Michael D. Burgett

Oregon State University | OSU · Department of Horticulture

The giant honey bee, Apis dorsata F., is known for its seasonal colony migrations. While many authors have studied colony seasonal migration patterns, there is a gap in understanding the specific durations of individual colony residencies at their nesting sites. Giant honey bee colony-founding swarm arrivals and colony departures were observed at t...

Cerumen is a major component of stingless bee nests and serves a function comparable to beeswax in honey bees, but it is made of both beeswax and plant resin. Cerumen contains biologically active compounds and offers multiple human health benefits, such as antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Ethanol is commonly used as a solvent for the e...

Stingless bees play a crucial role in tropical and subtropical ecosystems, contributing significantly to biodiversity and pollination services. The species Lepidotrigona flavibasis (Cockerell 1929) (Apidae: Meliponini), found in Southeast Asia, has attracted attention for its unique nesting habits and valuable honey production. The objective of thi...

Stingless bees (Apinae: Meliponini) exhibit astonishing and unusual behaviours, including tear-drinking or lachryphagy. In this review, we summarize lachryphagy in stingless bees, providing updated insights into their taxonomy, foraging patterns, ecology, hosts, evolutionary origins, and potential for pathogen transmission. In Northern Thailand, ma...

Bee propolis has been touted as a natural antimicrobial agent with the potential to replace antibiotics. Numerous reports and reviews have highlighted the functionalities and applications of the natural compound. Despite much clamor for the downstream application of propolis, there remain many grounds to cover, especially in the upstream production...

Background: Cerumen is a mixture of beeswax and plant resin made by stingless bees. It has antimicrobial and antioxidant properties and is often used in biological and therapeutic treatments. However, its adhesive characteristic makes cerumen challenging to process into powder. Methods: This study investigated the physical characteristics and an...

In Thailand, there have been limited investigations on the antibacterial properties of stingless bee honey. The purpose of this research is to investigate the physicochemical and antibacterial characteristics of five stingless bee species, including Lepidotrigona flavibasis, L. doipaensis, Lisotrigona furva, Tetragonula laeviceps species complex, a...

This research reports the characterization of bee pollen of Apis andreniformis colonies on the basis of morphology, proximate composition, the amino acid, and nutritive patterns in relation with their honey. The pollen gains of the sampling colonies revealed variations in their structure, symmetry, and sculpture. The exile surfaces of the pollens s...

We assessed nutrients composition of the Asian honeybee Apis cerana and giant honeybee Apis dorsata. Abundances of individual amino acids and thus their total amounts were found to be considerably higher in A. cerana pupae than those of A. dorsata pupae. The immature developmental stages of honey bees contained higher amounts of fat than the adults...

For eusocial bees, colony defense is paramount. An uncommon strategy is the deployment of hovering guard bees, which has been previously described for only a few species of Neotropical meliponines. This report describes the use of flying guards for the Paleotropical stingless bee species Tetrigona apicalis (Smith) which is the first known species i...

This study investigates male (drone) production by the giant honey bee (Apis dorsata F.). The entire brood populations from 10 colonies were counted to determine the immature population of drones relative to workers. As the condition of each cell was determined the cell’s position and content were noted using the Microsoft Excel platform. The conte...

The most extensive markets for pollination services in the world are those for honey bee pollination in the United States. They play important roles in coordinating agricultural producers and migratory beekeepers, who both produce honey and provide pollination for crops. Recent trends in bee disease-including the still poorly understood Colony Coll...

Two species of dwarf honey bees; Apis florea F. and A. andreniformis Smith were studied to examine their nest comb bee density. Ten colonies of each species were obtained in 2017 and 2018 from the Mae Rim district, Chiang Mai province in northern Thailand at elevations ranging from 600 to 1,000 m. The average number of adult workers of A. florea an...

The long term storage effects on stingless bee (Tetragonula laeviceps-pagdeni) honey from SE Asia (Thailand) were examined using physicochemical parameters. Fresh stingless bee honey was stored at 4, 30, and 45 °C for 6 and 12 months. The results show that the moisture, ash, and electrical conductivity change little over time and temperature storag...

The prevalence of Tropilaelaps mercedesae and Varroa destructor in concurrently infested A. mellifera colonies in Thailand was monitored. We also assessed the fecundity of T. mercedesae and V. destructor in naturally infested brood and in brood cells deliberately infested with both mite genera. Results showed that the natural co-infestation of an i...

Over the past decades international programmes to assist in the development of beekeeping have abounded. Funding has come from a wide variety of sources both public and private. (As an aside I was at first tempted to title this editorial ‘Aid and acronyms’ due to the breadth of sources that have provided fiscal support for beekeeping development.)

South East Asia, and Thailand in particular, is seeing the emergence of a new kind of beekeeping industry. More than five hundred species of stingless bees are to be found throughout the tropics. In Thailand stingless bees are collectively known in the vernacular as “channarong”, which is etymologically derived from “the factory that makes cerumen....

The repeated evolution of extreme polyandry in advanced social insects is exceptional and its explanation has attracted significant attention. However, most reported estimates of the number of matings are derived from limited sampling. Temporal and geographic variation in mating behavior of social insects has not been sufficiently studied. Worker o...

The architecture of the comb structure of the giant honeybee Apis dorsata was examined, including cell sizes, comb area, comb volume, and gravimetric capacity. Regardless of comb area, the partitioning of comb between brood rearing and food storage centered around 83% of the comb surface being used for brood production. The potential gravimetric ca...

Behavioral responses of Apis cerana, Apis dorsata, and Apis mellifera to the ectoparasitic mite, Tropilaelaps mercedesae, were compared using two laboratory bioassays: cohorts of 50 caged worker bees and individual-caged worker bees, all of unknown ages. For the group bioassays, ten T. mercedesae were placed on the bodies of bees in each cohort. Af...

The world’s most extensive markets for pollination services are those for honey bee pollination in the United States. These markets play important roles in coordinating the behavior of migratory beekeepers, who both produce honey and provide substitutes for ecosystem pollination services. We analyze the economic forces that drive migratory beekeepi...

We observed that the distribution of the parasitic brood mite Tropilaelaps clareae Delfinado and Baker on the giant honeybee, Apis dorsata F., in northern Thailand, is aggregated and fits a negative binomial distribution if parasite-associated host mortality is presumed. Because no brood mortality was directly observed, we propose to account for th...

Mating flight records are presented for males (drones) of the Asian dwarf honeybee species Apis florea. These include observations on longevity, mortality and inclusive flight records for a cohort of known-aged males. Averages for flight performance show the flights/lifetime to be 15.3 ($\pm $ 11.8 SD); the number of flight days, 9.1 ($\pm $ 6.5 SD...

In northern Thailand the pollen species resources for the nocturnally foraging carpenter bee Xylocopa (Nyctomelitta) tranquebarica (F.) were found to be primarily indigenous tree species. The presence of anthropogenic (exotic) species capable of providing pollen was also evident. X. (N.) tranquebarica displays polylecty in its pollen foraging with...

Pollination by honeybees plays an important role in modern agriculture. Some crops are greatly dependent on honeybees (almonds, apples, avocados, blueberries, and cherries are examples) while the yields and quality of other crops are significantly enhanced by honeybee pollination. The importance of understanding pollination markets has increased re...

The nocturnal flight of Xylocopa (Nyctomelitta) tranquebarica was investigated in northern Thailand. X. (N.) tranquebarica females utilize crepuscular and matinal periods for foraging. Additionally, nocturnal flights, in the presence moonlight, also occur. Flight during periods of total darkness was very rare and is considered aberrant. Foraging fl...

Seven species of honey bees are presently recognized in the genus Apis, of which four are indigenous to Thailand with the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) as an exotic fifth species. The honey bees native to Thailand include the Asian hive bee, Apis cerana; the little or dwarf honey bee, Apis florea; the small honey bee, Apis andreniformis; and...

We tested a population dynamics model that predicts that swarming of honey bees, Apis mellifera L., is a regulatory process of tracheal mites, Acampis woodi (Rennie), parasitism. If the model is correct, then feral colonies that are free to swarm should have fewer numbers of infested worker bees, infested workers should have fewer numbers of mites,...

Based on population dynamics, tracheal mite (Acarapis woodi) parasitism of colonies of honey bees (Apis mellifera) appears to be, potentially at least, regulatory and stable. Empirical and theoretical considerations suggest, however, that intracolony population dynamics of mite-honey bee worker seem to be unstable in managed situations where honey...

An examination of a commercial honey-bee apiary for theAcarapis species complex revealed the following: queens were essentially free fromAcarapis parasitism colonies were more frequently infested withA. dorsalis andA. woodi thanA. externus; individual worker-bee hosts were rarely parasitized by more than oneAcarapis species. Observed sex ratios, fo...

As a result of the Chernobyl accident on April 25, 1986, possible radioactive contamination of honey bees and cheese sampled in several areas of the United States were measured. Of bees collected in May and June of 1986 in both Oregon and New York, only those from Oregon showed detectable levels of cesium-134 (), a radionuclide which would have ori...

A quantification of the number of adult worker Apis mellifera L. found on combs of standard sizes at full holding capacity is reported. Estimating the holding capacity of combs can assist in evaluating honey-bee colonies for pollination capabilities and also for honey-production potentials.

A procedure is described for estimating numbers of capped brood cells by double sampling combined with linear regression. A complete census of capped brood cells is better than an estimate, provided it is possible to count all brood cells directly or from photographs of brood frames. The double sampling technique, however, has the advantage of enab...

The first report on Varroa jacobsoni in Bee World was published in 1967 (pages 119–121), and an article by P. Akratanakul and M. Burgett appeared in 1975 entitled ‘Varroa jacobsoni: a prospective pest of honeybees in many parts of the world’. The spread of Varroa into a number of countries occurred from 1977 onwards.As early as 1962 (pages 81–82) A...

Foraging honey bees (Apis mellifera L.), exposed to birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus L.) bloom treated with microencapsulated methyl parathion, continued to display pollen and midgut microcapsule contamination up to 9 days postspray. Nearly 10% of all pollen storage cells examined in combs taken from honey bee colonies exposed to the treated a...

Syrphids (order Diptera, family Syrphidae) were numerically the dominant visitors on umbels of flowering parsley. Honeybees were the next most numerous, and their numbers increased throughout the bloom period, while the syrphids showed a large population decline prior to mid-bloom. Seed yields were nearly 3 times as great with open pollination as w...

File scanned at 300 ppi (256 Grayscale) using ScanAll PRO 1.8.1 on a Fi-6670 in PDF format. CVista PdfCompressor 4.0 was used for pdf compression and textual OCR.

The hepatotoxic alkaloids known to occur in tansy ragwort (Senecio jacobaea L.) are also present in honey produced from the nectar of this species. These alkaloids, which inclued senecionine, seneciphylline, jacoline, jaconine, jacobine, and jacozine, are potentially carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic and may pose health hazards to the human...

A six-year study of natural swarming in Ithaca, NY, USA, showed a bimodal distribution for date of swarm emergence, with a peak during the first two weeks in June and a lesser peak during the last week in August and the first week in September. The mean swarm size for 126 swarms was 1·53 kg (11 800 bees). The mean weight of 116 swarm queens was 195...

The tachinid species Ormia dominicana, Ormia lineifrons, and Sitophaga aurigera were observed to aggregate atop 2 towers in central Florida shortly after sunset. The activity period for each species was brief, and that of O. dominicana was temporally separated from that of S. aurigera. Aggregations occasionally exceeded 100 individuals of a species...

The biology of the mite Euvarroa sinhai Delfinado and Baker was investigated. It is a parasite of drone brood of Apis florea. The developmental stages are egg, protonymph, deutonymph and sexual adult. The mite is reported for the first time from Thailand.

A previously undescribed system of differential food storage in replete forms of the honey ant, Myrmecocystus mexicanus Wesmael, is reported. Certain repletes store lipid as glycerol and cholesterol esters associated with sugar solutions containing glucose, fructose, and maltose.

The previously suggested protection from microbial attack of ripening nectar by the addition of glucose oxidase by the common honey bee, Apis mellifera L., has been found to occur in 9 other eusocial Hymenoptera from 3 superfamilies. The antibacterial effect results from the accumulation of hydrogen peroxide produced by the enzyme during ripening o...

The mating flight behavior of drone honey bees from swarm clusters is compared to drone mating flight behavior from colony situations. Duration of flight from swarms and colony situations is similar. Swarm drones appear to take as many flights/day but spend less time between flights than colony drones.

Colony division (swarming) is a natural method of reproduction in honey bees, Apis mellifera L. It also represents a potential economic loss for beekeepers, and management practices have been devised to reduce its incidence. Simpson (1957) estimated that in an average year 10-40% of the colonies in a commercial apiary will swarm if left unattended.

Male Apis mellifera L. (drones) accompanying reproductive swarms were analyzed for honey stomach contents to determine if they engorge honey prior to or during swarming. No evidence for engorgement was found. A diurnal feeding rhythm in drones was observed in nonswarming colonies.

M eadowfoam (Limnanthes alba Hartw. ex Benth. ssp. alba, Limnanthaceae) is an oilseed crop that requires insect (prima-rily honey bee) pollination to set seed. Effective honey bee management will increase meadowfoam yields, which will improve the economic competitiveness of this new resource for Oregon. The purposes of this publication are: • To re...

Declared out of print July 2010 In the United States it is estimated that managed honey bee colonies are annually responsible for the pollination of agricultural crops valued between $4 and $8 billion. Honey bees are accurately described as indispensable pollinators.

File scanned at 300 ppi (256 Grayscale) using ScanAll PRO 1.8.1 on a Fi-6670 in PDF format. CVista PdfCompressor 4.0 was used for pdf compression and textual OCR.

File scanned at 300 ppi (256 Grayscale) using ScanAll PRO 1.8.1 on a Fi-6670 in PDF format. CVista PdfCompressor 4.0 was used for pdf compression and textual OCR.

The bee mites Varroa jacobsoni Oudemaris and Euvarroa sinhai Delfinado and Baker (Family Varroidae) are reported for the first time from Thailand. V. jacobsoni was found parasitizing colonies of Apis cerana indica F. and A. mellifera L., E. sinhai was observed in association with drones of A. florea F. The biology of both mite species was investiga...