Secrets of bee hotels Saturday, August 8, 2015 Urbanites of all sorts have taken to building "bee hotels" for the "pollinator" bees that don't produce honey but, as Maclean's notes in its June 1 issue, not all is going well with these artificial nesting sites. Researchers tracked 200 bee hotels in Toronto over three years and found that wasps occupied three quarters of them. The advice? Put the bee hotel where a northeast sun hits it. Bees like warmth in the morning. More than four storeys high and introduced bees abandon them. Ground level is better. Make the holes into the rooms big enough for larger females. Furthermore, parasites resulted in heavy losses and no solutions were offered. Another researcher told Maclean's the problem may be with the city itself. It's just not conducive to bees and he says the same rules don't apply in orchards. "At their worst, bee hotels may act as population sinks for bees through facilitating the increase of parasites and diseases as a result of functional responses to unnaturally high nest densities and nesting site entrances set up in two-dimensions rather than in the more three dimensional arrangement found in nature." The study's authors don't advocate quitting, just doing more research on what does work. "We advocate for due diligence on the part of retailers and promoters of bee hotels to avoid 'bee-washing' . . . as applied to potentially misleading claims for augmentation of native and wild bee populations." The study on bee hotels can be found at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0122126 BF Soil Mapping: has electrical conductivity technology's time finally come? Thai chicken in Canada?
Free Tools to Power Up Your Farm’s Digital Life in Canada Wednesday, October 22, 2025 By Farms.com Based on an Article on SmallFarmCanada.ca by Jeff Buell For many Canadian farm families, the internet has become as vital as a tractor or combine. It is how producers manage precision planting, monitor commodity prices, check weather forecasts, pay bills and stay... Read this article online
Precision Harvesting with HeadSight and TrueSight Tuesday, October 21, 2025 Modern harvesting relies heavily on precision and smart technology, and new systems for head height control and steering are making sure you are not leaving bushels in the field. These innovations ensure efficient crop collection, protect equipment, and reduce operator fatigue during... Read this article online
Remembering Ralph Winfield: Beloved Better Farming Columnist Tuesday, October 21, 2025 Ontario's farming community is mourning the loss of longtime agricultural writerRalph Gordon Winfieldof Glanworth, who passed away peacefully at St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital on Oct. 17, 2025, at the age of 85. Ralph’s name has been closely tied to Better Farming since 1999. His... Read this article online
Case IH FieldOps Brings Smart Connectivity to Modern Farming Friday, October 17, 2025 that FieldOps operates on desktops through a web interface and on mobile devices through an app compatible with iPhone, Android, or iPad. This flexibility allows farmers to access critical machine and field information anytime, anywhere. One of the most significant upgrades to... Read this article online
New Holland Marks 50 Years of Twin Rotor Innovation Friday, October 17, 2025 New Holland is celebrating 50 years of leadership in twin rotor harvesting technology, a milestone that began with the introduction of the TR70 combine in 1975. This machine transformed agriculture by bringing the world the concept of twin rotor threshing and... Read this article online