Author Archives: Ron Miksha
Honey is Honey
Here’s a honey of a lawsuit. Target Corp has been targeted in a legal action by a Ms. Cardona, apparently of somewhere in California, who discovered from her on-line research that the $3 bottle of honey she purchased at a … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Honey
Tagged California, labeling, lawsuits, organic honey
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Wild Bees
This sounds like an interesting job. You may have heard that there are about 40,000 species of bees in the world. Most are solitary, some live loosely with familiar neighbours, and a very small number, like the honey bee, are … Continue reading
Posted in Ecology, Science
Tagged bee species, Cory Sheffield, macropis cuckoo bee, Saskatchewan
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A Multi-player Game
How does one get 50 different bee-specialists to work together on a project? Sounds like herding cats, if you ask me. But that’s what agricultural engineer Lucas Garibaldi of Argentina’s National University of Río Negro is doing. The fifty researchers … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Ecology, Pollination
Tagged Argentina, bee species, Lucas Garibaldi
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Expressing Genes
What the heck is Gene Expression? Researchers working at the University of Illinois are tricking honey bees in order to learn about something called Gene Expression. As if the poor bugs don’t have enough to worry about, scientists are fooling … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Genetics, Science
Tagged bee communication, DNA, Gene Robinson
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Almonds Need Bees
Almonds need bees. And beekeepers need almonds – to pay their bills. In California – which produces about 80 percent of the world’s almonds – hundreds of thousands of acres stretch from Red Bluff to Bakersfield. Each acre ideally has … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, Ecology, Pollination
Tagged almond pollination, California, Eric Mussen
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Math Bees
Lining up the Hives. The University of Essex (England) Mathematics Department has teamed up with a software designer to create an app that may help beekeepers and orchard owners maximize pollination in orchards. The venture, code named “Project Beeswax” even … Continue reading
Out with the Tongue
2012 was not all about colony collapses and neonicotinoidal imidacloprid pesticides. There was some lighter news. In December, we learned that honey bees were being trained to stick their tongues out. Some top-notch scientists at Bielefeld University in Germany are … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Science, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged bee tongues, Bielefeld University, training bees
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What’s happening to the bees?
It seems that the strange syndrome beekeepers call “Colony Collapse Disorder” was not so bad this year. CCD has been blamed for poor wintering in recent years – in Canada, losses had averaged over 20% for the past decade. Manitoba … Continue reading
Bayer’s Headache
The past year saw Bayer (your headache company) in the news quite a bit. A very serious study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health linked Bayer’s pesticide imidacloprid to Colony Collapse Disorder and published the findings in June’s … Continue reading
Wired for Adventure
From the UK this year, scientists published in Biology Letters that bees frequently mess up their waggle-tail dance if they are describing nectar sources that require the bees to dance horizontally across the frame. Much better for them to dance … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Science
Tagged Gene Robinson, University of Illinois, waggle dance
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Bad Beekeeping Blog 