Here’s the story, straight from Dr. Sutherland:

The problem that we face in California and in the world really is that there are many plant pathogens infecting our crops and many times we apply chemical fungicides to combat that. In our lab we hope to teach honey bees to respond to plant pathogens in the field so that we may detect those plant pathogens and reduce the fungicide applications. Insects in general and honey bees included are excellent vapor sensors and have excellent chemo sensors on their antennas so they’re able to detect organic molecules in the air at the low parts per billion. Bees can be taught to associate an odor with a reward through classical conditioning. First, we restrain the honey bees after collection, we restrain the honey bees inside a harness of sorts such that their heads and antenna are protruding then we expose the bees to the smell of an infected grape leaf or grape berry and we feed the bees at the same. So, in time, the bees learn to associate this odor with the sugar reward. So, the next step is actual detection in the field and this is accomplished through some prototype equipment that’s been designed by my collaborators at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The bees that have been trained are placed inside and when they encounter the smell within the box, they respond and this information is relayed to a computer and we were able to see that indeed we have detected the pathogen in the field. The ultimate goal here is to be able to detect plant pathogens in the field earlier than you can do with your eye so that we have an early warning system and we can better plan fungicide applications to be more efficient in time and space.

See also:
Can bees be trained to prevent plant disease? (Smart
and
Bees can be trained to detect plant diseases by Jeannette E. Warnert at UCANR.org

Bees trained to give early warning of plant disease was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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After checking my own hives in the last warm spell and talking to some of the larger beekeepers, it may be a good idea to make beekeepers aware of the possibility of their colonies running short of food supplies.

In this part of NB, in Westmorland County, the pollen in the colonies is almost non-existent, which is unusual before spring brood rearing (April). Syrup and honey supplies are not exhausted yet, however, the present supplies will be quickly used up during brood rearing.

Beekeepers should monitor their hives and feed if necessary.

Feeding with pollen substitute patties is necessary if beekeepers find their hives in the same conditions as I have been seeing them.

If they feed, syrup feeders are not the best to use in cooler temperatures. Frame feeders placed next to the cluster and / or pail feeders above the cluster are best for cool weather feeding. (Temperature less than 10 to 15 degrees Celsius.)

The weather this winter has been unusual in every regard which has caused this unusual condition of lack of pollen and little syrup and honey supplies in colonies at this time of year.

Fletcher 

Beekeeper ALERT: March 2010 was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Bee Tour 2010 in New Brunswick
• Beekeeping Field Day 12 June 2010
• 4th Annual Harvey Outdoor Adventure Show

If you are a member of the Central Beekeepers Alliance and you’d like to order any of these shirts, caps or badges, just speak to VP Christine Dembenski at the next CBA meeting.

Special Gear for Central Beekeepers was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Central Beekeepers Potluck Corn Boil 2010 – updated
• Central Beekeepers Meet 13 July 2010
• Central Beekeepers Potluck Supper 8 June 2010

A special variation of the CBA logo shown was created at the same time to mark the occasion of our association’s 50th Anniversary, which we’ll be celebrating in 2013.

You’ll also see a miniature version of the CBA’s new mascot bee logo decorating the top header of our website, and members of the group are able to purchase club clothing — caps and shirts — that sports our new logo. CBA members will be all dressed up to put on a fine show at this year’s Maritime Bee Tour!

New Logo Unveiled for Central Beekeepers was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Central Beekeepers Potluck Corn Boil 2010 – updated
• Central Beekeepers Meet 13 July 2010
• Central Beekeepers Potluck Supper 8 June 2010

While researchers are looking for the causes, honey bee populations around the world continue to decline at alarming rates. Given that more than a third of our food supply is dependent on pollination by honey bees, it is not an exaggeration to say that we have the potential for a major agricultural disaster. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there are many things that we as individuals can do to promote the health of the honey bee.

Bee the Solution:

• Grow bee-friendly plants
• Create a four-season sanctuary for pollinators
• Become a beekeeper
• Make a drinking fountain for bees
• Buy local, organic, unpasteurized honey
• Stop spraying
• Support bee research

Endorsed by Bee Culture Magazine and Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, A Bee Lover’s Garden has produced a fundraising calendar to support the Eastern Apicultural Society’s Foundation for Honey Bee Research. Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture Magazine, will chair a committee to review proposals and make the final recommendation.

What Would Your Garden Look Like Without Bees? was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Animated Life of Bees
• How to Keep Bees Like a 5 Year Old Kid
• Starting a New Bee Hive

Bees can be trained to recognize human faces, so long as the insects are tricked into thinking that the faces are oddly shaped flowers, new research shows. The insects use the arrangement of facial features to recognize and distinguish one face from another.

Bees recognize human faces using feature configuration. ScienceDaily.

First, the researchers used an arrangement of dots and dashes to represent the eyes, nose and mouth of the human face, and demonstrated that bees could learn to tell the difference between a face-like arrangement and a non-face-like arrangement. The bees learned to recognize the arrangement of features that makes up a face, and to associate a visit to that arrangement with a sugar reward, while non-face arrangements gave no reward.

But how robust was the bees’ ability to process the ‘face’s’ visual information? How would the bees cope with more complex faces? This time the team embedded the stick and dot faces in face-shaped photographs. Would the bees be able to learn the arrangements of the features against the backgrounds yet recognise the same stick and dot face when the face photo was removed? Amazingly the insects did, and when the team tried scrambling real faces by moving the relative positions of the eyes, nose and mouth, the bees no longer recognised the images as faces and treated them like unknown patterns.

Bees Recognise Faces Using Feature Configuration by Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 213, i (2010)

Bees Can Learn to Recognize Faces was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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The topics are similar to another documentary The Vanishing of the Bees.

It was released in the UK in October 2009 and is scheduled for US and international theatrical release in March, April and May. At this point the film is being screened at smaller venues in the states and the next showing is in New York in February. 

The trailer for the film is available on youtube and you can sign up for mailing list updates on their website and follow release dates near you.

New Honey Bee Documentaries was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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• CBA Christmas Party – Thanks

Sobeys (Oromocto)
Atlantic Superstore (Oromocto)
Home Depot (Fredericton)
Giant Tiger (Smythe Street, Fredericton)
Burger King (Smythe Street, Fredericton)
Greco Pizza (Dundonald Street, Fredericton)
Hilltop Grill & Beverage (Prospect Street, Fredericton)
Shur-gain Feeds n Needs (Exhibition Grounds, Smythe Street, Fredericton)
A & W (Prospect Street, Fredericton)
Roblynn Home Hardware (Oromocto)
Jungle Jim’s (Smythe Street, Fredericton)
Subway (Oromocto)

Your support of Central New Brunswick beekeepers in the holiday season is greatly appreciated!

Christine Dembenski
Vice-President
Central Beekeepers Alliance

Thank You to Local Businesses was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Central Beekeepers Potluck Corn Boil 2010 – updated
• Central Beekeepers Meet 13 July 2010
• Central Beekeepers Potluck Supper 8 June 2010

If so, would you be willing to loan one of them to the Canada Agriculture Museum?

I am looking for an antique or vintage honey tin from the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for an exhibit on beekeeping in Canada “Taking Care of Beezness” that I am curating at the Canada Agriculture Museum in Ottawa. The gist of the concept is to have a tin from each of the provinces to make the point that beekeeping is practiced accross the country. The exhibit opens in March 2010 so I am beginning to feel worried that those two provinces’s beekeepers will not be represented. Please e-mail me if you can help!

Thank you;

Franz

Franz Klingender is Curator of Agriculture at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ottawa, ON. You may reach him by email at fklingender@technomuses.ca.

update: Mr. Klingender was able to locate a collector who supplied him with a couple of old honey tins for the exhibit. We’re hoping that when the exhibit is mounted in the spring that photographs may be available to share with you.

Ag Museum Curator Seeks Antique Honey Tins from Maritimes was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) reports:

When bees sting, they pump poison into their victims. Now the toxin in bee venom has been harnessed to kill tumor cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees.

In mice, nanobees delivered the bee toxin melittin to tumors while protecting other tissues from the toxin’s destructive power. The mice’s tumors stopped growing or shrank.

An abstract of the research report is available at the Journal of Clincial Investigation website, and a detailed article aimed at the general public –‘Nanobees’ Zap Tumors With Real Bee Venom — is posted on the website of the Discovery Channel.

Could bee stings lead to a cure for cancer? was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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This funding program is intended to help commercial beekeepers to expand their existing operations by increasing the number of colonies, and small-scale beekeepers who wish to expand their operations to commercial status

Who is eligible for funding?

• The applicant must be registered as a commercial New Brunswick beekeeper (as per the requirements of the New Brunswick Apiary Inspection Act) in 2009.
• Applicants who are not currently considered a commercial beekeeper must submit an expansion plan, indicating how they will reach commercial status (50 colonies or more by September 15).
• Colonies must be available for pollination within New Brunswick.
• All applicants must submit a plan that includes a summary of their production management practices including disease control and overwintering practices. Applicants with poor management practices (as deemed by the New Brunswick Department of Agriculture and Aquaculture) will not be eligible for funding assistance.

What costs are covered by the program?

• The 2009-2010 New Brunswick Honey Bee Expansion Initiative provides financial assistance for:
  • Purchase of colonies
  • Purchase of nuclei colonies (nucs)
  • Splitting of colonies

Although the season is already well underway, eligible expenditures made since April 1, 2009, may still qualify for funding if they meet the guidelines. Expenditures made before that date are not eligible.

For more information about this program and other NB Strategic Agriculture Initiatives, please contact your nearest regional office of the New Brunswick Department of Agriculture and Aquaculture. Guidelines and Application forms for the Honey Bee Expansion Initiative are available on the NBDAA website at www.gnb.ca/agriculture (select “Strategic Agriculture Initiatives”).

2009-2010 Honey Bee Funding Announced for New Brunswick was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Bee Tour 2010 in New Brunswick
• Beekeeping Field Day 12 June 2010
• Beekeeper ALERT: March 2010

Bee Talk: Spring-Summer 2009 was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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To read more about the latest buzz on the White House lawn you can find the article by clicking on this link:

thedailygreen

The White House and Bees? was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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This news comes from Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture – The Magazine of American Beekeeping, who is a regular contributor to the BeeKeepers Quarterly). Flottum notes that Bee Culture, too, will be releasing a digital edition later this year.

Other digital beekeeping magazines include Bee Craft (UK) and MidWest Beekeeper (US). So far, the American Bee Journal is not available on the Internet, but you can subscribe to the Journal through its website, or view the Table of Contents, Covers, and an index of articles in past issues.

Beekeeping Magazines Go Online was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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Ireland has been described by many poets and story-tellers as the land of milk and honey, and there is little doubt that there was milk and honey in abundance in earliest times…

Honey was so important in early Ireland that a whole section of the Brehon Laws was devoted to bees and beekeeping. Tributes were paid in honey and no banquet table was complete without honey and mead, the legendary drink made from it. Honey was used not just for cooking, but also for basting, and as a condiment in which to dip meat, fowl and fish at the table.

The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore by Hilda M. Ransome (first published in 1937) explains that there’s a whole section about honey in the Brehon Laws, which date back to somewhere around 600 AD and probably much earlier — the “Bee-judgments” as the laws about beekeeping were called.

For example, under those old laws, anyone who kept bees was obligated by law to share the honey harvest with land-owners of the four adjacent farms, as that’s where the bees gathered nectar.

And if a man found a swarm in the faithche (the green surrounding and belonging to a house), three-quarters of that colony’s honey harvest at the end of the year was owed to the owner of the house. It certainly speaks to the value placed on honey!

We can guage what abundance of honey there was by the size of the vessels in which it was measured. The Brehon Laws mention four sized of vessels used when measuring honey in large quantities. A milch-cow measure was one which, when full, an ordinary person could lift as far as his knee; a heifer, one he could life to his waist; a small heifer to his shoulder; and a dairt or still smaller heifer vessel which he could raise over his head. It was a quaint way of measuring!

You can read more about the Brehon Laws on a fascinating website called Library Ireland, dedicated to sharing Irish culture and folklore.

For those who’d like to enjoy their honey in Irish culture with a bit of a “kick” to it, David Lee of the Federation of Irish Beekeepers’ Associations explains how to make your own mead.

The potent honey-based beverage might go nicely with this gourmet menu from the Institute of Northern Ireland Beekeepers, drawn from the old legends of County Tipperary:

Appetiser:
Wild Irish Rabbit Terrine, accompanied with hedgegrown brambles, Mead Chutney, garnished with Armagh Apple Crisps, accompanied with Guinness wheaten bread.

Main Course:
Crystallized pan fried Wolf fish, served with Colcannon potatoes served with a white butter sauce, infused with Field Nettle emulsion, garnished with Irish streaky bacon and deep fried leeks.

Dessert:
White Chocolate Beehive, filled with a Hazelnut & Irish Mist parfait, served with a rich raspberry & thyme compote, and a splash of fresh cream, garnished with Ling honey comb.

If that’s a bit much, just take a page from A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland, by PW Joyce (first published in 1906), which says:

A mixture of milk and honey was sometimes drunk; a mixture of lard and honey was usual as a condiment. Honey was sometimes brought to table pure, and sometimes in the comb. Often at meals each person had placed before him on the table a little dish, sometimes of silver, filled with honey; and each morsel whether of meat, fish, or bread was dipped into it before being conveyed to the mouth.

Or what about a broiled salmon steak, basted with honey, like the meal that was served by Ailill and Maive, king and queen of Connaught, to the young chief, Fraech, according to the old Irish tales. That sounds like a St. Patrick’s Day meal that would go down just fine here in New Brunswick!

Irish Honey Lore for St. Patrick’s Day was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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Anyone got a stainless steel 4 frame extractor to sell ( or even better – give)
Does not need a motor, I can rig that up.

Please feel free to drop a note in the comments here, if you don’t know Sterling and have a way to contact him directly but have an extractor to spare.

Wanted: 4-Frame Stainless Steel Extractor was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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• Central Beekeepers Meet 9 March 2010
• Central Beekeepers Meet 9 February 2010
• Beekeepers at the Fredericton Exhibition

Back row: Ralph Lockhart (NB), Alden Thomas (NB), Paul Vautour (NB), Mary Colpitts (NB), Fletcher Colpitts (NB)

Next: Edith Thomas (NB), Jerry Draheim (NS), Pascale Dillon (PEI), Joanne Moran (NS), Deborah Woodward (PEI), Homer Woodward (PEI)

Front row: Ann Vautour (NB), Paul Kittilsen (NS), Chris Jordan (PEI), and Peter Dillon (PEI)

[Photograph submitted by Ann Vautour]

Photo: Maritime Beekeepers at Canadian Honey Council was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Bee Tour 2010 in New Brunswick
• Natural Beekeeping Workshop with Ross Conrad
• Maritime Action Forum on Pollination Research: 19 March 2010

The good news is, and we’ve been collecting this for awhile now, is that with all of the fuss and attention, beekeepers are this fall and winter taking much better care of their bees than in the recent past.

Bee nutrition is improving, as are basic management practices such as rotating out old comb for new foundation; and Varroa treatments are settling out into solid protocols, as “those that don’t work are being phased out and those that are somewhat kinder and gentler on the bees are coming of age.”

On the other hand, it sounds like even non-lethal levels of Nosema may have debilitating effects on a colony by making them more vulnerable to pesticide damage and Varroa attacks.

Another item that caught Flottum’s attention — recent research shows there are many many viruses in the environment against which the honeybee must battle. Interestingly, although most of these viruses are spread from bee to bee in ways that make sense to the non-scientists among us, it seems that even the pollen that bees bring back to the hive is almost certain to be carrying one of three different honeybee viruses — transmitted from wild native bees, most likely, or from honey bees that visited the same bloom beforehand.

How all these factors play into the continuing concerns about Colony Collapse Disorder is still unknown, but CCD was still very much in the minds of beekeepers at the annual conference. You’ll want to read all of Flottum’s report (here), but I thought this closing anecdote of his was both interesting and slightly chilling:

On the last day of the conference I asked one of the commercial beekeepers who was there and who had colonies in a holding yard in southern California waiting for almond bloom how things were going. His answer was telling…”Well, he said, it’s been cold in California so far and the bees haven’t been moving…until the middle of the week. That’s when the temperature warmed up and bees could fly…and that’s when they started to disappear. Again.”

For more information, see Kim Flottum’s articles on the American beekeeping industry and Colony Collapse Disorder at TheDailyGreen.com:

• At Annual Beekeeper Conference, All Talk Turns to Colony Collapse Disorder
• U.S. Beekeepers Have More Bees Than Anytime in 3 Years
• The First Full Accounting of Colony Collapse Disorder

Kim Flottum Reports from US Beekeepers Conference was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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Part of the Häagen-Dazs loves Honey Bees™ campaign is an engaging website that’s sure to brighten a winter day.

Visitors to the website click on an old-fashioned skep-style beehive to reveal the website’s menu of educational and entertaining options —

• fly through the fields with a pollinating honey bee,
• make a cartoon bee< and send her by email to another honey bee fan,
• download a lesson plan about the bee crisis and how you can help,
• shop for “Feel the Love Buzz” and “Long Live the Queen” T-shirts to support honeybee research
• and more.

Go to HelpTheHoneyBees.com to learn more and explore.

[Thanks to CBA member Jessica Breau for the link!]

Help the Honey Bees, Eat Ice Cream, Send Bee-Mail was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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Bee Talk: Winter 2008-09 was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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In this video of a lively talk given by vanEnglesdorp at the Taste 3 food and wine conference, the “bee crusader” compares CCD to the ‘flu and explains some of the strange and mysterious discoveries about colony health that make CCD such a challenging problem — and what can and should be done about it.

He pins the decline of pollinators on what he calls “Nature Deficit Disorder” (NDD) — for which the iconic image is the sterile “green desert” of lawn that has replaced the diverse ecosystem of the meadow.

The talk is aimed at a general audience, not a bunch of beekeepers, so it’s a great introduction to honeybees, beekeeping, and colony collapse disorder… but there’s lots there for even the most experienced beekeeper to hear and enjoy.

You’d think it might be a depressing talk, but far from it — vanEngelsdorp’s own excitement about the fascinating world of pollination is contagious. In fact, we only wish that all speakers were as entertaining!

Dennis vanEngelsdorp Video: Where have the bees gone? was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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• What Would Your Garden Look Like Without Bees?
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1. Original Articles — improve your skills and knowledge
2. Municipal Codes Search — to find out the codes related to beekeeping in your area, including state regulations where applicable
3. Hive Diaries — keep track of your activity or publish photos for everyone to see
4. Retail Directory — find supplies online
5. Message Boards — get in touch with other urban beekeepers and trade experiences

The site is just getting started –it launches officially on 1 February 2009 — so the information is still sparse (and much of it is specific to beekeepers in the United States), but this seems to be one of the few websites that sets out with a focus on urban beekeeping. City-dwellers with bees or an interest in keeping honeybees can check out this new community at www.UrbanApis.com.

New Website for City Beekeepers was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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Orders Accepted Now for Early Queen Bee Shipments was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Maritime Action Forum on Pollination Research: 19 March 2010
• New Honey Bee Exhibits at Canada’s Virtual Museum & Agriculture Museum
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Honey bees are the unsung heros of agriculture — their ceaseless hunt for nectar ensures our food crops are fertilized. In fact, without the honey bee, agriculture would be in a pretty sorry state. The problem is, things aren’t looking good for bees. Over the past few years, two-thirds of the North American honey bee population has mysteriously disappeared, a disturbing phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder. American science journalist Rowan Jacobsen has been following the honey bee decline, and in his new book, Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, he explores the complex world of the honey bee, our precarious dependence on them, and the frightening consequences if they continue to die out.

This program will air on Radio One on Saturday, 24 January 2009, at 12:06 p.m., with a rebroadcast on Monday evenings at 11:06 p.m. It may also be heard on Sirius satellite radio. Past shows are usually made available on the website, for those who miss the broadcast.

Honey Bees on CBC Radio was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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Following are some highlights from the latest newsletter, available on the group’s “new and improved” website (www.projectapism.org) :

• Project Research — PAm is studying the movement of neonicotinoid insecticides into pollen and nectar, and helping to fund a Bee Diagnostics Center at Washington State University (WSU).
• Follow a 4-Step Program for keeping bees healthy — Dr. Marla Spivak, Apiculture and Social Insect Professor at UMN, promotes a 4-Step Program to keep bees healthy. These four steps include:
  1. Knowledge – know the clinical symptoms of bee diseases and pests and their life cycle as they relate to honey bees,
  2. Prevention – how can YOU, the beekeeper, take control in areas where you can thwart pest and disease transmission (i.e., replace combs, locate colonies in remote areas, feed bees well in times of dearth),
  3. Prevention – what can BEES themselves do on their own to limit pest and disease transmission (use bees selected for resistant traits), and
  4. Control – use chemical controls only as a last resort.
• New virus discovery in US honeybees — Varroa Destructor Virus 1 (VDV-1) has been discovered in US honeybees. This virus was discovered among bees in Europe in 2006. It is carried by both honey bees and varroa mites.

The group’s emphasis is on research studies with “realistic and practical usefulness for beekeeping businesses,” and the News and Research sections will be of some interest to beekeepers in general.

Project Apis m. Funds Honey Bee Research was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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Longwood Gardens, the 1,050-acre horticultural treasure of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, has launched a year-long changing exhibit and public education program on pollination, entitled The Buds and The Bees.

Offered as part of the 2009 program, two events in particular will be of interest to beekeepers who may be visiting in the Philadelphia area this spring and tempted to stop in at Longwood Gardens.

Beekeeping Basics with Jim Bobb
Saturday, March 14, 2009
1:00 PM — 4:00 PM
For anyone considering taking up apiculture as a hobby…[this class] offers participants the opportunity to observe hive equipment and discuss its intricacies with an expert. The mechanics, cost, and the ideal time to get started will be discussed so potential beekeepers can make informed decisions about taking the next step.

Jim Bobb was named Pennsylvania’s Beekeeper of the Year in 2008, with a long and active history of volunteerism and beekeeping. He keeps some 140 hives of his own at various public gardens as well as at his own property, and teaches horticulture classes at the Barnes Foundation as well as instructing at Longwood Gardens.

The Drama: Bee Colony Collapse Disorder with Dennis van Engelsdorp
Friday, April 03, 2009
7:00 PM
In recent years, an interesting and alarming phenomenon named Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has emerged. Honey bees are mysteriously vanishing across the country, putting $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts, and vegetables at risk! In this lecture important topics such as the potential causes of CCD will be discussed, and questions will be raised about what life would be like without our most widely used pollinator.

Canadian beekeepers will be familiar with the name of Dennis van Engelsdorp, who began his beekeeping career at the University of Guelph, studying Buckfast bees and honeybee tracheal mites, then served as the Government of Canada’s consultant to the Antigua Beekeepers Cooperative in the West Indies, before helping to develop Cornell University’s master beekeeping program. He currently serves as Acting State Apiarist for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, through Penn State University, and was one of the first researchers to tackle CCD.

Longwood Gardens Offers Year-Long Buds and Bees Program was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

The charter is an initiative of the Union National de l’Apiculture Française (UNAF), and its title echoes the theme of this year’s international apiculture congress, Apimondia 2009.

Why are bees the “sentinel of the environment”?

As the UNAF charter states:

The bee appeared on our planet along with flowering plants some 80 million years ago.

Today, more than 80 % of our vegetation is fertilized by bees, which play a major role in plant pollination.

In this way, about 20,000 endangered botanical species are still protected thanks to the action of the bees in the pollenation process.

Hence about 40 % of our food supply (fruit, vegetables, oleaginous plants) depends exclusively on the fertilizing action of bees.

Furthermore, honey, pollen, royal jelly, propolis and venom continue to be natural products much appreciated by consumers and are the object of extensive research throughout the world for their dietary and therapeutic qualities.

However, today, having survived various climate changes, bees are in danger because of extensive environmental alterations due to inappropriate agricultural practices (excessive use of ever more toxic phytosanitary products, land consolidation, monoculture, silaging…).

Since 1995, about 30 % of honeybee colonies have been disappearing every year in France. In the past 10 years, 15,000 beekeepers have had to stop their activity. From 1995 to 2005, the national production fell by 30 % and imports tripled. It is for this reason that in 2005, the UNAF (Union Nationale de l’Apiculture Française/National Union of French Beekeeping) launched the “Honeybee, Sentinel of the Environment” campaign to bring to the general public’s attention this alarming situation and try to protect the honeybee as well as beekeeping which depends on it.

A growing number of institutions and private firms are coming back to us, aware of the importance of the preservation of this pollen-producing fauna for the safeguard of our crop production and biodiversity.

Together, we want our government as well as governments all over the world, to give this matter their utmost attention, because the situation facing us today in France is the same all over the world.

For more information, or to sign the online charter, please visit www.abeillesentinelle.net and click on a flag image to choose your preferred language in which to read the page.

Honey Bee: Sentinel of the Environment was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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• ask a question about bees or beekeeping?
• make a comment?
• share something you’ve read, heard about, or seen on the Web?
• float an idea?
• get a second opinion?
• or, just chat about strange doings in your beeyard?

About the CBA Bee Talk Forum

Some of you may remember, years ago, when we had a forum? If so, you may recall that it was quite a job to keep the inappropriate spam ads from getting posted faster than we could take them down! That’s why the old forum was discontinued in the first place — it was hard to keep it “family friendly” for beekeepers because of ads for websites you really wouldn’t want to have to see!

Technology has come a long way in the last few years, however, so we thought we’d give it another try! In order to participate on the new forum, you’ll first have to register (free) and the system will send you a password to use whenever you want to leave a message or reply to someone else’s message on the forum. Hopefully that will help to keep the bad guys away!

Having our own CBA Bee Talk message board again should make it just a bit easier for you to talk about bees and beekeeping together, and to exchange advice, share our news, problems/solutions, and other beekeeping ideas.

Stay tuned — it’s coming soon!
Check it out!

Bee Talk: New Forum is Open was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Central Beekeepers Potluck Corn Boil 2010 – updated
• Central Beekeepers Meet 13 July 2010
• Central Beekeepers Potluck Supper 8 June 2010

And you know what that means — the 2009 Membership fee is now due for all new and renewing Central Beekeepers Alliance members. As in previous years, the membership fee remains the same — a bargain at just five dollars!

If you have not already paid your membership for this year, or if you’re new to beekeeping and interested in joining our association, please bring your $5.00 along to the next regular monthly meeting of beekeepers, on Tuesday evening, 13 January, 2009.

Thank you,
Central Beekeepers Alliance

CBA Membership Dues was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

• Central Beekeepers Potluck Corn Boil 2010 – updated
• Central Beekeepers Meet 13 July 2010
• Central Beekeepers Potluck Supper 8 June 2010

WHEREAS the New Brunswick Beekeepers Association is currently unable to meet its financial obligation as a member of the Canadian Honey Council in a sustainable manner,

BE IT RESOLVED that the membership dues structure be amended as follows:

$25   Associate Member (see note below)
$50   Regular Member – 1 to 10 colonies
$150 Regular Member – 11 to 99 colonies
$250 Regular Member – 100 to 499 colonies
$350 Regular Member – 500 to 1500 colonies
$700 Regular Member – more than 1500 colonies

NOTE: Associate Members will be non-voting but will have the privilege of attending meetings and the freedom to voice their opinion on issues. This membership is for a maximum of two years and is offered to new beekeepers who own not more than ten (10) colonies or are employees of a Regular Member. They are not eligible for other benefits such as “HIVELIGHTS” or liability insurance. Insurance is included in the cost of Regular Membership unless a member declines this benefit in writing.

[submitted by the New Brunswick Beekeepers Association]

NBBA 2009 Notice of Motion was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.

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