Bookshelf

Control of Varroa

Mark Goodwin and Cliff van Eaton

2001 120 pages Available from Bees for Development Price £16.20 Order code G125

Keeping up to date with all the literature being published on Varroa biology and control can be a major task. Here, combined in one volume are all the facts you need for now: enough Varroa biology, effects of Varroa, population growth, detection and evaluation, chemical control methods and resistance, bio-technical control methods, breeding for Varroa tolerance, integrated pest management, and examples of methods used in some countries. This neat text has been prepared by two of New Zealand's best bee scientists, and provides all the information that beekeepers need in an attractive and easy to digest style.

Bee propolis: natural healing from the hive

James Fearnley

2000 172 pages Available from Bees for Development Price £11.00 Order code F110

It was while running a whole-food shop selling a variety of natural health products that James Fearnley first became interested in propolis. Since then, as he says, propolis has emerged from the back shelves of health food shops to become a major selling, high profile health product worth millions of dollars: the current world price is US$15-20 per kilo (if purchased in tonne quantities).

This new book provides a useful guide to all aspects of propolis: what it is and how bees use it, its traditional and modern use by humans, its composition and biological activity, using propolis to treat human and other animal diseases, the types of propolis products available commercially, and how to make your own.

References are given, as well as details of organisations and suppliers. A useful new text.

The beehive metaphor

Juan Antonio Ramirez

2000 174 pages Available from Bees for Development Price £20.20 Order code R100

The Spanish author of The Beehive Metaphor shows how some late 19th and early 20th century artists and architects were influenced by ideas of bees, their social organisation and nest structure.

Chapter 1 is a nicely written description of the western development of beekeeping, with interesting historical references. Chapter 2 ‘Working beehive, Mystical beehive’ focuses particularly on the artist and architect Guadi. Chapter 3 discusses other artists: Salvador Dali, Joseph Beuys (a total bee-obsessive, who once spent three hours with his head covered in honey, explaining to a dead hare the meaning of artistic creation), and the bee-related work of modern installation artists. Chapter 4 focuses on bee-inspired architects, especially Rudolf Steiner and Frank Lloyd Wright. In Chapter 5 the author presents his argument that Le Corbusier was much influenced by the apian metaphor.

An excellent book full of ideas for people interested in bees and their wider influence on humans. Gaudi’s brother wrote one article in his whole lifetime. It was titled ‘Bees’ and, written in 1870, encouraged the promotion of apiculture: “It would be a good idea for our farmers to devote themselves to fostering and increasing the number of honeycombs; all one has to do is place the hives in among an abundance of flowers and protect them from other creatures, and from the wind which can make them very tired”.

More honey in the kitchen

Joyce White

2001 65 pages Available from Bees for Development Price £10.00 Order code W410

A follow-on to ‘Honey in the kitchen’ (described in Bookshelf in B&D55),this text contains over 130 recipes including honey as an ingredient for sweet and savoury food items. There are also recipes for furniture polish and shoe polish using beeswax and propolis. Recipes for dry and sweet mead (honey wine) are also included.

Constructive beekeeping

Norman J Chapman

2000 175 pages Available from Bees for Development Price £16.80 Order code CO80

This is a unique book describing many of the practical jobs that beekeepers have to do that tend to be omitted or inadequately described in the standard beekeeping texts. The author is an enthusiastic and skilled beekeeper, and this book is full of useful tips. Here are just some of the practical projects described in this book - how to: make cardboard boxes into honey jar carriers; make a slot scraper; nail frames correctly; make equipment to wireframes; tidy up used frames; make and use ‘semi foundation’ (wax sheet embossed on one side only); make a foundation press; prepare fuel for a smoker; remove old combs; keep hive records; make a mouse guard; prepare honey for show; make a warming cabinet; filter beeswax; made mead. These and many other topics are covered.

A novel text that many beekeepers will appreciate and enjoy.

Parasite-host interactions between the Varroa mite and the honeybee

Johan N M Calis

2001 144 pages Available from Dr Calis directly:

There is a great need to control Varroa mite infestations of honeybees without using synthetic acaracides. This publication presents the research of Johan Calis into bio-technical control methods and the susceptibility of honeybees to Varroa. Topics researched include the invasion behaviour of Varroa mites into broad cells, possibilities to use formic acid to kill mites ‘trapped’ in worker and drone brood, population modelling of Varroa mites and the varying biology of Varroa with different species and races of bees. This publication formed Johan Calis’s PhD thesis at Wageningen University.

Proceedings of the 3rd AAA Conference on bee research and bee development

M Matsuka, D Q Tam, H Enomoto, N T Dap, L Q Trung, T T Dau, N V Niem, N T Hang, P H Chinh (editors)

2001 228 pages Available from Bees for Development Price £21.70 Order code MO1O

AAA is the Asian Apicultural Association and its 3rd bi-annual meeting took place in Hanoi, Vietnam in 1996.

For various reasons publication of this text was delayed (Proceedings of the 4thConference held in Nepal were already published by ICIMOD in 2000), nevertheless this volume contains important papers on the biology of Asian bees and their management.

There are 78 papers, examples include: Apis nuluensis, the newly described mountain bee of Borneo, Apis nigrocincta, a previously unrecognised species from Indonesia, and the discovery of Apis laboriosa in Vietnam.

Also included is a comprehensive description of the (dynamic) situation of apiculture in Vietnam, updated to year 2000, and the many further research and development activities continuing after, and boosted by, the AAA's excellent 3rd Conference.

VIDEOSHELF

Warning signals from the Apple Valleys

Uma Partap

Playing time 31 minutes VHS Available from Bees for Development Price £27.80 Order code VID22

An enchanting half hour video showing apple production in valleys of the Hindu Kush Himalaya.

For example, apples have been grown as a commercial cash crop in Himachal Pradesh in northern India since the 1950s. This had led to the economic transformation of many villages: the income has increased educational and living standards, and today Himachal’s apple growing areas are Prosperous by any standard.

Commercial apple crops are also grown in some districts of Bhutan, China, Nepal and Pakistan. The total crop growing in valleys of the Hindu Kush Himalaya is around 2.3 m tonnes, worth US$500 m.

The video shows how farmers in Maoxian county of China have developed a technique for hand pollinating apple trees — a process involving the drying of apple flowers’ anthers on electric blankets!

Beekeepers in this area are reluctant to rent their colonies for pollination because of the heavy pesticide use. In India, farmers seek to improve pollination by picking bouquets of polliniser branches and hanging them near the trees to be pollinated.

The video carries the warning that apple crops are declining: reasons include loss of pollinating insects, insufficient planting of pollinser tree varieties, and increasingly adverse weather conditions.

A totally different view of beekeeping in one of the most beautiful regions on earth.

This half hour video is excellent for teaching about pollination requirements, and will fascinate beekeepers everywhere.

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