Vermont Beekeepers Association

Apiology

Apiology – (from Latin apis, "bee"; and Ancient Greek -λογία, -logia) is the scientific study of honey bees.

Queen cells acceptance rate and royal jelly production in worker honey bees of two Apis mellifera races

Royal jelly (RJ) is an acidic yellowish-white secretion of worker honey bee glands, used as food material of worker bee larvae for the first three days and queen bee larvae for the entire life. It is commercially used in cosmetics and medicinal industry in various parts of the world.

More:Royal Jelly

Making honey without bees and milk without cows

It's not unusual for vegans to miss certain foods. What is unusual, though, is Mr Mandich's solution: to create a type of honey, identical to the natural kind in every molecule, but produced without involving any bees at all.

More: VeganHoney

Early-life experience affects honey bee aggression and resilience to immune challenge

arly-life social experiences cause lasting changes in behavior and health for a variety of animals including humans, but it is not well understood how social information ‘‘gets under the skin’’ resulting in these effects.

More:Early Life

Altering social cue perception impacts honey bee aggression with minimal impacts on aggression-related brain gene expression

Gene expression changes resulting from social interactions may give rise to long term behavioral change, or simply reflect the activity of neural circuitry associated with behavioral expression.

More:Social Cue Perception

A model of infection in honeybee colonies with social immunity

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) play a significant role in the pollination of various food crops and plants. In the past decades, honeybee management has been challenged with increased pathogen and environmental pressure associating with increased beekeeping costs, having a marked economic impact on the beekeeping industry.

More: Infection

Testing the effect of pollen exine rupture on metabarcoding with Illumina sequencing

Pollen metabarcoding has received much attention recently for its potential to increase taxonomic resolution of the identifications of pollen grains necessary for various public health, ecological and environmental inquiry.

More:Pollen Rupture

A Look into the Cell: Honey Storage in Honey Bees, Apis mellifera

Honey bees, Apis species, obtain carbohydrates from nectar and honeydew. These resources are ripened into honey in wax cells that are capped for long-term storage. These stores are used to overcome dearth periods when foraging is not possible.

More:Honey Storag

Beekeeping in Vermont

AFB Reported in Bristol

Brooke Decker
Pollinator Health Specialist
State Apiculturist
Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets

American Foul Brood Announcement

August 12, 2020

American Foul Brood (AFB) Paenibacillus larva has been confirmed at an apiary located in Bristol, Vermont.

The multiple hives and associated equipment have been destroyed by fire by the beekeeper. The remaining colonies are under quarantine and enhanced inspection protocols.

Beekeepers should remain diligent in their hive inspections. Weak, declining, or dead-out hives should be closely examined for scale and clinical symptoms of AFB, before being reused.

Samples of comb, bees, brood or larvae can be sent to the USDA Beltsville Laboratory in Maryland, for analysis.

Enhanced cleaning protocols should be adopted after inspections of colonies suspected of any disease or pathogen, especially AFB. Regularly sterilizing your hive tool, gloves, smoker, and clothing is a recommended best practice for all beekeeping operations.

Any suspect findings of AFB must be reported immediately to Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets-

Brooke Decker
Pollinator Health Specialist / State Apiculturist
802-272-6688

Details: Last Updated: 12 August 2020 12 August 2020

Extracting Your Honey Crop

You're finishing your first successful beekeeping season and now it is time to learn how to harvest your honey crop! Join VBA Vice President Andrew Munkres, of Lemon Fair Honeyworks as he shares his expertise. We suggest you register early as this is a popular workshop.

Note: We are still working out details on how we present this workshop. It may be a live video program on Zoom or part of it may be pre-recorded then presented by Andrew who will take questions during the Zoom call. In any event, we will announce details as they become known. Since this workshop is being arranged on short notice we wanted to give you the opportunity to register for it as soon as it was scheduled!

Details: Last Updated: 10 August 2020 10 August 2020

Last Night's AMA Online

We've posted the recording from last night's AMA Zoom meeting where we discussed AFB and how it is being managed, along with a number of interesting topics. Take a listen (login required) and sign up for the next one...

Details: Last Updated: 07 August 2020 07 August 2020

AFB Reported in Hinesburg

Brooke Decker
Pollinator Health Specialist
State Apiculturist
Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets

American Foul Brood Announcement

July 30, 2020

American Foul Brood (AFB) ) Paenibacillus larva has been confirmed at an apiary located in Hinesburg, Vermont.

The multiple hives and associated equipment have been destroyed by fire. The remaining colonies are under quarantine and enhanced inspection protocols.

Details: Last Updated: 30 July 2020 30 July 2020

Vermont Bee Lab is Open

The Vermont Bee Lab is happy to announce that we are now open and ready to receive samples. We are currently offering tests for Varroa mites and Nosema.

Samples can be dropped off or mailed.

For more information on collecting and submitting samples, check out our FAQs on our website and view our video: