In the past years, I’ve often thought that many problems would at least be smaller if people had more knowledge, more education. I don’t mean years at school. It’s more the capacity of critical thinking, of common sense that I miss. Or recognizing that things are a little bit more complex than the black or…
When it comes to varroa treatments, there’s apparently a gap between theory and practice. A sentence I often hear: “When will scientists finally find something against varroa mites?”. It seems that the available products aren’t seen as “something against the mite”. I always thought that this was because of the belief that there should be…
Sometimes you have to think big. A recent paper by Parreño and co-authors discusses the links between biodiversity and bee nutrition and health. Having enough and good quality food is obviously important not only for humans, but also for bees. I’ve already talked about this from the perspective of managed honey bees. This paper though,…
When it comes to treat bee diseases there’s a huge gap. There are – good and efficient – varroa treatments. But other than that? Not much. Here we rely on good practices. There are also other bee health issues than varroa, obviously. The list of pathogens and parasites is quite long, though not each one…
Sustainable agriculture for bees – that’s a claim I hear quite often. Most often it’s followed by “ ban pesticides!”. It may not be a big surprise that I have my problems with that. The reason isn’t that I want pesticides without any restrictions on the fields and orchards. Funnily enough people often think that….
A honey bee colony is a superorganism. Something I say very often is: “A colony is more than the sum of the number of adult bees and brood cells!”. That seems difficult to understand sometimes. Considering that honey bee health is getting more attention, however, this is an important concept to figure out. Even more…
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