Bee News
Bee News 4
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Aug 17 Britain’s eight types of ‘social’ wasps – and 230 anti-social ones ... There are eight British members of the Vespidae family that are social wasps (many humans would say they’re all anti-social) – that eight includes the formidable hornet. In addition, we have 230 related types of solitary wasp, including the potter, mason and redoubtable beewolf. Social wasps inhabit colonies and are sometimes known as ‘jaspers’ (from vespa). They will be at their peak activity in mid-to-late August. |
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Aug 16 It was hoped that sulfoxaflor would provide an alternative to neonicotinoids, which have been shown to drastically reduce bee numbers, and is currently under review for licencing in Britain. But researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London found exposure to the new pesticide reduced both the size of bumblebee colonies and the number of offspring produced by 54 per cent. |
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Aug 16 When a queen suddenly dies, workers must select a group of larvae to raise as emergency queens, so the question arises whether workers tend to select larvae of their own subfamily over those of others, thus promoting their own genes at the expense of those from other subfamilies. |
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Aug 12 That’s the conclusion of our study, the first systematic examination of pollen contained within Australian honey. We collaborated with two major honey retailers to survey the pollen content of a large number of unprocessed honey samples. We found that a unique mix of native flora gives Australian honey a distinctive pollen signature. |
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Aug 11 Despite a world population of between 80 million and 100 million domesticated hives, each containing 10,000 to 60,000 bees, numbers are dwindling dramatically: one-third of the UK’s bee population has disappeared over the past decade and 24 per cent of Europe’s bumblebees are now threatened with extinction. |
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Aug 08 A study has found that the behaviour of invasive plants changes over time – meaning plants of the same species act differently if they arrive in their new environment at separate times. Scientists studied the characteristics of monkeyflowers (Mimulus guttatus), which first arrived in the UK from North America 200 years ago. They compared the behaviour of monkeyflowers long-established in Scotland with those introduced recently for the purposes of the experiment. |
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Aug 04 The city's proud emblem has had a colourful makeover - 101 of them to be exact - as part of the Bee in the City trail. The public art spectacle will see brightly painted honeybee sculptures pop up all over the city and surrounding suburbs this summer for visitors to admire, each featuring a unique design created by local artists and community groups. |
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Aug 04 Honeybees fan their wings to cool down their hives when temperatures rise, but a new study shows that an individual honeybee's fanning behavior influences individual and group fanning behavior in hive-mates. |
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Aug 04 This abrupt change in policy, announced via a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service internal memorandum, revokes the agency’s 2014 policy prohibiting the use of toxic “neonic” insecticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on refuges. The 2014 ban was promulgated in response to a series of lawsuits challenging the use of genetically modified seed and broad-scale application of toxic pesticides on refuges for violating environmental laws. |
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Aug 03 A team of researchers including three graduate students at the University of Arizona discovered that while worker bees and queens can be genetically identical, their vastly different lifespans appear to be connected to different microbes living in their guts. |
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Aug 03 Here’s how the Ceropegia flowers work, and it’s quite complicated. Spiders and other insect predators often trap and eat honeybees, and there are some flies that love to eat these honeybees, too. The flies are able to smell the scent of the dying honeybees, and congregate to feed off the bees even as the predators are eating them. Since they are, in this sense, robbing the predators, they are called “kleptoparasites”, that is, those that live off other creatures by stealing their food. |
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Aug 03 The authors of the study say it is the first of its kind to highlight the risk to bees in urban areas posed by garden use of pesticides. The study sampled pollen and nectar from bumblebee colonies in rural and peri-urban habitats in three UK regions–Stirlingshire, Hertfordshire, and Sussex over three years. |
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Aug 01 The Manchester Park Ale was the brainchild of the Brew Wild Manchester project, which aims to connect bee keepers, brewers and gardeners. Profits from sales of the beer are donated to the Manchester and District Beekeepers Association, with the aim to raise awareness of bee-keeping in the region. |
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July 30 This is the download version of Busy Bee and the Endangered Meadow available as a pdf file. The story has a series of line drawings ideal to be coloured in. It can be read on a PC/MAC or tablet, or partially or fully printed. The suggested age range is 4-8 years. |
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July 30 Beekeeping slang can be confusing for new beekeepers so here it is for queen cell cups versus queen cells. When empty, a queen cell cup is called just that. When containing an egg, mostly I hear beekeepers still call the structure a queen cell cup (not a queen cell). The discussion occurs mostly with swarming, a situation when the bees may remove the eggs from the queen cell cups, which would delay swarming. When a larva is in the structure, then it is called a queen cell |
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July 26 The Eagle Point solar farm outside Medford is the largest “solar apiary” in the country, incorporating designs that benefit pollinators. It’s home to 48 bee colonies interspersed among solar panels, which are generating enough energy to power more than 2,100 homes annually. |
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July 23 Mr Packham is visiting Lakenheath Fen this weekend as part of a “bioblitz” campaign to assess wildlife found in 50 spots around the country. He said farmland birds, butterflies and bees have all suffered significant declines in numbers due to pesticides, while wildflower meadows have largely vanished from the countryside. |
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July 23 A researcher from Colorado who specializes in insect interactions with hemp plants says in places where there are few other flowing pants, hemp cultivation could be a real boon for bee populations. "I mean, it's just shocking how valuable hemp is as a pollen resource for all kinds of bees," Dr. Whitney Cranshaw, an entomologist with the Colorado State University College of Agricultural Studies told Civilized. But some plants are more useful than others for bee populations. |
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July 21 Pollinators come in all shapes and sizes: butterflies, beetles, birds, bats and even humans. The only job requirement is that they transfer pollen from stamen to pistil (a flowering plant’s male and female organs). As pollinators visit flowers to drink nectar or feed on pollen, they move pollen from flower to flower and help plants reproduce. Pollination is an ecological service — a role an organism plays in its ecosystem that is essential to human life |
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July 20 They say that some member states are using the “emergency” claim to bypass the ban, while EFSA contends that it is “misleading” to mix emergency authorisations with the decision for a complete ban. |
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July 20
This is based on official government statistics. |
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July 19 Between 1800 and 1960, the number of individual birds had declined by just 15% , says Berthold - but from 1960 to 2018 bird populations crashed by a massive 65%. "Today, we have just 20% of birds we had 200 years ago - and 55% of all species are seriously threatened." Only a few species have thrived alongside humans, such as the greylag geese, crows and magpies. |
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July 17 To measure exposure to pesticides in these avian pollinators, investigators made novel use of cloacal fluid and fecal pellets from hummingbirds living near blueberry fields in British Columbia. They also collected bumble bees native to Canada, and their pollen, and blueberry leaves and flowers from within conventionally sprayed and organic blueberry farms. |
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July 10 The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) is asking amateur and professional beekeepers across Scotland to send in samples for its new national honey monitoring scheme. It will comprehensively test honey from around the UK. The CEH scientists will use these techniques to identify the types of pollen and pesticide residues present in the honey samples, as well as some of the diseases bees are exposed to. Dear **** Thanks for visiting the Honey Monitoring Scheme website. Regarding your query – the honey sample packs will be delivered to you, containing within them a freepost envelope addressed to our site at CEH Wallingford (see below). Once you have signed up to the scheme online and submitted your online questionnaire, this will trigger the process of us sending out the honey pack to you. I hope this helps - Please also check our FAQ page for wider information https://honey-monitoring.ac.uk/taking-part/faq Ujala Syed |
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July 10 Tests on four rivers in the county revealed 34 pesticides in total, as well as nine antimicrobials and veterinary drugs. Scientists said they were surprised and concerned by the results, and warned there would be harmful effects for plants and wildlife The tests were carried out using a high-quality new technique created by scientists in Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter. |
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July 10 From 9-15 July, London’s world-famous shopping destination will be renamed ‘Carnabee Street’ and transformed into a hive of activity in support of the campaign. Come down to enjoy a host of educational and fun games, installations and talks. |
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July 09 Depending on environmental conditions which dictate the effectiveness of bees, the company has demonstrated an effective increase of 25% to 60% pollination set ( cherries and almonds). It means that in cold weather, and during bee shortages there’s a viable alternative to dependency on insect pollination. |
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July 08 The £2.15 million deal to buy 186 hectares (460 acres) of land in the Peak District – an area equivalent to 260 football pitches – is the biggest farmland acquisition by the Trust since it bought Trevose Head in Cornwall in 2016. The 80 hectares (198 acres) of land at High Fields at Stoney Middleton and the 106-hectare (262-acre) farm at Greensides near Buxton are home to “unusually large areas of hay meadows and flower rich grassland”. |
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July 05 One in 10 did not know where honey came from and one in four have not seen a caterpillar in over a year. And 17% of children in the UK have not been to a park or forest in the last 12 months. Youngsters are better at identifying Pokémon characters than British wildlife despite a £10million government pledge to get them closer to nature. |
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July 05 The Bee in the City trail will place eye-catching fibreglass sculptures of the insects at key landmarks around the city centre and surrounding suburbs throughout this summer. More than 100 huge honeybees will be dotted around the public art trail, each with its own colourful design created by local artists, along with colonies of mini bees designed by school children, youth groups and adult creative groups. |
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July 05 I went home pleased to have met such a minutely pretty wild flower. But a few days later, the kindly local botanist got in touch again, distraught. The local council had strimmed the verge where the autumn squills grew, and they were no more. He had even told them that they should leave this patch of grass until later in the year so that the tiny squills could set seed, but someone had cut them down all the same. |
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July 05 The U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded study is published in the journal Scientific Reports and is the result of a research collaboration between entomologists at Oregon State University and North Carolina State University. This is the first study that has thoroughly investigated the role of nutritional state of larvae in their selection for queen rearing. |
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July 05 Scientists from the University of Exeter attached tiny tags to Asian hornets, then used a tracking device to follow them to their nests; the first time this has been achieved. They tested the technique in southern France and Jersey—where Asian hornets are well established—and the tags led researchers to five previously undiscovered nests. |
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June 29 Samuel Ramsey, a doctoral candidate in entomology, explains his dissertation on Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that feeds on honey bees |
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June 29 It felt as disorienting as forgetting my pin number. I stared at the caterpillar, unable to attach a name to it. I don’t think my mental powers are fading: I still possess an eerie capacity to recall facts and figures and memorise long screeds of text. This is a specific loss. As a child and young adult, I delighted in being able to identify almost any wild plant or animal. And now it has gone. This ability has shrivelled from disuse: I can no longer identify them because I can no longer find them. |
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June 28 One way to get free bees is to entice swarms into your garden. I set up a bait hive which has been successful in attracting some of our most illustrious insect pollinators and honey makers into my apiary. |
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June 28 Hundreds of the insects were set loose when efforts to move a hive in Burghfield, Berkshire "went wrong". A note put up near the village hall says: "A hive broke open...we are very sorry if you got stung." A bee expert said the insects "would have felt under attack" and were protecting their home. |
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June 28 This is according to an announcement of winter losses from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS). |
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June 24 Setting billions of years of evolution of the planet aside, industry's solution to a problem that they to a great measure created in the first place, are robotic bees made from plastic and titanium programmed to pollinate genetically engineered crops. |
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June 24 Dave Goulson: Insects are the dominant lifeform on the planet. We've named well over a million species of insects, and there could be 5 or 10 million. As for the number of individuals, it's safe to say that there are many more insects than anything else (excluding microorganisms like bacteria). |
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June 21 "Populations of bees around the world are declining, and viruses are known to contribute to these declines," said David Galbraith, research scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb and a recent Penn State graduate. "Despite the importance of bees as pollinators of flowering plants in agricultural and natural landscapes and the importance of viruses to bee health, our understanding of bee viruses is surprisingly limited." |
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June 20 This will be the first study of its kind to incorporate the knowledge and experience of local beekeeping, farming organisations and academic researchers - including the EU RefLab for bee health - and will provide the first comprehensive pan-European assessment of the exposure hazard of chemicals. |
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June 20 "The blue fluorescence just triggered a crazy response in the bees, told them they must go to it," said the study's corresponding author, Oksana Ostroverkhova. "It's not just their vision, it's something behavioral that drives them." |
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June 18 J Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Syngenta, also said the technologies to produce more food from less land are vital in halting climate change, but that better targeting will mean farmers around the world will use less pesticide in future. |
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June 14 Flowers have lots of different patterns on their surfaces that help to guide bees and other pollinators towards the flower's nectar, speeding up pollination. These patterns include visual signals like lines pointing to the centre of the flower, or colour differences. |
The pollination of cultivated plants
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June 13 This volume is the first of two “compendiums for practitioners”, sharing expert knowledge on all dimensions of crop pollination in both temperate and tropical zones. The focus in this first volume is on applied crop and system-specific pollination. The focus in this second volume is on management, study and research tools and techniques. |
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June 13 “Nature reserves are becoming natural art installations,” he said. “It’s just like looking at your favourite Constable or Rothko. We go there, muse over it, and feel good because we’ve seen a bittern or some avocets or orchids. But on the journey home there’s nothing – only wood pigeons and non-native pheasants and dead badgers on the side of the road. |