Status of Pollinators in North America

Status of Pollinators in North America
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2007-05-13
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309102898

Pollinators-insects, birds, bats, and other animals that carry pollen from the male to the female parts of flowers for plant reproduction-are an essential part of natural and agricultural ecosystems throughout North America. For example, most fruit, vegetable, and seed crops and some crops that provide fiber, drugs, and fuel depend on animals for pollination. This report provides evidence for the decline of some pollinator species in North America, including America's most important managed pollinator, the honey bee, as well as some butterflies, bats, and hummingbirds. For most managed and wild pollinator species, however, population trends have not been assessed because populations have not been monitored over time. In addition, for wild species with demonstrated declines, it is often difficult to determine the causes or consequences of their decline. This report outlines priorities for research and monitoring that are needed to improve information on the status of pollinators and establishes a framework for conservation and restoration of pollinator species and communities.

Bad Beekeeping

Bad Beekeeping
Author: Ron Miksha
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre: Bee culture
ISBN: 9781412006279

A million pounds of honey. Produced by a billion bees! This memoir reconstructs the life of a young man from Pennsylvania as he drops into the bald prairie badlands of southern Saskatchewan. He buys a honey ranch and keeps the bees that make the honey. But he also spends winters in Florida swamps, nurse-maid to ten thousand dainty queen bees. From the dusty Canadian prairie to the thick palmetto swamps of the American south, the reader meets with simple folks who shape the protagonist's character - including a Cree rancher with three sons playing NHL hockey, a Hutterite preacher who yearns to roam the globe, a reclusive bee-eating homesteader, and a grey-headed widow who grows grapefruit, plays a nasty game of scrabble, and lives with four vicious dogs. Encompassing a ten-year period, this true story evolves from the earnest inexperience of the young man as he learns an art and builds a business. Carefully researched natural biology runs counterpoint to human social activities. Bee craft serves as the setting for expositions that contrast American and Canadian lifestyles, while exemplifying the harsh reality of a man working with and against the physical environment.

Honey Bee Medicine for the Veterinary Practitioner

Honey Bee Medicine for the Veterinary Practitioner
Author: Terry Ryan Kane
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1119583373

An essential guide to the health care of honey bees Honey Bee Medicine for the Veterinary Practitioner offers an authoritative guide to honey bee health and hive management. Designed for veterinarians and other professionals, the book presents information useful for answering commonly asked questions and for facilitating hive examinations. The book covers a wide range of topics including basic husbandry, equipment and safety, anatomy, genetics, the diagnosis and management of disease. It also includes up to date information on Varroa and other bee pests, introduces honey bee pharmacology and toxicology, and addresses native bee ecology. This new resource: Offers a guide to veterinary care of honey bees Provides information on basic husbandry, examination techniques, nutrition, and more Discusses how to successfully handle questions and 'hive calls' Includes helpful photographs, line drawings, tables, and graphs Written for veterinary practitioners, veterinary students, veterinary technicians, scientists, and apiarists, Honey Bee Medicine for the Veterinary Practitioner is a comprehensive and practical book on honey bee health.

Modern Beekeeping

Modern Beekeeping
Author: Ramón Eduardo Rebolledo Ranz
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2020-08-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1838801553

Beekeeping worldwide has seen remarkable development in the face of the growing demand for products from bees by consumers who demand increasingly innocuous products that do not harm the environment. However, it should be noted that, recently, problems have arisen in beekeeping production that could become restrictive factors for the worldwide development of beekeeping. This book includes, in simple and accessible terms, very relevant topics such as the effect of pesticides, the impact of diseases and their management, production and analysis of pollen present in honey, DNA analysis, and sustainable management, among others. This book is answering an expected need for accurate and international information for the productive sector.

Honeybee Veterinary Medicine

Honeybee Veterinary Medicine
Author: Nicolas Vidal-Naquet
Publisher: 5m Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Diseases
ISBN: 9781910455043

Honeybees are an essential part of farming and the wider ecosystem. Since the middle of the 1990s bee populations around the world have suffered dramatic decline through diseases, intoxication, and unknown causes. Veterinarians have had little training in bee health but as the situation continues, qualified animal health professionals and, in particular, veterinarians are being required to become involved as new dangers threaten honeybee health everywhere because of global apiculture trade and exchanges of honeybees, products of the hive and beekeeping material such as Aethina tumida (the small hive beetle - a beekeeping pest) introduced in Italy in 2014 or the mite Tropilaelaps spp (parasitic mites of honeybees). This book will provide an overview of bee biology, the bee in the wider environment, intoxication, bee diseases, bee parasites (with a large part dedicated to the mite Varroa destructor) pests, enemies, and veterinary treatment and actions relating to honeybee health. The book will also cover current topics such as climate change, crop pollination, use of phytosanitary products, antibiotic resistance, and Colony Collapse Disorder. While aimed at veterinary practitioners, students and veterinarians involved in apiculture and bee health (officials, researchers, laboratory veterinarians, biologists...), the book can also be beneficial to beekeepers, beekeeping stakeholders, animal health and environmental organisations.

Control and Prevention of American Foulbrood in Honey Bees

Control and Prevention of American Foulbrood in Honey Bees
Author: Sandra Rosa Fuselli
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: American foul brood
ISBN: 9781536119862

American foulbrood (AFB) is a severe bacterial disease that affects larvae of honey bees (Apis mellifera). The causative agent is the spore forming bacteria Paenibacillus larvae. The use of antibiotics has led to the appearance of resistant bacterial strains and residues in beehive products. Nowadays, antibiotics are legally banned in several countries, and the affected colonies have to be destroyed by burning the hives. Therefore, the development of alternative therapeuctic methods for the control and prevention of AFB is necessary. The present monograph reviews the traditional methods used for the control of AFB, and the natural strategies based on the application of essential oils, plant extracts, propolis, royal jelly, non-conventional natural molecules, bacteria and bacteriocines, assessed in vitro and in vivo for the prevention and control of P. larvae. This book also discusses the experimental data achieved from these studies, and intends to be a starting point for future research in the field.

The Buzz about Bees

The Buzz about Bees
Author: Jürgen Tautz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2008-04-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3540787291

Tis book, already translated into ten languages, may at frst sight appear to be just about honeybees and their biology. It c- tains, however, a number of deeper messages related to some of the most basic and important principles of modern biology. Te bees are merely the actors that take us into the realm of phys- ology, genetics, reproduction, biophysics and learning, and that introduce us to the principles of natural selection underlying the evolution of simple to complex life forms. Te book destroys the cute notion of bees as anthropomorphic icons of busy self-sacr -i fcing individuals and presents us with the reality of the colony as an integrated and independent being—a “superorganism”—with its own, almost eerie, emergent group intelligence. We are s- prised to learn that no single bee, from queen through drone to sterile worker, has the oversight or control over the colony. - stead, through a network of integrated control systems and fee- backs, and communication between individuals, the colony - rives at consensus decisions from the bottom up through a type of “swarm intelligence”. Indeed, there are remarkable parallels between the functional organization of a swarming honeybee colony and vertebrate brains.

The Lives of Bees

The Lives of Bees
Author: Thomas D. Seeley
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691166765

Seeley, a world authority on honey bees, sheds light on why wild honey bees are still thriving while those living in managed colonies are in crisis. Drawing on the latest science as well as insights from his own pioneering fieldwork, he describes in extraordinary detail how honey bees live in nature and shows how this differs significantly from their lives under the management of beekeepers. Seeley presents an entirely new approach to beekeeping--Darwinian Beekeeping--which enables honey bees to use the toolkit of survival skills their species has acquired over the past thirty million years, and to evolve solutions to the new challenges they face today. He shows beekeepers how to use the principles of natural selection to guide their practices, and he offers a new vision of how beekeeping can better align with the natural habits of honey bees.