October 2022
Last year we heard vague stories of Lithium being used to target Varroa. Now researchers from the University of Belgrade have used Lithium citrate hydrate (Li-cit) to treat hives and found almost 95% effectivity against the mites without harming the bees. Other researchers in Argentina have found that using special DNA that disrupts the mite’s genes has no impact on the bees but causes around a 50% mortality in the mites. This particular method involves creating the dsDNA by bacteria, feeding it to the bees and it then infects the mites from there. And yet another team in Canada have discovered that a chemical called 3C36 paralyses the mites without harming the bees. It seems that we may have three new effective controls against the mites available at some time in the future, although it could take years before these are on the market.
The Entomological Society of America has adopted the name Northern Giant Hornet for the “Murder Hornet”, Vespa mandarinia – apparently the name “Asian Giant Hornet” was considered somewhat offensive. While that isn’t particularly relevant for us here, a little further down the article, they mention that they have renamed Vespa velutina’s common name from “Asian Hornet” to Yellow-legged hornet. While we can be happy that this particular creature isn’t in Ireland (yet!), I wonder how many in Europe will switch their naming preferences.
I’m sure many of you are already aware of the tradition of tanging, something I only heard of recently. This is the almost forgotten practice of banging of metal items together to confuse a swarm, causing them to land immediately, apparently especially effective when the swarm has just emerged from the hive. The folks in Bee Craft magazine asked their readers if they used tanging as part of their swarm control and it appears the practice is very much alive still, at least in the UK.
Another new term I learned this month is electroreception. Bee Craft has published an article by Beth Harris of the University of Bristol on the subject, where bees pick up a positive charge from friction with the air as they fly. Plants, on the other hand, have negatively charged parts, including pollen. When the bee gets close to the flower, the pollen is attracted to her, and she’s coated with the pollen when she forages on the flower, something we’ve all seen. However, another effect is that the charges neutralise each other, at least temporarily. It appears that bumble bees can detect this drop in charge on the plant and interpret is as the flower not having as much nectar and pollen, making it less attractive. We’re all familiar with the waggle dance but it now appears that dancing bees also produce a pattern of changing electric fields associated with their dancing movements, picked up by the other bees using electroreception, indicating that the waggle dance provides even more information than we previously thought.
An article published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, authored by Flemming Vejsnæs of the Danish BKA among others, entitled Honeybees as Active Samples of Microplastics delivers the shocking but not unsurprising information that microplastics were found in honey and attached to honeybees from all of 19 apiaries around Denmark. Considering that microplastics are defined as up to 5mm in size, this is equivalent to you carrying a 60cm lump of plastic. Interestingly the most common plastic is polyester, almost five times as much as polyethylene or PVC – I wonder if the polyester particles are from washing machines. The samples were from urban, suburban, and rural apiaries so it appears that nowhere is safe. Are microplastics going to be the next big health scare?
An article published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, authored by Flemming Vejsnæs of the Danish BKA among others, entitled Honeybees as Active Samples of Microplastics delivers the shocking but not unsurprising information that microplastics were found in honey and attached to honeybees from all of 19 apiaries around Denmark. Considering that microplastics are defined as up to 5mm in size, this is equivalent to you carrying a 60cm lump of plastic. Interestingly the most common plastic is polyester, almost five times as much as polyethylene or PVC – I wonder if the polyester particles are from washing machines. The samples were from urban, suburban, and rural apiaries so it appears that nowhere is safe. Are microplastics going to be the next big health scare?
An Israeli company, Bkeeper, started by fifth-generation beekeeper Hagar Pundak, transforms old beehive parts into furniture of all kinds. As you can see from the picture, the outcome is varied and rather attractive. So now you know what to do with your old hives!