Hello dear beekeepers! I’ve been reworking my old website. not my blogs. The English part became ready enough to be published and I launched it on http://elgon.es There are quite some new material there. In the article “Resistance breeding” some of
Bees grooming, shaking and biting mite
Already in 2002 Sven-Olof Ohlsson in Munsala Finland filmed bees grooming, shaking and biting mites. I have published two of his video clips on YouTube for him. You can see one here where the the mite had attached fast between
Lasting learning?
In one of the recent blogposts I wrote about non-resistant bee colonies against varoa mite, learning from resistant worker bees how to deal with the mites and being resistant. It seems now that these colonies that has learned resistance have
Factors for reinvasion
Robbing Several years ago, it was common that there were always noticeable, even many bees flying around the ventilation and the door to the extraction room. It has become less and less bees every year. This year there have been
Reinvasion is worst
Last year 2015 was a bad year for the bees in more than one respect. Long cold spring and bad summer. But late summer was good as was the autumn. The bees could recover and prepare for next year. Fresh
Small cell size important in breeding Varroa resistance
After reading the blogpost ”Breakthrough?” an European PhD-Scientist wrote me an email with the following comment: ”After reading your post I realized that you do have small cell size, but you’re not mentioning it in the actual post. To make
Breakthrough?
Last year I saw more wingless bees than I had expected and I used more thymol than I had expected. I realized that I could partially thank the bad weather fort thias. The bees had got too little of pollen.
Wingless bees and varroa level
Before varroan came there could be seen occasional bees with undeveloped/deformed wings in spring. Maybe it was the influence of DWV, Deformed Wing Virus. But it may also have been chilled brood. During the final phase of the pupa development
Struggles for the survival of honey bees
SB is a relatively new and dedicated beekeeper in southern Germany. She is interested in different kinds of bees and their place in the ecological system. I asked her to tell her story and her struggles helping her bees to
Keeping track of the infestation level
In the search for breeders for this season I tested a number of hives for the infestation level of Varroa mites in the beginning of May. Those choosen had not been treated for mites either not at all last season,