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American Foulbrood drugs

10/29/2012

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"Honey bees are big money makers for U.S. agriculture. These social and hardworking insects produce six hive products – honey, pollen, royal jelly, beeswax, propolis, and venom – all collected and used by people for various nutritional and therapeutic purposes.

Honey, of course, is the most well-known and economically important hive product. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agriculture Statistics Service, honey bees made more than 148 million pounds of honey last year. With the cost of honey at a record high at about $1.73 per pound, that’s a value of over $256 million.

After honey, beeswax is the second most important hive product from an economic standpoint. The beeswax trade dates to ancient Greece and Rome, and in Medieval Europe, the substance was a unit of trade for taxes and other purposes. The market remains strong today. Beeswax is popular for making candles and as an ingredient in artists’ materials and in leather and wood polishes. The pharmaceutical industry uses the substance as a binding agent, time-release mechanism, and drug carrier. Beeswax is also one of the most commonly used waxes in cosmetics. The U.S. is a major producer of raw beeswax, as well as a worldwide supplier of refined beeswax.

But the greatest importance of honey bees to agriculture isn’t a product of the hive at all. It’s their work as crop pollinators. This agricultural benefit of honey bees is estimated to be between 10 and 20 times the total value of honey and beeswax. In fact, bee pollination accounts for about $15 billion in added crop value. Honey bees are like flying dollar bills buzzing over U.S. crops.

Luckily for the honey bees and the many crops that depend on them for pollination, FDA recently approved a new drug to control American foulbrood, a widespread bacterial disease that kills bee larvae."


New Drug Approved to Help Agriculture's Helpful Honey Bees
By Melanie McLean, DVM, Center for Veterinary Medicine, FDA
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Bacteria vs. Virus

7/19/2012

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"So, basically, we'd all be dead if it weren't for the honeybee.
Which means a disease that's wiping out honeybees is bad. Really bad.
If someone discovers something that will stop that disease, that someone is saving all human life as we know it.
Meet professor Penny Amy and graduate student Diane Yost...

"AFB has been known about for 100 years. It is called 'American' because this is where it was first discovered, but the disease is worldwide. It is the worst of the bacterial diseases that affect honey­bees.
It is a bacteria that simply exists in nature. Sometimes, honeybees encounter it while out running their errands. When they return to the hive, they sometimes accidentally bring it with them.
That is how it works its way into honeybee colonies. It does not harm adult bees, but when the larvae - the babies - get infected, the bacteria settles into their gut and eats them from the inside out.
It is gross and it is deadly...

"When professor Amy started thinking about AFB, she thought about how some scientists have figured out ways to kill some bacteria with viruses.
This has been going on for decades, but it's really taken off in recent years as researchers look for ways to kill so-called 'superbugs,' or bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics...

"They tested soil from Pennsylvania and Iowa; beeswax, that gluey stuff bees make to hold their hives together; even a tube of Burt's Bees lip balm that Yost found while walking her dog in a park. In all, they tested 98 different things.
Turns out, they found naturally occurring strains of a virus in 31 of the samples (including, yes, the lip balm). None of those virus strains hurt humans - or, more importantly, adult honeybees.
They ran some tests. They figured out that some of those strains actually did kill the AFB bacteria...

"They're in the process right now of running DNA testing to figure out which strains are which.
Once they figure that out, they'll want to weaponize the stuff. They wouldn't use that term, of course, but that is the goal. They want to figure out whether they can make it into a spray or something that would essentially treat infected beehives or, even better, protect beehives from ever getting infected."

UNLV researchers fight disease affecting honeybees
By Richard Lake
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL





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The miracle of beeswax

5/23/2012

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"Pure beeswax is secreted in the form of tiny fish scale-like discs by four pair of glands separating the abdomen segments in 12-18 day old worker (female) honey bees. The bee rakes the wax disc off with combs on one hind leg and passes it to the front two legs (yes, the bee is now standing on three of its six legs) which move it  to the strong jaws. The jaws chew it into malleable wax which the bees use to build their amazingly light and strong honeycomb -- cells where the young are reared and where pollen and honey are stored. Wax production is incredibly energy-taxing --  bees must consume eight ounces of honey for each ounce of wax they make.

"Modern day engineers and architects marvel at the perfection of the hexagon shaped wax cells with the 110 and 70 degree angles. This design is the strongest, most efficient for maximum storage, and the perfect angles for cradling the young larvae."

The Story of Beeswax
Honey Bees and Heather Farm


"A honeycomb constructed from beeswax is nothing short of a triumph of engineering. It consists of hexagon shaped cylinders (six-sided) that fit naturally side-by-side. It has been proven by mathematicians that making the cells into hexagons is the most efficient shape. The smallest possible amount of wax is used to contain the highest volume of honey. It has also been shown to be one of the strongest possible shapes while using the least amount of material. "

How Bees Make Wax
Beeswax Company, LLC


"The glandular secretions of honeybees can do more than divide the cells of a hive; beeswax-based paint-coated walls in Ancient Greece and copies of the Magna Carta were delivered in 1215 bearing a beeswax seal. These days, it's mostly an ingredient in candles and cosmetics, but you can visit a craft store or a farmers' market, pick up a cake of it, and put it to work around the house as well."

10 Uses for Beeswax
By: Harry Sawyers, This Old House magazine
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Swarm Control/Prevention

1/31/2012

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Preventing swarms by using the Demaree Method, an interesting alternative to dividing the hives.

"Swarming is the natural means of reproduction of the honeybee colony. Bees
swarm to insure their race will continue to survive. When bees swarm, they
divide an existing colony in two forming a new colony. For this to occur a new
queen must develop and the old queen leaves the hive with a large proportion
of bees in search of a new home to live and proliferate. The remaining bees
stay and wait for their new queen to emerge.
One of the best ways to prevent a bee colony from swarming is by the way of
the Demaree method. The method was devised by George Demaree and was
first explained in an article in the American Bee Journal in 1884. In 1892 he
again explained an improvement in his method. The objective is to separate
the unsealed brood and eggs from the queen. Brood goes above an excluder,
while the queen is below. This measure reduces overcrowding in the hive and
therefore the bees desire to swarm; and makes it possible to retain the total
colony population; and to keep honey production at a maximum. The
technique has the advantage of allowing a new queen to be raised as well."

Swarm Prevention By Demaree Method
Khalil Hamdan, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands.
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Building up colonies.

1/30/2012

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I was working the bees most of the day today and noticed that they were bringing in a lot of yellow pollen.  I don't know what that would be from this early in the year, but maybe it was red maple.  Just looking in the tops of the hives, it seemed like the bees were stronger (more numerous) now than a week ago.  Are they raising brood already?  It has been a very mild winter, and there seems to be a pollen flow.
Which brings me to this subject, preparing bees to make a honey crop.
All bullet points are from the gobeekeeping.com website.
  • If the honey (nectar) flow is early -- such as black locust the beekeeper must have the hives built up strong as early as possible.   This may require feeding hives to stimulate brood production and the feeding of a pollen substitute.
  • All hives of bees must be at their strongest to produce a good crop.   This is done by frequent inspection for good brood patterns  and the replacement of queens if necessary.  It also requires that the beekeeper is alert to bee diseases.  Any disease weakens a hive.
  • It pays to have fewer strong colonies than many weak colonies.  Too often a beekeeper is in a hurry to increase hive numbers.  If a honey crop is expected, then the beekeeper might begin combining weak hives with hives that are fair but not strong.  One might also switch the location of a weak hive with a strong hive if the hive with the weak population has a good queen (one you have replaced just recently).
  • If the beekeeper is wanting to increase the number of colonies he/she has, it would be better to take only one frame of bees and brood from a number of hives and build slowly rather than splitting all the hives at one time.   If the honey flow comes later in the year, splitting makes sense.
  • The beekeeper must have a plan to prevent swarming.  The beekeeper must provide adequate space for brood production and honey storage.   A swarm defeats all the effort put into getting a hive of bees ready for the honey crop.
  • http://www.gobeekeeping.com/LL%20lesson_eleven.htm
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    Billy Craig
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