Post by WVsnowflake on May 7, 2009 20:21:41 GMT -6
If you’d like to benefit your garden and community and offer a treat to your taste buds, consider keeping a couple of beehives. As honeybees gather pollen and nectar to make 50 pounds or more of pure, wild honey per hive, they pollinate crops nearby — and up to four miles away. This pollination is essential for good yields for some flowering crops. Best of all, honeybees require only simple management once the hives are up and running. Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture Magazine, says that managing bees takes “more effort than for your cat, but less than your dog.”
But can you do it naturally? For the first time in 20 years, the answer is yes. Until the mid-1980s, some beekeepers avoided using chemicals inside beehives, but then a quarantine violation led to the importation of the varroa mite, a devastating tick-like honeybee parasite. At about the same time, much tinier terrors called tracheal mites began ravaging hives throughout the country.
To save their bees from these and other pests, many beekeepers turned to chemical controls, which worked for a while. Then two things happened: many populations of varroa mites became resistant to the two main pesticides used to control them, and entomologists discovered that feeding bees fatty patties made of sugar and shortening suppressed tracheal mites to tolerable levels.
In addition, products that utilize the mite-minimizing properties of essential oils (such as thymol-based Api-Life VAR) and spearmint and lemongrass Honey-B-Healthy) can effectively suppress mites in small apiaries. Dusting with powdered sugar is another technique used to knock down mites. Combined with routine hive maintenance and using bees bred to clean out compromised cells, new natural techniques can eliminate the need for chemical controls.
www.motherearthnews.com/Modern-Homesteading/2008-02-01/Keep-Bees-Naturally.aspx
But can you do it naturally? For the first time in 20 years, the answer is yes. Until the mid-1980s, some beekeepers avoided using chemicals inside beehives, but then a quarantine violation led to the importation of the varroa mite, a devastating tick-like honeybee parasite. At about the same time, much tinier terrors called tracheal mites began ravaging hives throughout the country.
To save their bees from these and other pests, many beekeepers turned to chemical controls, which worked for a while. Then two things happened: many populations of varroa mites became resistant to the two main pesticides used to control them, and entomologists discovered that feeding bees fatty patties made of sugar and shortening suppressed tracheal mites to tolerable levels.
In addition, products that utilize the mite-minimizing properties of essential oils (such as thymol-based Api-Life VAR) and spearmint and lemongrass Honey-B-Healthy) can effectively suppress mites in small apiaries. Dusting with powdered sugar is another technique used to knock down mites. Combined with routine hive maintenance and using bees bred to clean out compromised cells, new natural techniques can eliminate the need for chemical controls.
www.motherearthnews.com/Modern-Homesteading/2008-02-01/Keep-Bees-Naturally.aspx
