Dan Nosowitz from AtlasObscura asks about the smartest bugs in the world? What is ‘Smartest’, after all? Of course after a while, the subject of bees comes up. Bees are capable of observation, learning, and memory to solve problems. “Every bee is entirely flower-naive at…
We have field tested this Beehive Fence design in three rural farming communities in Kenya with over 80% success rate. Any type of beehive can be used although our project focuses on using Kenyan Top Bar Hives and Langstroth Hives as they swing efficiently in…
This behavior is key to recovering from the Verroa mite epidemic. Ciro Invernizzi and colleagues from the Facultad de Ciencias, Montevideo, Uruguay, compared grooming behaviour in Italian (Apis mellifera ligustica) and Africanized bees. They found that at the individual level, Africanized bees showed a higher…
What a fascinating study of honeybees. I don’t think the article from The Register gets it right however. If a hive is queenless, workers will become “laying” workers in order to create new queens for the colony. Cape worker honeybees have the ability to invade…
Hopefully this sort of theft doesn’t find itself to the east coast of the United States. To complicate matters, bee brokers who arrange contracts between beekeepers and almond growers are discovering that there are not enough beehives to go around, driving up demand, rental costs…
The driver with the trailer loaded with 400 hives was involved in a multi-vehicle wreck. The bees were unhappy with the situation. Crews called in a group of beekeepers to help. After about an hour, the swarm cleared. A beekeeper told Channel 9 that bees…
Interesting 2014 study linking Neonics and CCD. “Bees from six of the 12 neonicotinoid-treated colonies had abandoned their hives and were eventually dead with symptoms resembling CCD,” the team wrote. “However, we observed a complete opposite phenomenon in the control colonies.” Only one control colony…
Startling discovery found in the results of the study done by entomologist Christian Krupke, and associate professor Elizabeth Long. The pollen samples represented up to 30 plant families and contained residues from pesticides spanning nine chemical classes, including neonicotinoids – common corn and soybean seed…
I wonder if honeybees have a similar ability. Granted, a honeybee doesn’t have as many body hairs as a bumblebee. Fascinating results however. The scientists took half of the flowers and put 30 volts on them, then filled them with sugar water. The other flowers…
Sadly, a tourist from Louisiana died while hiking in an Arizona park. A very sad, but rare story, about how multiple stings from bees can be lethal. “A Good Samaritan went back to the area Sonya described to check on Alex. Alex was located lying…
