat ourselves - and the beast would have an advantage. We would work very hard trying to use cars and planes and burn out ourselves and other things would happen. We would get delinquent children, social dsiruption etc. Sort of like Terror my sin. Just some ideas. Keep well Garth Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 17:14:09 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Method for detecting cane sugar honey Greets All Came accross this on pubmed (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) Keep well Garth A test to detect cane-sugar-honey. Vit P Departamento Ciencia de los Alimentos, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Los Andes, Merida, Venezuela. [Medline record in process] A manual procedure for simple detection of cane sugar honey is described in terms of a visual reaction of honey, water and diethyl ether mixtures. Analyses of 30 samples of genuine honey were contrasted with 30 samples of cane-sugar-honey from Venezuela, and discriminated correctly by the proposed method. PMID: 9754408, UI: 98427016 Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 17:28:59 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Evidence to show bees choose queen Greets All More interesting info. Keep well Garth Anim Behav 1997 Dec;54(6):1483-90 Unequal subfamily proportions among honey bee queen and worker brood. Tilley CA, Oldroyd BP School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney [Record supplied by publisher] Queens from three colonies of feral honey bees, Apis mellifera were removed and placed in separate nucleus colonies. For each colony, eggs and larvae were taken from the nucleus and placed in the main hive on each of 3-4 consecutive weeks. Workers in the queenless parts selected young larvae to rear as queens. Queen pupae, together with the surrounding worker pupae, were removed from each colony and analysed at two to three microsatellite loci to determine their paternity. In all three colonies, the paternity of larvae chosen by the bees to rear as queens was not a random sample of the paternities in the worker brood, with certain subfamilies being over-represented in queens. These results support an important prediction of kin selection theory: when colonies are queenless, unequal relatedness within colonies could lead to the evolution of reproductive competition, that is some subfamilies achieving greater reproductive success than others. The mechanism by which such dominance is achieved could be through a system of kin recognition and nepotism, but we conclude that genetically based differential attractiveness of larvae for rearing as queens is more likely.Copyright 1997 The Association for the Study of Animal BehaviourCopyright 1997The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. PMID: 9521799 Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 21:38:51 +0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: antany Subject: wasps and bees MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-2" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rimantas Zujus wrote: >This year we had more wasps than usually. Since August I noticed wasps to be >very brave and aggressive. No nectar flow, no kindness. Some bee keepers >lost a part of their colonies. RZ! I have some experiences about it. And I assert that wasps are brave and aggresive only when feel weak colony. I thouhgt like you 3 years ago and lost all my four colonies. I think you have the same problem. Andrzej ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 16:35:48 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Adrian Wenner Subject: Pigeon and bee homing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi, Andy. First, will you be at the San Luis Obispo CA beekeepers meeting? I will be there for a couple of days to interact with old friends. (I know you don't like that sort of thing but thought I would ask anyhow.) Also, did you see my Part I in the American Bee Journal (October issue)? Many thanks for your input about pigeon homing. I buzzed your message off to Leo Turley in western Australia in reply to his extensive message. Here is what he sent to me (I am sure you will appreciate it): ******* X-Sender: lturley@net1.nw.com.au Adrian, Thank you very much for that and I like what you have to say. I am getting some excellent stuff from the Bee keeping fraternity and all of it cements in place what I have (almost) always known arising from more than 47 years of hands-on experience with racing pigeons. Much of what has been put forward by the academics over the years is plainly not so. I have been working on a manuscript dealing globally with racing pigeons for about 5 years and now I am retired (retired 18 months ago aged 54 - self funded retiree and feels marvelous) I want to go all out and complete it. The homing section dealing with the multitude of theories is very important and I want to take the opportunity now to put it right. There is so much that researchers have overlooked and moreso taken for granted. I find elaborate theories built on very tenuous foundations and presumptions that are way over the top. The opening paragraph of Cornell University's overview on Pigeon Navigation, for example, at http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/bionb420.07/eorcutt/PIGEON.HTM is immediately misleading, viz: "The ability of homing pigeons to navigate back to their 'home' loft from distant and unfamiliar release sites has provided an excellent means by which to investigate the importance of various external cues in spatial navigation. When reared in a particular loft, a young pigeon can be transported hundreds of miles away and successfully find its way home from the release sight." How wonderful! It misses a very important factor that unless young racing pigeons are educated from a very early age and that this training is continued on, well into adulthood, and that it is extended away from the home loft, at ever increasing distance, they will not "home" from one kilometre, let alone 500 and 1000 kilometres. In reality, young racing pigeons have the capacity to learn and it is up to the fancier to teach them. It is well known that unless this process is started around the home loft in the first 3 months of life, then they have more than likely lost the opportunity, certainly young pigeons left too long before being shown the outside world become too strong on the wing to remain in the immediate area for sufficient time to take in its surroundings and become lost. Many of our new pigeon fanciers take this process for granted and then wonder why they have lost them all on their first time away from home and often only on a very short little hop of say 2 - 3 kilometres. The recent publicised racing pigeon losses in the US is precisely based on this problem. Too many fanciers relying on other fanciers' hard work of putting birds through a reasonable education program and expect them to show inexperienced birds the way home. It is classic stuff. Pigeons learn very quickly and providing there are enough educated birds in a flock, it is a successful method and has its own terminology called 'jumping'. Saves a lot of time and works well most times - providing nothing unusual happens in a race to make the task a little harder than normal. When too many fanciers try to 'jump' at the same time you get a flock with no idea where it is and a little bit of adverse weather makes for a disaster that is "unexplainable". Many scoff at this, but it is a fact and happens all the time and there are variations of the same condition. This US incident was a young bird race, I understand from 200 miles - and was simply a matter of too many young birds without sufficient experience. Classic example. 200 miles is also a long way for young pigeons. Most long time fanciers know about jumping, but are not quick to admit it. It is not quite as simple as what I have related, other factors come into play, like the classic over-optimistic programming of races, coupled with say a spate of inclement weather that has hampered individual's own training plains leading up to a race promotes "jumping" for too many birds and to too far a distance. Fairly simplistic stuff and too simple to be taken into consideration by many. I am glad you mentioned magnetic orientation. For years this has been a stumbling block away from more feasible explanations. By good fortune this year I have made use of the IPS Space Forecast Centre for Geomagnetic disturbances. They even have a service whereby they notify by e-mail as an alert of periods of unsettled conditions and is measured in a scale called K Indices. See: http://www.ips.gov.au/asfc/aus_geomag/index.html#bestview Interesting stuff and I received 13 alerts at an average of one per week and while only two periods covered precisely our race fixtures, much of our training was done during the alerts and the long and short of it is that it didn't make any difference. All in all I am now becoming more convinced that simple memory coupled with other innate issues are the only issues involved. By innate I mean such things as the ability to wheel and turn in a flock without colliding, there are leaders and followers - long time pigeon fanciers can see which ones are calling the shots in daily exercise and the role changes according to fitness - a survival trait for a colony of pigeons. I know large releases of pigeons, such as in races, are made up of leaders and followers and over the top of this are the birds who remember the area from previous journeys and it is these birds who set the direction for the others to follow. Most of this is all too simple for the academics and I have always wondered if bee orientation and pigeon orientation principles were the same and I am now fast coming to that conclusion that they certainly are. Finally, just to finish off, Tinbergen, 1951. The Study of Instinct. Oxford University Press, London, (Manning, An Introduction to Animal Behaviour, E. Arnold) documents his experiment on home location by digger wasps at: http://salmon.psy.plym.ac.uk/year1/ETHEXPT.HTM#Digger and I find that very relevant too. Adrian, as I said, I like your comments and the above is simply to add and agree with your noted sceptic overview of many of the theories that abound. Thank you again and please come back if you think of anything else. Kindest regards, Leo Turley Perth, Western Australia http://www.nw.com.au/~lturley/ Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home phone) 967 Garcia Road (805) 893-8062 (UCSB FAX) Santa Barbara, CA 93106 ************************************************************************ * "...in the drift of the years I by and by found out that a Consensus * * examines a new [idea] with its feelings rather oftener than with its * * mind. You know, yourself, that is so. Do those people examine with * * feelings that are friendly to evidence? You know they don't." * * * * Mark Twain * ************************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 19:07:33 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andy Nachbaur Subject: Re: Pigeon and bee homing In-Reply-To: <199810250124.SAA06853@mx1.thegrid.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 04:35 PM 10/24/98 -0700, you wrote: > First, will you be at the San Luis Obispo CA beekeepers meeting? I will >be there for a couple of days to interact with old friends. (I know you >don't like that sort of thing but thought I would ask anyhow.) Also, did >you see my Part I in the American Bee Journal (October issue)? Thanks for asking, I will surprise all and come out from behind the rocks but not this year. But Brian Ferguson will be there part of the time along with his brothers and my neighbors so I will get several reports on what I missed, so be good and have some good talks with old friends as they are thinning out as we get older for sure.. >Many thanks for your input about pigeon homing. I buzzed your message off >to Leo Turley in western Australia in reply to his extensive message. Here >is what he sent to me (I am sure you will appreciate it): Good stuff for sure and I would not be surprised that at least drones are followers. ttul, Andy- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 22:37:33 -0400 Reply-To: dublgully@worldnet.att.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: David Gaida Subject: Antibiotic treatments MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Interestingly, just today attended a state beekeepers' meeting. The presenter was Dr. Shimanucki from the Beltsville Lab. One of his topics was actually the use of terramycin for control of AFB. Apparently this discussion will remain current no matter how many times it is repeated. Changes and new information and all that junk. Some of the facts that Doc shared and I hope I recorded correctly (Any mistakes will be mine alone in transcribing) (And yes, I did ask him if I could share his information) I will share this info for those of you who have not heard it before and apologize to those of you who have: A SINGLE 'resistant' strain of AFB was found in 4 states in 1996/97: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota. The one persistent item in each hive tested was the source for the nucleus hives that were used to start the hives. He said one additional 'resistant' AFB was found in 1998 in Connecticut. After further investigation, the same common source for nucleus colonies was identified. (Which perhaps would lead you to believe that the resistant strain is not an evolution of the original AFB spore, but perhaps a different spore). The lab has identified that any "idea" of resistant strains of AFB can be linked to the use of "extender patties" (vegetable shortening with the Terramycin added). They have shown that extender patties do not give a consistent amount of treatment thereby allowing the AFB to go unchecked. Not a resistance, but the lack of correct use of the treatment. Further there are three common factors they see in the requests they receive when beekeepers ask for identification of "resistant" strains the beekeepers have found in their hives. The common factors are: 1. The beekeepers use extender patties, not dust (which is the recommended way to treat) 2. The beekeepers purchased nucleus colonies instead of package bees. (the exchange of combs being the factor) 3. The beekeepers were not religious in their inspection of the hives and equipment perhaps resulting in the spore getting a strong hold before treatment with the patties. The lab also feels that the strain is perhaps not a 'resistant' strain, but perhaps a new strain from someplace else. I asked the Doctor what side he is on regarding the use of Terramycin. I was still unsure of our position. The Doctor is on the side of "safe rather than sorry". There are currently two treatments being looked at for future use. One an antibiotic and one a 'natural' substance. Both still being formulated. If we were in Sweden where there is no foulbrood, I am sure our decision would be different. It must be wonderful to know you can safely not treat. However, in the US, in this age, I cannot imagine the guilt I would feel if we lost our colonies due to our decision to experiment (and I do believe not treating is an experiment when there are known cases of AFB). We do not raise lab mice or bees for experimentation. Can't afford it and I am a sucker for a cute face. Once a bee is developed that will need no antibiotics, I will be at the front of the line of buyers. And there are none of us who have time to waste. Interesting that education, and I believe Bee-L is educational for me, could be referred to as a waste of time. Thank goodness there are educators willing to share their time and experience to help us make our decisions. Whether they be for or against. Those of us still making our decisions need to see each side. Past and Present. (Before retirement, I was a paralegal doing research and writing for 24 years. Sometimes the most convincing argument for your side comes from the arguments against your side.) I am still learning how to search the archives. Have found great information so far, but still learning and hoping there are others willing to help me learn. After all, conjecture resulted in the movable frame hives. Judy in Kentucky, USA ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 21:11:40 -0600 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Organization: The Beekeepers Subject: Re: Travel vs. Telescoping Covers In-Reply-To: <11273191028211@systronix.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT >Can someone explain to me what the advantages are of the tin-roofed, >telescoping hive cover over the simpler (and far cheaper) "travel" cover? >I can see that the sides of the travel cover... As one who has used both, I'll have to say that both are good, as is a simple flat piece of plywood. Nonetheless, after years of experimenting, we have settled on a telescoping lid (with or without metal) and a plastic bag of kodel insulation as an inner cover, even though we still own 1000 or so of the migratory style and use them in a pinch. We are migratory, but find that mass, not volume is the limiting factor in transporting hives the way we do it. Pictures at 11. The space between hives required by the side overhang makes handling much more pleasant, and the overhang reduces the amount of water that gets into the hive. Water running down the outside will often 'wick' through cracks. We had this happening under lids and it resulted in water in frame feeders and water on standing floors if they happened to be at all tipped back. Contrary to what one might think, the telescoping lids blow off much more frequently than the migratory type, even with an eight pound brick on top. The reason for this is that around here it is little twisters (dust devils) that are primary lid lifters and the rim contains vacuum. Nonetheless, we like the wind barrier that the overhang provides and the drier interior that results from conveying water farther down the side. Moreover, with sacks or pillows, the lid provides protection from sun. If you want to put patties on top of the frames, a telescoping lid will allow a sheet of plastic to be used above them to keep draughts out, since all sides will be folded and held down and an reasonably good seal can be achieved. Allen ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 13:50:18 +0300 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Jassim AL-Mughrabi Subject: Re: Beekeeping in Saudi Arabia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jassim M.Al-mughrabi Honeybee Technician Minisry of Agriculture & Water P.O.Box 42332 Riyadh11541 K.S.A Fax 009661-(458)3348> Welcome to the list. Tell us a about beekeeping in Saudi Arabia. What > variety of bees to you use, and what sort or foraging do you have in your > hot dry climate? > > Paul > > Hi paul and other friends , > > We have two kind of beekeepers in Saudi Arabia : > 1- the beekeepers who use the modern hives and this kind of beekeepers they keep > bees in there farms . >2- the other beekeepers use the trditional way by keeping bees inside hive loq and they usually transfair there bees from place to place searching for good nectar sources espcially we have different kind of climets . > The indigenous bees is ( Apis mellefera ) which it was found here ( the old world ) thousends of years it`s very quit bees and produce good brood combs also more honey than the imported bees ,moreover.They fly more distance than italian or carniolan bees . > > 3- the main foraging source to the first beekeepers is ( Alfa Alfa ) and to the other beekeepers is ( acacias - spring flowers - spina chresty and maney maney other ) > >best regards,, > > Jassim M.Al-mughrabi >Honeybee Technician >Minisry of Agriculture & Water >P.O.Box 42332 Riyadh11541 K.S.A >Fax 009661-(458)3348 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 16:29:33 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Re: Fondant - beware starch ingredients Greets All/Allen/Murray Interesting to read about the fondant as a feed for bees. Just a caution to anybody trying to make the stuff or buy it - another thing to check for is the ingredients of the icing sugar componenet. Normal icing sugar is made by finely grinding sugar and mixing it with starch so it remainds smooth and 'clumpless' as well as having better holding properties when being made into icing. Castor sugar is pure sugar and has no additives. I know this as I am allergic to both maize and wheat hence cannot eat icing sugar due to it's components that are bad for me. I know from watching beekeepers that I know trying to feed their hives with sausages of icing sugar and honey that it damages colonies due to the starch component if they are rearing brood. Hence checking with the icing sugar milling company would also be a good step. Keep well Garth Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 17:12:58 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Re: Antibiotics and bees Hi All Sorry to extend this one, but in response to both Allens and Judys post I would like to offer the following bit of information. The following paper describes how the tetracycline resistance gene in a common human skin bacteria, Staphylococcus epidermidis, is very similar to the one described in Bacillus subtilus. Where a gene for resistance is present it moves very rapidly from bacterial host to host, and soon it destroys the usefullness of an antibiotic. In a recent study of local south african chicken (chicken around the world are fed tetracycline to increase their growth rate - they used to be fed penicillin but that stopped working and too many people became allergic to it) it was found that 100% of chicken contained bacterial strains resistant to tetracyline, chloramphenicol and penicillin. These are three of the best antibiotics. So yes, using bad examples and alarmism may be bad, but as Allen said in the following quote: Then, choose whether you want to believe those who use calm reasoned words backed by ample experience or those who make unsubstantiated alarmist statements unbacked by anything but conjecture, non-sequiturs and bad reasoning. You'll find the former group are busy people, taciturn after having once spoken, and unwilling to argue the same old matters over and over. The latter group seems to have endless time to spout conjecture about things in which they have little experience. end quote. So from this I am sure we can see that given the evolution of strains resistant to every antibiotic known to man, the calm reasoning ones among us can see that to take a short cut and use a broad spectrum antibiotic to treat a trivial bee disease, probably more indicative of bad beekeeping pasture than anything else, is not wise. In the short term it will help - but in the long term the ones with experience using TM are going to be the first ones with experience with resistant strains - simple. As far as conjecture from ones with little experience - that may be aimed at me - I routinely work with antibiotic resistant bacterial strains. (that's what microbiologists do) I have never had AFB in my hives so I have not worked with that bacteria. I have worked with B.subtilus, cereus and a few others - any environmental sample of these from where humans are has resistance present. According to recent publications AFB has suddenly been found in my country. My rather older book from 1960 reports that AFB when it does occur in south africa is not a major problem and the bees clear it up. But then again, the bees in my area are healthy and happy at the moment and have not been fed antibiotics for 50 years. J Med Microbiol 1996 Jul;45(1):57-63 A novel plasmid from Staphylococcus epidermidis specifying resistance to kanamycin, neomycin and tetracycline. Schwarz S, Gregory PD, Werckenthin C, Curnock S, Dyke KG Institut fur Kleintierforschung Celle/Merbitz der Bundesforschungsanstalt fur Landwirtschaft Braunschweig-Volkenrode (FAL), Germany. The naturally occurring plasmid pSTS7 from Staphylococcus epidermidis mediated resistance to tetracycline via a tetL gene and to kanamycin and neomycin via an aadD gene. Plasmid pSTS7 showed partial restriction map and sequence homology to the previously described tetracycline resistance plasmid pNS1981 from Bacillus subtilis and to the kanamycin/neomycin/bleomycin resistance plasmid pUB110 from S. aureus. Sequence analysis of the regions flanking the two resistance genes in pSTS7 led to the identification of a novel site for interplasmid recombination which could explain the derivation of pSTS7 from the incompatible pNS1981- and pUB110-like parental plasmids under tetracycline-selective pressure. Keep well Garth Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 19:05:37 -0500 Reply-To: dublgully@worldnet.att.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: David Gaida Subject: Hive Beetle MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thought I should share some info that Dr. Shimanucki gave us concerning the hive beetle being found in a few southern states in the US. The Doc had just returned on Monday from a trip to South Africa. He was interested in the African attitude towards the hive beetle. He said every hive has the beetle, however, the African beekeepers are not concerned about their presence. He said the beekeepers he spoke with just remove the beetles and go on. They remove the beetles before any damage is done. Even though they have the beetles, they could not recognize the picture he showed of the damage done to honey supers. The damage occurring in the US hives, apparently is because the beetles were allowed to go unchecked. He stated there is an easy way to stop them. Remove the frames from your hive and spray them off with a garden hose with moderate pressure. Just plain water. He said the larvae are easily removed from the combs. They crawl out and fall to the ground to continue their growth. The eggs are laid in any open comb, including the honey combs, which the beetle penetrates. The doctor said he was amazed at the way the Africans were nonchalant about the beetles. It may be that with large commercial US beekeepers, it is impossible to catch the beetles before they cause the damage. He thinks hobbyists should, however, not have trouble with them if they inspect their hives regularly. He said it appears that the beetles either leave a scent or cause the bees to become demoralized. In any event, the bees abscond from the hive. He said it was very interesting to see the difference in the concern between the African beekeepers and the US beekeepers. He went on to say, however, that in Africa hardly anyone ever buys any bees. There are enough feral bee colonies to replenish any apiary. One beekeeper who has 200 hives said he normally loses half of them each year. But all he does is set the hives out and they soon have a swarm. So he can replace all 100 lost hives within one to two weeks. Dr. Shimanucki also spoke about a problem he sees that will probably be the newest threat to US beekeepers. He said it is called TROPILAEPS CLEARAE. Controls for the varroa should also be effective against this mite. This mite prefers worker larvae, contrasted to the varroa which prefers drone larvae. The one good thing is that this mite will not survive when there is no brood present, contrasted to the varroa which can survive on the adult bee. This mite will be a problem in tropical or subtropical climates which do not experience any time when there is no brood present. He said the mite has been identified in SE Asia, Korea and the Mid East. There are no reported cases of this in the US at this time. For your info. Judy in Kentucky, USA ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 19:52:34 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Christopher Slade Subject: Re: Buying queens Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Vince, I agree with your comment about the queens' genes and selection for the appropriate destination. However, I do not agree with your comment about treating bees with antibiotic. The point is that you are not treating the bees but the bacteria. By doing so you are subjecting them to a strong selective pressure. While bees will have about one generation a year in which to evolve, the generations of bacteria are measured in minutes or hours and evolution of resistant strains of bacteria to antibiotic will be correspondingly faster than the resistance of bees to the bacteria especially if they are relieved of the selective pressure by indiscriminate use of antibiotics. I am writing as a reasonably well read beekeeper, not as a scientist. Perhaps Garth or another scientist would like to comment on my logic. Chris Slade ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 22:39:02 -0700 Reply-To: fltdeck1@ix.netcom.com Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Matthew Subject: few weak hives going into winter MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I've been feeding six new hives which I pulled out of feral sites since August, and this weekend I found four of them to be exceptionally weak on honey-stores. These hives have been fed nearly non-stop (baggie method, 1-gallon sugar/water top-feeders, & chopped-up comb - mush & large pieces). My hope was that they'd build up a bit to have a chance for the winter. To my concern, it seems that even the 20-30 lbs/each of feed I've given each of them has literally disappeared . How could they eat so much? I'd understand if they could carry the weight on their bodies.....they'd all be fat little things. The bees are there, one to two full-depth supers full of wax & bees, though they're WAY light (estimate the hives weigh 10-40 lbs more than they would weigh bare-framed & bee-less) . This is greatly disappointing considering the effort I've spent in giving these bees a chance (they were all to be killed by pesticide unless I removed them). I'm fairly certain robbing hasn't occured as I've watched for evidence (no mass of dead bees from fighting nor ragged ripped-open comb) unless the bees have repaired the damage to the comb & carried off their dead before my inspections. We're in Colorado and the weather's been changing rapidly from day to day since October - mostly for colder days & freezing nights. My better hives are heavy (100-200lbs) and I was planning on giving these weaker hives their extra stores. Still, I'd like to know if anyone has an idea on why these bees are exceptionally needy? Thanks in advance of anyone's suggestion. Matthew in Castle Rock, CO ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 08:35:06 GMT Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Computer Software Solutions Ltd Subject: Artificial Insemination Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello All Apart from needing to know something about this procedure for the Senior examination next July, I was wondering how practical it is to experiment with it. What equipment is needed, where can training be obtained, and what are the chances of it being even moderately successful in the hands of an amateur?. I would particularly like to hear from someone like myself who has actually carried out the procedure. At present I have 10 hives in three apiaries, and this is my second year in beekeeping. As always thanks very much for any information. Sincerely Tom Barrett 49 South Park Foxrock Dublin 18 Ireland e mail cssl@iol.ie Tel + 353 1 289 5269 Fax + 353 1 289 9940 Latitude 53 Degrees 16' North Longitude 6 Degrees 9' West of Greenwich ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 04:00:19 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Stan Sandler Subject: Re: Antibiotics and bees Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi Garth and All: >Sorry to extend this one, No need to apologize. The subject has the potential to having a bearing on the future of humanity if untreatable bacterial strains of some diseases evolve. Is that statement "alarmist" Allen? Maybe we should be more alarmed, because some of the people on the forefront of the continuing battle with pathenogenic microbes think we could lose it. CBC radio just recently broadcast four one hour programs on the subject on their "IDEAS" show. The agricultural long term use of antibiotics is undeniably one of the major culprits, and the longterm *preventative* use of tetracycline in bees is not a lot different than feeding it to other farm stock, because although we don't regularly eat the bees, as Garth said: >Where a gene for resistance is present it moves very rapidly from >bacterial host to host, and soon it destroys the usefullness of an >antibiotic. Allen said: >You'll find the former group are busy people, taciturn after having >once spoken, and unwilling to argue the same old matters over and over. >The latter group seems to have endless time to spout conjecture about >things in which they have little experience. But I am sure that Allen was just having a bad hair day :) when he said this, because although I have been on this list long enough to have read plenty of discussion on the matter (including Allen's very considerable experience as a large scale beekeeper and former bee inspector) I don't think that the subject is "exhausted". And if Allen considers for a moment the international nature of this list, and the fact that regulatory officials in a large number of countries (people who do have some *experience* although Andy might argue not a lot:) have seen fit to prohibit the use of antibiotics he might agree that the debate is still ongoing even among busy experienced people. I would like to bring fumagillan into the discussion. Do you know Garth what it's relationship is to other antibiotics? Is it so different from other antibiotics used by humans that fumagillan resistance would never be a problem (except for nosema ridden bees) or might it be the starting of a whole group of antibiotics for the future? The following is taken from a post by P-O Gustaffson. It is comments by Ingemar Fries, an entomologist about fumagillan resistance: There has been one attempt to monitor if fumagillin resistance can be provoked in N. apis (Gross, K P; Ruttner, F (1970) Entwickelt Nosema apis Zander eine Resistenz gegen|ber dem Antibiotikum Fumidil B? Apidologie 1: 401-422.). No increased tolerance to fumagillin in the parasite has been seen after long term exposure. The fact that the product now has been in use for several decades without loss of effect also indicates that the parasite is very slow or unable to develop resistance to this drug. Ingemar went on to describe some of the methods used to control nosema in Norway where fumagillan is not allowed (and where I can imagine winter can be fairly severe!). (The methods were fumagation and wintering on foundation). In fact, I just read over ALL the posts in my bee-l "nosema" file, and I have convinced myself that this is the last year I am going to spend a thousand dollars on fumagillan without even testing for nosema, and without fumagating with acetic acid. Regards, Stan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 22:14:13 -0600 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Organization: The Beekeepers Subject: Re: Antibiotic treatments In-Reply-To: <02553525302474@systronix.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I appreciate this post, as I do Garth's (as an aside and totally unrelated, I have a fellow from South Africa named Garreth working here) original post on the topic of symbiotic organisms which was very stimulating. FWIW I have never liked using any medications (and now I am using the big A) and appreciate any reasoned and factual discussion. Having said that, and revealed myself as a romantic, I have to accept the empirical evidence to which I have been exposed over the years in my functions as bee inspector and commercial beekeeper; although I was an originally unwilling convert, for twenty years now there has been little doubt in my mind about the wisdom of using oxytet. There are some valid concerns, and the one that Garth brushed on is one. The other that concerns me is the question of whether handling oxytet causes humans to carrry resistant coliform bacteria. The question of symbiotic bacteria is a fascinating one, and I have heard it said that there are also fungi that are associted with properly functioning colonies. As for whether all North American bees are exposed to oxytet and thus invalid subjects, I have to laugh and say that many of my bees came from NZ and as we all know there is no oxytet use in NZ (laugh here). Many more came from Auz and of course no Auzzies use oxytet (wink wink, nudge nudge). Anyhow, if we dusted them, many probably did not get around to noticing the stuff and are still simon-pure -- untouched by the nasty stuff. Anyhow the fact is -- as Andy has pointed out a few times -- bees fed oxytet do better on the whole than those which are not (and presumably still have all their flora & fauna intact). If the symbiots give a distinct advantage, then there should be an immediate loss of performance if the bees are medicated. No one to my knowledge has reported this, so who can say. Sometimes I forget to rush out and dust my exotic package bees and frankly, they do not seem noticably appreciative or superior. The quotes below are very helpful in understanding the resistant AFB situation. Thanks Judy (David?) for providing them. > Interestingly, just today attended a state beekeepers' meeting. The > presenter was Dr. Shimanucki from the Beltsville Lab. One of his topics > was actually the use of terramycin for control of AFB... > A SINGLE 'resistant' strain of AFB was found in 4 states in 1996/97: > Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota. The one persistent item in > each hive tested was the source for the nucleus hives that were used to > start the hives. He said one additional 'resistant' AFB was found in 1998 > in Connecticut. After further investigation, the same common source for > nucleus colonies was identified. (Which perhaps would lead you to believe > that the resistant strain is not an evolution of the original AFB spore, > but perhaps a different spore). I don't get this. I get the *opposite* of that form the quote. > They have shown that extender patties do not give a consistent amount of > treatment thereby allowing the AFB to go unchecked. Not a resistance, > but the lack of correct use of the treatment. Interesting. I've used both treatments and found the dust to be far more unreliable and inconsistent. We used a single extender patty on each of 48 hives made up of comb from infected comb (scale removed) we culled from purchased equipment and had no subsequent observable breakdown in any hive AFAIK. I tried this years ago with dust and was rewarded with massive breakdowns. > The lab has identified that any "idea" of resistant strains of AFB can > be linked to the use of "extender patties" (vegetable shortening with > the Terramycin added). Just what does 'linked' mean? Just being at the scene of the crime proves nothing. Victims are often found at the scene of a crime and so are witnesses. Neither are usually causally related to the event. In most people minds, anyhow. Some have been known to blame the victim for being there. > Further there are three common factors they see in the requests they > receive when beekeepers ask for identification of "resistant" strains the > beekeepers have found in their hives. The common factors are: 1. The > beekeepers use extender patties, not dust (which is the recommended way to > treat) 2. The beekeepers purchased nucleus colonies instead of package > bees. (the exchange of combs being the factor) 3. The beekeepers were not > religious in their inspection of the hives and equipment perhaps resulting > in the spore getting a strong hold before treatment with the patties. The fact that extender patties were used means nothing unless it is shown conclusively that there is a causal relationship. This was not the only thing in common. The supplier was common to them all, I gather from the above. Perhaps there are other commonalities. (Move over dRone) Patties appear to be scapegoats here. Perhaps there is a political component? Foxes running the henhouse? IMHO there has been gross gross gross negligence on the part of the 'bee scientists' and regulators in not getting approval for alternate and very different control agents to augment oxytet. It was only a matter of time until it failed when used exclusively. Everyone knew that. But guess what? This will keep the scientists and regulators in operating funds for quite a while fixing what they should have prevented. In the meantime, they are scapegoating the one truly reliable treatment. Well, I guess syrup is good too, except for the fact that oxytet stability is poor and the active ingredient degenerates quickly over time. Really, now. Dust! Dust is the worst way to apply oxytet. Use dust and the inspectors will never get laid off. > The lab also feels that the strain is perhaps not a 'resistant' strain, > but perhaps a new strain from someplace else. Where have we heard that before? > I asked the Doctor what side he is on regarding the use of Terramycin. I > was still unsure of our position. The Doctor is on the side of "safe > rather than sorry". There are currently two treatments being looked at > for future use. One an antibiotic and one a 'natural' substance. Both > still being formulated. Good. Too bad that sulfathiozole, the magic bullet is not approved -- even for nucs and queen rearing outfits that don't make honey. > If we were in Sweden where there is no foulbrood, I am sure our > decision would be different. It must be wonderful to know you can > safely not treat. However, in the US, in this age, I cannot imagine the > guilt I would feel if we lost our colonies due to our decision to > experiment (and I do believe not treating is an experiment when there > are known cases of AFB). We do not raise lab mice or bees for > experimentation. Can't afford it and I am a sucker for a cute face. Amen > Once a bee is developed that will need no antibiotics, I will be at the > front of the line of buyers. Behind me. See you at Steve Tabers? :) > And there are none of us who have time to waste. Interesting that > education, and I believe Bee-L is educational for me, could be referred to > as a waste of time... Only if it is repititious and the result of people being too lazy to go to a website and type a couple of words and press a button. > I am still learning how to search the archives. Have found great > information so far, but still learning and hoping there are others willing > to help me learn. After all, conjecture resulted in the movable frame > hives. I'm not entirely convinced that moveable frames are an advancement. Have you ever seen skeps managed by a master? I thought not they have been stamped out by a pogrum against cheap equipment. At one time all bee publications of any size and influence belonged to bee funiture manufacturers. (As perhaps did the regulators :0 -- right Andy?) Who says skeps cannot be inspected? They can very nicely. No one who repeats that old BS has ever tried. And the cutting of comb ensures reduction of disease new wax. There are many more good points and FWIW, there is apparently a commercial outfit in Germany running about 1000 skeps. Anyhow, thanks for bringing some good stuff to this. Allen --- Newsflash! Visit http://www.beekeeping.co.nz/beel.htm to search BEE-L archives the easy, easy way or to update or change your subscription options. --- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 09:42:46 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Adrian Wenner Subject: Apology Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" My apologies to the BEE-L network subscribers for mistakenly using the Return command instead of being more careful and getting the pigeon and bee homing message only to Andy Nachbauer. Normally I am more careful. Adrian Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home phone) 967 Garcia Road (805) 893-8062 (UCSB FAX) Santa Barbara, CA 93106 ************************************************************************ * "...in the drift of the years I by and by found out that a Consensus * * examines a new [idea] with its feelings rather oftener than with its * * mind. You know, yourself, that is so. Do those people examine with * * feelings that are friendly to evidence? You know they don't." * * * * Mark Twain * ************************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 16:19:22 -0700 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: edward markus Subject: Critters that pupate away from their future home MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here we have codling moth which pupates at the base of a tree over winter and crawls back up in the Spring to begin another cycle of biting unattractive hole in my apples. . Sounds a bit like the hive beetle in this. I know there is a commercial preparation called Tanglefoot. This extra gooey substance works to block insect migration when spread around and upon a tree trunk by the "orchardist" (It's OK, I call myself a beekeeper what I'm not contemplating my latest foul-up) . I bought it in an aerosol can which gummed up well before it was empty. The question... has anyone come across a home- made version of this and if so, how does one make it and live to tell the tale! A corollary...... A fine seed company from Oregon, Territorial Seed puts out a catalogue for the Pacific Northwest and its environs. It is part wish book and part planter's bible. A wealth of information on many including organic pactices for the gardener. The point of this is that they include organic soil drenches for giving ground dwelling cole crop chewing bugs a new way to aid the gardener as fertilizer rather than annoying tenants on cabbage roots. I've not used the product, I prefer a bigger hammer when dealing with this . But if one wants to break the hive beetle cycle in the ground it may offer some small hammer possibilites. Edward Markus - Heart's Home Farm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 06:49:43 -0700 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Organization: The Beekeepers Subject: Re: Pillows etc. Comments: To: Murray McGregor Comments: cc: Eric Abell In-Reply-To: <0$rI5GAkVvM2EwUX@denrosa.demon.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > I never sleep before the first bee shift of a series as my brain just > keeps turning over on the preparations all night. (I suppose in a > perverse kind of way I get excited.) I found that getting all wound up in my case seemed to be related to seasonal allergies, that often co-incide with the timing of major operations beginning. An antihistamine often knocks me out so I can sleep in such cases. > ...noticed that you place small pillows on top of the combs after > unwrapping, but whilst wrapped they are only covered by an inner cover, > the rest of the insulation being covered by the wraps, which are thicker > on top than on the sides. Correct? That's the method we adopted from others years ago and still use for many hives. More recent wraps are single piece with the same thickness as the sides on top too. I was searching for pictures -- I know I scanned them, but one of the computers on my network won't respond. I was going to put them on the web for you to look at. > With our milder and wetter, but probably longer, winters I am wondering > about adopting the pillows here as an all winter insulation layer. We > would use it to cover over the fondant etc in the vacant head space inside > the empty box on top, much the same way as the bubble wrap I mentioned > earlier. Are there any complications with using these such as > condensation? No, we found that sacks mould and that the bees suffered, but under the plastic the bees thrive, since the plastic does not have much heat inertia and is impervious to moisture. We find plastic and wood covers comparable in wintering success. > Or perhaps bees chewing holes in them. Not if you use high quality true 6 mil (not 6 mil rating) poly. They can chew thru garbage bags, but never touch this stuff. > We would probably choose to remove them after the spring build up was > well underway and replace them with our normal wooden inner covers. Actually, all year round they are far better than the wooden inner covers which I hate. They are non-rigid and can be peeeled back for a peek, do not accumulate wax , never need scraping, and permit leaving wax buildups on top of frames. We seldom scrape ladder comb and now welcome stools on tops of frames since they loft the pillow enough for the bees to pass under. You can read Eric's and my comments on BEE-L over the last several years since we pioneered the idea by searching using 'pillow' as a key at http://www.beekeeping.co.nz/beel.htm. While you are at it, you might look at "hive mats". (use the double quotes). My only beef with the pillows is the problem of keeping them in place while replacing the outer lid on a windy day :( > So, how are they made? We use poly tubing and slice it off in the correct width. Then we insert the kodel and iron both sides with waxed paper to prevent sticking. Maybe I can get some pictures of the process onto the web shortly. > The insulation material you mention is not, to my limited knowledge of > such things, available here, Ask at tarpaulin manufacturers who make insulation to protect curing concrete in winter. Kodel is a poly batting, much like quilt batting only courser. Water just runs out of it and mice leave it alone. Never rots, either. > so I was wondering about using these easy seal polybags part filled with > the small polystyrene filler chips we use in packing goods for the > parcel carriers. We are able to get them just the right size to fit over > the top of a langstroth hive, and in fairly heavy duty plastic, so if > these would do it will be a very quick and efficient thing to make up. > Just open the bag, shove in a scoop of chips, seal it, and a couple of > staples to prevent the seal coming undone. Perhaps this, however will > not give the insulation that some fibre based fill inside the bag would > give, or perhaps thin upholstery foam. Well, I can't say it won't work, but Kodel pillows are flat and don't bunch up when peeled back. They are like a sack only much better. Thin upholstery foam might be okay, but look for the Kodel or the same material under another name first. It is cheap and really good. I use 1" rating and Eric like the thinner stuff. Since adopting pillows, we are moving toward telescoping lids with a 1" rim around the inside edge to make a seal and to allow the pillow to loft -- particularly if we are adding patties. > Another variant on this sometimes used here, not by us because we > thought it to be a bit labour intensive, is to use 1 inch styrofoam > sheeting. Then for each colony you need two sheets, one with a fairly > large round central hole in it and the other a solid sheet. You place the > one with the hole down over the cluster, and feed the fondant or whatever > (sometimes liquid in contact feeders) over the hole. This then seals off > the hole and the colony is fairly well insulated. An empty box is then > placed on top and the second solid sheet of styrofoam goes over that, > followed by inner cover and telescoping roof. (And large rock or bricks, > as per your most recent post. They do indeed lift off remarkably readily > if you get a swirling wind.) We've used styrofoam other rigid materials, and just don't like then. Reasons? Trouble sealing, rapid deterioration, uncomfortable feel, bulkiness. The pillow/quilt concept works really well, and with the right materials quilts are very durable and effective. > I also notice you use upper entrance holes and that these are continued > through the winter wraps. We never use upper holes at all, and only if the > hives become particularly strong in warm spells in summer do we provide > any kind of upper ventilation at all. This is a practice that makes wrapping a slow job. We do it because everyone does it. We've done without and so have others with good results, but we are afraid of ice storms following snowfalls that might plug off the sources of air and also like the bees to be able to get out in the spring without having to walk down two flights of stairs. Without upper entrances, using doubles to winter means that the strongest colonies can have lots of entrance activity and the weak ones none. This leads to transfer of bees into strong hives from the weak. This is the rationale behind using auger holes: All hives in a yard can attract bees equally in spring and after reversing, whereas the bees would be attracted to those hives that were active on the floor. Besides bees love -- and orient to -- round holes. > We used to jack up lids etc, but the amount of propolising was terrible, > even to the extent that, when we had bore holes they would completely > propolise closed these holes in a few days. We concluded that they did > not want them and we have not noted any change in wintering or yields > with or without them. Your cicumstances are obviously very different as > the colonies in the pictures seem to be using the upper holes at least > as much as the lower ones. We, however, generally winter all our hives > in single chambers, whereas you are on double and this will have many > knock on effects on winter and spring management. Singles are likely the best, but we cannot get enough feed for certain success and still have room for the bees in one standard. That's why I'd love to go to Jumbos. Doubles are a whole different ball game compared to singles. Jumbos come in between. > As you can gather I am going to try a couple of apiaries with something > like your pillows in place this winter and see if it makes much > difference... I'll try to get some pictures up on the net ASAP. Allen BTW, I'm CCing Eric and also BEE-L again, so that others can share in this discussion. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 07:40:16 -0700 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Organization: The Beekeepers Subject: Pictures at Eleven MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT www.internode.net/HoneyBee/Pix As promised. Much more to follow. Maybe even some explanations. Allen ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 11:37:04 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "Swintosky, Michael D." Subject: Honey Moving Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Greetings All, Has there been mention as to the movement of honey from brood boxes up to the supers? Specifically, is there any greater/lesser likelihood depending on brood chamber configuration (one deep, two deeps, etc.)? My thought was towards spring when honey supers are first put on. Will the bees move honey out of the brood box(es) to make room for egg laying? If so, to what degree? Residues from Apistan strips, etc. in brood box honey I believe have been shown to be pretty low concentration, so I wouldn't worry about small amounts being moved up. Low contaminant levels would be diluted significantly further. However, I might be concerned if half a super was moved up. Mike Dellroy, Ohio ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 18:13:39 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Rimantas Zujus Subject: Amitraz Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-4" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maybe, this is of some interest to the all LIST Attila writes: > Hi! It looks like you have varroa in your country also. I wonder if you ever >used amitraz. I would be interested if you would have the details how to use >this chemical. It is effective for both mites. Thanks for your help. Attila > > Hi, Attila & ALL Your E-mail address hidens country?s identity but your name reminds me of Finland? Yes, we have the warroa and, I heard, even tracheal mites. Warroa Jacobsoni came here in the 60-th. I liked the link: http://apiculturene.cas.psu.edu/SammMap.html , showing when and how the mite spread in the world. Finland ? 1976. Amitraz is forbidden in many countries. Nevertheless, some big beekeepers use it here. I was told a case concerned with it. Some years ago a group representing our beekeepers? society visited well known and experienced elderly fellow. He was seen far ahead looking after his hives. The group chatting came nearer and then suddenly astonished. ?The host disappeared somewhere, maybe, avoiding of the meeting? made a joke someone. But soon the host was found lying among hives unconscious. When he came to his senses he have told about his experience in fighting against the warroa mites with a Mitac (based on amitraz). Some courageous fellows put 2-3 drops on a paper tape, burns it, slip into hive?s entrance and close it for 15-20 minutes. Paper tape burns better being soaked in water solution of KNO3 and dried before using. The heated KNO3 releases O i.e. oxygen and smokes better. I think, more dangerous method is to spray with water/Mitac solution. ( the case with our beekeeper). You have to put 2-3 drops of Mitac in one Liter of water and then spray the combs, thus breathing the poisonous vapour youself. This year I used Gabon tapes. They worked excellent. One tape about $1. If one have many hives it takes a great money, therefore some fellows risk. Best wishes Rimantas Zujus Kaunas LITHUANIA e-mail : zujus@isag.lei.lt http://www.online.lt/indexs.htm http://www.lei.lt 55 North, 24 East ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 21:12:22 +1300 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Nick Wallingford Organization: Bay of Plenty Polytechnic Subject: Re: UK: Importing Bees MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > KBV is widespread, and apart from in the scare stories aimed at keeping NZ > bees out, I have never heard of it being other than a secondary pest. I > also am not aware of whether there has even been any serious research done > to ascertain if it is present in Britain. One thing is certain, the anti > importation lobby will come up with some other disease or pest after this > one is found here to cite as grounds for banning imports, and so on > through whatever ailment they can find, however minor. I understand the > concern of people regarding viruses, especially in conjunction with > varroa, and many of these are serious, but I believe that KBV is no more > serious a threat than many of the viruses already here. According to Dr Denis Anderson (not a Kiwi, mind you...) who has a pretty good grasp of both practical and scientifice beekeeping, Kashmir bee virus has been found in *every* population of bees that have been tested by the accepted methodology for identification. One might go further and say it is probably present in *every* population of bees... Far be it for me give a biblical quotation variation, but "If you seek, you will probably find"... And having found, and realised it hasn't been causing any practical problems, you'd have to ask the motivation for holding it against NZ for all this time... (\ Nick Wallingford {|||8- home nickw@beekeeping.co.nz (/ work nick.wallingford@boppoly.ac.nz NZ Beekeeping http://www.beekeeping.co.nz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 14:31:58 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Dave Pehling Subject: Re: Hornfaced bees and mites Comments: To: Russell Vreeland In-Reply-To: <199810051357.GAA30794@coopext.cahe.wsu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 5 Oct 1998, Russell Vreeland wrote: > I'm new to this discussion group and would appreciate any response to two > questions. My husband and I have been keeping hornfaced bees for > pollination for 3 years now. We live in Coatesville, Pennsylvania and the > bees seem to be doing well. Does anyone know if they are susceptible to the > varroa and tracheal mites of honey bees? Also, we would like to switch from > cardboard tubes to wooden bee houses -- does the type of wood used make a > difference with the bees? ======================== I have been keeping _Osmia lignaria_ for 14 years in a variety of nests. The wood does not really matter as long as the holes are smooth. In nature, these insects nest mostly in smooth beetle holes in dead trees. They WILL use almost any hole between 1/4 and 3/8 inch in a pinch. I have a problem with them filling my outside electrical recepticals with brood! These bees can not get Varroa mites as they have a very different life cycle. Not sure about tracheals. The mites that cause me the most problem are the _Chaetodactylus sp._. They can be controlled by alternating nest blocks every year. There are some good links on the WSU Gardening home page (http://gardening.wsu.edu). Do the keyword search for "mason" to get the the publication. cheers, Dave Pehling | W.S.U. COOPERATIVE EXTENSION-SNOHOMISH CO. | | 600 128TH ST. S.E. | | EVERETT, WA. 98208 U.S.A. | | PHONE - (425)338-2400 | | FAX - (425)338-3994 | | EMAIL pehling@wsu.edu | ============================================ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 21:26:25 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Al Needham Subject: NZ Bees ..... On Tue, 27 Oct 1998 21:12:22 +1300 Nick Wallingford writes: >Far be it for me give a biblical quotation variation, but "If you >seek, you will probably find"... And having found, and realised it >hasn't been causing any practical problems, you'd have to ask the >motivation for holding it against NZ for all this time... I have been on the List for a bit, and it seems to me that NZ bees have a penchant for getting slammed on a fairly regular basis. You seem like a decent chap there Nick :-), why does this slamming your bees keep popping up ? What have your NZ bees ever done to harm this planet ? Al ............ <"Mailto: awneedham@juno.com" > Scituate,Massachusetts,USA The Beehive-Educational Honey Bee Site Check Our Beekeeping Books & Videos http://www.xensei.com/users/alwine ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 22:27:56 -0500 Reply-To: vcoppola@froggernet.com Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Vince Coppola Subject: Re: Buying queens MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Christopher Slade wrote: > > Vince, > I agree with your comment about the queens' genes and selection for the > appropriate destination. However, I do not agree with your comment about > treating bees with antibiotic. The point is that you are not treating the > bees but the bacteria. By doing so you are subjecting them to a strong > selective pressure. While bees will have about one generation a year in which > to evolve, the generations of bacteria are measured in minutes ....... Hello Christopher, I think we are talking about different things. I was only referring to the selection of bees for resistance to a disease such as AFB. As to the selection of resistant bacteria, I agree. The last time I spoke to Dr. Shiminuki about antibiotic use for AFB, he recommended it be used as a prophylactic treatment only. My understanding of this sort of treatment is to check infection at times of the year they are likely to occur, spring and fall. At these times of year there may be weak or dead colonies that harbor AFB spores and be robbed. If antibiotic has been used to "cure" colonies then AFB symptoms may recur at any time of year. I think this could lead to resistant bacteria. Actually I'm surprised this has not happened till recently, and perhaps it has not happened, there may be another explanation for the resistant strains. Personally, I follow the recomendations, spring and fall treatment. I've kept bees for over 25 yrs, commercial numbers for at least 15 yrs, and have had only 4 colonies show AFB symptoms and they were burned. Of course the AFB experts know how to cure these cases with antibiotics, just ask them the do it all the time. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 20:47:55 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "Paul Cronshaw, D.C." Subject: DNA test on bees Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A short blurp in the local Santa Barbara paper: SAN BERNARDINO DNA tests to seek nature of bees DNA tests will be used to determine if it was a swarm of Africanized honey bees that attacked people and chased an ambulance in a community near the Colorado River, San Bernardino County authorities said Friday. Popularly known as killer bees, Africanized honey bees are more aggressive than their common relative European honey bees. "It's impossible to be sure just by looking at them," said Dr. Lal Mian, an entomologist with San Bernardino Vector Control. Mian said he expected to receive samples late Friday but was unsure when he would have test results. After years of warnings that the dangerous insects were moving north from Central America,killer bees have begun appearing in the southwest United States over the past few years. Paul Cronshaw, D.C. Hobbyist Beekeeper Santa Barbara, CA USA ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 07:11:12 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Aaron Morris Subject: Instrumental Insemination (from Robert Dahlgren) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT The following submission to BEE-L was edited to remove excessive quoting of previously posted material. ------------------ Original message (ID=6F027E) (92 lines) -------------------- From: "Robert Dahlgren" To: "Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology" Subject: Re: Artificial Insemination Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 02:05:15 -0500 Hi Tom, I live in Southwestern New York State, USA. I took Susan Cobey's course on Instrumental Insemenation At Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio. It was a three day course and very informative with lectures and hands on practice. I had boughten an insemenation platform from Steve Tabor before he moved to France - He is back in the States now. Search the Web For Susan Cobey or Sue Cobey and also for 'Instrumental Insemenation". Sue has a vidio on I.I. that she has just worked up. There is also a German Tape That has been translated to English that I have. I am interested in Bee Breeding and Honeybee Genetics. The fastest way for improvement is with I.I. You know how it goes with these wayward girls - You don't know whose kid they are bringing home. Queen bees go about it the same way. Breeding with a single drone leads to the truest heredity. Well it's 2:01 here In Eastern U.S. We just went back on Standard Time yesterday. You've probably had breakfast already. I've got to get some shut-eye. Drop a line. Best Regards, Bob Robert Dahlgren 2902 Stone Rd. Falconer, NY 14733-9732 USA ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 07:19:39 EST Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Aaron Morris Subject: Instrumental Insemination from Andreas Schuck Scheidhauer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT The following submission to BEE-L was edited to remove excessive quoting of previously posted material. ------------------ Original message (ID=67DBA9) (83 lines) -------------------- From: anscsche@entelchile.net (Andreas Schuck Scheidhauer) To: "Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology" Subject: RE: Artificial Insemination Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 21:34:57 -0400 Hi, instrumental insemination is very useful if you will improve your stocks. The best equipment avaiable is the SCHLEY (Germany). Besides the instrument itself you need a stereo microscope, CO2 bottle, and a lot of little stuff. Susan Cobey at the Ohio State University gives courses where you can learn how to do it. (cobey.1@osu.edu). A student from the Ohio State U. designed an instrument ("Latcham", I guess). It works fine too, and is cheaper then the Schley one. It depends on how much you will spend for an equipment. I inseminate regularly. It is not so difficult as it seems to be. But the extraction from the drones semen is a dirty job if you don't like to kill beings with the same right to live on this earth as we have. As in Chile it is forbiden to import queens from other countries, inseminate queens is a must be to make all this genetic improvement stuff. Although it is interesting (specially the results), this drone killing story makes me sick. If you need some addresses don't hesitate to write me. Good luck, Andreas http://www.colmenaressuizos.co.cl ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 13:57:49 +0100 Reply-To: drs@kulmbach.baynet.de Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: "Dr. Reimund Schuberth" Subject: Re: Artificial Insemination MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Tom, you're right, artificial insemination isn't a common part of beekeeping. The main problems of insemination technique are the price of the equipment and the selection of good breeds. > What equipment is needed, where can training be obtained, and what are the > chances of it being even moderately successful in the hands of an amateur? There are different types of equipement used. Typically you need a queen holder, sterilization equipment, and carbondioxid for narcotication, a microscope and a special syringe to inject semen into the vagina of the queen.Best training is by doing and learning from a man/women who is working with these techniques regularily. Surely you will get some adresses from insemination-stations in Ireland or Great-Britain. It isn't very complicated to learn it, if you are used to work carefully and exactly. The artificial insemination is a good technique for controlling the mating of queens. If you let your queens get mated naturally they get mated with different drones (up to 20) and of an area with about a radius of 10 km. If you want to control matings you have to bring your queens to special mating places with some drone-hives of good descent on small islands or valleys in high mountains. Here in Germany we have such mating places in the mountains in the south or on some islands in the Northern Sea. Simply Insemination is not a garantee for getting good queens, because you can use any drones semen and any unmated queen for an insemination-process. As you see, insemination will never become a common part of beekeeping. It's just a special method of some queen breeders. Perhaps you can send your unmated queens to a insemination station in your country, if you aren't able to have your own insemination laboratory. Good luck in any way. Sincerely Reimund (Excuse me if my English is hardly to understand!) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Beekeeper in Germany (Bavaria) Queen Rearion of Carniolan Bees Insemination Station ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 14:43:57 +0100 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: P-O Gustafsson Subject: Re: Antibiotic treatments MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Anyhow the fact is -- as Andy has pointed out a few times -- bees fed > oxytet do better on the whole than those which are not Now Allen, would this be the "real" reason for the treatment? That the use of antibiotics will give the beekeeper a higher crop, irrespective of whether there is AFB or not? That would explain the persistent defending of prophylactic treatment with antibiotics by some of the list members. The own profit sometimes affect the way of reasoning... As Garth already pointed out, there is a growing problem with the use of antibiotics to increase growth rate among animals we use for food. The antibiotics are getting less effective to cure diseases on us, and researchers working in that field are starting to ring the alarm bell. As I earlier said, I don't argue against larger commercial operators using it for curing hives that are found with clinical symptoms of AFB. But to use a valuable resource in a way that soon might make it useless, just for the short term profit, is irresponsible. Europe is now turning away from the use of any antibiotic in animal food, and I'm sure you will have the same discussion on your side of the pond too. And Allen, The BEE-L logs don't hold information on the latest news in research on antibiotics, and I'm afraid I will continue this discussion when I feel it's nessesary to contribute with our attitude. And it's the overall use of antibiotics as a cure for everything that I react to. When we get more of those strains of bacteria resistent to antibiotics, we will be in far more trouble than a few dead bee hives. And I still think it's sloppy beekeeping to pour drugs into the hives "just in case".... ;-) -- Regards P-O Gustafsson, Sweden beeman@algonet.se http://www.algonet.se/~beeman/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 16:01:34 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Re: Antibiotics/fat/spores Hi All/Allen/Stan Thanks Allan and Stan for the interesting replies on the antibiotic issue. I have read arounda little more and have a few more things to add on this time bacterial spores and getting rid of them, as well as resistance. First I must appologise to all for being a little severe in one of my previous posts - bad day sybdrome. Recently it has been found that many bacterial spores are highly stable if stored in any fatty substance - they are also less likely to germinate. This has something to do with the fats connecting to the fats in the bacterial spore and stabilizing them. On the other hand the spores are likely to germinate under damp conditions. Hence I would geuss most AFB epidemics begin when there is an increase in moisture in the empty super cells - leading to germination?? On the other side, the inclusion of a high fat substance in ones vehicle for distributing the oxy-tet seems a bad move as it will probably result in the spores in the guts of the bees not germinating - or for that matter forming and not getting treated. As far as transfer of resistance in coliforms on hands and such - almost a definite. There is an interesting practical which they conduct here every year for microbiology. One takes a dilute solution of three different forms of the common gut bacteria, E.coli. Each form has a different marker on it/in it (such as a gene for resistance to an antibiotic, or a colour producer etc) and you place 10 micro litres (a very litte drop the size of a pin head) on one persons hand. Everybody walks around and shakes hands for five minutes and at the end on isolates bacteria of the hands and 99% of people have at least one colony forming unit (cell) of each bacteria on their hand. So the transfer of resistance into the hive is quite probable through this route. On the other side of this topic - high doses should remain effective as a prophylactic treatment for many more years - given than new antibiotics are coming out for human use that little resistance is present for I actually personally think that it may be advisable to treat with oxytet for AFB cases - but I still wonder about the long term negative effects. As for fumigillan I will have to go and scratch around a bit - and find out more about nosema. My geuss would be that it's mode of action is very very different to TM as it is acting on a completely different sort of organism. Standard antibiotics for bacteria are very easy to produce as they tend to target a part of the machinery in a bacteria the we, bees, cows and other higher animals do not have. This is usually something like the production of cell walls (penicillen) or protein synthesis (I think TM fits in here if my memory is correct). Hence getting something like nosema one has a greater chance of killing the host as well as the pest as both use the same machinery. As far as yeast infections go in bees - I am sure that HIV will help there with treatments - if treating is to help - as at present one of the main causes of AIDS related death is infection with the yeast Candida albiqans and family. Many many new yeast killing preparations have been developed. I will look around a bit and put any more stuff I find up for scrutiny. Keep well Garth Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 10:52:18 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Lloyd Spear Subject: Instrumental Insemination MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For those of you who are interested in more information, see: http://iris.biosci.ohio-state.edu/honeybee/breeding/index.html. Sue Cobey's email address is Cobey.1@osu.edu. Lloyd LloydSpear@email.msn.com Owner, Ross Rounds(tm) the finest in comb honey production. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 13:26:05 -0500 Reply-To: beesbest@mediaone.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Kathy Organization: Red Maple Farm Subject: Re: Antibiotics/fat/spores MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Garth, in writing his observations, theories, etc. about bacterial spores and antibiotic treatment, wrote the following, which made me wonder... : Assuming this is true: > Recently it has been found that many bacterial spores are highly > stable if stored in any fatty substance - they are also less likely > to germinate. This has something to do with the fats connecting to > the fats in the bacterial spore and stabilizing them. Then this is the part I wonder about: > On the other side, the inclusion of a high fat substance in ones > vehicle for distributing the oxy-tet seems a bad move as it will > probably result in the spores in the guts of the bees not germinating > - or for that matter forming and not getting treated. About a year (or so) ago, I was having a conversation with Diana Sammatarro about a finding of very, very fine dropelets of oil that some regulatory inspection had found in someone's honey and was trying to pin down the source of. If memory serves, she was involved in the discussions because one of the speculations was that the beekeeper's use of grease patties had lead to the oil being in the honey. I came away from the conversation understanding (I hope correctly) that it was highly unlikely that the oil in the honey had come from grease patties because 1) The bees don't ingest the patties, they simply remove them from the hives with their mouth parts (they don't swallow) 2) The dropelets of oil were so fine that they were more likely to have come from an aerosol spray can or atomizer that might have been used to lubricate the extracting equipment 3) Even if the bee had accidentally injested some of the grease patty, it would have had to digest the oil to break it into such small dropelets. So, what I wonder is... If grease patties are simply removed from a hive by worker bees mouthparts, and not injested, then it seems that suspending the oxy-tet in a high fat substance wouldn't prevent the spores in the bee gut from germinating. And then I wonder if it makes any sense as a delivery system for oxy-tet at all? If not "swallowed", how does the bee make use of the medication? Do bees have some method of food/medicine absorbsion in their mouthparts that I am unaware of? Do the spores germinate in the gut and then come floating or swimming out (with malevolent intent), only to be met by Oxy-tetman in the bees mouthparts? Kathy thinking we may see some trick-or-treaters on Saturday dressed as evil AFB spores, or perhaps a new super hero... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 11:36:08 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andy Nachbaur Subject: Re: DNA test on bees In-Reply-To: <199810270605.WAA19456@mx1.thegrid.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 08:47 PM 10/26/98 -0800, you wrote: >"It's impossible to be sure just by looking at them," said Dr. Lal Mian, an >entomologist with San Bernardino Vector Control. Mian said he expected to >receive samples late Friday but was unsure when he would have test results. What this says to me is that the these bees, from a hive in a tree disturbed by a lawn mower during a dearth period, did not fit into or failed to pass the "field" test for Afro Bees and to prove they are Afro, (because they were aggressive and we all know our bees are never aggressive), much time and money will be spent to find their roots which may or may not be African. We will have to wait for the report but don't be surprised if it gets lost as if they were not Afro then it just another man bites dog story. ttul, the OLd Drone For this kind of news and good news too.. http://beenet.com/bnews.htm ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 12:21:44 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andy Nachbaur Subject: Re: Antibiotic treatments In-Reply-To: <199810271349.FAA12221@mx1.thegrid.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 02:43 PM 10/27/98 +0100, you wrote: >> Anyhow the fact is -- as Andy has pointed out a few times -- bees fed >> oxytet do better on the whole than those which are not >Now Allen, would this be the "real" reason for the treatment? That the >use of antibiotics will give the beekeeper a higher crop, irrespective >of whether there is AFB or not? That would explain the persistent >defending of prophylactic treatment with antibiotics by some of the It is true to this point....to protect a bee hive from EFB you must use TM as a prophylactic treatment before the disease gets started in the spring. I learned that the hard way and from Dr. Bailey, one on one. For AFB its a little different but again the best protection is as a prophylactic before exposure to AFB early in the season. Resistance AFB has not been a problem because most hives that come through the TM screen are destroyed. This tread is a never ending one and I must say until you walk in the shoes of a beekeeper who has done everything right only to be destroyed in a few days time by EFB you can not appreciate the value of TM which has made much beekeeping possible in places that would not support it without it because of EFB not AFB. If for every reference to disease and TM we would substitute "sugar" I am sure we could get the same kind of tread going. Yet most beekeeper realize that in some areas of the world if beekeepers did not feed sugar they could not keep bees, its the same for drugs, antibiotics, and chemicals of one kind or another. I don't like it, I fight against it, I don't even want to believe it, but that's the way it is...! >As I earlier said, I don't argue against larger commercial operators >using it for curing hives that are found with clinical symptoms of AFB. Speaking from my own experience in the US most commercial beekeepers do not have time to play with AFB diseased hives and "do not" normally knowingly treat hives with visual symptoms of AFB, "we burn em", and have been doing that since the 40's, besides it the Law in most states. I have never met the commercial beekeeper who does it any different other then just about all who at one time or another played with a few sick hives behind the barn, in this respect we are no different then the hobbyist. We do have another antibiotic maybe better then TM for AFB that could be used at about the same cost if there ever is a problem with TM but today AFB is not the problem in the US. So far the problems reported for bees with TM have not given anyone a reason to change as they are in isolated areas and complicated by other factors. Hope this helps, ttul, the OLd Drone http://beenet.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 12:32:42 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andy Nachbaur Subject: Re: Antibiotics/fat/spores In-Reply-To: <199810271838.KAA12802@mx1.thegrid.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:26 PM 10/27/98 -0500, you wrote: >About a year (or so) ago, I was having a conversation with Diana >Sammatarro about a finding of very, very fine dropelets of oil that some >regulatory inspection had found in someone's honey and was trying to pin >down the source of. If memory serves, she was involved in the I would be surprised if this was not from natural sources.. Some pollen such as Corn, Safflower, and Sunflowers and I am sure others can be almost running with oils and this can get into open honey cells. Is it the norm? I don't think so but a lot depends on the beekeeping pasture and what selection the bees have for pollen. If all they got is corn or sunflowers then I would expect its normal to have some fats or what ever in the bees honey. ttul, the OLd Drone (c)Permission is given to copy this document in any form, or to print for any use. (w)OPINIONS are not necessarily facts. USE AT OWN RISK! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 22:08:39 -0500 Reply-To: vcoppola@froggernet.com Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Vince Coppola Subject: Re: Antibiotics/fat/spores MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Garth wrote: > On the other hand the spores are likely to germinate under damp > conditions. > > Hence I would geuss most AFB epidemics begin when there is an > increase in moisture in the empty super cells - leading to > germination?? AFB is a brood disease. The spores do not germinate until they are ingested by larvae. There is variability in the number it takes to kill a larva, typically 6 - 200 spores. The spores get into the larva in the feed they are given by nurse bees. Oxytet kills the active not the spore stage of AFB. Since the active stage is in the larva, the oxytet must bee fed to the larva too work. There is no doubt that grease patties work very well to make the symptoms of AFB disappear, its been done by many. Whether this is a cure or not is debatable. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 10:06:04 -1000 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Pat Franklin Subject: Re: Hive Loaders for trucks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aloha everybody, Does anybody have anymore information on truck loaders to load bee hives. Thanks, Pat pat@aloha.net ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 21:57:52 -0800 Reply-To: beeman@NOSPAMkingston.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Kent Stienburg Subject: Re: few weak hives going into winter MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Matthew, It's been my experience that if the hives are very weak there will be little or no evidence of fighting. I assume that this is because of to few guard bees or the hive is demoralized. I had a similiar problem except it was around August. I tried to help it along but it never seemed to take off the way I expected it. Even though it "consumed" a good quantity of syrup. So I stopped feeding out of frustation. I soon turned my attention to other things. When I came back to the hive three weeks later it seemed to be doing better so I waited another 2 weeks. When I checked it again it was booming. However, we are late in the season and you don't have that luxury now so if they were mine and since they are very small I would consider uniting them. There should still be enough warm days to allow you to do this. As far as deciding which queen would rule you will have to make that decision. If you let the bees decide there is a chance you could end up with no queen or an injured one. Good luck. -- > Kent Stienburg > Remove NOSPAM to reply. -- Kent Stienburg Remove NOSPAM to reply. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 11:59:59 +0300 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Jassim AL-Mughrabi Subject: Bee eater MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all I have serious proplem from BEE EATER . If any body have sugestion I will be greatfull . I used dird net and loud voices but no use . Jassim M.Al-mughrabi Honeybee Technician Minisry of Agriculture & Water P.O.Box 42332 Riyadh11541 K.S.A Fax 009661-(458)3348 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 21:16:24 GMT+0200 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Garth Organization: Rhodes University South Africa Subject: Re: Oil in honey and effectiveness of pasteurization Hi All/Kathy/Andy Kathy thanks for your mention of the oil droplets in honey. That is interesting as it brings up the effectiveness of honey pasteurization to remove 'bee diseases' and human pathogens. The way I understand it most pasteurization regimes used on honey tend to be in areas where it is either against the law to import honey that has not been pasteurized to protect bees and humans, or within an area to extend shelf life for dodgy water content products. Commercial pasteurization and sterilization procedures for products such as milk have to take into consideration the effect of oils and fats as agents which raise the temperature required to kill a spore of certain bacteria (mainly bacillus species - therefore possibly AFB). Hence in the production of normal pasteurized milk a lot of muck gets through and will survive afterwards. In industrial production of inccoculum in for instance lysine plants it is essential that media be exposed to temperatures of over 140C for ten minutes to remove all spores.That is almost one and a half times boiling point. This is also at very high pressure (600Mpa I remember hearing). If we did that to honey we would have caramel at the end. Does anybody know what the normal pasteurization proccess is on honey? I know that some countries (I think mine is included here) have resorted to gamma irraditiation of honey - a better alternative. Keep well Garth Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis 6139 South Africa Time = Honey If you are not living on the edge you are taking up too much space!! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 11:22:24 -0800 Reply-To: robert@jobhaus.com Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Robert MacKimmie Subject: Middle of the road Wax Melters ... Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 4.2mach v148) Hi all, We are looking for a mid-level wax melter -- does anyone have an opinion of a wax melter that actually works? The wax load is from 500-600 hives. The Better Way Wax Melter sounded like a appropriate piece of equipment, but several people queried about it returns a less than enthusiastic verdict. Is there a resonable melter for under or around $1000 US? Thanks, Robert r@citybees.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 17:47:12 -0500 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Al Needham Subject: Re: " America's Killer Bees " On Thu, 22 Oct 1998 19:36:17 EDT Christopher Slade writes: > It was moving bees internationally that >brought us varroa and the Americas "killer bees". Sorry, Chris, but your "alleged ' Americas ' killer bees" originated as escapees from some research hives in Brazil. They were originally brought in to Brazil from Africa -...... Of course, everything - all life forms - moves all over the world these days by one means or another, so trying to shut something out from one's specific piece of the planet is really an exercise in futility, imho. You can block it for a time, but that is a temporary solution. Now, with the internet, substitute ' ideas ' for ' life forms ' above and you will get a notion of the same thing - witness mainland China trying to block parts of the net - a really futile activity - even their new Human Rights Site was hacked within the first 24 hours of its existence ... but I am getting away from Bees and Bee diseases, etc. Al ...................................................................... <"Mailto: awneedham@juno.com" > Scituate,Massachusetts,USA The Beehive-Educational Honey Bee Site Check Our Beekeeping Books & Videos http://www.xensei.com/users/alwine ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 16:22:16 -0800 Reply-To: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Andrew & Tiffany Dubas Subject: Ross Rounds Comments: To: Beekeeper MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit How many Ross Rounds can you put on one hive ? what is the best method ? one deep ? then the R/R ? I have a few R/R supers around but never had any luck getting them to fill them out. I know they work but what is the best method ? and the best time to put them on. ? Want to use them for next season. thanks, Dubie (Andrew) Andrew & Tiffany Dubas E-Mail : dubees@enter.net home page : http://www.enter.net/~dubees ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 14:51:36 -0600 Reply-To: Barry@Birkey.com Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Barry Birkey Organization: BIRKEY.COM Subject: Finding bee related photos on the web MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Howdy - I remember just a short time ago someone was asking about where one could find bee/beekeeping pictures on the web. I see Alta Vista has a specialty search at: http://www.altavista.com/ called AV Photo Finder that allows you to "find millions of colorful and imaginative pictures from the World Wide Web." Follow their directions, I think you'll be pleased. I typed in "bees" and had more than I cared to view. Remember that the images are still copyrighted, obviously. -Barry -- Barry Birkey Illinios, USA -------------------------------------------- 630.293.1181 ph > 630.293.3613 fx barry@birkey.com > http://www.birkey.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 19:33:13 -0500 Reply-To: dublgully@worldnet.att.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: David Gaida Subject: Extender Patties MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dave and I were having a hard time this year getting our bees to 'remove' or 'use' the extender patties when we placed it on the inner cover or as a single patty over the frames. Sure can't help the bees if they don't touch it. Tried an experiment. We took the same amount of sugar/grease mixture that we would normally put into a patty. We put it into a plastic baggie and cut a small hole in the corner of the baggies. Then we squeezed the mixture out onto the top of each frame in the brood box (similar to applying a small 1/8" bead of caulk). We also add a small amount of the bees' own honey to the mixture. Don't know if it was the timing or the new application, but the bees removed all the mixture within one week each time we used it. Comments? Judy in Kentucky, USA ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 18:00:35 -0700 Reply-To: allend@internode.net Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Allen Dick Organization: The Beekeepers Subject: FGMO Research Comments: cc: dronebee@norfolk.infi.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT For those who are wondering, I will get back to the oxytet discussion as soon as I have some time. I am quite pleased with the direction the discussion is taking and *will* have some comments, but I am a painfully slow typist (right Jan, right Dave?) and the new page I've been playing with has been consuming my interest lately. What page? Why http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/Pix of course. I've been taking pictures as we do our daily work and have a few good ones. Haven't been there? Weeelllllllll..... what's holding you back? --- Anyhow, that's not why I came out of the weeds. I want to say that I've been in touch with Dr. Rodriguez recently and he says he is doing some work with applying mineral oil as a mist. I gather he is working with a university and a national lab this time and is pleased with the progress. Allen ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 21:23:51 -0500 Reply-To: vcoppola@froggernet.com Sender: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology From: Vince Coppola Subject: Re: Extender Patties Comments: To: dublgully@worldnet.att.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Gaida wrote: > > Dave and I were having a hard time this year getting our bees to 'remove' > or 'use' the extender patties when we placed it on the inner cover or as a > single patty over the frames. Sure can't help the bees if they don't touch > it. Tried an experiment. > > We took the same amount of sugar/grease mixture that we would normally put > into a patty. We put it into a plastic baggie and cut a small hole in the > corner of the baggies. Then we squeezed the mixture out onto the top of > each frame in the brood box (similar to applying a small 1/8" bead of > caulk). We also add a small amount of the bees' own honey to the mixture. > > Don't know if it was the timing or the new application, but the bees > removed all the mixture within one week each time we used it. Hi Judy, First, one week is too fast, remember its an extender patty, meaning the treatment extends over a time period. I think 3 to 4 weeks is about right. I used to make 50/50 crisco and 6x sugar. These are taken very slow and sometimes not at all. I've finally settled on a mixture using 100 lbs of 6x and about 35 lbs of canola oil. The sweeter mix is taken in about the right time frame. Do not use granulated with canola, you'll get a mixture that is too runny. The nice thing about using liquid oil is that the mixture has the same consistancy over a wide range of temperatures, no heating and no runnyness if the pattie is sitting on a warm hive top. Another consideration s colony strenghth. Weak colonies do not take patties well. It is better to dust those. Actually its better not to have weak colonies but I always seem to have a few.