Would you like a Mentor? Would you be interested in a Hive Inspection? When a mother brings her newborn baby home for the first time, in spite of all her reading and preparation, is faced with anxiety riddled questions. Having a Mentor in your beekeeping experience give some relief to that anxiety. I am no […]
Royal Jelly
Royal Jelly Royal Jelly is a proteinaceous secretion of the honey bee’s hypopharynx gland. They are only noted in the Worker Bee as both Drones and Queens do not have them. Researcher Masaki Kamakura, demonstrated the presence of a protein known as royalactin increases the size and ovary development as well as hortens developmental time […]
Fun Facts
Queen Queen is fed every 20-30 minutes at peak brood rearing. Queen larva grow 1500-1700 times weight of egg. Broodnest Facts Worker larvae grow 900-1100 times weight of eggs. In a normal hive at height of season, there will be: 300-1000 drones 25,000 older foragers 25,000 young house bees. 9000 uncapped larvae. 6000 eggs 20,000 […]
Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program
Write-up and photos by Charlie Vanden Heuvel Additional contributions by Linda Zahl Summary: Portland Urban Beekeepers (PUB) hosted a delegation of enthusiastic, Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program students at the Portland Urban Beekeeping (PUB) treatment-free apiary located at Zenger Farm, SE Portland, OR, a sustainable, educational, urban farm. The delegation’s U.S. visit was financed by […]
Bee Stings
When a honey bee stings a person, it cannot pull the barbed stinger back out. It leaves behind not only the stinger, but also part of its abdomen and digestive tract, plus muscles and nerves. This massive abdominal rupture kills the honey bee. Honey bees are the only species of bees to die after stinging. […]
Why Honey Bees?
So you are now a beekeeper! You acquired your style of hive (Langstroth, Ware, Top Bar) and have even gotten your bees housed in it. There is actually a step to consider before all this that is critical to managing your hive. It is like getting a dog. Rather than throwing a dart at the […]
Varroa Destructor Mite
Life Cycle of the Honey Bee and Varroa Destructor Mite In the past thirty years an evolution occurred with Complete Colony Collapse (CCD). Beekeepers, bee biologists and many others struggled to pin point the cause. One of the main pests was the Varroa Destructor Mite. Varroa are ectoparasites that feed on the fatty tissue of […]
Pesticides and Honey
Dead European honeybees have almost 57 different pesticides detected, according to a new paper in the Journal of Chromatography. Should that be a concern? Not really. The great thing about modern technology is that we can detect parts per trillion, orders of magnitude what can be harmful. When we review the affects of radiation poisoning […]
Hive Placement
Whether you are new to beekeeping or expanding your apiary, the placement of your hives always becomes a question. Textbook positioning of your hives may not be possible. Hive Registration Consideration should be given to requirements to register hives with the appropriate town, city, county, state agencies. To understand the need check with: Honey Bees […]
Drone Congregation Area
Drone Congregation Area (DCA) – The major component of the mandibular gland secretion of queen honeybees, 9-ODA ((2E)-9-oxodecenoic acid), has been known for more than 40 yr to function as a long-range sex pheromone, attracting drones at congregation areas and drone flyways. Workers and drones have their own separate flight regions in the air. We […]