Okay, not a bee, but I saw this HUGE spider in our yard recently so had to share it. The below picture is Argiope aurantia, or a Yellow Garden Spider. It created a beautiful web behind our pool, just sitting amongst the Lamb’s Ear waiting for lunch. I’m not really into spiders, and was a little freaked out. Wikipedia says it is harmless to non-allergic humans, so it must be true.

Since we’ve been discussing scientific classifications, spiders are in the Class Arachnida, while bees and other insects are in the Class Insecta.

May you prosper and find honey.

I did a Varroa treatment recently (on Aug 27). I like to use Formic acid, as it is an organic product produced naturally in nature and bees have a natural resistance. It doesn’t mean the chemical isn’t hard on the gals, but I’m at least using something natural. Most natural beekeeping guidelines and come country’s organic management requirements allow for natural treatments like Formic Pro and Apiguard.

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Through much of August, these low flying bugs made lazy patterns above the grass in our backyard, apparently looking for something. It was bit of an adventure to figure out what they were, as they didn’t seem to stop moving. I eventually figured out they are a species called Scolia dubia, or more commonly called blue-winged scoliid wasps or two-spotted scoliid wasps

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This year I pulled some honey supers early as they were full and I wanted to encourage the bees to keep working away. I ended up with roughly 25 pounds of this early honey, and recently bottled it up. I was interested in seeing what the differences were between this early Spring honey and my regular season honey that I gather in July.

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I noticed this week an article out of Georgia about the invasive yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina, found near Savannah. This hornet is particularly damaging to honey bee colonies, and is a cousin of the northern giant hornet, known as the Asian giant hornet or “murder hornet” in some media. I thought a brief round up of hornets and wasps might be interesting.

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Last week was EAS 2023, or the Eastern Apicultural Society‘s 2003 Short Course & Conference. The annual conference is in a different state every year. This year in Massachusetts and next year is in Maryland. The first two days is the short course, with talks and workshops on microscopy, queen rearing, honey show judging, and other topics; the final three days is the conference, with keynote speakers and the latest in beekeeping and research from some of the best in the nation.

The theme this year was Past, Present, and Beeyond.

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I did my summer honey extraction recently… so much honey. In Virginia we hit the dearth in mid-summer, so early July is a good time to pull your supers and extract the honey. This year I pulled some supers in the spring so I was interested in comparing the early honey with the summer honey as well.

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I moved a couple colonies into more accommodating lodging recently. One a Langstroth hive and the other a top bar hive. This involved moving the existing hive, putting the new hive in its place, and moving the combs into the new box. The bees know where their entrance should be, so they quickly accommodate to the new box as long as their brood and queen is there.

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It is pretty late for bee swarms. Below I have a photo of some active ants from our yard, and I thought it was an interesting photo. Most social insect groups reproduce their colony by swarming, include bees, ants, and termites.

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