Weeks 6-7

Article 1:
Bacillus larvae must be pretty serious for farmers to burn entire hives because of it, it's too bad. Though, I wonder why it is that the larvae don't form properly and turn to goo.


It's nice too see a more natural counter to tracheal mites, other than the commercial menthol packet. Getting the bees onto the oil patty by baiting them with sugar seems to be great way to cover up the trachea's odor.

Haha, I was waiting for the bear problem to come up in this article. I think that rather than erecting an electric fence, couldn't one just elevate the hive to the top of a post, or hang it from a large tree, then when one needs to tend to it, the hive could be lowered.

I'd like to see how farmers and other bee keepers deal with bears, they seem to be the most pertinent problem here in B.C.

How would one find that their hive is infected before it is too late, as the fixes for them seem to be fairly drastic.

Article 4:
It's astounding how fast these Varroa mites can grow, from undetectable to colony collapse in a few months. It really encourages proper and regular inspection of hives, else you could be in some serious trouble. It doesn't help that 85% of them are undetectable.

After the comparison of Verroa mites to the relative size of a basketball to us, its a wonder that the bees cant deal with them themselves by simply knocking them off or eating them.


It's unfortunately -for bees- ingenious that the mites can smell the scent that the bees use as a cap command for the brood combs, so that can get into the brood cell and down to the royal jelly to use to reproduce.

I'd be interested to see how often bee keepers check for mites, and the various precautions they take against them, as I'm sure there would be more than a few home-grown methods of dealing with them.

I wonder if there are any methods underway to interrupt the mite's ability to smell the bees cap command pheromone. Maybe a smell could be used that only the mites could smell, that would overwhelm them and block all other scents.