Professor David Evans is a virologist studying the biology of single stranded positive sense RNA viruses, including poliovirus, hepatitis C virus and deformed wing virus of honeybees. He has a fascinating, practical beekeeping blog, https://www.theapiarist.org/
- More on collecting and hiving swarms, their memory, how and when to treat them for mites, and a Citizen Science survey of whether swarm absconding might be due to scout bee activity.
- We can now add 'faster honey ripening' to the known benefits of using drone comb in honey supers, though whether these outweigh the consequences of a queen getting above the excluder is debatable.
- You should learn from your mistakes or — in this case — mine. What to do with your feet when mishandling queens, how to retrieve the queen from a full box of brace comb, and (What? You want more?) comments on setting up and siting bait hives.
- Not all plastic queen cups that look the same perform the same, and different commercial plastic queen cups can profoundly affect the success of queen rearing. Do the dimensions of the cell cup influence the size of the resulting queen?
- It's expensive to start beekeeping. Buy wisely. You don't need most things the suppliers sell. Price is not necessarily the best indicator of suitability. Compatibility, future-proofing and longevity are far more important.
- Honey bees may voluntarily leave the hive and not return when their health is compromised. This altruistic suicide is a form of social immunity and has evolved to protect the colony from infectious disease.
- How do you stop swarms from absconding, and why do they abscond? Could it be 'residual' scout bee activity, and how could this be tested?
- Prevention is better than cure. Why and how to monitor the mite population in mid-season. It takes minutes to do properly, providing either peace of mind, or a useful early warning of trouble (that can be avoided) ahead.
- Slow-release oxalic acid strips activate honey bee immune responses — is this a good thing?
- Reviewing the consequences of recent storms, apiary vicinity mating and the adaptions of Cape honey bees to windy locations (and the undesirable side effect of social parasitism).