Beekeeping news 4

Bee News 4

MEPs block member states’ move to weaken bee protection from pesticides

Oct

MEPs sent the Commission back to the drawing board after member states watered down draft measures to protect bees.
The European Commission’s draft proposal was intended to incorporate into EU law the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) 2013 guidance to cut the use of pesticides that harm bees. The guidance indicated how pesticides should be tested, in order to protect bees from both acute and chronic exposure. Pesticides would remain available on the market only if they pass these new tests

From biomedicine to buzz pollination: why we need a plan 'bee'

Oct

As pollinators, bees are responsible for many of our plants flowering and for many of the fruits and veggies in our diet.
And of course, it's thanks to them we have honey.
But have we underestimated the humble bee ? Researchers report that some Australian honeys act as a potent antimicrobial agent, with amazing healing properties.

Making a business from honey: Beekeeper's mead mission

Oct

Not many people are lucky enough to turn a hobby into a career.
But that is what Matt Newell, 30, has done, using honey from his beehives to make mead - an alcoholic drink - that is now on sale across the Wye Valley.
"I've been beekeeping as a hobby for 15 years, and have wanted to make mead commercially for such a long time," Mr Newell said.

European Honey Buzzards prey on invasive hornets

Oct

A new study has for the first time documented the predation on the nests of Asian Hornet by European Honey Buzzards, opening up questions as to whether the raptor could act as a biocontrol agent for the invasive wasp.
Asian Hornet is listed among the 100 most invasive alien species and is spreading, seemingly at an unstoppable rate, across Western Europe. It first appeared in Europe when it was introduced in France in 2004 and has since expanded rapidly. The presence of this wasp creates social alarm because it is a threat to native biodiversity, to human economic activities (especially due it predating on Western Honey Bees, which are vital for pollinating and honey production) and to human hetitleh.

Bees: Twenty one species in NI 'at risk of extinction'

Oct

Twenty one bee species in Northern Ireland are at risk of extinction unless action is taken, according to a report.
The study by conservation charity Buglife Northern Ireland examined historical and modern data.
It blames loss of wildflower habitats, pesticides, pollution and climate change.
Northern Ireland is home to many rare and threatened bee species.

Oct

Remember when a country drive ended with the windscreen covered in smashed insects? Ever wondered why that seems to happen less these days ?
Now a landmark German study has come up with an explanation. Conducted over thirty years, scientists in the city of Krefeld have documented a collapse in that country’s insect population. Those findings are backed up by another study across the border in the Netherlands which concludes a sharp drop in wildlife populations.

The insect apocalypse, and why it matters

Oct

The majority of conservation efforts and public attention are focused on large, charismatic mammals and birds such as tigers, pandas and penguins, yet the bulk of animal life, whether measured by biomass, numerical abundance or numbers of species, consists of invertebrates such as insects. Arguably, these innumerable little creatures are far more important for the functioning of ecosystems than their furry or feathered brethren, but until recently we had few long-term data on their population trends. Recent studies from Germany and Puerto Rico suggest that insects may be in a state of catastrophic population collapse: the German data describe a 76% decline in biomass over 26 years, while the Puerto Rican study estimates a decline of between 75% and 98% over 35 years.

Rapeseed farmers benefit from honeybees more than pesticides, French study finds

Oct

For European rapeseed farmers, honey bees buzzing around fields may outweigh the benefits of using pesticides to fight insect damage, French researchers said.
A four-year survey in France found higher yields and profits for rapeseed fields where there’s an abundance of pollinating insects, according to a study by agricultural researcher INRA and the country’s National Center for Scientific Research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society.

French Beekeepers Against Systemic Iinsecticides

Oct

From the beginning, producers of these new insecticides denied their effects on bees: ‘bees don’t reach the molecule’, ‘ghosting is well under control’, ‘doses are harmless’ ...
But faced with these words, more and more studies have gradually confirmed beekeepers observations: imidacloprid is found in both pollens and nectar; the products are very persistent and toxic at infi-nitesimal doses in pollen and nectars.

The Bee: “The Most Important Living Being on the Planet”

Oct

Its sting hurts a lot, but if they were to disappear, it would hurt much more.
The Earthwatch Institute concluded in the last debate of the Royal Geographical Society of London, that bees are the most important living being on the planet, however, scientists have also made an announcement: Bees have already entered into extinction risk.

Black year for European beekeepers

Oct

This year has been a black one for many European beekeepers, particularly in France and Italy, where unpredictable weather has produced what are being termed the worst honey harvests ever.

Confronting colony collapse

Oct

Researchers from the Ecology and Evolution Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) sequenced the genomes of the two Varroa mite species that parasitize the honey bee. They found that each species of mite used its own distinct strategy to survive in its bee host, potentially overwhelming the bees' defenses. In addition to pointing to how scientists might vanquish these deadly intruders, the findings also shed light on how parasites and hosts evolve in response to one

Oct

The Amazon is on fire; the Arctic ice is melting. But there is an environmental crisis closer to home.
One in seven British species is threatened with extinction, according to a new report by the country’s main wildlife and conservation charities.
It shows there have been strong or moderate declines in 41% of all species since 1970.
The State of Nature Reports are here

Couple to open Edinburgh's 'first honey store in decades' in Easter Road

Oct

Andrew Zalewski and Marta Kozlowska will be opening Edinburgh’s only honey store, Edinburgh Honey Co, next week in 178 Easter Road.
The couple originally sold honey online, made using Andrew’s grandfather’s bees back in Poland.
But in the last couple of years, the bee enthusiasts have spread their wings in Scotland and now own 50 hives – which adds up to about half a million bees – that are kept in Haddington.

What’s All the Buzz Around Microbes ? and, Fumigillin Returns to Combat Nosema. Both Good News !

Oct

In Rowan’s Social Insect Lab, researchers are examining whether gut bacteria play a role in fending off pathogens that threaten the honey bee population.
After more than a decade of crushing declines in the honey bee population worldwide, whole colonies of one of our most important pollinators are disappearing at unsustainable rates ... and
Canada Welcomes the Return of Fumagillin to Combat Deadly Nosema Disease in Honey Bees.
A very effective treatment for Nosema, a deadly disease of honey bees, is now available again in Canada after intensive work by Vita Bee Hetitleh in conjunction with the Canadian Honey Council (CHC).

Why does Bayer Crop Science Control Chemicals in Brexit Britain ?

Sept

The beginning of the global ecological Armageddon
Henk Tennekes first described the systemic neonicotinoid insecticides as a ‘disaster in the making’ Thursday 6th January 2011: In his own words he says that his book “catalogues a tragedy of monumental proportions regarding the loss of invertebrates and subsequent losses of the insect-feeding (invertebrate-dependent) bird populations in all environments in the Netherlands. The disappearance can be related to agriculture in general, and to the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid in particular, which is a major contaminant of Dutch surface water since 2004. The relationship exists because there are two crucial (and catastrophic) disadvantages of the neonicotinoid insecticides ....

North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds in the last 50 years — another sign that we're in the middle of a 6th mass extinction

Sept

Nearly 3 billion birds have disappeared across the US and Canada since 1970.
A new study found that there has been a 29% decline in bird populations over the last 48 years.
The scientists point to agriculture practices, pesticides, and habitat loss as the primary culprits for these declines.
The finding is another data point in an ominous trend that suggests the Earth is in the middle of a 6th mass extinction.

Toxic Pesticides Found, Again, to Yield No Increase in Productivity or Economic Benefit for Farmers

Sept

The actual utility of pesticides to achieve their purported goals is an under-recognized failing of the regulatory review of pesticide compounds for use. A study published in Scientific Reports now exposes the faulty assumptions underlying the use of neonicotinoids — the most widely used category of insecticides worldwide. The study demonstrates that use of neonicotinoids (neonics) to treat seeds — a very common use of these pesticides —actually provides negligible benefits to soybean farmers in terms of yield and overall economic benefit. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should take notice, and consider that efficacy ought to have a role in the agency’s evaluation of pesticides for registration.

Wasps: If you can't love them, at least admire them

Sept

Want to know the best way to kill a cockroach ?
Well, first inject some powerful neurotoxins directly into its brain. This will make the bug compliant; it won't try to fly away and will bend to your will.
Second, slice off one of its antennae and drink the goo that comes out. For snack purposes, you understand.
And then lead it off to your lair by the stump, like a dog on a leash. You're going to bury this zombie in a hole in the ground.
But just before you close up the tomb, lay an egg on the bug. Your progeny can have the joy of eating it alive.

Veterans with PTSD, anxiety turn to beekeeping for relief

Sept

“I’m in this program to help me get out of the thought process of all those problems that I have,” said Ylitalo, who has struggled since leaving the Army in 2017. “It helps me think of something completely different…. I’m just thinking about bees.”
Researchers are beginning to study whether beekeeping has therapeutic benefits. For now, there is little hard data, but veterans in programs like the one in Manchester insist that it helps them focus, relax and become more productive. The programs are part of a small but growing effort by Veterans Affairs and veteran groups to promote the training of soldiers in farming and other agricultural career

Paleontologists discovered diversity of insect pollinators in 99-million-year-old amber

Sept

A team of paleontologists from the Borissiak Paleontological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) discovered four new species of extinct insects with sucking mouthparts in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber. Researchers believe that they visited first angiosperm flowers, but eventually went extinct due to the inefficient design of the proboscis. According to the research, Paradoxosisyrinae, the group to which these creatures belong, is a kind of «Nature's failed experiment». The results of the study are published in the Cretaceous Research journal.

Artistic Reconstruction of Buratina truncata gen. et sp. nov. Feeding on Tropidogyne Flowers

Artistic reconstruction of Buratina truncata . Feeding on Tropidogyne Flowers
Credit: Andrey Sochivko

How Bees Live with Bacteria, and Bees Finding Food

Sept

An apple plantation in spring. The trees are in full bloom. But to ensure that they also yield in autumn, workers have to do a real fluff job for weeks: each individual flower is manually pollinated with brushes – because there are no bees left to do the job. Not a nice vision of the future. But in some regions of China this is already reality. And the disappearance of the bees is reported all over the world.
The exact reason for the bee mortality is not known. Pesticides from agriculture, destruction of habitats, pathogens – probably several factors play together. A research group at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, is now focusing on another factor. It is the bacteria that live in and with bees. Many of them are important for the hetitleh of bees. If they suffer, so do the bees.

Male honeybees inject queens with blinding toxins during sex

Sept

They say love is blind, but if you're a queen honeybee it could mean true loss of sight.
New research finds male honeybees inject toxins during sex that cause temporary blindness. All sexual activity occurs during a brief early period in a honeybee's life, during which males die and queens can live for many years without ever mating again.
UC Riverside's Boris Baer, a professor of entomology, said males develop vision-impairing toxins to maximize the one fleeting opportunity they may ever get to father offspring.

Honey Bees Remember Happy and Sad Times, Scientists Discover

Sept

While the brains of honey bees are tiny compared to those of humans, the insects are capable of some surprisingly advanced thinking. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences has now cast new light on the insects' cognitive abilities.
A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that honey bees can remember positive and negative experiences—such as taking care of their young or fending off an enemy. These memories are then stored in specific areas of their brains, according to how good or bad the experience was.

To save honey bees we need to design them new hives

Sept

Honey bees are under extreme pressure. The number of honey bee colonies in the US has been declining at an average rate of almost 40% since 2010. The biggest contributor to this decline is viruses spread by a parasite, Varroa Destructor. But this isn’t a natural situation. The parasite is spread by beekeeping practices, including keeping the bees in conditions that are very different from their natural abode of tree hollows.
A few years ago, I demonstrated that the heat losses in man-made honey bee hives are many times greater than those in natural nests.

US Beekeepers File Suit Against EPA Charging “Illegal” Approval of Insecticide

Sept

A group of beekeepers joined forces on Friday against Trump’s EPA by filing a lawsuit over the agency’s move to put a powerful insecticide—one that scientists warn is part of the massive pollinator die-off across the U.S.—back on the market.
The lawsuit charges that the EPA’s approval of sulfoxaflor—touted by its manufacturer, agro-chemical giant Corteva, as a “next generation neonicotinoid”—was illegally rendered as it put industry interests ahead of the hetitleh of pollinators and ignored the available science.

Asian hornet: UK sightings

Sept

Current situation . . .
An Asian hornet sighting was confirmed in the Tamworth area of Staffordshire on 2 September 2019. This is the first report since July, when a single hornet was confirmed in New Milton, Hampshire. In each case they were spotted and reported by a member of the public.
Since 2016, there have been a total of 15 confirmed sightings of the Asian hornet in England and six nests have been destroyed.
Nine of these sightings occurred in 2018; an individual hornet in Lancashire (April) and Hull, three in Cornwall, two in Hampshire, one in Surrey (all September) and one in Kent (October).

Incredible lost story of beekeeping Scottish prisoner of war unearthed by researchers

Sept

Despite refusing to “slave” for Hitler and being forced to endure a bitter march across Europe after his capture, Company Sergeant Major James Hamilton Savage persuaded the Nazi guards in Stalag 383 to allow him to set up beehives behind the barbed wire fences.
His incredible story came to light after librarians discovered a record of the former head of beekeeping at the West of Scotland Agricultural College, now the SRUC.
CSM Savage was captured and taken Prisoner of War in St Valery en Caux in northern France in 1940 after the 51st Highland Division were left behind following the Dunkirk evacuation.

Rare Bee Confirmed In Wisconsin For First Time In More Than A Century

Sept

Scientists with the U.S. Forest Service recently discovered one of the most rare bees in North America in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. The Epeoloides pilosulus bee was discovered in mid-July by scientists who were surveying the pollinators as part of an inventory of native bees in the Great Lakes region. There are only two known species of Epeoloides in the world.
The rare bee is often referred to as a cuckoo bee because it’s a pollen thief.
The bee is a cleptoparasite that mooches off the oil and pollen collected by the Macropis bee for its young, according to Joan Milam, an adjunct research fellow in the Department of Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Flowers can hear buzzing bees—and it makes their nectar sweeter

Aug

Sound is so elemental to life and survival that it prompted Tel Aviv University researcher Lilach Hadany to ask: What if it wasn’t just animals that could sense sound—what if plants could, too? The first experiments to test this hypothesis, published recently on the pre-print server bioRxiv, suggest that in at least one case, plants can hear, and it confers a real evolutionary advantage.
Hadany’s team looked at evening primroses (Oenothera drummondii) and found that within minutes of sensing vibrations from pollinators’ wings, the plants temporarily increased the concentration of sugar in their flowers’ nectar. In effect, the flowers themselves served as ears, picking up the specific frequencies of bees’ wings while tuning out irrelevant sounds like wind.

How bees live with bacteria

Aug

More than 90 percent of all bee species are not organized in colonies, but fight their way through life alone. They are also threatened. Scientists demand more research on the ecology of these insects.
An apple plantation in spring. The trees are in full bloom. But to ensure that they also yield in autumn, workers have to do a real fluff job for weeks: each individual flower is manually pollinated with brushes -- because there are no bees left to do the job. Not a nice vision of the future. But in some regions of China this is already reality. And the disappearance of the bees is reported all over the world.

Tanging works well with a little seed

Aug

Okay, fine, call me nutbag-crazy. But I’m here to tell you that tanging does, indeed work. It’s not just for breakfast (or laughing at) any more.
I believe that the legendary use of tanging, which is to make a loud clanging or ringing noise (done in the olden times with a pot or pan) works. Now, I’ve been called crazy before and have no problem with that. I also believe in UFO’s, Bigfoot and ghosts. I think there are things seen just as well as unseen.
'Tanging' the bees

Winter Losses of British Honey Bees Were 8.5% – the Lowest Rate Since the BBA Started Counting.

Aug

Winter losses of British honey bees were 8.5% – the lowest rate since the British Beekeepers Association started the current survey program in 2007/08.
The survey covers the period from Oct. 1, 2018 to April 1, 2019 and was carried out online for the first time. Some 5,581 members completed the survey.
The association has members from the whole of the British Isles and the Channel Isles, including England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Isles.

Jan

The world's insects are rapidly declining and the consequences can be catastrophic if that decline is not htitleed and quickly reversed. Paulo Mesquitela on Vimeo.

Movement of Pesticides into Flowers, Nectar and Pollen

Aug

Movement of Pesticides into Flowers, Nectar and Pollen
Patterns of Pesticide Use Affect Pollinators
Beekeeping Business Uses Every Bit of the Bees, the Land and the USDA

University of California, Riverside researchers have developed a new type of solid-phase microextraction (SPME) probe that inserted into plants through a needle, allows repeated sampling of seven neonicotinoids in plant sap.
SPME probes use a fiber coated with a liquid or solid to quickly extract analytes from a sample.

Half a billion dead honey bees in Brazil show what happens when you roll back pesticide regulations

Aug

It should be no surprise, then, that in Brazil, which has seen a 27% increase in pesticide sales since last year, roughly 500 million honey bees were found dead in piles across four states in early spring. The country’s pesticide use has grown by 770% between 1990 to 2016, as reported by Bloomberg. Insecticides like sulfoxaflor and neonicotinoids have been shown to harm bees, impairing their reproductive hetitleh and even killing them outright. Combined, these stresses contribute to an event known as a colony collapse, where many thousands of bees suddenly die. The cause of these mysterious deaths eluded entomologists for a decade; now, study after study has pinned them on the chemicals.
“These [pesticides] are meant to kill insects,” says John Tooker, an applied insect ecologist at Penn State. “The realization that bees are insects, and that insecticides kill bees, is mind-boggling to entomologists. I mean, no shit.”

Microbes on the menu for bee larvae

Aug

Bees only feast on nectar and pollen, right?
Wrong. Turns out, Nature's famously busy insect isn't strictly vegan, after all.
Reporting online in this month's American Naturalist, a team of Agricultural Research Service ARS and university scientists has shown that bee larvae (brood) have a taste for "microbial meat."

Welsh bees threatened by deadly disease American Foulbrood

Aug

Concern has been growing over the spread of a deadly disease among the Welsh bee population.
American Foulbrood (AFB) is a highly-infectious disease which is caused by a spore-forming bacteria transferred to the bees through infected food.
According to the UK government's BeeBase database there have been 14 new cases in Wales so far this year compared to three in 2018 and 26 the year before.

Chemical-Intensive Agriculture Is Increasingly Toxic to Insects

Aug

(Beyond Pesticides, August 15, 2019) An article in the journal Plos One, “An assessment of acute insecticide toxicity loading (AITL) of chemical pesticides used on agricultural land in the United States,” shows that recent shifts in insecticide use—from organophosphates and carbamates to synthetic pyrethroids and neonicotinoids—have made a large contribution to the ongoing insect apocalypse. This shift to insecticides that target insects based on both selective toxicity and delivery method occurs within a context of shrinking habitat and biodiversity.

Bee disease confirmed in Perthshire

Aug

American Foulbrood found near Pitlochry.
An outbreak of American Foulbrood (AFB) has been found in an apiary near Pitlochry.
AFB is a notifiable disease that affects colonies of honeybees. The infected hives will be destroyed as there is no permitted treatment for the disease in the UK.
The disease was confirmed on 12 August following laboratory diagnosis by Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA).

National Honey Bee Day

Aug

Join HoneyLove on Aug 17, 2019 as we celebrate National Honey Bee Day to honor the insect responsible for more than 1/3 of the food we eat with beekeepers, beekeeping clubs and associations, and honey bee enthusiasts from all across the country. We take this opportunity to celebrate honey bees and recognize their contribution to our everyday lives as a means of protecting this critical species for future generations. We also pay homage to beekeepers, whose labors ensure we have bees to pollinate our crops

A rugged old bee whisperer takes us to Honeyland

Aug

There's not much milk, a smattering of human kindness, and a whole lot of sticky stuff in Honeyland, a fablelike look at life in a remote region of the world.
This brief, sometimes gruelling movie is labelled a documentary, and the nonprofessionals in front of the expansive, probing camera here pretty much play themselves.

Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides

Aug

America’s agricultural landscape is now 48 times more toxic to honeybees, and likely other insects, than it was 25 years ago, almost entirely due to widespread use of so-called neonicotinoid pesticides, according to a new study published today in the journal PLOS One .
This enormous rise in toxicity matches the sharp declines in bees, butterflies, and other pollinators as well as birds, says co-author Kendra Klein, senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth US.
“This is the second Silent Spring. Neonics are like a new DDT, except they are a thousand times more toxic to bees than DDT was,” Klein says in an interview.

Pesticides deliver a one-two punch to honey bees

Aug

Adjuvants are chemicals that are commonly added to plant protection products, such as pesticides, to help them spread, adhere to targets, disperse appropriately, or prevent drift, among other things. There was a widespread assumption that these additives would not cause a biological reaction after exposure, but a number of recent studies show that adjuvants can be toxic to ecosystems, and specific to this study, honey bees.

Neonicotinoids may have an unexplored harmful exposure route to beneficial insects

Aug

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Spain has found neonicotinoids represent an unexplored harmful exposure route to beneficial insects via honeydew. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of beneficial insect exposure to neonicotinoids and what they learned

A New Vaccine For Bee Sting Is Successfully Tested

Aug

Recently, a trial of anti-vaccine against bee sting has been completed, which contains Advax which is stated helpful in curbing fatal allergic reactions, a few people suffer due to bee venom. Initially, scientists designed the vaccine so that they can easily neutralize venom secreted by honey bees found in Europe.
Some people, when get stung by a bee have to suffer with great deal of allergic reactions which are termed as anaphylaxis. This severe reaction also claims lives of victims of bee stings, if they don’t get efficient medical assistance in time.

The Moscow Times says climate change may be playing a greater role in killing Russia’s honeybees than officials care to admit.

Aug

Dave Goulsen, a bee specialist at the University of Sussex in Britain, says scientists haven’t found what killed the bees.
“These big die-offs are an unfortunate combination of a variety of factors,” he tells the newspaper.
“It’s common sense that if we start getting big fluctuations in weather – droughts, floods, frosts – these things are going to be challenging, particularly if bee populations are already stressed,” Goulsen says. “If bees are already hungry and poisoned, they are going to have a tough time dealing with these things.”

Trump Administration Detitle Multiple Blows to Honey Bees this Month

July

Earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a decision to register new uses for the bee-toxic pesticide sulfoxaflor. The decision closely followed a USDA announcement htitleing the Honey Bee Colonies Survey, combining blows to already suffering beekeepers. According to the nonprofit Bee Informed, this past winter tallied the most colonies lost in a decade—an estimated 37% between October 1, 2018 and April 1, 2019.

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