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/
- Why tolerate poor quality bees? Simple positive and negative selection strategies can produce significant improvements in colony behaviour. However, increased productivity and pathogen resistance (e.g. to mites and viruses) appear harder to reproducibly achieve.
- Do viruses really prefer virus-contaminated syrup? How much worse are viral coinfections of honey bees? Does miticide treatment kill mites, but leave virus levels damagingly high? Three recent papers on deformed wing virus, and their relevance to practical beekeeping.
- Midseason activities include managing late-swarming, rearing queens for overwintering in nucs, and making the best of the summer nectar flows … and, if that wasn't enough, there's the winter ahead to start preparing for. And now isn't too soon.
- Laying workers, and the distinct but functionally similar rebel workers, are a curse in hopelessly queenless hives. Why and when do they occur, how can you prevent them from appearing, and how to fix things if they do.
- The 'June gap' and brood breaks; does the queen stop laying, or are the larvae cannibalised? Probably both, and more. Plus some brief comments on hayfever and honey, and determining when OSR/canola honey is ready for extraction (it's earlier than you might think).
- There are differences in the chemical and physical properties of wax in queen cells and worker comb. This is attributed to a specific group of young worker bees; the queen cell builders. What lessons are there for beekeeping from the identification of these bees and differences in the wax?
- The weather has a profound influence on bees and beekeeping; some thoughts on coping with extreme heat, the ideal conditions for queen mating, and predicting the onset of swarming.
- Miticides kill Varroa. They also have detrimental side effects for the brood, workers, drones, and queen. Some of these side effects are more damaging than others, but many can be avoided (or at least mitigated) with proper colony management.
- The vagaries of the weather, compounded by unexpected events, are what make beekeeping so endlessly fascinating … and challenging. Don't get flustered. Just keep calm and carry on and things should be OK.
- Bees spend more of their short lives learning about the environment during orientation flights than they spend foraging. Why are these flights so important, when do they start, and are bees that have yet to take them really 'non-flying bees'?