- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So you want to be a full-time commercial beekeeper and keep 1,000 colonies or more.
Perhaps you want to sell honey and beeswax, rent your bees for commercial crop pollination, rear queen bees, or sell bulk bees.
The newly published second edition of the Small Farm Handbook, which draws on the knowledge of 32 experts from the University of California, contains a wealth of information. The chapter, "Raising Animals," covers beekeeping as a business.
“Costs to start a beekeeping business are not particularly high compared to many small businesses, and a well-planned and managed operation can be profitable,” writes
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The amount of California farmland being cultivated using conservation tillage techniques is continuing to expand, according to a survey by California’s Conservation Agriculture Systems Institute (CASI).
The survey tallies silage and grain corn; small grains for hay, silage and grain; tomatoes, cotton, dry beans, and melons managed as no-till, strip-till, ridge-till and mulch-till – which leave at least 30 percent of residue from the previous crops on the soil surface – in the nine-county Central Valley region. In 2010, such conservation tillage accounted for about 14 percent of the crops’ total acreage, an increase from about 10 percent in 2008. The survey also found that minimum tillage practices – which reduce the overall...
- Author: Anne Lombardo
A University of California wildlife research team working in the Sierra Nevada near Oakhurst, Calif., is asking the public to donate clean, gently used socks for research on a rare weasel called the Pacific fisher. The team is part of the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project (SNAMP), which is examining the effects of forest thinning, as currently done by the U.S. Forest Service, on the health of local wildlife, the forest and water resources. The U.S. Forest Service implements these treatments out of concern for excessive fire risk. Eighty years of fire suppression, reductions in logging and drought conditions have left the forest increasingly overcrowded and excessively...
- Author: Ann King Filmer
Researchers are hoping a project that includes capturing and tracking deer will reduce roadkill on Interstate 280, outside San Francisco.
UC Davis researchers and state Department of Fish and Game officials are capturing deer between Dec. 2 and Dec. 15 along a stretch of the freeway from Millbrae to Woodside, said Fraser Shilling (video clip), head of the research project and co-director of the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis.
Using tranquilizer darts fired from a rifle, or "clover traps" (large netting enclosures), about 15 deer are expected to be captured. Researchers plan to capture another 30 deer by the time the project is completed in May...
- Author: Janet L. White
Although 10 years have passed since the first regulatory approval of genetically engineered, herbicide-tolerant rice, no transgenic rice is grown commercially, either in California or nationwide.
In contrast, genetically modified crops such as soy, corn and cotton have received widespread adoption by U.S. farmers.
Debate continues over whether genetically modified rice would be a plus or minus for the environment. While herbicide-tolerant varieties could reduce herbicide applications overall — they could also contribute to herbicide resistance in weedy rice.
For the time being, however, market considerations have trumped the debate over environmental costs and benefits.
A recent
