It’s one thing to know about honeybees’ role in our lives—pollinating flowers and the plants that produce our food—as well as their populations declining, but it’s another thing to understand how a honeybee colony’s hive actually works because in its own way, a hive is an organism of sorts, with thousands of individual parts working…
Details
What many likely don’t know about honey is it takes “two million individual blossoms to produce one pound of honey,” says beekeeper Zac Browning, with each individual honeybee producing 1/12 of a teaspoon in its lifetime. With the planting of more row crops in states like North Dakota, Iowa, and so forth, producing that number…
Details
It takes a lot of work and dedication to be a beekeeper, especially in Texas—working in sweltering, summer temperatures in a protective beekeeping suit and lifting between 50-90 pounds of honeycomb all day. For former CIA operative turned beekeeper Tara Chapman, she’s proud to be the uncommon woman who works jobs not often filled by…
Details
It’s probably not hard to figure, but it’s well known that honeybees are important parts of our daily survival and function as a species, which is why so much focus has been placed on finding out what’s causing bees to decline and what we can do to ensure their various sub-species are not lost to…
Details
As many beekeepers have learned, the state of North Dakota is one of the best habitats in the country for raising honeybees, and it’s why one in five bee colonies—about 250 billion bees—spend summer there, producing twice as much honey as any other state. “North Dakota is the last, best place in North America to…
Details
Upon retiring from the Army this past March, Sgt. 1st Class Ben Finch had the plan of expanding his vegetable farm at his Fort Polk home in Louisiana into a larger, commercial operation, and he’s discovered one of the best ways to do this is through honeybees and beekeeping. “Beekeeping looks like a natural way…
Details
For those who haven’t heard of varroa mites, they are small, destructive parasites known for their parasitic relationship with honeybees—more specifically, they’re known for their ability to devastate honeybee colonies and are a likely factor contributing to or are related to colony collapse disorder (CCD). Varroa mites, like all parasites, suck blood from honeybees at…
Details
It’s not an uncommon story that eventually a retiree decides to find a vocation that he or she does less for money and more for enjoyment. A Bemidji, MN man, Les Hiltz, who spent much of his adult life harvesting and caring for his own farm, has decided his retirement vocation would be what was…
Details
It likely makes sense for an industry to take care of the living source of its very income, to not only ensure those in the industry can have that income for as long as possible but to also ensure that living source has a sound quality of life—which is a mutually beneficial relationship predating domestication…
DetailsIt takes creative talent to communicate a specific goal, message, or theme with a piece art and even more so to get observers to see the point of a piece. British artist Wolfgang Buttress, a man of these intentions, said of his most recent work, “I want visitors to feel enveloped, wrapped-up, and involved in…
Details
As the years have gone on, the US and many other countries have seen honeybee colonies decline at increasing rates per year, sometimes up to 44 percent, with causes linked to pesticides, diseases, mites, malnutrition, and colony collapse disorder (CCD). With such losses becoming well known among the general population, many states have seen increases…
Details
In the past few years, beekeeping has become a more popular hobby as news of declining honeybee populations spreads. Not only does it provide a fun hobby and a source of honey, but beekeeping also contributes a helping hand to the hurting pollinators we rely on so much for our own survival. David Sharpless of Henderson,…
Details
For those who don’t already know what honeybees face, it’s probably safe to say the most you ever thought honeybees could do was sting you and cause a little bit of short term pain. However, as many outside the science and beekeeping communities are beginning to understand, honeybees and other pollinators, tiny as they are,…
Details
We all likely watched episodes of old black-and-white TV shows, and if the series featured a traditional family in a suburb where nothing burned, no one had bathrooms, and generally nothing bad ever happened—more often than not, if the series ever featured firemen, they were not putting out fires but rescuing cats stuck in trees.…
Details
It would be easy to leave the fight for the honeybees to scientists who seek to discover what factors are causing declining populations. In a perfect world, there would be one cause with an easy fix, but the issue of declining bee populations is in fact a complicated one. Considering 75% of the world’s food…
Details
Not too long ago, Pope Francis threw his hat into the ring when it came to the issue of declining honeybee populations, specifically calling for a dialogue about “how we are shaping the planet” and also that families embrace an ecological culture. Megan Ryan, a Catholic Indiana special education teacher and environmentalist, has taken up…
Details
We all have passions when we’re young, and while some of us either lose those passions, grow out of them, or simply find new ones, one New York teen has a long term passion that not only provided direction for his career but could also be the answer to the great enigma that is colony…
Details
We all have career goals and dreams we hope to achieve in our lifetimes, and for Tom Kasper, a South Dakota owner of a lawn and landscape business, that dream was to own and operate his own greenhouse. He even specialized in greenhouse management at North Dakota State University, just to show how much that…
Details
It’s hard to not get nervous whenever coming upon a honeybee hive in the woods or in the backyard. Given honeybees’ ability to protect themselves with their best defense mechanism (that painful stinger), your first reaction would understandably be to assume they are the aggressive stuff of nightmares and to run the away, which as…
Details
Honeybees and a Barn Show When it comes time for siblings to go to college, more often than not they find themselves losing touch and growing apart as the years go on and individual identities are developed. Even so, sometimes the opposite occurs in that despite distance and busier schedules, siblings not only make the…
Details
The threat to honeybees presented by pesticides—specifically those with neonicotinoids—have become so well-known beyond the scientific community that even companies like Scotts Miracle-Gro have started the process of discontinuing their use permanently by certain dates and substituting those harmful products with safer alternatives. Given the rate of loss being around 45 percent of colonies per…
Details
At this point, it is well known that global honeybee populations are in decline, with one survey showing a 44 percent loss of colonies in the US alone. Whether due to parasites, neonicotinoid pesticides, or malnutrition, these losses directly impact people as well, given we rely on honeybees as pollinators, and as a result many…
Details
In response to the global decline of honeybee populations and those of other pollinators, General Mills, the company that gives us Cheerios and its many kinds, has decided to become part of the solution and do what it can to not just salvage these hurting populations but to nurture them and get them back to…
Details
Honeybees, like people, have the ability to balance their nutritional needs and know what they need and want at different times, depending on what they’re lacking or carrying a surplus of. For that reason, bees tend to show preference for certain flowers over others, often those allowing for the best adaptation possible or the best…
Details
For as long as we’ve studied them, pathogens still require further understanding for how they affect living creatures at the rates in which they do. Given the rate at which honeybee colonies are collapsing—almost 30 percent annually—and the fact of pathogens being a contributing factor, there has been much research focusing on how exactly pathogens are…
Details
As many likely know or have at least heard, US honeybee populations are declining for more than one reason including pesticides, lack of nutrition, and the spread of diseases through varroa mites and other parasites acting as vectors (like mosquitoes and malaria). In an effort to understand these factors, especially diseases, USDA and university researchers…
DetailsThe fight to find out what’s causing the global decline of honeybees requires dedicated students of science and an all-hands-on-deck mentality. Sarah McTish, an entomology student at Penn State, has been such a fighter since she was eight after attending the Penn State Great Insect Fair. “Up to that point I’d loved insects,” she said. “But…
Details
Dandelions, the pervasive weeds that warrant appreciative double takes, are usually allowed to grow in one’s yard for a bit until a Saturday comes, the grass gets too high, and the yellow wildflower is then razed down to make a smooth lawn. It’s understandable to want to rid the yard of this weed—no wildflower is…
Details
There has been a debate going on regarding the effects of certain pesticides—specifically those containing neonicotinoids—on honeybees and other pollinating insects. As per this debate, the EPA is currently investigating the possibility of these harmful pesticides contributing to colony collapse disorder (CCD)—the sudden disappearance of worker bees for no plausible reason. The state of Maryland…
DetailsReports of declining honeybee populations due to mites, diseases, and pesticides have unfortunately become the norm, with plenty of researchers doing what they can to alleviate the problem. Luckily, there are plenty of others out there as well going the extra mile to help the hurting pollinators—and, surprisingly, some of those others are San Francisco…
Details
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a crisis involving honeybees disappearing from their hives, is still a rampant concern for beekeepers and researchers everywhere, given our heavy dependence on the pollinators for one third of what we eat. While there have been reports of these collapses decreasing, the concern will never really go away until populations are…
Details
The desperate situation for global honeybee populations has left many researchers, scientists, and even political leaders worried about how they can possibly support the world’s growing population and its food demands with collapsing bee colonies everywhere. There have been many studies performed to understand the origins of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and how to possibly…
Details
With global honeybee populations plummeting at staggering rates, researchers are implementing conservation efforts left and right to decrease the rate of loss or stop it all together, especially with our own growing food demands depending on honeybees. One of the many causes believed linked to their declining populations and collapsing colonies (called colony collapse disorder…
Details
Modern agriculture is what is today due to centuries and even millennia of improving and refining techniques and, for some agriculture, domesticating animals from cows, dogs, and even honeybees to a degree. From their roles as pollinators and the products they produce—honey, beeswax—honeybees have gone from largely wild animals to domesticated creatures whom we can…
Details
The fight to preserve honeybee populations is an ongoing struggle, and while some states have found success amidst the uncertainty and reported colony collapses, there are still plenty reporting mass losses in honeybees and honey shortages. While the exact cause is still under debate, many researchers believe a contributing factor to colony collapses is the…
Details
All social animals have a method of communication with their group that danger is nearby: most emit sounds of some kind, some frequencies, and some even leave scents behind. According to the latest findings in a study by James Nieh—a professor of biology at the University of California—honeybees have a more sophisticated alarm system making…
Details
At the national level, beekeepers from all across the country have been reporting declines in the honey yields they can attain from their honeybee colonies. Even further, more reports of colony collapse disorder keep pouring in, with worker bees disappearing without a trace and leaving their queen behind and entomologists not understanding the nature of…
Details
Experts in the field of entomology—the study of insects—have been studying the ongoing crisis of declining honeybee populations, hoping to not only save honeybees from extinction but also get them flourishing again like that of previous years. One such expert, Dr. May Berenbaum, has been studying the chemical mechanisms between insects and their host plants her…
Details
With the decline in honeybee populations in the US and around the world, numerous organizations both private and public have been putting forth efforts and doing what they can to stop or even just slow the significant losses in numbers, which likely have been occurring for several decades now. The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service…
Details
The ongoing honeybee crisis has inspired many to get out and contribute what they can to the honey industry by learning about the bees, conserving and protecting their food sources, and also properly and humanely raising them while supporting human food supplies, currently under crisis just as the little pollinators are. Even kids are getting…
Details
