They’re letting us speak in public again. đŻ Come join Seldom Fools Apiculture and learn about the humble honey bee. We can attribute at least one third of each bite of our food to this little pollinator and the important role they play in our daily lives. In recent years, both the domestic and the wild populations have been declining …
Welcome back to the site!
Web sites can be complicated things. They don’t necessarily have to be. It just works out that way sometimes. The best laid plans and all that. Last summer, we (well, I) had database issues. It wound up being corrupted and we lost all of our previous posts. Our web host didn’t have much of a backup system and I didn’t …
Using bees to apply pesticides? Unfortunately yes.
I had hoped that this article was a spoof when I saw it linked on Google+ this morning, but it’s all too real: While bees pollinate crops, Canadian researchers have found they can also be used to control pest insects and manage disease by dropping off pest control agents while they work. âWe thought we can give added value to …
New lip balm flavours
Just in time for winter, we’re testing cinnamon and star anise (licorice) in our lip balms. Cinnamon especially we need to get right: we don’t want what should be a soothing thing to burn anyone’s lips. đ When they’re ready, we’ll be launching an online sales section of the site here. It’s been far too long in the making.
The Great Hive Monitoring Project is underway!
You see lots of numbers and facts bandied about with regards to bee hives and winter. Temperatures, how the cluster moves, when they cluster up, etc. But you don’t actually see the data. I know that the centre of a winter cluster of bees is supposed to be approximately 90F all the time, but only because I’ve read it somewhere. …
Time to Bee Worried | OnEarth Magazine
Time Magazine is covering the bee “apocalypse” and OnEarth is ticked off that it’s taken so long: TIME magazine fronts the global bee crisis, a story OnEarth first covered in 2006âand weâre still no closer to a solution. I’d take issue with the end of that sentence. Scientists and the government are no closer to a solution. Beekeepers have been …
CAPA releases Annual Winter Loss Report
The Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists has been tallying winter losses across Canada since 2007. Their 2013 Statement on Winter Losses (covering the winter of 2012/2013) has been released and it’s ugly out there: Province Number of Colonies Wintered Fall 2012 Number of Dead or Unproductive Colonies Spring 2013 Percent Wintering Loss (%) British Columbia 46,746 8,414 18.0 Alberta 282,000 …
No pesticide moratorium for Ontario
It’s been a hard couple of years for pesticides kills in Ontario. David Schuitt in Elmwood estimates he lost 37 million bees in 2012 and he’s not alone. The spring planting season saw a number of apiaries in Southwestern Ontario wiped out by residue from a synthetic nicotine-based pesticide that’s applied to corn seed before it’s sold. The planting machinery …
Moving the Lang
Reverend Lorenzo Langstroth invented the modern framed bee hive. We’ve all seen them: the typical stack of white boxes along the margins of a farm field. Until 2012, we didn’t have any. We figured that we should probably find out what these things are all about and bought three singles from Dancing Bee Honey. Remember, we’re primarily a topbar operation. …