As 2017 draws to a close, let’s look back at the year’s best beekeeping stories. With lower honey prices in 2017, some beekeepers left the business and colony counts fell a little.  Back in 2016, I reported that honey bees were in recovery – colony collapse hadn’t been reported in five years (now six) and (in Canada, at least) there were more bees than anytime in Canadian history.

Many of the world’s 20,000 species of bees are in trouble from chemical exposure, climate change, and habitat loss. Some have been listed as endangered, at risk of becoming extinct. However, honey bees are managed livestock – their numbers rise and fall depending on honey prices and pollination demands of fruit and almond growers. Worldwide, the number of kept honey bees is still near last year’s record high because beekeepers do all they can to care for their little friends, feeding and protecting them – and earning a livelihood from their bees.

The most popular post of 2017 was my story on Chinese honey.  One More Thing About Chinese Honey… focused on the dreadful way that wet honey is often taken right from the broodnest, then dried in industrial evaporators until its moisture is low enough to sell the syrup as “honey”.  It’s not what you and I would call honey.

The second-most read piece from 2017 was a revision of the story of Warwick Kerr, the Brazilian geneticist who “Invented Killer Bees”. I’m glad that you liked that piece because Kerr’s story, published on his 95th birthday, is important on a lot of levels. The Brazilian military dictatorship tried to destroy Professor Kerr, but his worked helped the poor people of his country tremendously.  If you missed that blog post, I hope that you’ll find time to read it now.

In 2017, people from 174 countries dropped by to learn some bad beekeeping (Hello, Zambia! And Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Bosnia, and 170 other countries!) from this blog. The majority of readers are in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, so I will continue to write mostly in English and mostly about beekeeping in the west.

I published 101 bee blog posts in 2017 – that was about 75,000 words. A lot of bee news, ideas, and opinions.  All of those bee stories were fascinating,  but here are some of my favourites:

January 2017

One More Thing About Chinese Honey…

Beekeeper Royally Stung

From a news story about a fellow (“Prince Charles’ beekeeper”) trying to keep his bees alive by doing something he apparently wasn’t supposed to be doing.

That’s a quick summary of some my favourite blog posts from 2017. I only write when I get a free hour or two, but it added up to 101 short stories – enough to fill a small book. With the new year upon us, I hope you’ll drop by occasionally and see what’s new in bees in 2018. Meanwhile, have a healthy, happy, and sweet new year!