Honey bees have long been in the headlines due to their rapidly declining numbers, but the last few weeks have them in the spotlight for a new, somewhat strange reason. Specifically, a fairly recent experiment showed that hemp could be a good pollen resource for overly stressed bees—and a company based in Israel has started…
Details
Given that bacterial diseases are one of the more serious threats facing them, honey bees might be getting the ally they need to fight and win—a one-of-a-kind edible vaccine. At least, that’s what a team of researchers from Finland is promising with the first-ever insect vaccine aimed specifically at helping struggling honey bee populations. The…
Details
As concerns for pollinators, especially honey bees, continue to grow in the eye of the public, interest from the science community has grown just as much to advance understanding of the many threats bees are facing. For instance, risk assessments have examined the ways in which honey bees can be exposed to pesticides whenever they’re…
Details
To make new queens for their colonies, honey bees use royal jelly to turn several female worker bee larvae into potential candidates, and the last one standing after a battle-royale type event is the new queen. Now, according to a team of researchers from Stanford University’s School of Medicine, a protein in mammals has been…
Details
While everyone knows a honey bee hive revolves around one queen to rule them all, it turns out that even bees can have rebellious children. For European honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies, it’s just the queen bee who lays eggs, which hatch into worker bees—all female—that nurse young bees and keep up the hive. However,…
Details
When Australian beekeeper Scott Whitaker cut into a bathroom ceiling in the Queensland town of Sunshine Coast, he encountered something he could describe only “as a monster” — the biggest honey bee colony he ever had to remove from someone’s home. Over 50,000 honey bees were packed into the bathroom ceiling, along with so much…
Details
In a first-ever documented case, scientists have discovered a female honey bee with two fathers but no mother to speak of. Known to be haplodiploid, the honey bee system of gender determination is that females are the result of fertilized eggs whereas males come from unfertilized eggs. However, in one or two percent of instances,…
Details
Down in Cape Town, South Africa, a suspected poisoning took place in a wine-making area of the region, and this incident led to roughly one million honeybees dying. According to Brendan Ashley-Cooper, a beekeeper and farmer, an insecticide the wine farmers often use called Fipronil was believed to have caused the bees on his land…
Details
In the past 10-15 years, honey bees and other bee species all over the world have been seeing declining numbers, much to the dismay of beekeepers everywhere as well as anyone who enjoys the sweet taste of natural raw honey. With this knowledge in mind, many nations are making efforts to help the ailing pollinators,…
Details
According to Gary Pointon, a New Zealand beekeeper, “It’s part of beekeeping that you’re going to get stung, and for the first 20 stings, I was fine. Then, I got stung in the head and went into anaphylactic shock, and the doctors decided I was allergic … [but] it hasn’t stopped me!” Pointon is one…
Details
While research into neonicotinoid pesticides, which have proven to be harmful to pollinators like honey bees, has brought about many new revelations, scientists announced recent findings that provide new insight into how these pesticides affect the declining pollinating species around the world. It turns out exposure to a specific neonicotinoid pesticide called imidacloprid causes complex…
Details
According to a study recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the weed-killer known as glyphosate decreases the microorganisms in a honey bee’s guts, and such changes leave the insects much more likely to die an early death. These lost but helpful microorganisms in the guts of honey bees are directly…
DetailsWhen moving as one, a honey bee swarm, which occurs after a hive has grown too large and must divide to survive, is basically a superorganism, changing shape whenever responding to strain or stress, even when doing so costs several individuals their lives. With a new queen at the center, this superorganism of a swarm…
Details
For those who live in Southwest Florida, it’s likely you know about the region’s algae problem, and it turns out more than just the wildlife in the Gulf are being affected by it. According to local bee experts, honey bees are experiencing problems in areas with blue-green and red tide algae. Keith Councell, the vice…
Details
For beekeepers, smoke is one of their secret weapons for keeping bee stings to a minimum and has been for thousands of years, with some 2,500-year-old ancient Egyptian artwork depicting the practice. Despite how long smoke has been used to calm honey bees, however, it’s still unknown why it occurs—though some new research that was…
Details
As the weather gets closer and closer to winter, honey bees around the world will soon have to settle in with the stores they have until spring starts blooming with all the nectar they can find. With that fact clear to most beekeepers, the introduction of a new negative, potentially harmful factor could have potentially…
Details
While many colleges try attracting prospective applicants through twisting ivy and picture-perfect, manicured lawns, others are starting to adapt their campus’s landscaping practices in order to attract butterflies, honey bees, and other pollinators. Bee Campus USA, which is a branch of Bee City USA, began back in 2015 in order to encourage the shift we’re…
Details
As many have likely heard, U.S. honey bees have been declining at an unprecedented rate for the last ten years, with a recent USDA report stating honey production was down almost ten percent in 2017 when compared to 2016. With beekeepers reporting 40 percent colony losses on average, it’s going to take large-scale changes as…
Details
For anybody who thinks there are way more yellow jackets around this summer than normal, it’s because there are. The stinging pests, frequent disturbers of barbeques everywhere, are rearing their ugly heads in terms of numbers, and, unfortunately, we’re not the only ones who are suffering as a result—honey bees, crucial pollinators already on the…
Details
It’s not unusual to hear about swarms of honey bees showing up in strange, very public places—one actually planted itself on a museum sign dedicated to the memory of Muhammad Ali last year, a sign ironically adorned with his famous catchphrase: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” In Greenville, South Carolina, its Village…
Details
While honeybees mostly make their precious honey stores via floral nectar, sometimes they take a page out of our book and have a few sweet snacks, even hitting up sugary foods that humans leave out. The honeybee’s flexibility when it comes to foraging from non-floral food sources is a handy trick for whenever beekeepers have…
Details
Despite domesticated beehives having a global population between 80 and 100 million, each of which contain 10,000-60,000 individual bees, their numbers are dropping quickly, with beekeepers reporting 40 percent losses each year and several bumblebee species even going on the endangered species list. Given bees pollinate roughly a third of the world’s food crop and…
Details
In the past few years, rooftop beehives have become a common site in cities throughout the U.S. and other countries, providing businesses with additional income, publicity, and, more importantly, a place for urban bees to find refuge in densely-populated areas where bee swarms aren’t exactly welcome. While harvesting honey is a main draw for rooftop…
Details
Give or take a decade ago, U.S. beekeepers began noticing they were losing hives at alarmingly high rates. It was so sudden and surprising to many, and it kicked off the phenomenon that came to be called colony collapse disorder, which is still an issue to this very day with one notable difference—the level of…
Details
Thanks to the hard work of honeybees, roughly one fifth of the foods we enjoy are made possible, and behind each hive — at least those that are “domesticated” — is a scientist or beekeeper helping its thousands of residents thrive. For the hives on the campus at the University of Florida, they’re part of…
Details
Despite all the focus that’s been placed on honeybees in the last few years, specifically how their populations have declined significantly, there are still those out there who see them and other bee species as pests and a nuisance. In Johnson County, Kentucky, one man, Jason Conley, has made it his mission to protect bees…
Details
While it may not sound especially complicated, the concept of zero—nothing, nada, zilch—is a deceptively complicated idea, with the very first placeholder for zero dating back to roughly 300 BCE but not appearing in Western Europe before the 1100s AD. Children typically can’t wrap their minds around the idea until they’re in preschool, which makes…
Details
Unsurprisingly, honeybees are named for the delicious syrup they make it droves—honey—but they are important for so much more, thanks to the pollination they partake in every time they visit plants and flowers for the purpose of creating their honey stores. That makes the tiny insects pretty crucial for the culinary world, as they are…
Details
Considering how much New Zealand’s honey industry has expanded in the last few decades, it’s not surprising to hear that some of the country’s college student are doing what they can to help save honeybees and their declining populations. Four students with Paeroa College—Ariihia Morehu, Timoti Wiperi, Hamish Buchanan, and Jeramiah Coffey—have begun developing a smartphone app that will…
Details
As many know, honeybees and other bee species are essential parts of our ecosystems in addition to being a crucial part of many world economies, including our own here in the United States. However, with colony collapse disorder (CCD) and various other factors, particularly pesticide overuse, diseases, and parasites, rearing their ugly heads, there has…
Details
In downtown Seattle, specifically at a facility called The Sanctuary Seattle, enough hives to hold 20,000 honeybees are being installed, with the future occupants coming all the way across the sea in Hawaii. Once they arrive, the Hawaiian-raised Carniolan bees will be used for urban beekeeping, housed on the grounds of the oldest church in…
Details
Researchers with Washington State University (WSU) may have found a way help save honeybees by introducing micro-particles into the insects’ digestive systems, and from there the particles would absorb the damaging toxins often in pesticides. WSU bioengineering project manager Waled Suliman has stated that the material his team has developed only attracts specific compounds within…
Details
Suddenly, the theft of bees has become a very real problem for beekeepers here in the United States. The raw honey craze here in the states has the undesirables trying to take a short cut to a new business by stealing other people’s hives. The latest theft occurred in Lula, GA. It would appear the…
Details
Something very exciting was revealed in a recent edition of SustainableBrands.com. A Canadian firm is working on a new technique that will use bumblebees to protect bees naturally. The firm, Bee Vectoring Technology, has created an all-natural alternative to crop dusting with pesticides and harmful chemicals. The process is fairly simple. A tray is placed…
Details
In the past few weeks, the Cincinnati, Ohio Zoo, with help from a company called Morgan’s Canoe, rescued a honey bee colony consisting of at least 50,000 bees from a garage. However, what makes this common event so remarkable is the fact that this beehive is suspected of being at least 25 years old. The…
Details
You know we love bees, but this is the time of the year when they are most active and bee safety is of major concern. That means it is also the time of the year when people are most likely to be stung. The time bees have to “take care of business” is very limited…
Details
It seems as though every day we are finding out something new that is threatening the honey bee population. Finally, we get some good news for a measure being taken to actually protect the bee. The European Union is reportedly banning the use of neonicotinoids on crops by farmers. The list of endangered species of…
Details
Within the war-torn country of Afghanistan, honey is treated as a renown cure-all. However, for some inside those borders, the profitable commodity also creates incredible opportunities for working and owning private businesses, even for young women. One example is 19-year-old Frozan, who three years prior received a loan, purchased two bee hives, and was educated…
Details
With many scientists on the hunt for anything that could help save ailing pollinators, such as honeybees and similar bee species, researchers with Washington State University may have come up with another viable solution, specifically a material that might help curtail the effects of extensive pesticide exposure by removing such toxins from bees’ systems. According…
Details
Though honeybees are our go-to source for honey and pollination, there are other bees out there that pollinate plants and the crops we use for food. Interestingly, unlike honeybees, most of the over 4,000 species of bees on the North American continent don’t live in colonies. Actually, most native bee species are solitary—nesting in cavities,…
Details
