Bee News
Bee News 4
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March 16
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March 14 |
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March 13 |
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March 13 The experts say the use of neonicotinoid pesticides is particularly worrying because they are accused of being responsible for a systematic collapse in the number of bees around the world. For example, heavy use of these insecticides has been blamed for the 50 per cent decline over 25 years in honeybee populations in both the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Such a collapse, they say, threatens the very basis of agriculture as 71% of crop species are bee-pollinated. |
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March 11 |
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March 08 A new report, being presented to the UN human rights council on Wednesday, is severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions”. The report says pesticides have “catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole”, including an estimated 200,000 deaths a year from acute poisoning. Its authors said: “It is time to create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.” |
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March 08 The Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver, and the Special Rapporteur on Toxics, Baskut Tuncak, told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that widely divergent standards of production, use and protection from hazardous pesticides in different countries are creating double standards, which are having a serious impact on human rights. |
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March 07 That is the finding of the Honey Bee and Pollination Program Advisory Panel's (HBPPAP) study into the threat of the large African hive beetle (LAHB). The research, led by Professor Ben Oldroyd from the University of Sydney, found the risk status of the beetle should be upgraded from 'low' to ' high' to stop it from become invasive. |
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March 03 The new analysis, Pollinators in Peril: A systematic status review of North American and Hawaiian native bees, revealed that more than 700 species are in trouble from a range of serious threats, including severe habitat loss and escalating pesticide use. “The evidence is overwhelming that hundreds of the native bees we depend on for ecosystem stability, as well as pollination services worth billions of dollars, are spiraling toward extinction,” said Kelsey Kopec, a native pollinator researcher at the Center and author of the study. “It’s a quiet but staggering crisis unfolding right under our noses that illuminates the unacceptably high cost of our careless addiction to pesticides and monoculture farming.” |
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March 03 |
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March 02 The first meeting of the new organisation will be held in Perth on April 1. Gavin Ramsay, owner of Tay Bees and Honey and the bee health and science officer at the Scottish Beekeepers’ Association, has been one of the driving forces behind the formation of the society. He said: “We have reached a crucial juncture for the survival of our own Scottish honey bees. |
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Feb 23 "The coolest thing I've learned recently about bees is that nurse bees who are infected by a fungal parasite (Nosema) selectively choose honey that has greater antibiotic properties (Gherman et al. 2014). So they self-medicate! That's more than I can do and I can read labels!" |
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Feb 23 Previously, it was always assumed that ‘the dose makes the poison’, in terms of chemicals causing detrimental health effects on organisms. Yet it has now been found that when organisms are exposed to two toxicants in sequence, the toxicity can differ if their order is reversed. |
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Feb 23 |
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Feb 20 |
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Feb 20 |
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Feb 15 Bees produce vibrations with their wing muscles that are inaudible to humans but can be detected by accelerometers embedded in the honeycomb. Embedded video: Honeybee whooping signal and Bees whoop when they bump into each other |
Feb 11 Mexico builds wall to keep out Monsanto’s GMOs |
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Feb 11 The research, published in Ecological Entomology, suggests that beekeepers should provide opportunities for their bees to access specific nutrients, possibly through a natural mineral lick, to support their balanced health because the bees will search for the minerals when they need them. |
Feb 05 Chile is trying to save its bee population damaged by fires |
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Feb 04 |
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Feb 03 Apiarist Murray McGregor, the owner of Denrosa Apiaries in Blairgowrie, is the first person in the UK to be convicted of the charges. The 61-year-old previously admitted administering "unauthorised veterinary medicinal products". McGregor has produced honey for both the Balmoral Estate and Prince Charles' Duchy Estate. |
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Jan 30 |
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Jan 23 |
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Jan 16 |
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Jan 15 |
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Jan 15 |
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Jan 14 The new analyses released today indicate that honeybees can be harmed by the widely-used pesticides clothianidin, thiamethoxam and dinetofuran. The agency also released today an updated assessment for a fourth leading neonicotinoid — imidacloprid — showing that in addition to harms to pollinators identified last year, the pesticide can also harm aquatic insects. |
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Jan 13 |
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Jan 12 A research team headed by Wu Chung-hsin (吳忠信), professor in life sciences at National Taiwan Normal University, found that bats feeding on imidacloprid-tainted insects were unable to fly along learned paths, as a reuslt of which they often "got lost" while out hunting. |
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Jan 10 |
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Jan 06 In 2013 the European Union restricted the use of three neonicotinoid insecticides following a scientific review that concluded they pose a high risk to honey bees 'High levels of neonicotinoids have been found in wildflowers next to wheat crops' |
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Jan 01 |
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Jan 01 The pesticide giant had commissioned James Cresswell, an expert in flowers and bees at the University of Exeter in England, to study why many of the world’s bee colonies were dying. Companies like Syngenta have long blamed a tiny bug called a varroa mite, rather than their own pesticides, for the bee decline. |
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Jan 01 Biology Professor Jim Burritt and his students have published research about a new strain of the bacterium called Serratia marcescens strain sicaria. With evidence of its killing power, they chose the name sicaria, which means assassin, and Ss1 for short |
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Dec 29 |
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Dec 23 Now Mexico is making headlines by banning Monsanto products. A group of beekeepers was successful in banning Monsanto from planting genetically modified soybeans. Originally Monsanto had received permission to plant their GM seeds in a large area of land, despite the protests organized by thousands of beekeepers, citizens, major environmental groups, the National Institute of Ecology, and Mayan farmers. But a district judge overturned the Monsanto permit as he was convinced by the scientific evidence showing the threats GM crops had on honey production in the Yucatan peninsula. He went even further, and ruled that co-existence between GM soybeans and honey production is not possible. |
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Dec 21 This publication focuses on simple steps that agronomic crop producers can take to minimize the negative effects of pesticide use on honey bees and other pollinators. |
Dec 17 For the first time, Varroa mites have been recorded hopping onto honey bees from flowers, and doing so with surprising agility, according to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE. |
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Dec 16 |
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Dec 16 From 1st January 2017, the US branch of the German discounter (more than 1,500 points of sale in the United States, growing steeply) is set to banish from its shelves products which have been treated by the following eight insecticides: Thiametoxam, Chlorpyrifos, Clothianidin, Cypermethrin, Deltamethrin, Fipronil, Imidacloprid, Sulfoxaflor. |
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Dec 13 The preliminary findings of the study – which examined a type of pollination unique to bees known as 'buzz pollination' – will be presented at the British Ecological Society's annual meeting in Liverpool this week. |
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Dec 10 |
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Dec 08 |
Dec 07 Halfway through a video of a speech by the biologist Professor Dave Goulson there is an abrupt loss of sound. Goulson, who has devoted his working life to highlighting the catastrophic decline of bees, is giving a talk to hundreds gathered at the National Honey Show in 2015. Strangely, his words are silenced for 20 seconds of the video uploaded by the show to YouTube, precisely when he discusses the impact on bees of the most widely used insecticides in the world – neonicotinoids. ... ( Source: The Guardian ) |
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Dec 05 The New Phytologist review describes the latest advances in our understanding of how plants use their flowers to ensure reproductive success. Flowers use light to attract pollinators by creating colour using microscopic structures or chemical effects. Using gravity to their advantage, petals cause pollinators to slip or grip when they land on a flower, ensuring that they transfer pollen without taking too much of the sugary nectar reward. Plants may even alter their electrical fields to influence pollinator visits. |
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Dec 05 The investigators aim their inhibitor, named VU041, at the mosquito Anopheles gambiae, the leading vector for malaria, and Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that transmits Zika virus and other pathogens. |
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Dec 03
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Dec 02 The organisations claim: "There is now more than enough evidence to retain the ban and extend it to all crops, and that this is essential to reverse the decline of bees and other pollinators." Industry organisations such as the NFU and HTA have opposed the ban and called for more scientific research on neonicotinoid use. |
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Dec 01 The insecticide did kill the invasive insects, but had the unforeseen consequence of causing a boom in spider mites, plant eating mites that eat hundreds of species of plants. Mites poke holes in leaves to feed, and they did this to the trees in the park so much that they began to drop leaves. |