I've been pretty busy with the bees and research of late. I just uploaded a number of articles from ABJ -- you can view them at http://scientificbeekeeping.com/articles-by-publication-date/
I'd been asked about the relationship about dysentery and nosema, and was concerned about the amount of misinformation commonly parroted in the literature and by presenters. So I started writing an article about it. But as commonly occurs, the article grew into a series that turned out to be much longer than expected. In fact, the last installments are not yet published!
Meanwhile, I've been lagging on getting the results of last summer's (2018) two large field trials written up -- one on the effect of supplementing pollen sub with zinc and 24-methylene cholesterol (a critical sterol). To my surprise, it didn't help.
The other a large-scale project in which we tagged 6000 bees in colonies about to collapse from varroa/DWV, with color-coded metal discs, and then collected the discs from drifted bees from hives set up at various distances up to 2 miles away. The results again were not at all what I expected, but you'll need to wait until I write them up (which I hope will be soon).
Of late I've been reading a lot of older field research by very smart scientists who also clearly knew something about bees and beekeeping. I find some of this research to be very impressive, and am disappointed that few in the bee research community seem to realize how much great research was done before the turn of the century. Much to the dismay of us beekeepers, some published research these days is by researchers who clearly have scant experience with beekeeping themselves.
To that end I became active in Project Apis m as a Scientific Adviser, in an attempt to return the funding organization to its roots of making sure that donating beekeepers got their money's worth from usable applied research. But I apparently I pushed a little too hard and pissed off a few established scientists who liked to spend beekeeper's money as they liked. Anyway, I was asked to resign.
So it's back to trying to find another way to get good practical research that beekeepers can immediately apply to their management decisions done. I've got a list of screaming questions from beekeepers, looking for some field researcher to answer them. Any grad students looking for useful projects can feel free to contact me, although few of the questions involve "sexy" molecular biology. I may be able to transfer some of the donations to ScientificBeekeeping to fund your projects.
My selective breeding program for varroa resistance may be gaining traction -- as of mid November, we've got around 130 colonies that haven't needed treatment to keep their mites in check. And 9 colonies going on 20 months without needing treatment. And a couple of yards in which a third of the hives are handling varroa on their own. Cross your fingers for the success of the daughters of these queens next season!
I've also been checking our assumptions for alcohol washes for mite monitoring. I'll soon be publishing on the best frames from which to take the bee sample, the best strength of alcohol to use, and the degree and type of agitation required. I've also developed a portable, battery-powered, rechargeable agitator to take to the field -- it makes doing hundreds of alcohol washes a piece of cake! I'm not yet sure whether I'll be publishing the plans, or finding someone to manufacture them.
Anyway, my passion is to serve beekeepers around the world. What with low honey prices, a lot of U.S. beekeepers are struggling. If you're on this mailing list, that indicates that you are hungry for the science behind successful beekeeping. I hope to help get that to you!