SW Ohio Beekeeper School March 27th

Southwestern Ohio Beekeeper School is open for registration.  The daylong school features multi-track programs designed for the beginner and experienced beekeeper.  This is a highly-regarded beekeeping school -- local beekeeper Richard Stewart of Carriage House Farm says:

"This school has a long history and is very popular, so much so that last year registration closed two weeks after opening with this year expected to go even quicker. The lectures are top notch, every major bee supply vendor in the business is present...If you only attend one beekeeping school ever, this should be the one hands down!"

 Saturday March 27th 8am - 3pm at the Oasis Conference Center (902 Loveland-Miamiville Rd, Loveland 45140).  $35 per person.  Lunch is provided.  Registration is by mail, first-come, first-served, and is limited to 300.  Download the forms here.  Last year's school sold out early, so don't delay. 

CityBeat Podcast Featuring North Bend Beekeeper Richard Stewart

CityBeat's Stephen Carter-Novotni interviews Richard Stewart of Carriage House Farm in North Bend about his bees in a forty-minute podcast.  Richard talks about the bees and his no-chemical approach during the first twenty-five minutes, and then photojournalist Andrea McLaughlin discusses her experiences learning about bees and beekeepers. Great listening!

2010 Native Bee Calendar

The Great Sunflower Project is offering the 2010 North American Native Bee Calendar as a fundraiser.  The calendar has twelve of the most common bee genera and descriptions to help you learn to identify your garden's bees. Photographs are by Rollin Coville. All proceeds go to supporting the Sunflower Project.

$14.00 (including shipping). Order here.

Great Sunflower Project 2009

It's time again to sign up for the Great Sunflower Project, which tracks bee visits to a particular species of native sunflower (helianthus annuus) which will be planted by volunteers all over the country to help gauge the health of wild bee populations. This year, organizers are collecting addresses of volunteers quite a bit earlier than they started last year, so with any luck we'll all get our seeds early.

If you'd like to participate -- volunteers plant sunflowers, then on a specified date or dates throughout the summer count the number of bees that visit one of their flowers over a period of 30 minutes and report their findings back via an online form -- visit the project's website and sign up!

Germany bans pesticides linked to bee deaths

After the death of millions of honeybees sprayed by a misapplied pesticide earlier this month, Germany has temporarily banned the use of neonicotinoid pesticides.

Bayer CropScience, the maker of the pesticide clothianidin which is sold in Germany and the US under the brand name Poncho, blames an application error. The pesticide, which was sprayed in the field on seeds of sweet corn that had just been planted near the Rhine river, was supposed to include a glue-like substance to make the chemical stick to the seeds. Instead the pesticide became airborne, killing the bees and presumably any other insects it came into contact with.

In a press release last week, Bayer CropScience says, "We are saddened by the loss of the bees." Bayer CropScience is a subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Bayer (whose corporate motto is Science for a Better Life) with annual sales of EUR 5.8 billion (about $9.4 billion.)

Solitary bees for pollination

Solitary bees, unlike the honeybee, are natives to the United States. According to ScienceDaily, as the honeybee crisis worsens solitary bees may be able to fill the hole left behind. The Texas Agricultural Experiment Station is studying the kinds of nesting boxes that will attract various kinds of native bees:

If you build it, they will come. Native bees that is. And when native bees do come, they may be a hundred times more efficient as pollinators than are honeybees, said Jeff Brady, research assistant with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

Solitary bees don't make honey or beeswax, but they do have advantages over the honeybee. They are adapted for pests and diseases present here in the U.S., and as they don't live in colonies they aren't vulnerable to Colony Collapse Disorder. Best of all, the average homeowner can host solitary bees without expensive equipment, time-consuming maintenance, or stings.

The gentle blue-black Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia Lignaria) is a solitary bee native to most of the continental U.S. and was pollinating fruits and flowers here for eons before European colonists brought the honeybee with them to North America. A few hundred Orchard Mason bees can pollinate an acre of apple trees.

Orchard Mason bees are even less likely to sting than the honeybee*, as they have no colony to defend. Bees are attracted only to flowers -- not to sweet drinks or food -- and when you're working in your garden they'll peaceably just work along beside you. Even if your yard is small, you like to entertain outdoors, or you have young children, you can invite Orchard Mason bees and most other native wild bees into your backyard without fear. Lisa over at Dry Ideas has a great post about how to Make Your Own Solitary Bee House, or you can buy a bee shelter and bees at Knox Cellars. Check out the Knox bee shelters in particular -- they offer replaceable paper liners that bring yearly maintenance time requirements down to nearly zero. I'm ordering one of these today.

* The honeybee- lookalike yellowjacket is the likely culprit in most backyard "bee stings," as unlike bees, the aggressive yellowjacket is attracted to sweet drinks, food, and garbage. That's the honeybee on the left, yellowjacket on the right. Stings from actual honeybees are almost always the result of venturing too close to the colony/hive (which may make the bees think you're attacking the colony -- especially if you swat at the bees when they come to investigate), stepping on a bee, or getting one caught in your clothing.

Honeybees: 36% of commercial hives lost since last year

That's since last year. This is only the second year the Apiary Inspectors of America has measured losses from year to year, but even without long-term data this can't be good. Last year's losses were 32%. Most of the deaths both years were due to Colony Collapse Disorder.

From a report yesterday from the Associated Press:

"For two years in a row, we've sustained a substantial loss," [Dennis vanEngelsdorp, president of the association] said. "That's an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm."

Honeybees are crucial to crop and garden pollination.

Ohio beekeepers asking for help

The Ohio State Beekeepers Association is requesting letters from Ohioans to Governor Strickland and Ohio Director of Agriculture Robert Boggs protesting planned cuts in the Ohio Department of Agriculture's Apiary Program, which would eliminate the last remaining trained apiculturist from the program and assign his duties to pest inspectors. The OSBA believes this will cripple the program at a crucial point, when honeybees are already threatened.

Here is the OSBA position paper:

The honey bee, essential to crop pollination and a healthy environment, is threatened by planned cuts to the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s (ODA) Apiary Program. Honey bees not only produce honey, they are essential for the pollination of over 90 food and forage crops. One third of our food supply, or every third bite you take, depends on honey bee pollination. The USDA estimates the value of honey bee pollination to U.S. agriculture to be in excess of 14 billion dollars annually. A 2005 Ohio Department of Agriculture report estimates the value of honey bee pollination to Ohio agriculture to be 44 million dollars annually.

Mounting threats to the honey bee such as parasitic mites, diseases and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has received much publicity in the past year, have endangered the honey bee and the beekeeping industry in Ohio and around the world. The ODA Apiary Program has worked to protect the honey bee in Ohio since 1905 through a program of inspection and regulation. However, a series of cuts in the Apiary Program over the past decade has reduced the trained apiary staff within the ODA from a total of six to one, a level of staffing that is barely adequate to maintain an effective program.

Due to the budgetary crisis and the need to cut expenditures, the ODA plans to reduce the apiary program even farther this summer. The sole trained and experienced apiculturist (beekeeper) responsible for supervising the apiary program will be eliminated and his inspection duties will be assigned to plant inspectors within the plant pest program. These hastily trained persons with little or no prior experience as beekeepers will be expected to fulfill the responsibilities of a state bee inspector while dividing their time between their duties as plant inspectors and bee inspectors. The ODA maintains that their plans are adequate to protect the honey bee industry in Ohio.

The Ohio State Beekeepers’ Association (OSBA) disagrees. To be effective the apiary program requires a trained, experienced apiculturist in a supervisory capacity not just to maintain the bee inspection program but to advise the ODA on issues affecting honey bees in Ohio and to represent the state of Ohio in critical cooperation and collaboration with other states and federal agencies to protect the beekeeping industry. If the ODA implements these reductions in staff as they plan to do this summer we feel that the safety net that has helped to protect the honey bee in Ohio since 1905 will collapse. These cuts would jeopardize the honey bee population in Ohio, an essential natural resource, and would in turn jeopardize Ohio’s agricultural production, Ohio’s environment and Ohio’s economy. Please contact the Director of the Department of Agriculture and the Governor to urge them not to make these cuts to this essential program.

Here are email links for Governor Strickland and Director Boggs.

Here's what I sent:

I am writing to protest the proposed cuts in the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Apiary Program. I urge you to rescind the proposed cuts to the apiary program. Rather than cutting this program, perhaps the funds to continue it could be found by raising fees to beekeepers for the services the program provides.

Thank you.

Make sure to sign it! And providing your phone number will let the recipients see you are indeed an Ohioan.

The Great Sunflower Project

All over North America, folks are joining The Great Sunflower Project, which during the summer of 2008 will collect data on honeybee activity across the continent. Honeybees are crucial to vegetable and fruit production -- many plants won't produce unless they've been crosspollinated by honeybees. Farmers need a healthy bee population.

Each participant will plant at least one sunflower (a specific kind -- Helianthus annuus, or the wild annual sunflower) and then at several points over the summer watch that sunflower to see how long it takes for five bees to visit. Participants report their data back to the project organizers, and The Great Sunflower Project tallies the data to see where bee activity is healthy and where it isn't, which may help discover the causes behind colony collapse disorder.

Why sunflowers? Sunflowers are easy to grow and are great resources for bees and birds. And why this particular sunflower? Helianthus annuus is a native wildflower and produces a lot of nectar and pollen, which attracts bees. It's important that everyone use the same flower so that the data collected will be comparable.

Registering is easy and free, and they'll even send you a packet of seeds for the right sunflower! So if you'd like to help the honeybees, here's a fun way to do it!