Monday 15 November 2010

CATCH THE BUZZ - Change In The Air

After 3 weeks travel and catching up, CATCH THE BUZZ is back. Watch for our emails, check out our supporters below, tell a friend abou the BUZZ, and keep your smoker lit, your hive tool handy and bee veil tight.

CATCH THE BUZZ

Things Are Always Changing…A collection of events…

Alan Harman

 

The Dak Lak Honey Bee Joint Stock Co. aims to double its honey exports to 10,000 tonnes this year valued at more than US$20 million.

   By late October, the company in the highland province of Dak Lak had collected 11,000 tonnes of honey and exported more than 8,000 tonnes of honey products to the U.S., Canada, Japan, and South Korea.

   The U.S. buys 80% of the honey products from Dak Lak province.

   To push honey exports, Dak Lak has expanded into other areas in Dak Lak province as well as to provinces in the Central Highland and Southwestern regions.

   Dak Lak province this year is home to 200,000 flocks of bees with expected production of 11,500 tonnes of honey, twice the amount last year.

*

 

An organic honey producer in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey says his honey harvest fell 50% this year even after the number of hives was increased by 40%.

   Topuy Kaçkar Organic Honey Products general manager Remzi Özbay tells the Hürriyet Daily News it almost looked like the company’s bees were on strike.

   “They have so drastically slashed the production that we could only deliver half the amount we promised to customers a year ago,” Özbay says. “We had to suspend our export negations with five countries.”

   Özbay says there is a high international demand for his honey including from the United States, Japan, Germany and Australia.

   The firm usually harvests about six tons of honey from 1,000 hives each year and raised the number of hives to 1,400 this year to meet the rising demand.

   “However, despite the increase in the number of hives our production fell to three tons,” Özbay says.

   “We did a study and found out this was the case with all honey producers.”

   He says the natural balance has been ruined due to pesticides that have directly affected the bees’ ecosystem.

   “Bee deaths are increasing,” he says

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Partnership

   Canadian specialty honey manufacturer Island Abbey Foods Ltd. announces a agreement to distribute its Honibe products through Dutch Gold Honey Inc., of Lancaster, PA and its subsidiary McLure’s Honey and Maple Products, Littleton, NH.

   The Prince Edward Island company’s Honibe brand is built around a proprietary technology that allows the creation of 100% pure dried honey products in a variety of forms.

   Dutch Gold Honey will expand its product lines to include Honibe 100% pure dried honey products starting with Honibe Honey Drop sugar cubes and Honey Sprinkles granules for desserts, baking and ingredient use.

   Island Abbey Foods president John Rowe says he’s excited about the collaboration.

   “Dutch Gold Honey is a leader in the honey industry in the United States that has built a reputation on quality, integrity and trust over the past 64 years,” he says. “To now have our innovative Honibe product lines available through this household name in honey is a wonderful partnership for us.”

   Dutch Gold Honey sales vice president Jill Clark says it is pleased to be able to offer the award winning Honibe line of pure dried honey products to its customers.

  “Island Abbey Foods has generated a lot of international attention for its unique technology since the launch of the Honibe brand in 2008, and we are excited to add their products to our Dutch Gold Honey & McLure’s product lines,” she says

   The Honibe brand has garnered international attention in recent months for its Honey Drop product, a teaspoon-sized individual serving of 100% pure dried honey without any additives. It is ideal for sweetening tea or coffee by dropping it into the hot beverage and stirring.

   Most recently, the Honey Drop won two SIAL D’or 2010 Awards at the world’s largest food tradeshow in Paris, France and will is one of nine finalists competing for best new food product in the world this month.

   Island Abbey Foods is a 6th generation PEI agricultural family business.

 

This message brought to you by Bee Culture, The Magazine Of American Beekeeping, published by the A.I. Root Company.

Read an EXCLUSIVE CHAPTER from Tom Seeley’s new book Honey Bee Democracy, only on Bee Culture’s web page Here!

Build an entire bee hive with just a table saw. Go to Garreson Publishing. Books by Peter Sieling.

Find out What Is New At Mann Lake right Here

Protein feeding pays off with better health, better survival, better production, and better wintering. Learn More.  

FREE - Kelley Bees Modern Beekeeping Monthly Newsletter

Quality Top Bar Hives by Gold Star Honeybees - good for you, good for your bees, good for the planet. Check us out at www.goldstarhoneybees.com.

Subscribe to Malcolm Sanford’s Apis Newsletter right here for a comprehensive listing of beekeeping events around the country and around the globe, check out Bee Culture’s Global Beekeeping Calendar

 

 

CATCH THE BUZZ - Nature vs Nurture

CATCH THE BUZZ

 

Nature or Nurture, Queen and Worker

Alan Harman

   The nature-nurture debate is a giant step closer to being resolved after scientists studying bees documented how environmental inputs can modify genetic hardware.

   The research at the Australian National University (ANU) and the German Cancer Institute uncovered the extensive molecular differences that occur in the brains of two types of genetically identical, but behaviorally different, female honey bees – worker bees and queen bees.

   The workers and queens develop along very different paths when put on different diets.

   The research reveals for the first time the intricacies of the environmentally influenced chemical marking of DNA called DNA methylation, which has the capacity to alter gene expression without affecting the genetic code – a process referred to as ‘epigenetic’, or above the genome.

    “This marking determines which genes are to be fine-tuned in the brains of workers and queens to produce their extraordinarily different behaviors.” research team leader Ryszard Maleszka says at ANU.

    “This finding is not only crucial, but far reaching, because the enzymes that mark DNA in the bee are also the enzymes that mark DNA in human brains, he says.

   “In the bees, more than 550 genes are differentially marked between the brain of the queen and the brain of the worker, which contributes to their profound divergence in behavior.

   “This study provides the first documentation of extensive molecular differences that may allow honey bees to generate different reproductive and behavioral outcomes as a result of differential feeding with royal jelly.”

   Maleszka says the work goes a long way to answering one of life’s biggest questions.

   “This study represents a giant step towards answering one of the big questions in the nature-nurture debate, because it shows how the outside world is linked to DNA via diet, and how environmental inputs can transiently modify our genetic hardware,” he says.

   “Similar studies are impossible to do on human brains, so the humble honey bees are the pioneers in this fascinating area.”

 

Read an EXCLUSIVE CHAPTER from Tom Seeley’s new book Honey Bee Democracy, only on Bee Culture’s web page Here!

Build an entire bee hive with just a table saw. Go to Garreson Publishing. Books by Peter Sieling.

Find out What Is New At Mann Lake right Here

Protein feeding pays off with better health, better survival, better production, and better wintering. Learn More.  

FREE - Kelley Bees Modern Beekeeping Monthly Newsletter

Quality Top Bar Hives by Gold Star Honeybees - good for you, good for your bees, good for the planet. Check us out at www.goldstarhoneybees.com.

Subscribe to Malcolm Sanford’s Apis Newsletter right here for a comprehensive listing of beekeeping events around the country and around the globe, check out Bee Culture’s Global Beekeeping Calendar

This message brought to you by Bee Culture, The Magazine Of American Beekeeping, published by the A.I. Root Company.

Check out the Biggest Honey Show there is this fall at www.honeyshow.co.uk