In this video Michael Palmer speaks to the Prince Williams Regional Beekeepers' Association about his practice of overwintering nucs to make up for loses as opposed to buying new colonies.
In part one he covers the benefits of of overwintering nucs, choosing which colonies to use to make your nucs, how to create the nucs.
In part two he looks at some of the unique management practices to this system and some of the equipment options.
A study performed southern tip of Gotland,an island in the Baltic sea where 150 colonies were left unmanaged with varroa mites. After 6 years it appeared that a host-parasite co-adaptation occured with the 5 colonies, plus an addition to 8 swarm colonies that remained.
This book considers the issue of moisture within the hive. The author gives particular attention to the effects of ventilation on curing honey and how it could contribute to swarming behaviour.
There's lots of lists of flowers to plant to help the bees out there, but this is the first time I've seen a scientific comparison of the attractiveness of different plants.
Figure 3 from the paper seems to offer a quick glimpse at which types of flowers were the favourites.
I've been interested in agastache (anise hyssop), since reading praise for it in beekeeping literature a few years ago and because it's native to North America. This gives me a little extra incentive to try planting a little more of it.
I sent Mihail a question and he was quick to remind me that this study was only conducted in one area and results may vary in different regions. So you may want to take this research as inspiration to try setting up a test garden near your own bees and see how your results compare.
New Jersey based beekeeper Kevin Inglin puts out shows that go into detail on different managment techniques, provides updates on what's going on in his own apiary, and other pertinent bee news.
Demonstration of how to extract comb from a top bar.
Similar to the concept outlined in Beekeeping For All, the setup in this video seems to rely on lots of support for the comb in a radial extracting position and using sturdy older combs.
Photo by: bbcworldservice / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial License
Documentary looking at migratory beekeeping in the USA from the california almond mega-monocultures and beyond.
Photo by: bbcworldservice / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial License
As Ontatio's provincial apiarist reported the numbers of hives moving from Ontario to the blueberries ~1000+km away has more than doubled in the last few years, the issues experienced by our southern neighbours are certainly worth contemplating up here in Canada (and in the nut aisle of bulk food stores everywhere).
Walt Wright Suggests constructing the hive in such a way as to reduce the need for the bees to add propolis will allow them to spend that much more time collecting honey.
Photo by: OBA TTP / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
He suggests trying to make the hive boxes as level as possible, as well as shaving the end of the frame that rest on the rebates down to a sharp angle so as to reduce the point of contact between the frames and the hive body.
David Heaf's translated excerpts from Johann Thür work asserts the importance of heat and smell for the bees. Thür has scathing criticism for the use of frames. He claims the extra space around the frames makes it easier for the warm air of the hive to escape the nest and increases stress on the bees.
Handy free web site which allows you to keep notes and records of multiple hives in multiple bee yards. This tool lets you check key some of the hive info at a glance. One of the notable extra features is the google map with different forage distance rings showing.
By using the this tool you are giving them a bit of personal info, they claim they will keep it private but that they will use the data to publish general trends for a broad geographical area.