Category Archives: News

Classes Rescheduled

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The remaining classes scheduled for this year will not be held at the Extension Office on Franklin Farm Lane. There will be no class tonight. The Education Committee is working to finish the classes. They are looking at an outdoor venue for next Thursday or it may be by prerecorded video. The last class on Pests & Diseases will pretty certainly be by video. Under any circumstances, we want to be sure to address any questions.

USDA National Agricultural Statistics Honey Bee Survey

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NASS has collected statistics on the number of honey bee colonies and U.S. honey production for decades as part of the Census of Agriculture and in annual estimates. In order to build an even more robust scientific body of knowledge on honey bees at USDA, NASS began in 2016 to collect data on honey bee health and pollination costs. Reliable, up-to-date statistics help track honey bee mortality.

USDA National Agricultural Statistics Honey Bee Survey

National Colony Loss Survey 2017

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Dear Beekeeper,
Warm up your keyboard, grab a cup of coffee and take the Bee Informed Partnership National Colony Loss and Management Surveys! You can find them by following this link: http://26.selectsurvey.net/beeinformed/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=2017
We need you! We know it is one of the busiest times of the year for beekeepers and we thank you for taking valuable time from your colonies to participate in the National Colony Loss and Management Surveys. The surveys are now live and will close on April 30th!
The Colony Loss Survey has evolved from our winter loss survey conducted 11 years ago. Now we monitor summer losses as well. The National Management Survey is conducted annually in conjunction with the Colony Loss Survey. The two surveys are aimed at looking for relationships between colony losses and colony management (including disease treatment strategies, supplemental feeding, etc.) and/or other factors that may influence colony health (such as colony location, honey production, and forage type). Please share this survey information with your beekeeper friends and clubs!
We are excited to share our dynamic state map located at https://bip2.beeinformed.org/geo where you can view state losses from all years of the survey.   At that site, you will see annual, winter and summer losses as well as the number of participants and colony numbers for your state. Dynamic management reports that have resulted from previous years’ surveys can now be found at https://bip2.beeinformed.org/survey. This exciting data management explorer lets you see what actionable practices are correlated with improving survivorship!
We need your responses! Some of you may be contacted independently by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) of the USDA to participate in their first quarterly colony loss survey. We encourage all beekeepers contacted by NASS to answer BOTH BIP and NASS surveys.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at support@beeinformed.org.  
Once again, thank you for your participation,
The Bee Informed Partnership
The Fine Print (read quickly and with a serious voice):
Please do not complete the survey more than once. Information about past Loss and National Management Surveys and the annual reports can be found online at http://beeinformed.org/.
Again, your participation in this research is voluntary and your responses will be kept confidential. In any publication or presentation resulting from this research, no personally identifiable information will be disclosed.