15 Amazing Incredible Uses for Honey!

Posted on December 16, 2014 by Ron Miksha

It’s good.

I came across a list. It’s one of those “7 Amazing Habits of the World’s Most Successful Dogs” sort of lists. But this one is about honey and the title wasn’t written as run-of-the-mill click bait (such as today’s headline on my blog), but it is more subtle: “15 Household Uses For Honey“.

Fall is honey-using season. But now the autumn holidays (Rosh Hashanah, Thanksgiving, Halloween) and the final honey harvests are behind us. We realize that honey sells better and disappears from pantries more quickly in the fall. Winter is just days away. Still, beekeepers can initiate a few extra sales during the upcoming cold and flu season. To that end, the Mother Earth Living’s piece (“15 Household Uses For Honey”) deserves a visit.

I am not going to list all ’15 household uses’ for honey. Several on the list are redundant. Burn Balm and First Aid, for example, both encourage spreading honey on ailing body parts as an antiseptic and as a healing home remedy. Home remedies, in fact, make up 8 of the 15 Household Uses for Honey – including treatments to fight drunken hangovers, sore throats, nervous tummies, stubborn coughs, and persistent pimples. Somehow, I doubt revelers will be looking for honey on January 1st, but it’s worth mentioning.

Of the fifteen honey uses (you can think of more) only two are appetizing (drizzle on cheese; dab on fruit), one recommends honey as an energy food (“Workout Booster”), and four are beauty-bath and handsome-hair regimes. This breaks down honey’s advantages to culinary, medicinal, energizing, and beautifying. Not a bad bunch of attributes. (In a very old bee journal I saw a whole new category – automotive maintenance… it seems a Model T radiator will not freeze up in winter if a judicious amount of honey is mixed in with the water.)

I am of a mixed-mind when it comes to making these sorts of honey-use recommendations. I think a beekeeper can appear rather flaky if he/she pulls out a long list of miracles that honey performs. I do think that most of the list is valid and accurate – anecdotally, I have witnessed honey healing nasty burns and settling anxious stomaches – but as a consumer, I am always leery when any food or supplement is touted as all-inclusive. It suggests that either some exaggeration or some desperation is going on. However, I think it is useful for the salesperson-beekeeper to know these uses and be able to respond to each in an informed way. Any valid application that encourage honey consumption (and is beneficial to the customer) is worth knowing about – even if it is best not heralded as part of a sales pitch.

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Our Pig

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Ron Miksha

We bought a pig. We will keep it in Africa. It wouldn’t be fair to make our pig live in our house in the city. So Wilbur will be staying with a family in Africa.

As I am sure you have figured out, our family made a contribution to a charity. Our kids (ages 12 and 8) broke open their piggy banks and we all put a few dollars towards this ungulate project. $90 buys a (married?) couple which goes to a family that will benefit from the boars.

The charity that will provide the porkers is Plan Canada. It has been around for about 80 years. Other Plan Canada projects include the anti-malaria Spread the Net program, Because I Am Girl, and a variety of community programs. The thing I like about this outfit is that they try to break the cycle of poverty by providing tools to families. Those tools may include a couple of pigs which (in theory) are not to be eaten but rather will be used to raise more pigs, some of which may be sold or, well, maybe cooked. But you get the idea. You can donate money for sheep, goats, chickens, or seeds, shovels, and hoes. These are intended to enhance economic security, but Plan Canada also provides wells for clean water, builds schools, and makes sanitation systems for villages. The group also sponsors women and girls’ education in a big way.

In past years, Plan Canada would also provide beehives if that’s where you wanted your money to go. Their blurb mentioned pollination, “saving the bees”, honey, wax, and self-sufficiency – but their accompanying photograph was of a modern, white, two-storey Langstroth hive. I had trouble with the idea and didn’t donate to it. I thought Plan Canada should find a way to help local beekeeping by offering local equipment. Our western hive-style might work in some places, but maintenance of such equipment would be a hassle in many parts of the world. Plan Canada seem to have agreed.

Anyway, if you would like to help, Plan Canada seems a worthy outfit. If you live in the USA or elsewhere, I think Plan Canada is part of Plan International so you could contact them. If you are not keen on farm animals and clean water, there are other groups that provide famine and emergency relief for the truly desperate. It seems Plan Canada is trying to use donations responsibly with the goal of helping families become self-sufficient. And who wouldn’t love to buy a pig – and keep it at someone else’s house?

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Beehives vs Drunken Elephants

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Elephant with an attitude (Image CC-SA by Vikram Gupchup)

Drunken elephants have been a problem for as long as I can remember. Elephants are known to booze-up, get rowdy, and attack farmers – sometimes even entire villages. A herd of elephants got drunk on rice beer in Assam, India, and then looted and destroyed a nearby community. Reportedly, they were mostly young elephants and were just looking for more beer. But unfortunately, four people were killed in the ensuing skirmish. Worldwide, over 100 people are killed each year by irritated elephants. The worrisome fact is that not all the elephants are drunken beasts during their murderous escapades – many of the killers are stone-cold sober.

Some environmentalists are (at least partially) excusing the elephants’ riotous behaviour, suggesting it is in retaliation for human activity which continually encroaches upon elephant land. I think the environmentalists have a point. But no species has the right to take the law into their own hands – and revenge is a slippery, retaliatory slope which can only lead to an escalation of the Hatfield and McCoy sort. However, if the elephants are fed up with us, they certainly have their reasons.

Goons have been poaching and slaughtering elephants for generations, turning elephant legs into drums and flower pots and tusks into trinkets. Elephants are migratory mammals, traveling long distances as they follow seasonal changes for healthy dietary variations and for meet ups at watering holes and salty mineral springs. There they may share stories or even fall in love. But we have taken most of their rangeland for our own growing population, turning their trails into our roads and their meadows into our fields. The forest elephant in the Republic of Central Africa lost 60% of its population to poaching – the ivory is sold to fund human wars and, in other parts of Africa, terrorism. Elsewhere, humans in Laos, Sri Lanka, India, and 37 African nations have expanded cropland to prevent their own starvation. In the process, elephant numbers have plunged in the past few decades – the African elephant population, for example, has fallen from 4 million (1930) to 300,000 today.

Some well-behaved elephants:

Farmhand (1855)

Executioner (1868)

Circus performer(1880)

General Labourer, 1946

Temple duty (2010)

For centuries, humans have used elephants for work, warfare, and entertainment.  As you can see in the pictures below, elephants have been employed in temples as living totems of Ganesha and executioners in India (the second image below is fuzzy, but it is an 1868 sketch of an elephant being forced to kill the man whose head is on the block). Elephants have given us circus entertainment in North America (as in Dumbo and Jumbo among thousands of others) and they have worked as draft animals throughout southeast Asia and general labourers in Europe (the last photograph below was shot by a US service man in Hamburg in 1945 – the elephant is cleaning up WWII debris after Allied bombing).

We have been abusive. But human women, children, and farm peasants pay the price when marauding elephants trample conventional fences and destroy crops. Elephants have learned to lift latches on gates and they have sought weak spots in wire and wooden fences when gates are locked. Subsistence farmers are sometimes ruined when elephants trash fields. But the pachyderms recognize beehives and steer clear of potential stings. So, a very bright Oxford scientist, Dr Lucy King, came up with a potential solution. It is based on the fact that elephants are afraid of bees.

For inventing a fence of beehives that reduces clashes between humans and elephants, the United Nations presented Dr King with the prestigious Conservation of Migratory Species award. She received the recognition because her fence is innovative, uses local resources, provides farmers with honey and wax, and because it actually works. First tested in 2008, it has stopped 84 out of 90 attempted raids in three different regions. It seems to fit culturally – three different African tribes have adopted the system. Beekeepers reading this will also recognize that the hive is elevated on posts and suspended by wires. This prevents nasty brood-eating mammals (as well as ants) from accessing the bee colonies. African bees typically nest in trees so these hanging hives are accepted by the bees – I suspect unoccupied boxes would attract swarms. (Since the elephants have learned to recognize the units as hives, dummy hives can be hung among populated hives – these are equally effective at barring the elephants.) Beekeepers will also recognize the construction shown here is a TBH (Top Bar Hive), which uses local materials, but Langstroth hives (as nucs) can also be used.

I think this is a brilliant idea. It satisfies the defensive needs of the local people without killing the endangered migratory elephants (they simply skirt the bees and the crops and continue ambling along their way). Dr King has placed a manual (which she wrote) on the internet so other groups may adopt her idea. Meanwhile, testing, refinement, and distribution of the beehive fence continues. You can – and should – visit elephantsandbees.com to learn more. You may also contribute to this effort by going to the Elephants and Bees donor page or through the UK’s Save the Elephants charity. We are told that “100% of funds will go towards project-running expenses.”

Kenyan beehive fence, with Dr King
(photo from Beehive Fence Construction Manal

 

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Sterile Radioactive Bugs Arrive in Croatia

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Ron Miksha

 

A sterile radioactive kibbutz bug (Image PD by FAO)

Why did a kibbutz in Israel ship 380 million sterile, radioactive fruit flies to Croatia? That might be the most unusual introduction this blog has ever used. Here’s the backstory…

Ceratitis capitata – the lovely but insidious Mediterranean Fruit Fly – is indigenous to the fruit belt surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. This includes Croatia. Normally, the Medfly does not wander far, so it spreads slowly. Unless it’s boxed up in a crate of tangerines. Or figs, apples, peaches, blueberries, pomegranates, grapefruit, or some other wormy but nutritious carton of fruit. That’s how the Medfly reached the States, New Zealand, Chile, and (I think) Australia. In Chile, New Zealand, California, Texas, and Florida, the bug was successfully eradicated. Hawaii is still fighting it. If you don’t like worms in your oranges, it needs fought. The bug’s life cycle prompts it to poke holes into ripening fruit and deposit eggs under the fruit’s skin. The eggs hatch and the larvae (worms) eat, grow, and pupate. Even those of us who are free-range omnivores find the results a bit disgusting.

Not fussy – Medfly larvae enjoy a healthy variety of fruit
– including peaches and figs.

The Medfly can be sprayed into oblivion. That’s how California eventually ridden itself of the scourge. Back in 1989, Governor Jerry Brown resisted aerial spraying on environmental principles. He authorized a ground assault, but the Medfly moved ahead of the program. Reluctantly (and almost too late), Brown agreed on blanket sprays which finally destroyed the fruit flies. (By the way, Brown is again governor. He is 76 years old now. He took over a bitterly divided, bankrupt state (only partly due to Arnold the ex-terminator, who was formerly in charge). California, under Brown, has recovered remarkably. There is finally a government surplus – The Economist says Brown is “so tight-fisted he is not above eating off other people’s plates.” Potentially a bit disgusting, but I digress.) In the end, helicopters sprayed malathion at night while the California National Guard inspected vehicles fleeing infested areas. Later, entomologists released sterile Medflies to seduce any holdout Ceratitis capitata.

This brings us back to Croatia and the friendly kibbutz. In 1934, Jewish settlers from Germany began the Sde Eliyahu religious colony. They built their stockade and tower settlement near the Sea of Galilee at 200 metres (660 feet) below sea level where malaria swamps and summer heat affected the early settlers and their precarious crops. They persevered, transforming their worthless tract of land into an agricultural oasis. Today the kibbutz and its 750 residents are entirely dependent on farm-related activities. Here is what Sde Eliyahu says about itself: “Many of our field crops and fruit are special in that they are cultivated according to the principles of organic agriculture. We were real pioneers in this sphere in Israel fighting for the exclusion of toxic fertilizers and sprays. To replace the latter, natural enemies of pests have to be found and activated.” Pursuing natural solutions led to the establishment of BioBee, which is mainly involved in bumblebee pollination within greenhouses, and Bio-Fly, which raises indigenous Mediterranean fruit flies and sterilizes them.

Bio-Fly, a subsidiary of BioBee, was founded “for the purpose of developing and supplying biological control solutions for the Mediterranean fruit fly (Medfly) and other pests, using the Sterile Insect Technique,” according to the outfit’s website. The newspaper Haaretz says that the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission supervises the radioactive sterilization of the fruit flies while the kibbutz has a collaborative agreement with the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, and several Mediterranean governments for the distribution of the sterile flies. The company has a mass rearing facility and supplies sterilized male pupae, as well as sterile male flies for dispersal in agricultural fields. The latest swarm of flies were scattered along the border areas of Croatia and Bosnia. Normally, about 15 million sterilized pupae are produced each week at Bio-Fly. The sale to Croatia was over a third of a billion flies, so perhaps production has ramped up recently. (The 380 million flies were weighed, not individually counted.) By the way, the reason that only male fruit flies are sold is that it prevents a potential disaster if some flies are not effectively sterilized – no egg-layers are shipped abroad. The sterile males successfully mate with indigenous females who then remain infertile their entire week-long adult life.

Croatian fruit and veggie stand (photo – Miksha)

I was surprised that the Croatian tourist haven has a big tropical fruit industry. The coast is mostly craggy with mountains that encroach upon the sea. Almost everywhere along the coast, there isn’t much more than a skinny (but inviting) beach. But when I approached the Croatian coast from Sarajevo, driving south through Bosnia, a friend and I found ourselves on the broad Neretva Delta – a warm lowlands of rich soil and dense gardens and groves. It was quite a switch from the barren stone-filled hills to the north. Until the moment Neretva’s river valley opened before me, I was unaware of Croatia’s huge citrus industry. But as a Mediterranean country, Croatia’s burgeoning fruit-producing area suffers from the Medfly. (For more, and some great pictures, see the UN’s FAO report about Croatia’s fruit fly pests.)

Despite the flies, I was enthralled with the orange groves – something I missed since my Florida beekeeping days. Seeing all these small acreages owned by independent farmers who peddle their fruits and veggies at roadside stands was a slightly nostalgic trip back in time. I didn’t see any honey bees in the groves, but my trip was in October, not March, so the trees were not blooming. Migratory beekeepers would have moved their colonies north in early summer. The bees would not have been back until perhaps November. But when they did return, the beekeepers would not have to deal with clouds of malathion drifting over their bees, thanks to 380,000,000 imported radioactive male fruit flies.

Croatia’s fruit delta, along the Neretva River (photo – Miksha)

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No Cheery Welcome for the Beetles

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Ron Miksha

“It’s the Beetles!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, The Beetles!” **  That’s how Ed Sullivan introduced John, Paul, George and Ringo to the American public. The introduction was followed by a lot of screaming, some disruptive noise on Ed’s stage, and general hair-pulling by the audience. Not so different when The Hive Beetles entered the world stage. The latest stop on their uncelebrated global tour is southern Europe.

A friend in Europe wrote to me, wanted to know my thoughts about these new beetles. They were found this year in southern Italy. According to the Invasive Species Compendium, hive beetles (Aethina tumida) “are considered to be a minor pest in [South] Africa, but a major problem in areas where they have been introduced.” So far, the beetles have been introduced to the USA, Canada, Jamaica, Australia, Italy, and possibly Egypt. Indeed, they are on a world tour. They are not very active here in Canada – I think it is too cold, at least out on the prairies. The hive beetles either flew across the border from the states (They can fly a few kilometres at a time.); or, more likely, they arrived on imported equipment a few times, but never gained permanent residency status. I have only seen hive beetles once, on a trip to Florida. So, I am not an expert. However, I told my correspondent what I know from my perspective, but it is not from first-hand experience. (Lack of experience has never stopped me before.)

The hive beetle is certainly an ugly and nasty insect – most of the damage is done during its larvae stage – creepy, densely populated worms that cause a lot of trouble. No one wants the pest in their hives. They destroy comb equipment and make a big mess. When they were first found in the USA, beekeepers and researchers were frightened. Bee equipment was quarantined and it was difficult to get approvals to move between states. Equipment was sometimes burned by government inspectors. Scary movies were shown at beekeepers’ meetings. (I know – I sat through one such thriller here in Alberta.) Then people settled down and the hive beetle is now considered a minor (albeit grotesque) pest. But the initial infestations were an opportunity for excitement. I think it will follow a similar trajectory in Europe: initial fear and panic, oppressive regulations, then finally acceptance and control. This was precisely the story of the honeybee tracheal mite – HTM caused the initial Canadian-American border closure while some petty bureaucrats did their best to cow the beekeepers. Today no one seems to even look for HTM.

Beekeepers will learn a few tricks that will reduce the problem. Most beekeepers will be annoyed by hive beetles, but few (if any) will be put out of business. Some of my friends and family have commercial bee businesses in central Florida which has had substantial populations of the beetles for a few years. Hive beetles are not their biggest headache. Here are some of the tips they have found to keep things that way:

Keep things clean. The beetles can infest stacks of old combs – devouring pollen, tunneling, burrowing, defecating, and making a really fine mess of things. Stacks of equipment should be covered. Floors should be clean – a lot of beekeepers are sloppy, allowing wax and pollen debris to build up in the workshops – these harbour and feed the hive beetles. If you are a messy beekeeper, your days may be numbered.

Handle honey promptly. If honey is taken from the bees and the boxes and combs are allowed to sit inside a shed for a few days, hive beetles may move in. The result is a slimy mess that ruins the honey and the equipment. The beekeeper should process honey right away and not wait – that’s always good practice anyway. If you are a procrastinator, your days as a beekeeper may be numbered.

 Keep bee colonies strong. The small hive beetle does not kill bees or eat brood, but can wreck a weak colony that does not defend itself. The bees may be so distraught that they abscond (abandon) their nest. Good healthy colonies don’t have serious problems, but a few beetles may hide in hive crevices and if the colony becomes weak, queenless, or neglected by the beekeeper, the population of hive beetles swells. The best defence against hive beetles is a strong colony of bees. If you are a negligent beekeeper, your days are certainly numbered.

There are a few other tricks – beekeepers in susceptible areas may set traps, use chemicals (see the links below), or assist specific nematodes (tiny worms) in the soil in the apiary to act as guards against infiltration. For more ideas, here are a few links to follow:

  1. Wikipedia (this is actually a good reliable article): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_hive_beetle
  2. Hive Beetle in Europe (detailed PDF information sheet) https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/downloadDocument.cfm?id=17
  3. Managing Small Hive Beetles (this page was written in November 2014, so it is very up to date): http://www.extension.org/pages/60425/managing-small-hive-beetles

** Yes, I know. The English Beatles misspelled their name, but indulge me, OK?

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Packing Honey Combs

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Temporary packing crew

With a break in the weather, my kids and I made a trip down to the farm. It is in Vulcan County, aptly named for heat. Vulcan can be really, really hot is the summer. But it is late fall and we’ve already seen a few days of minus 20! However, the past couple of days were pleasant, so my two youngest and I went to the countryside to give my older daughter a hand at packing honey.

Erika and her husband have owned, managed, and operated our old farm for the past four years. This season was good. The couple are running Canada’s largest comb honey farm, producing tens of thousands of combs a year. (Sorry buyers, they are completely booked and sold out already.)

Today I am repeating some pictures I put on line last year. I didn’t take photos this weekend, but not much has changed in the past year. (Except the younger kids are taller.) These pictures will give you a tiny peak inside the comb honey packing shop.

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Buzzing Out-of-Sync

Posted on November 22, 2014 by Ron Miksha

In-sync – and in it together photo by in CC by John Severns

If flowers bloom a month earlier than usual – as they reportedly did last year in Maryland – what does that mean for bees? According to Will Plants and Pollinators Get Out of Sync? it could mean trouble. The story appears on NASA’s website and explains how plants and pollinators have co-evolved: “the two species time their cycles to coincide, for example, insects maturing from larva to adult precisely when nectar flows begin.”

Before we consider the implications, I’d like to dismiss the notion that the species got together over beers one evening to “time their cycles.” As the NASA correspondent undoubtedly knows, cycle-timing is entirely an accident of nature, an accumulation of evolutionary mishaps that include genetic mutations and selection. Rather than coincidental planning, pollination synchronization results from an exclusionary rejection. If, for example, a plant suffers a mutation which results in early blooming (say, a rewrite of the base pair in a gene that produces a protein benefiting from heat stimulation) and if no bees are around at the new earlier flowering time, the flower simply does not reproduce. There are no seeds and there is no next generation of similarly off-sync flowering plants. However, if there is also a type of pollinator bees that coincidentally suffers a genetic mutation resulting in an ability to rapidly build a large spring population, the mutated flower will have pollinators available to “meet up” with it. That plant will produce similarly inclined seeds and the bee colony with its tendency to build an early spring population will also thrive and spawn more early-risers.

Mutations are rare, nevertheless mutual coincidental genetic disruptions happen frequently amongst the billions of creatures involved. It’s a numbers game and the numbers are big. Each year, about one in ten million of each DNA base unit is altered during replication. This happens by exposure to natural radiation or chemical hazards. If there are over a hundred million individual seeds in a field (the number of alfalfa seeds produced in a quarter-section, for example), each year ten seeds in the field will suffer genetic damage to the coding affecting the proteins that result in early flowering. So, it does happen – and at a surprisingly fast rate when we consider the billions and billions of seeds produced each season around the world. This is how plant scientists genetically alter plants (unless they are “genetically engineering” by manipulating bits of genetic code). Plant scientists expose millions of seeds to high-level radiation, resulting in accelerated rates of mutation. Then they grow the resulting plants and measure the results: A brighter colour? A longer stem? A tastier fruit? Nature plays this same game over a longer period of time. Wild flowers in meadows and seeds in fields are nature’s genetic laboratory. (If you would like to understand mutation rates, this easy article by Toronto professor Larry Moran discusses estimating the rate of human mutations – which average about 150 genetic mutations per person each generation.)

What is the effect of a warmer climate on plant pollination? First, we know that temperature is not the only factor that determines when a plant will bloom. It is not even the most important factor. Length of day is. Photoperiodism is a fascinating subject. Plants have 15 different types of cell receptor that sense light. Humans, by the way, have just 3 and ours are stuck inside our eyeballs’ retinas – a plant’s eyes cover its entire body. The thing that triggers blossoming is the period of time between the last flash of “far red” at the time of the setting sun and the next full spectrum sunshine, the following morning. Greenhouse managers know this and they sometimes toy with the plants’ transducers, forcing off-season flowering, by exposing plants to artificial light.

But for this discussion, let’s assume ambient temperature actually triggers flowering – as it does in some plants. Will flowers and bees become “out of sync” because of climate change? According to this Independent newspaper article, “Higher temperatures may result in fewer bees, scientists claim”, the future is dire. “This is because the more out-of-sync pollinators and plants become, the more difficult it will be for each to find opportunities for pollination – potentially threatening a wide variety of plants, including crops of seeds or fruits, most of which depend on pollination,” says the Independent, adding “it will raise fears that popular foods such as apples and pears could be affected.” However, those popular foods (Pears are popular? Not in our house.) will survive because the orchard managers contract beekeepers to supply honey bees. If the season slides forward, the beekeeper will adjust his schedule, developing stronger colonies earlier. This has already happened in California’s almond groves where big colonies are required in February and beekeepers react by stimulating their bees in early January. Farmers will somehow manage. The ever-popular Bartlett pear will remain a staple food (in homes other than ours*). But wild bees and birds might not be so lucky, according to both common sense and the NASA article.

Hummingbirds are at risk. “Honeybees aren’t the only pollinators affected by climate change. Hummingbirds and other migratory pollinators may be even more susceptible if their seasonal migrations become out of sync with the flowering and nectar availability in their breeding habitat,” says NASA’s Earth Observatory website. I think the bottom line to this story is that humans, driven by profit and self-interest, will continue to enjoy juicy pears for generations to come, but the rest of the animal kingdom will be left to survive by the luck of evolutionary adaptation. Some species will adjust to the warmer climate, others will join the ranks of the extinct. Beekeepers will become more adept at manipulating colony populations to provide bees for commercially valuable crops while roadside asters (as seen in today’s photo, above) will mutate or perish. If man’s role in the changing environment fascinates you, you may like to read a piece I wrote for my Earth sciences blog, at this site.

* We do eat the occasional pear. It’s just hard to describe the fruit as popular.

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Dead Swiss Bees

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Dead pollen-collecting bees

Something odd was killing bees in Switzerland. It was sudden. It was peculiar. It was devastating. This past spring – in April, 2014 – beekeepers in the Zäziwil and Möschberg region found almost 200 colonies dying. They quickly recognized signs of poisoning. Local farmers denied using neonicotinoids or other insecticides. They were honest. They had not. Yet nearby bees were in rough shape.

Swiss investigators moved in. They demanded the farmers’ receipts. What had the farmers bought? What had they used? The investigators discovered that orchards in the area had been treated with the fungicide Folpet, which is allowed in Switzerland. Folpet is not an insecticide, it is a pesticide. The pests that it attacks are fungi. This fungicide is closely related to a much older fungicide, captan, which some of my more ancient readers will recall from their childhood. I do. I fondly remember running in a white cloud of dust, chasing after the family tractor as my father planted long rows of captan-treated seed potatoes. Because of the treatment, our potatoes did not suffer from Rhizoctonia, and neither did I. Recently, the EPA stated that captan and its sister fungicide Folpet are non-carcinogenic, except in “high doses and prolonged exposure.” Interesting. Used in orchards, captan and Folpet enhance the outer beauty of fruits – making them spot-free and shiny. This may be why I was allowed to follow in captan’s shadow when I was a child.

I have brought you no closer to finding the Swiss bees’ killers. But we’ve learned something about the fungicide Folpet. And so did the Swiss inspectors. They learned that the Folpet came from a factory is Israel. The factory also makes a non-neonicotinoid insecticide called Fipronil, which is banned in Switzerland. Just before making the Swiss batch of the fungicide, the factory had filled American and Brazilian orders for Fipronil. Allegedly there was still some insecticide in the factory’s system when the fungicide was made. It seems that the equipment was not cleaned before they started to produce Folpet. The Swiss government removed the suspect batches from their local market.

This story points out how tough it is to avoid poisoning our honey bees. The farmers were not using insecticides (or so they thought); the Swiss government had outlawed Fipronil and it could not enter the country (or so they thought); and the bees were pollinating fruit trees and collecting life-sustaining pollen (or so they thought). If this is the story in its entirety, it also suggests that even a small amount of poison (the residual left in a system when the factory switched from fungicide to insecticide) can kill a lot of bees.

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A New Origin for the Bee?

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Haeckel’s 1879 Tree of Life

Years ago, we learned that honey bees developed in Africa, then spread north and evolved into different subspecies. It is not surprising that the bee could adapt to the much colder northern climates – you don’t even need to accept evolutionary science to see how that might work. With moderate genetic mutations from damaging gamma rays or localized environmental hazards, changes occur. With vast and rapidly reproducing populations such as bees, some mutations inevitably are beneficial to survival. In the presumed case of bees out of Africa, as bees slowly migrated north, the most cold-hardy descendants reproduced. From Africa’s adansonii or scutellata (or their earlier representatives), descendants became Europe’s mellifera, ligustica, caucasica, and carnica. These are the black bee, the Italian, the Caucasian, and the Carniolan respectively. But this simplified collection leaves out a host of other non-African races – the Middle Eastern anatoliaca, syriaca, lamarckii and meda, for some examples.

Did the honey bee originate in Africa? The out of Africa idea was developed a hundred years ago and was based on phenotypical traits (physically visible and measurable characteristics) and the assumed effects of geography and climate on the bees’ divergences. But now we are not so certain. In 1992, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was analyzed from 68 colonies in ten different regions. The scientists found 19 different subspecies represented by the mtDNA. On the basis of their best fit “Tree of Life” model, they clumped these into three different clades, or branches. These lineages are African, Mediterranean, and European. But these scientists had a surprising result. They found that the oldest mitochondria could be traced to the Mediterranean branch while the African branch showed greater change. They surmised that the original dispersion of honey bees was from the Middle East: “The pattern of spatial structuring suggests the Middle East as the centre of dispersion of the species.” This result, from “Evolutionary history of the honey bee Apis mellifera inferred from mitochondrial DNA analysis”, published in Molecular Ecology also included the suggestion that the present subspecies divided less than one million years ago, as indicated by a 2% variation in the relevant mitochondria DNA.

The Middle East origin for honey bees was a surprising result. It went against prevailing notions, so other researchers were reluctant to accept the findings. However, in August of this year, confirming evidence was published. Using a larger sample set (140 honey bee genomes and 8.3 million SNPs) and more modern equipment, results were published in Nature Genetics in late August. Matthew Webster, researcher at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Uppsala University (in Sweden) says, “The evolutionary tree we constructed from genome sequences does not support an origin in Africa.” Instead, our modern honey bee originated from common ancestors in the Near East and began a rapid dispersion about 300,000 years ago into Europe and Africa.

You may wonder if the study of the bees’ genetic tree has much relevance for today’s beekeeper. Here is something to note. Almost as a passing thought, researcher Matthew Webster adds, “In contrast to other domestic species, management of honeybees seems to have increased levels of genetic variation by mixing bees from different parts of the world. The findings may also indicate that high levels of inbreeding are not a major cause of global colony losses.” We can trust Webster on the factual part of this discovery – he is telling us that his world-wide samples of kept honey bees are more genetically diverse than other domestic species (i.e., pigs, sheep, goats, bananas, potatoes). It should then follow, he suggests, that Colony Collapse Disorder is not due to inbreeding of honey bees. Instead, it is more likely that some other factors are culpable in the disappearing disease that sporadically hits apiaries.

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A Long Time Bloggin’

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Ron Miksha

The first bee blog started in October 1995. This page was published in January 1996. It was a pre-blog blog – point form on a simple web page.

Web logs – blogs – have been around for about 20 years this month. That is according to this piece from (where else?) someone’s blog. I have been writing this bee blog – these pages about the politics and science behind beekeeping – for 19 years. I started in October 1995, and from the start, my pages included a ranting and raving page similar to a modern blog. The image above shows you what my January 1996 ‘bee blog’ looked like. When I began this exercise, I was in my 30s, had mostly dark hair, and quite a lot of enthusiasm. As best I can tell, the blog you are reading right now might be the first one ever started. In case you missed that start-up, here is a link to the Beekeeping News Page in my archives.

What good is a bee blog? There is a certain voyeuristic element to reading a beekeeping blog. It is like sneaking a peak under someone else’s hive cover. Except with a bee blog, the beekeeper is tipping the lid for you. Today there are easily 10,000 personal and business beekeeping sites and probably a thousand of those have blogs. Universities and government agencies add another thousand. Many of them are great. Part a beekeeper’s education is to study the tricks, tips, and thoughts of other beekeepers. And then borrow what makes sense. You won’t get a lot of clues from my blog here as this site is more news and opinions than practical bee culture. But if it is the latter you are after, you will find my book, Bad Beekeeping, is stuffed full of beekeeping advice. Not that any of it is good advice – but it is all interesting.

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