Free Republic

Curious if there are many FReeper beekeepers. If I get a decent response, I would like to start a weekly beekeeping Ping list. In order to make this list successful, participation on everyone's part is vital.

Open a beekeeper’s beehive, and the bees will talk. Look closely (through your protective gear, of course), and you will see bees conducting a waggle dance, tails in the air, using their pheromones to express their concerns about the hive intruder. Queens are on the move, sometimes alerting her hive with a piping call. The piping call is one that inmates at the Collin County Sheriff’s Office are learning about as they navigate the art of beekeeping. It’s part of a one-of-a-kind beekeeping program at the CCSO Detention Facility with the help of Texas Bee Supply owners Lyndon and Blake...

Three hives containing more than 180,000 bees in total were found intact on the cathedral’s roof despite the devastating blaze Following the tragedy of Monday’s fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, news came on Friday of a miracle as sweet as honey. The hundreds of thousands of bees that lived in hives inside Notre Dame’s roof are alive and well, according to the beekeeper, or apiculteur, that oversees them.... ...Three hives that are home to an estimated 60,000 bees each – 180,000 bees in total – are located on a lower roof atop the cathedral’s first floor.

Looking to see if any FReepers are Beekeepers. Any tips and hints for a successful hive would be appreicaited.

Battalion chief: Beekeeper was harvesting honey from personal hiveA swarm of bees killed a dog, injured a beekeeper and a firefighter and prompted residents living in a Ceres neighborhood to be under a shelter-in-placer order, according to an official with the Ceres Fire Department. The attack happened at about 5 p.m. Sunday when the beekeeper, 53, was trying to harvest honey from his beehive in his backyard in the 2700 block of River Valley Circle, battalion Chief Rick Scola said. There were about 4,200 bees inside the hive, which equals about three pounds of bees, and for an unknown reason,...

HOLLAND, Mich. (WZZM) -- A local beekeeper who lost all of his honeybees this winter and he says it's happening across the state. Anyone can look at Don Lam's beehive and see piles of dead honeybees. However, for Lam, each hive also tells the story of a struggle to survive. "They vibrate their wing muscles and that vibration is similar to shivering," says Lam, a beekeeper in Holland. It was a fight that his nearly half a million honeybees lost to a long, harsh winter. "They had eaten there way all the way to the top, had run out of...

One of America’s earliest food crops – almonds – is also one of the most important for commercial beekeepers. Almonds depend on bees for pollination, but the explosive growth of this bumper crop taxes the very honeybees the industry needs to thrive. California’s Central Valley produces over 80% of the world’s almonds, valued at over $4 billion in 2012. The boom is poised to continue, with new food products and expanding overseas markets increasing demand to the point that no young almond trees are available for purchase until 2016. Demand for almonds translates into demand for pollination. So every year...

Monsanto is hosting a "Bee Summit." Bayer AG is breaking ground on a "Bee Care Center." And Sygenta AG is funding grants for research into the accelerating demise of honeybees in the United States, where the insects pollinate fruits and vegetables that make up roughly a quarter of the American diet. The agrichemical companies are taking these initiatives at a time when their best-selling pesticides are under fire from environmental and food activists who say the chemicals are killing off millions of bees. .. Die-offs of bee populations have accelerated over the last few years to a rate the U.S....

The shocking minutes relating to President Putin’s meeting this past week with US Secretary of State John Kerry reveal the Russian leaders “extreme outrage” over the Obama regimes continued protection of global seed and plant bio-genetic giants Syngenta and Monsanto in the face of a growing “bee apocalypse” that the Kremlin warns “will most certainly” lead to world war. According to these minutes, released in the Kremlin today by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation (MNRE), Putin was so incensed over the Obama regimes refusal to discuss this grave matter that he refused for three...

Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees. These foods provide 35pc of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying – or being killed – at a disturbing pace. The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN's index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee...

Beepods are handsome, made-in-Wisconsin wooden beehives designed for optimum bee comfort and user-friendliness. The cost? Under $500. Now show me the honey ... Along with backyard chicken-keeping, urban beekeeping is another exercise in countrified self-sufficiency that’s really picked up steam over the past couple of years and been embraced by city dwellers … the latest “urban agricultural must-have,” as the New York Times put it back in 2009. The whole bees-in-the-city movement reached an unofficial climax back in March when the ban on residential beekeeping was lifted in New York City (although NYC beekeepers had been practicing and celebrating it...

LAKEVILLE, Minn. - A second person has died in a four-vehicle crash on Interstate 35 in Lakeville that released a swarm of bees from a semi. Two semi trucks, including one carrying millions of bees, and two cars collided on Interstate 35 late Monday morning . The driver of one of the cars died at the scene. The driver of the other car was airlifted to a hospital and died Monday evening. The drivers killed in the crash have been identified as 24-year-old Kari Rasmussen of St. Anthony, Minn. and 50-year-old Pamela Brinkhaus of Elko, Minn. Several first responders were...

5/3/2010 - JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq (AFNS) -- The local buzz around Balad isn't just about a new agricultural development program, it's also literal. A beekeeper taught Iraqi women and families how to care for bees during a three-day class in Yethrib, a sub-district of Balad, to help spur economic independence and benefit local agriculture. In a small room of a village house, Franklin Johnson, a United States Department of Agriculture agricultural advisor, and Sara Aziz, a Department of State interpreter, joined seven burqa-draped women sitting cross-legged on rugs awaiting a honeybee lecture. Local villager and 18-year beekeeper Alahin Aziz...

Something is killing the nation's honeybees. Dave Hackenberg of central Pennsylvania had 3,000 hives and figures he has lost all but about 800 of them. In labs at Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, and elsewhere in the nation, researchers have been stunned by the number of calls about the mysterious losses. "Every day, you hear of another operator," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. "It's just causing so much death so quickly that it's startling." At stake is the work the honeybees do, pollinating more than $15 billion worth of U.S....

Life has been anything but sweet lately for New Jersey's state insect, the honeybee. First, an onslaught of tiny mites began killing bees in massive numbers. Then a few towns banned beekeeping. And beekeepers, a folksy group who raise the insects in backyards and on farms, started to dwindle. "It's very discouraging. They're a very important insect," said Bob Hughes of Hamilton Township, president of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association and owner of Bob's Buzzy Bees. He said the association's membership has fallen dramatically since the 1980s. After years of feeling a sting, New Jersey's beekeepers have something to buzz...

A penny-per-pound marketing fee on honey producers has survived a legal challenge from a group of beekeepers at odds with the National Honey Board. An administrative law judge in Washington ruled last week that the national honey checkoff program was constitutional. In a 27-page ruling, Judge Jill S. Clifton cited a May Supreme Court opinion that kept intact a mandatory beef promotion "tax" administered by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Clifton observed that the honey and beef checkoff programs, both passed by Congress and overseen by the Agriculture Department, constitute "government speech" that is not subject to the First Amendment....

FRIDAY, June 10 (HealthDay News) -- Cancer researchers have been given a million-dollar grant to investigate the therapeutic value of the folk medicine propolis and the food spice turmeric. The U.S. National Cancer Institute grant is earmarked for the study of the two alternative remedies, each of which has shown promise in reducing risks for breast, prostate and colorectal malignancies, and in enhancing cancer treatment. Propolis and turmeric are rich in plant polyphenolic compounds that exhibit potent antitumor activities, the researchers said. "A very interesting property of these compounds is that they have been shown to cause cell death in...