The 2026 USDA Beltsville Bee Lab Closure and What It Means for Beekeepers
USDA plans to close the Beltsville Bee Research Laboratory as part of a wider research-center shutdown, an active, disputed 2026 policy story, not settled history.
BeeKeepersRealm Editorial Team
Articles published under this name are the work of the BeeKeepersRealm editorial team rather than a single writer. Drafting is AI-assisted. These articles have not yet had the two-person review described in our editorial policy, in which a named beekeeper takes responsibility for an article and a second team member reviews it. As each article goes through that review it is re-published under that person's byline, so an individual name means an individual has taken responsibility for that page. See the team page for who writes and who reviews.
New Varroa Treatments Beekeepers Should Know About in 2026
2025-2026 brought genuinely new Varroa chemistry: an EPA-registered RNAi treatment, the first amino-acid miticide, and USDA research on amitraz resistance.
Randy Oliver and ScientificBeekeeping.com: A Commercial Beekeeper’s Research
Randy Oliver runs a real commercial almond-pollination operation while publishing some of the most cited independent Varroa management research online.
Marla Spivak: The MacArthur Fellow Behind the Minnesota Hygienic Bees
Marla Spivak's decades of hygienic-behavior research produced the Minnesota Hygienic bee line and earned her a 2010 MacArthur Foundation genius grant.
The Honeybee Dance Language Controversy: Wenner vs. von Frisch
Nobel laureate Karl von Frisch said the waggle dance conveys real information. Adrian Wenner spent years arguing bees actually navigate by odor alone.
Iceland’s Beekeeping: A Small, Isolated Apiary Culture Built From Scratch
Iceland has no native honeybees. Every colony there today descends from bees deliberately imported since 1998, in a small apiary culture unusually free of Varroa.
The 18th-Century Race to Explain the Honeycomb’s Perfect Angle
In 1712 Maraldi measured the honeycomb's precise cell angle, then a real 30-year mathematical dispute among Réaumur, König, and Maclaurin followed to explain it.
Bechbretha: Ireland’s 7th-Century Bee Law
Bechbretha is a real 7th-century Old Irish legal tract that set detailed rules for swarm ownership, hive theft, and a neighbor's share of honey.
Thomas Wildman and the Georgian-Era Showman Beekeepers
Thomas Wildman's 1768 beekeeping treatise broke real ground on hive design, while his nephew Daniel turned swarm-clustering into a paid London stage act.