The New Year...

We are excited to announce the hiring of Phoebe Koenig to our Midwest tech team and John Klepps to our Florida/Georgia team! Please see their photos and profiles on our tech team website here: https://beeinformed.org/team-2/tech-transfer-teams/
As a bittersweet start to the year, we are saying good bye to Katie Lee, our very first technical transfer team member who intrepidly began the California team before BIP was BIP and then moved to start the Midwest team. Katie will be spending this year completing her PhD so we are very excited for her. We also wish Megan Mahoney, who initiated and built a fantastic Texas team, all the best as she begins a new career in Hawaii following her desire to work in queen breeding.
 
 
And the Old…
Bees are rapidly moving into almond orchards for pollination and that is a good time to reflect on the previous year to see how successful we were at keeping mite loads at a manageable level. I have included two graphs that show the average mite loads month by month in 2016 and then also from 2015. Unequivocally, it appears that beekeepers did a much better job of staying on top of mite levels in 2016. Note the spikes already in the spring of 2015 in some teams and the improvement in the spring of 2016. Fall is a challenging time, and as discussed in previous months, a critical moment of the bee year to get mites low enough for the bees to raise healthy winter bees. The higher loads in fall show up every year but this year, the management seems to be working for most operations.

2016 Average monthly varroa mite loads in 5 tech teams. Graph courtesy of the Bee Informed Partnership, Inc.
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2015 Average monthly varroa mite loads in 5 tech teams. Graph courtesy of the Bee Informed Partnership, Inc.
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