The international honey industry just got more bad news regarding the overall health of honey bee colonies around the world. According to a recent study by the University of Strathclyde, international honey bee colonies were down by 16 percent after the winter. Worldwide Decline in Honey Bees The study surveyed more than 25,000 beekeepers throughout…
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California is supposed to be the land where clean energy and nature are protected, but quite the opposite happened this week during a game. A swarm of bees decided to take up shop just outside the Padres dugout. The game was halted to deal with the situation. Unfortunately, the solution chosen by the Padres was…
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Thomas Seeley is arguably one of the most respected voices in the world on the behavior of bees. His new book, “The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild,” is already drawing wide acclaim. The good news for bee lovers is you do not have to have a master’s…
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In the Matanzas province of Cuba, there’s a penchant for old-fashioned agriculture, which means honey bees can forage and swarm without pesticides affecting their survivability, as they have been elsewhere throughout the world. It’s safe to say that life is pretty great for Cuba’s tiny pollinators, with one man, Rogelio Marcelo Fundora—a mechanical engineer and…
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According to a team of researchers from the University of California in San Diego, a pesticide that has been deemed safe for honey bees may actually endanger certain demographics of these bees, especially if it is used alongside other chemicals, such as fungicides. Sivanto, which was developed by the company Bayer CropScience AG, has been…
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With the new spring season comes rain, warmer weather, budding flowers, and, to the unfortunate chagrin of some, honey bees coming out in swarms. However, there’s no reason to be worried about these tiny insects, even when you find them flying around in one big swarm, according to a beekeeper from the English county of…
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After the Honey Bee Health Coalition partnered with them, the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) is releasing a new set of best management practices (BMPs) in order to protect honey bees and similar pollinators around and in cornfields. As a row crop, field corn, at over 90 million acres, covers more soil in this country…
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As a way of helping commercial and hobbyist beekeepers track the many environmental stressors honey bees experience, Penn State’s Pollinator Research Center and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, as well as several other collaborators, developed an app called Beescape, which can be used for monitoring environmental factors around hives, farms, and gardens where…
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While they’re largely known for producing honey in general as well as painful stings when they’re threatened, honey bees are starting to become known for a few other things as well—royal jelly, bee pollen, and the New Zealand-based Manuka honey. Before you find yourself missing out, you need to try these products and reap all…
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In recent years, beekeeping has grown into a popular hobby for many and into a cause for others. For beekeepers in the state of Texas, however, they may be pleased to discovery that, as January 1, 2012, a bill was turned into law that makes beekeepers eligible to receive an agricultural exemption on their property…
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Despite there being a beehive on the state seal of Utah, honey bees aren’t “Beehive State” natives, having arrived with Brigham Young and the rest of the Mormon settlers in the 1840s. Young even called this new region “Deseret,” which means “honey bee” in the Book of Mormon. Considerably less renown would be Utah’s prominent…
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According to a one-of-a-kind study, honey bees might be the key to helping cities monitor pollution and pinpointing the precise sources of pollutants like lead. This study, which was published via the journal Nature Sustainability, analyzed honey samples from urban hives stationed in six metro neighborhoods in Vancouver, Canada. The team of researchers behind the…
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At 81 years of age, Morgan Freeman is one of the most recognizable faces—and voices—in the acting industry as well as the world in general. He’s taken on so many different roles in his long career that it’s hard to remember them all, but it’s one of his newer, lesser-known roles that could be the…
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In the year 1981, the largest known bee in the world was believed to have gone extinct, and it wasn’t the first time this had occurred. The Wallace giant bee, which originated in the Indonesian rainforests, is roughly four times the size of a regular honey bee, with the females (males being half their size)…
DetailsWhen they start life, honey bees hatch and grow up inside their hive with roughly 40,000 other bees, and for their first three weeks of life, this dark, constantly buzzing home is all they know. After this crucial development period, they venture out of the nest in search of nectar and pollen—a moment of considerable…
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As it can be easy to surmise at this point, the rising loss of honey bee colonies throughout the U.S. and the world is the result of multiple stressors, such as pesticides, habitat loss, climate change, malnutrition, viruses, and parasites, coming together in fatal combinations. Because of the seriousness surrounding the decline of honey bees,…
DetailsIt turns out, according to research from York University, that the solution for creating more disease-resistant honey bees may lie in certain groups of genes that control hygienic behavior and enable hives to limit harmful bacteria from spreading as a result. In a hive, some worker honey bees can detect and subsequently remove dead or…
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The blooming of California’s almond groves occurs all at once, and with it comes an influx of beekeepers and their honey bee hives to pollinate the countless pale white flowers. For Bret Adee, a veteran beekeeper, he’s already hustling to get his bees ready for almond pollination before moving them to the orchards in California’s…
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For insects, honey bees are notoriously intelligent, boasting exceptional navigation skills, communication skills, and the unique ability among insects to comprehend abstract concepts. However, based on recent reports, they may have to add art connoisseur to their repertoire. As part of the Great Australian Bee Challenge from ABC Catalyst, honey bees have been shown to…
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As most hopefully know, honey bees are one of the most crucial pollinating species in the world, being responsible for roughly one-third of our food supply. However, increasing declines in bee colonies have placed an incredible strain on the U.S.’s agricultural pollination capabilities as well as our future food security. While many things are contributing…
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With the regular honey season over, it’s time for an annual mass journey of millions of honey bee hives to California’s almond groves, and researchers continue to work in helping to lower the odds of pollinators as well as their offspring from dying while out there. Every winter, commercial beekeepers from all over the country…
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When it comes to the South African Cape honey bee, one tiny change in its genetic makeup transforms the socially organized insect into a fighting social parasite. This change guarantees infertile worker honey bees will start laying eggs of their own and fighting with other colonies. Recently, an international team of researchers from Martin Luther…
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According to assistant professor Michelle Nappier with the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, dogs “have up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, versus only about six million for us. The part of their brains dedicated to interpreting smell is about 40 times larger than ours.” For this reason, dogs are perfect for inspecting…
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As is becoming common knowledge, honey bees are essential for human civilization to be possible. Without them, most of the crops we grow wouldn’t have natural access to necessary pollination, and it would be much harder to feed the world’s expanding population. However, honey bees are having serious problems, from pesticides to habitat loss to…
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Since 2017, the state of Assam, India has seen a unique technique develop straight out of nature, and it has specifically protected countless elephants from losing their lives on railway tracks. This innovation, put in place by the Northeast Frontier Railways (NFR), involved using the amplified sounds of honey bees, and the downloaded noises eventually…
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As we all remember, Hurricanes Maria and Irma knocked out the electricity in Puerto Rico and uprooted thousands, but the storms wreaked havoc upon the island’s smaller community members as well—billions of domesticated and wild honey bees were displaced or killed as a result of the storms and the aftermath. Now, roughly 18 months later,…
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According to Norman Gary, a retired apiculturist, pesticides, predators, parasites, and a variety of microorganisms are constantly threatening honey bees’ chances of survival. However, another, more obscure threat exists—hobbyist beekeepers in urban areas who rear too many hives for honey bees to thrive in any way. Per the 85-year-old Gary, whose experience with bees includes…
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According to 16-year-old West Fork, Iowa resident Collin Witte, his first year working as a caretaker of honey bees has been both “challenging and rewarding.” The high school junior, awarded in 2017 with a youth beekeeping scholarship via the Iowa Honey Producers Association, harvested around 50 pounds of honey from his two beehives in the…
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For many decades, folk musicians have acted as arbitrators of political protest. From the “Ballad of ’84” by Dick Gaughan, the clarion call of the Scotland miner’s strike to the 1959 Pete Seeger cover of the gospel song “We Shall Overcome,” an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, the one-two punch of a singer…
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Soon, researchers and beekeepers will get to welcome the reveal of a genome for the small hive beetle (SHB), thanks to a team of scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). The reason for beekeepers to get excited is that small hive beetles have created major problems for honey bees, and few treatments have proven…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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