
Corn seed treatment insecticides pose risks to honey bees, yield benefits elusive.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Nearly every foraging honey bee in the state of Indiana will encounter neonicotinoids during corn planting season, and the common seed treatments produced no improvement in crop yield, according to a Purdue University study. (Click http://purdue.ag/perilstopollinators for a video abstract). Neonicotinoids, including clothianidin and thiamethoxam, are a class of insecticide commonly applied as a coating to corn and soybean seeds to protect them from earl

The folklore of "Telling the Bees"
The traditional European custom of “Telling the Bees” has existed for generations. Important events were told to the bees such as marriages, births and deaths. If the bees weren't told about a death event, they wouldn't go into mourning and it was believed a penalty would be paid, such as the bees would leave the hive, not produce enough honey for the beekeeper or even die. Celtic mythology has always held that bees were the link between our world and the spirit world and if

Beekeeper Buzz: The Heatons
Beekeeper Buzz invites you to meet beekeepers from around the State of Michigan. The only surprising thing about Sylvia and Lyle Heaton having honeybees is that they didn’t do it a lot sooner. This lively couple bought a nearly century-old farmhouse in the country west of Lansing and spent twenty years molding Mother Nature's landscape, that is as much as she would allow. Now, it is a sprawling, inviting homestead dressed up with a cornucopia of native plants, three ponds, a