One lazy afternoon you find yourself looking across a field of flowers. The sun is warm and the breeze rustles through the grasses beneath your feet. Suddenly, at the edge of the field you see a lone figure hunched over a white box. The person is dressed from head to toe in a white, spaceman-looking jumpsuit. You begin to get nervous as you peer closer and notice a helmet covering his head. His gloved hands hold a strange-looking instrument spewing smoke from some internal, smoldering fire. You do not know it, but you are about to witness a robbery by this alien creature. Should you call the police? Should you take matters into your own hands? No! Instead, grab a container and prepare to get some honey! There’s a beekeeper hard at work!

With our understanding of honey bee biology and colony structure, we can begin to investigate the process of rearing bees for ourselves. To begin, we need a good understanding of the equipment we will need and how to use it. We will need to know the parts of the beehive and how to assemble them properly to facilitate bee rearing and honey production. Finally, we will need to handle bees within the hive. The Honey bee Project Book 2 provides the 4-H member with specific information about beekeeping, bee handling, and hive inspection.

This 2019 Virginia Pest Management Guide provides the latest recommendations for controlling diseases, insects, and weeds for home grounds and animals. The chemical controls in this guide are based on the latest pesticide label information at the time of writing. Because pesticide labels change, read the label directions carefully before buying and using any pesticide. Regardless of the information provided here, always follow the latest product label instructions when using any pesticide.

Members of the Nosema genus are microsporidians, which are now classified as a fungus. Nosema species (spp.) are obligate, intracellular parasites. This means that they require a host (in this case a honey bee) to complete their lifecycle. There are two species from the genus that infect our honey bees (Apis mellifera) – Nosema apis and Nosema ceranae. Nosema apis is a well studied species that has been known to infect honey bees for over 100 years. A thorough review is given by Fries [1]. Nosema ceranae is a closely related species and was first found in Apis cerana, the Asian honey bee in 1996 [2] and then in the European honey bee in 2006 [3-4].