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Many of you are aware that I winter 3 months in Bolivia, South America where my wife Nieves hails from. While here I do some bee classes and apiary visits. We have class beginning this Saturday in fact (it is summer her). I just finished an intense week of coarse and field work. Kerry Clark president the of the British Colombia beekeepers was here on a Canada outreach project. Kerry has completed other teaching assignments in Ethiopia, Tanzania (both with Africanized bees) an

How do you overwinter? What do you consider the greatest challenge to successful overwintering? 38 WVBA survey respondents reported average  overwintering losses of 46%, just two percentage points different from the 416 OR beekeeper average winter loss. As Figure 3 of the WVBA report illustrates (posted on http://pnwhoneybeesurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/WVBA-2019.pdf}, the average losses were the highest for members of the past 5 survey years. What have you been do

Do you fly a drone?  No I don’t mean the live drones you find in your bee colony or tethered drones you might fly at a bee display but instead I am asking if you fly a robotic drone to use for aerial services? Drones have been used in war, espionage, research, videography and farming. New research is demonstrating how drones can help blueberry farmers. Flying overhead, drones can spot troubled areas in a massive blueberry patch in a fraction of the time it would take on foot.

The first posting on WVBA winter losses reported loss of 122 colonies = 46 % average loss, slightly lower than the statewide loss of 48%, which equals the highest for OR backyarders. The 46%loss was the highest WVBA level of the previous 4 years and 9.5% above the 4 year average.  The trend is sloped upward, indicating losses have been increasingly larger for WVBA members. Typical of the statewide data, the WVBA respondents are largely new beekeepers. 54% of WVBA respondent

At the March WVBA meeting I distributed paper copies and directed members to a web-based survey document in a continuing effort to define overwintering losses/successes of backyard beekeepers in Oregon. This was the 10 th year of such survey activity. I received 416  responses from OR backyarders, keeping anywhere from 1 to 38 colonies; Willamette Valley members sent in 38 surveys, 4 more than the previous year, reporting survivorship of 227 fall colonies. Overwintering los