Articles

Some WVBA beekeepers may remember Emily (Cross) Painter. She served as Secretary of WVBA for a couple of years, 2014-2016 while a West Salem High student. She left then to spend a gap year in England and for last four years has been an undergraduate student at the University of Vermont. You may be interested in her introduction to beekeeping, what she has given back at still a young age and where she is now. Emily Painter began with bees on the family farm outside of Dallas i

January is not a month for bee colony inspection. But that does not keep us from worrying about them. So what can we do with our bees this month (besides just worrying)? It is possible to roughly group our overwintered colonies into two groups per our last fall judgement/inspection. We sought to have mostly strong colonies with abundant honey stores. However, were the populations too large and our bees have already eaten most of their winter stores? Unfortunately, we likely a

PARASITIC MITE SYNDROME (PMS) Parasitic Mite Syndrome is a condition, not a specific disease whereby a honey bee colony dies rapidly in the fall months. The initial PMS field symptoms include reduced adult population and spotty brood pattern with dying larvae. These symptoms intensify over a short time as the colony gets close to dying. Confusingly the symptoms may be independent of how heavy the Varroa mite infestation is in the colony. A similar syndrome is CCD, Colony Col

Doesn't this just say fall? Monarch Butterfly and Honey Bee on Sunflower Photo by Kathy Garvey

To feed bees or not to feed bees? If you read Jeremy Barnes letter to the editor (in most recent ABJ, September 2020) you might wish to hit the pause button. Jeremy summarizes studies involving feeding sugar syrup to bees confined in cages in the lab. Worker bees fed sugar syrup do not live as long (compared to bees fed honey), the different pH may disrupt the normal gut microflora, the pure sugar diet might overwhelm body functions evolved for nectar and/or the bees fed sug