Australian Bees Banned By APHIS

By Alan Harman

With little public fanfare, the United States has banned the importation of honey bee queens and package bees from Australia.

Minister Counselor (Agriculture) Simon Smalley at the Australian Embassy in Washington and a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (ASPHIS) both confirm the [...]

In 2007a team* was formed to search for the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder. Using mass spectrometry-based proteomics, a technique modified by the military for screening samples for pathogens, they found a fungus and an unusual virus associated with samples from colonies with CCD symptoms.

Read more

Members of the International Sisterhood of Egglayers, Local 1851, are set to vote this week on a strike action against SweetBee Honey Corporation.

At issue is SweetBee’s new mandatory retirement age of two years for queen bees. The policy was announced on March 1, and drew an ominous hum of indignation from egglayers across the company’s [...]