As Laurel and Hardy might have sung…..”In the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia, on the trail of the honey bee”.
ADBKA was delighted to host the first talk from the 2026 SBA touring speaker, Mr Bob Binnie, from the southern Appalachian Mountains of northeast Georgia on 13th February at Milne Hall in Kirkton of Skene.
Bob started in the honey industry in 1981 in Oregon and has worked across many States of the US, and now operates as a ‘Producer/Packer’ trading as The Blue Ridge Honey Co. (which in 2025 bottled 1.5million lbs [682,000 kg] of honey). Before getting into the subject of the talk, it was touching to hear how Bob and his wife (visiting Scotland for the first time) fitted in some genealogical research into the Binnie family history – his grandfather having been born in Aberdeen and emigrating to the US when he was 20 years old. Bob’s talk was entitled ‘Queen Management, Requeening and Queen Acceptance‘ and provided a fascinating insight into how a commercial beekeeper in the US manages these issues.
Bob was particularly passionate about the dangers of ‘synergistic interactions’ of toxins in wax comb, i.e. the largely unknown ways in which chemicals from products like varroacides, which are not in themselves harmful to the bee, can combine with other substances to produce a toxic environment in the wax that can weaken colonies and appear like poor queen performance. He referred us to research which suggests that fluvalinate (the active ingredient in Apistan) is particularly interactive. He also believes that there is yet to be evidence of increased resistance in varroa to any organic treatments (such as oxalic acid or formic acid), only to synthetic products. Bob was delighted to hear that those in attendance typically replace combs on a 3-yearly cycle – in his experience this is much more frequent than our US counterparts.
His thoughts on queen replacement were unambiguous; he replaces all queens every year (but remember he rears his own queens and honey production is his business). However, ignoring his personal MO, his recommendation was that queens should, as a general rule, be replaced after they have seen out two spring seasons. On queen acceptance, he reminded us that it is statistically more successful during periods of high nectar flow, when the weather is good (welcome to NE Scotland, Bob) and when the bees are well fed. He favours the push-in cage method of queen introduction, where the cage encapsulates an amount of sealed brood, that on emerging will immediately accept the queen as their mother.
Bob touched briefly on propolis, and how it contributes to the overall immune system of the colony, and that those with high quantities of propolis are typically healthier and consequently more productive (albeit considerably stickier!). During the presentation and the Q&A session there was lively discussion with our trusted local queen suppliers about queen rearing, in particular ideal larval age for grafting and age of new queen before introduction to a colony.
Due to Bob’s natural presentation style and knowledge, 2 hours flew by and along the way we learnt some new words:
– Bee Yard (apiary)
– Bee Package (a box containing 30lb bees + Queen)
– Field Force (flying bees)
– Double screen board (Snelgrove board)
– Y’all (a’body)
Bob wrapped up his talk with “Good Queens = Greater Success”… and whichever side of the Atlantic y’all come from, we can agree on that.
