To make her easier to locate in the hive, the queen bee is usually painted with a small dot of colour on her thorax, as shown in this video. The colour also helps the beekeeper to keep track of the age of his or her queens, as a different colour is used for each year in a cycle of five.

White is used for years ending in 1 or 6, yellow for 2 or 7, red for 3 or 8, green for 4 or 9, and blue for years ending in 5 or 0. This system is widely accepted and used by queen breeders and beekeepers the world over. The queen bee in this video is clearly a 2006 model, as her white spot tells us.

It is important to know the age of the queen because her most productive egg-laying time will be limited to the first few years of her life. Queens are commonly replaced every year or two, in order to maintain a strong colony.

This video is courtesy of Brian’s Urban Bees blog, and the bees are residents of Queen’s Park, London, UK.

Physician Jennifer Eddy of University of Wisconsin Health’s Eau Claire Family Medicine Clinic is currently conducting the first randomized, double-blind controlled trial of honey as a topical treatment for diabetic ulcers. Honey is already being used in New Zealand as a treatment for bed sores.

Eddy first successfully used honey therapy a few years ago with a 79-year-old patient who was facing amputation after all medical options had been exhausted.

“This is a tremendously important issue for public health,” explains Eddy, adding that the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have identified bacterial resistance as one of the most important medical problems of our day.

Patients in the clinical trial will receive ulcer care and treatment by an expert podiatrist. Half will be randomly assigned to receive honey, while the other half will receive a wound-care gel that has been compounded with inert components to give it the flavor and color of honey. The ulcers will be measured to see how quickly they heal, to evaluate whether honey or the standard wound gel is better for healing.

If honey proves the more effective method, Eddy cautions patients against using it at home without a physician’s involvement. “Unfortunately, diabetic ulcers are very complicated, and honey would only be part of the solution,” she says.

Funding for the study is provided by the Wisconsin Partnership Fund for Health and the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation. Results of the trial are expected to be published within the next two years.

See also:

• Honey could save diabetics from amputation (Yahoo! News)
• UW Press release http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/13738 5/2/07

Thanks to CBA member Sterling Clark for bringing this story to our attention!

NBBA president Paul Vautour told the CBC last week that New Brunswick’s beekeeping industry has experienced winter losses close to $1 million. The government’s recent pledge of $100,000 in aid to beekeepers “doesn’t come close” to meeting the need.

“To buy a package of bees now is about $200 a package, that’s just to buy the bees to put them in the box, so at $200 dollars a package, you can say I lost about $34,000 myself and I’m just a small commercial beekeeper,” Vautour said.

“There are much larger ones than me, some with 800 hives, some with 1,500 hives, so their losses are much bigger than mine.”

The provincial compensation money will help some producers to buy some honeybees for this year, but Vautour points out that just finding enough bees may be a challenge, with all of North America suffering unusual losses.

British bees forced down a Boeing 737 with 90 passengers on board, today, after the aircraft flew into a swarm of bees shortly after take-off from Bournemouth Airport.

The pilot decided to abort the scheduled flight to Portugal and return to the airport for safety checks, fearing that the plane’s engine had become clogged with bees.

Officials at the British Airline Pilots’ Association said “bee strikes” are a very rare occurance, the last recalled incident being nine years ago.

“Bird strikes are very common and most pilots are well used to the loud noise they make,” BAPA officials told The Daily Mail, “But bee strikes are a rare occurance — the pilot must have been very puzzled and confused about what was going on.”

The following article applies to people importing honey bees into NB for 2007. Please note that this applies to honey bees being brought in for any purpose and includes people purchasing honey bees, renting honey bees, selling honey bees and any other use of honey bees. These procedures are in place to protect the honey bee industry from honey bee diseases.

Interprovincial movement of honey bees into NB for 2007

The following outlines the New Brunswick sanitary requirements for honey bees being transported from outside New Brunswick into New Brunswick. Please find below information on
A) Requirements for honey bees to enter New Brunswick from outside New Brunswick, and
B) Beekeepers who do not meet these requirements.

Subject A:
Requirements for honey bees to enter New Brunswick from outside New Brunswick

A beekeeper intending to transport honey bees from outside NB to NB must do the following: The beekeeper must ensure that the bees are accompanied with a “Permit to Import and Transport Honey Bees / Autorisation d’importer et de transporter des abeilles” (issued by the Provincial Apiarist in NB) which is dated not more than six months before the date the bees are imported into NB.

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