Central Beekeepers Alliance

New Honey Bee Documentaries

A program by David Suzuki recently aired on CBC January 7th entitled To Bee or Not to Bee. The documentary explores various possibilities for the declining honeybee population in several countries such as industrial beekeeping, poor nutrition from monoculture pollinations, and diseases.

Continue reading...

Honeybees on Crocus Flowers: Photographs

These photographs were taken by CBA member Gail Duncan on her property at Yoho Lake, New Brunswick, the last week of April 2009. Her honey bees were taking advantage of a lovely spring day to forage for pollen in the crocus blooms. (Click on each thumbnail photo if you’d like to view a larger version.)

Continue reading...

Video: Honey Bees Fighting Varroa Mites and Bee Louse

This video, Bees fighting varroa and braula coeca, was made by Ivan Brndušic, an electronics technician (from a long line of beekeepers on his mother’s side) who lives, works, and watches honey bees in the town of Bor, Serbia. When you see the bees’ attempts to remove the pests, it makes it very clear [...]

Continue reading...

Update on Varroa Mite Research

An abstract of Maritime MicroBiologicals Inc. and David Boyle’s research into fungus as a control for varroa mites, undertaken with the New Brunswick Beekeepers Association, has just been published on the website of the New Brunswick Department of Agriculture and Aquaculture.

Continue reading...

Honey Bees can Count, Scientists Say

Researchers in Australia have discovered that honeybees can count. They may be a long way from being able to count their own numbers of sisters in the hive, but it has been shown that bees can count up to four, at any rate. “We began by asking whether bees can learn to ‘count’ the number of landmarks that they encounter on the way to a food source,“ said Professor Mandyam Srinivasan of the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), who led the research conducted with a colleague from Sweden, Marie Dacke.

Continue reading...