Bee News
Bee News 2
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March 15 Scientists deliver new ten step plan to reform the Common Agricultural Policy to fight the biodiversity and climate crises Scientists from all EU countries and beyond say that the European Commission’s proposal for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2020 must be ‘drastically improved’ in order to stop harming the environment. They propose ten urgent actions to reform the CAP for long-term food security, biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation. If adopted, evidence-based, planet-friendly farming would finally begin to reverse the taxpayer-funded destruction of nature. The study is available here |
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March 15 The revised methods from the Trump administration, requested by the pesticide industry, overlook and ignore many of the common ways that protected species are harmed and killed by pesticides. For example, they fail to take into account downstream impacts of pesticides that runoff into streams and rivers or the loss of insect pollinators that endangered plants depend upon. |
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March 13 Honeybees’ brains have nearly 1 million neurons — only a fraction of what mammals have, but a complex brain for an insect that allows them to make sophisticated calculations and decisions we long thought impossible. |
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March 12 The earliest recorded evidence dates from 7000BC, where archaeologists discovered pottery vessels from the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Henan province, China that contained the chemical signatures of honey, rice and compounds normally associated with the process of fermentation. |
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March 5 To find out why DWV has this effect on bees, researchers with the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) collaborated with the University of Illinois and Washington State University. |
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March 3 |
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Feb 29 Bees play a crucial role in the nation’s multi-billion dollar horticulture industry, pollinating not just almonds but fruit, including apples, pears and cherries. Australia is the world’s second-largest producer of almonds and growers are already grappling with years of drought. The fires destroyed about 6,000 hives in New South Wales state alone, according to NSW Apiarists Association President Stephen Targett, with other hives experiencing stock losses as bees perished or were lost in thick smoke. |
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Feb 26 Jue, a beekeeper from Xinjiang in northwest China, said he has not slept for days, worrying about his 300 beehives that are stuck in wooden boxes about 200 miles from where he has been confined due to the curbs. “I am really anxious,” said Jue, who wanted to be identified only by his family name. “If all my bees die, I will lose my entire year’s income,” the 55-year-old nomadic beekeeper added. |
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Feb 21 Poinar’s work also showed that the bee – which he named Discoscapa apicula – belonged to a new family, genus, and species. His findings were published in the January 29, 2020, issue of BioOne Complete. |
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Feb 21 As awareness increases about native bee death, some companies are taking advantage of public concern by touting their products as bee-friendly or making other claims. This marketing strategy, called bee-washing by critics, uses the plight of bees to mislead consumers. While many people are worried about honey bees, it’s also important to understand the jeopardy that native bees face. |
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Feb 21 The data from Phillips McDougall, the leading agribusiness analysts, are from buyer surveys focused on the most popular products in the 43 nations that buy the most pesticides. It was obtained and analysed by Unearthed, a journalism group funded by Greenpeace UK, and the Swiss NGO Public Eye. |
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Feb 18 A booming demand for honeybees for pollination drew Potts, owner of Pottsy’s Pollination in Oregon, to load 400 hives of his bees on trucks and drive them down to California’s agricultural heartland last month. He unloaded them to a holding area just outside Yuba City and returned just a few days later to find 92 hives had been whisked away by thieves. |
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Feb 18 But the honey bees’ tormentors are trying to help them: their ordeal is a controlled experiment that reveals how high wind speeds significantly reduce the efficiency of their foraging |
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Feb 13 A group of US biologists have now decoded the meaning of over 1,500 of these jigs, providing conservation groups trying to boost the imperiled species' population with new insights into their dietary preferences. "The thing I think is the most interesting about bees is their communication," Morgan Carr-Markell, a PhD student at the University of Minnesota and the lead author of a new study published in the journal PLOS One, told AFP. |
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Feb 9 Honeyland is the first film to compete for both the best documentary award and best international feature film. The documentary's success is even more remarkable because it started almost accidentally. |
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Feb 9 These destructive pests are responsible for heavy economic losses, caused by their infestation of beehives in almost every corner of the globe. But how did this problem start, what does this pest do, and what does the future look like for honey bees? These questions are answered in detail in a new article on the biology and management of Varroa mites, published in January in the open-access Journal of Integrated pest Management. |
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Feb 7 |
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Feb 7 A study suggests the likelihood of a bumblebee population surviving in any given place has declined by 30% in the course of a single human generation. The researchers say the rates of decline appear to be “consistent with a mass extinction”. |
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Feb 7 There are many remedies made out of honey to ease the raspy throat, especially for children. A very popular remedy is paring up the honey with another healthy ingredient: lemons! Putting a few lemon slices into a cup of honey not only helps with the throat but with other symptoms of the common cold as well. |
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Feb 6 This Statement aims to be a trusted source for authorities, traders, supermarkets, retailers, manufacturers, consumers, and other stakeholders of the honey trade chain to ensure they stay updated with the current concepts and new testing developments regarding honey purity and authenticity. It is also a guide to promote best practices for the prevention of honey fraud and all of its insidious negative side effects on bees, beekeepers, crop pollination, and food security. |
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Feb 5 Canberra Region Beekeepers president Dermot Asis Sha'Non said an apiarist was trying to complete necessary hive checks on Wednesday January 22 when they accidentally started the fire |
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Feb 5 "After a single exposure to some chemicals—xenobiotics—the gut microbiome can be permanently affected," says senior study author Robert Brucker of Harvard University. "Exposure can have lasting changes to future generations even after an exposure risk is eliminated." |
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Feb 3 |
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Feb 2 Dandelions – which will start flowering in the UK this month – provide a valuable food source for early pollinators coming out of hibernation, including solitary bees, honey bees and hoverflies. Each dandelion head contains up to 100 individual flowers, known as florets, which contain nectar and pollen. There are 240 species of dandelion in the UK. |
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Feb 2 |
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Feb 2 According to the BBC, CCTV footage from the early morning hours of January 8 shows the suspects breaking onto the grounds of Wisbech Castle, which is believed to have first been built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century; the structure that stands today dates back to the late 1700s. The intruders lifted the lids off the hives, kicked them, and then attacked the bees inside with sticks. |
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June 9 |
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June 7 But last month, his apiary was wiped out. He found out through the grapevine that a nearby farm had been applying pyrethroids to crops overnight. The chemical is legal for use in Russia, but can have devastating consequences if it’s misapplied. Had the farmers given Gusak a warning, he could have taken action to shield his hives from the pesticide. But this didn’t happen. |
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June 2 Allogroomer bees also appear to have stronger immune systems, possibly enabling them to withstand their higher risk of infection, according to the findings published in Scientific Reports. Ectoparasites (parasites that live on the outside of a host's body, such as mites) are a growing threat to honeybees worldwide, so the researchers say that supporting allogrooming behavior might be an effective pest control strategy. |
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May 27 |
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May 23 The review is published in the journal Toxicological Sciences. |
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May 23 |
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May 21 Further afield, twelve wild bee species within Europe are classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as critically endangered. A further 52 are listed as endangered Their populations are threatened by a number of factors including habitat loss due to agriculture and farming, urban and suburban development, pesticides, climate change, and disease. |
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May 20 However, in modern times intensive agriculture and monocultures are becoming widespread. More and more agricultural land is planted with monocultures, which are constantly under attack by pests and diseases. Our ancestors fought against this with natural methods, using crop rotation to avoid such troubles. |
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May 17 The Commission, the EU executive, wants to commit the European Union to a halving of the use of chemical and “high-risk” pesticides by 2030, a draft document seen by Reuters and set to be published on May 20 showed. |
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May 17 Shrinking wilderness and the proliferation of pesticides have caused many to justifiably worry about the plight of bees, which are conspicuous and rightly appreciated daytime pollinators. But because most moths sip nectar under the cover of darkness, their contributions mostly fly under the radar, and as a result they’re studied less and offered fewer protections. |
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May 12 |
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May 5 Like many other businesses Doug's trade was already decimated by the coronavirus pandemic, reducing his takings by at least half according to his calculations. But the father-of-one received another cruel blow when 18 of his hives, on the South Downs behind Lyons Farm Retail Park in Worthing, were mindlessly destroyed, costing him thousands of pounds in lost products, equipment and the lives of around 630,000 bees. |
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May 2 Chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV) was only recorded in Lincolnshire in 2007. A decade later, it was found in 39 of 47 English counties and six of eight Welsh counties, according to data collected from visits to more than 24,000 beekeepers. As well as struggling to fly, the afflicted bees develop shiny, hairless abdomens. Piles of dead individuals are found outside hives with whole colonies frequently wiped out by the disease. |
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April 29 Heat can kill sperm cells across the animal kingdom, yet there are few ways to monitor the impact of heat on pollinators like honey bees, who are vital to ecosystems and agriculture around the world. |
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April 28 The Scottish Bee Company’s heather honey is said to contain up to 10 times more of the essential micro-nutrients, manganese, compared to 200 of its global rivals making it among the world’s top food products containing manganese. Researchers from Fera Science Limited teamed up with the Edinburgh-based Scottish Bee Company earlier this month to investigate the nutritional content of its honey, which is produced in the Lothians, Dumfriesshire, Stirlingshire, Fife and Aberdeenshire. |
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April 24 |
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April 23 |
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April 18 A collaborative study by Clemson scientist Matthew Koski suggests that pollen color can evolve independently from flower traits, and that plant species maintain both light and dark pollen because each offers distinct survival advantages. Koski's research is featured as the cover story of the April issue of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology and is titled "Pollen colour morphs take different paths to fitness." Andrea Berardi of the University of Bern in Switzerland and Laura Galloway of the University of Virginia were Koski's co-authors. |
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April 8 Erratic rainfall and mass deforestation have severely affected the bloom of the Ziziphus mauritiana or beri tree — the main food source for the honey bee population — resulting in a decline in honey production. |
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April 8 There are some incredible facts in nature. One of them seems to be Jinandromorphism. Jinandromorphic creatures are not bisexual. These creatures are known for having a different situation than accommodating the genitals of both sexes. In other words, both halves of their bodies have different genders. |
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March 21 “The task of undertaking is fascinating” and the new work is “pretty cool,” says Jenny Jandt, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Otago, Dunedin, who was not involved with the study. |
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March 20 Ron Hoskins has spent the past 24 years researching the varroa mite, which has killed millions of bees worldwide. He said he was "devastated" to find his research set-up near Swindon had been burned to the ground. "Whoever did this must have stunk of smoke and been stung by bees so I hope someone will report them," he said. |
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March 16 |
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March 15 But this year was different, as the province of nearly 60 million people was locked down at the end of January because of the new coronavirus. Wu and his friends, who were also stuck in Yunnan, started calling the local authorities, asking to be allowed to return to Hubei from March 1. |