Calling all light warriors - the Bees need you!

[bluestflame]

another swarm i rehomed today , still learning as i go

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TyT5QQywpjQ

and a couple of pics ( i had a friend take some pics )













last two should have been reversed in sequence

[william r sanford72]

Nice work bluestflame...I think you got off easy on that swarm.no ladders saws or home to mess with and free bees...


William.

[william r sanford72]

A Place for Engineering in Entomology


Meghan Bennett engineered a device to detect the emergence of alfalfa leafcutting bees from their nest cells. Her device is composed of a microcontroller, infared detectors, metal BBs, and Eppendorf tubes, among other components.

By Meredith Swett Walker

Meghan Bennett, a Ph.D., student studying the alfalfa leafcutting bee (Megachile rotundata), was interested in how the bees time their emergence from their nest cells. She needed to record exactly what time the bees emerge in relation to different environmental cues. But collecting this kind of data requires watching nest cells (or videos of nest cells) and carefully noting time of emergence. It’s tedious and time-consuming, and one person can only watch so many cells at a time. She had a problem—an engineering problem.

Engineering is an extremely broad discipline, but the etymology of the word illustrates its essence. The word “engineering” is derived from the Latin ingeniare, meaning to contrive or devise. Bennett needed to devise a device that would allow her to record bee emergence more efficiently. She soon waded into the world of 3D printing, infrared detectors, and microcontrollers. Along with collaborators, she built a device (pictured above) that allows her to record the exact emergence times of 1,000 bees in a single experiment without the need to sit and watch them crawl out of their cells. The entomologist had completed an engineering project.

This is exactly the kind of scenario Barukh Ben Rohde, Ph.D., of the University of Florida had in mind when he organized the Entomology 2017 Section Symposium “Entomological Engineering: Tracking, Stimulation, and Detection of Insects.” Rohde is an electrical engineer interested in teaching engineers how to work on biological problems. He used his engineering skills to solve an entomological problem: the need for a low-cost device, with low electrical power requirements, to trap biologically modified male mosquitoes.


What happens when an electrical engineer tackles mosquito trapping? A sound trap for male Aedes aegypti, as shown in this figure from Barukh Ben Rohde’s presentation.

The symposium showcased the need for engineering in entomology. Richard Mankin, Ph.D., of the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service is an entomologist who studies the Asian longhorned beetle, an invasive, destructive tree pest. Mankin shared his work on a low cost, easy-to-use device that detects the presence of beetles in living trees or lumber using sound. Perry Jetter of the University of Florida presented low-cost techniques to detect when honey bee queens have died using tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) chips or magnets. Quick detection of queen death allows beekeepers to replace the queen before the colony fails.

James Snyder of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services demonstrated his work using 3D printing to produce and rapidly redesign traps for the Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri). The psyllid spreads huanglongbing (HLB), or citrus greening disease, which has devastated the citrus industry in Florida. Snyder’s traps have advantages over the traditional sticky traps because they prevent deterioration of trapped insects and allow managers to test the psyllids for HLB disease onsite using a handheld PCR device.
These tools may prove crucial in rapid detection and containment of this devastating tree disease.


This is not a giant Christmas tree ornament; rather, it’s a trap for Asian citrus psyllids. James Snyder created this device using a 3D printer to effectively catch the insects so they can be screened for huanglongbing disease.

Kan Li, Ph.D., of the University of Florida is an engineer who works with machine learning. He joked that his last biology course was AP Biology in high school. Li is using a complex mathematical model called a “finite state machine” to automatically recognize insects like mosquitoes and house flies based on their flight dynamics.

In order to control mosquitoes and prevent mosquito-borne diseases, we need more field observations of mosquitoes—lots more. But detecting mosquitoes in the field can be costly and laborious. You can identify mosquitoes by the whining sound their wings make, but a rugged, inexpensive device that can filter out background noise is needed. Rather than designing such a device, Haripriya Mukundarajan, a Ph.D. student at Stanford, realized that most of us are already carrying it in our pockets: a cell phone. Mukundarajan presented her work verifying that cell phones could record mosquito whines effectively. She and her colleagues then created software that could distinguish mosquito species using these recordings and trained citizen scientists in Madagascar to use their phones to record mosquitoes. They are now working on developing an app to facilitate recording and submitting data to their “ABUZZ” citizen science project.

So, is Mukundarajan an entomologist or an engineer? She jokes that “no field would claim her.” She started out working in robotics, then got into space technology, is currently working in biophysics, but is also starting to get into genomics. Mukundarajan says she “prefers to let the problem dictate the field.” Her work, and the research presented in this symposium, clearly demonstrates the power of combining disciplines like engineering and entomology to solve important scientific problems.

https://entomologytoday.org/2017/11/...in-entomology/

[william r sanford72]

UK will back total ban on bee-harming pesticides, Michael Gove reveals
Exclusive: Research leads environment secretary to overturn government’s previous opposition, making total EU ban much more likely

The UK will back a total ban on insect-harming pesticides in fields across Europe, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, has revealed.

The decision reverses the government’s previous position and is justified by recent new evidence showing neonicotinoids have contaminated the whole landscape and cause damage to colonies of bees. It also follows the revelation that 75% of all flying insects have disappeared in Germany and probably much further afield, a discovery Gove said had shocked him.

Neonicotinoids are the world’s most widely used insecticide but in 2013 the European Union banned their use on flowering crops, although the UK was among the nations opposing the ban. The European commission now wants a total ban on their use outside of greenhouses, with a vote expected in December, and the UK’s new position makes it very likely to pass.

“The weight of evidence now shows the risks neonicotinoids pose to our environment, particularly to the bees and other pollinators which play such a key part in our £100bn food industry, is greater than previously understood,” said Gove. “I believe this justifies further restrictions on their use. We cannot afford to put our pollinator populations at risk.”

In an article for the Guardian, Gove said: “As is always the case, a deteriorating environment is ultimately bad economic news as well.” He said pollinators boost the yield and quality of UK crops by £400m-£680m every year and said, for example, gala apple growers are now having to spend £5.7m a year to do replace the work of lost natural pollinators.

Gove said the evidence of neonicotinoids’ harm to pollinators has grown stronger since 2013, including a landmark field trial published in July that showed neonicotinoids damage bee populations, not just individual insects, and a global analysis of honey revealing worldwide contamination by the insecticides.

This and other research was examined by the UK’s Expert Committee on Pesticides (ECP), which published its updated advice on Thursday. “Exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides under field conditions can have an unacceptable effect on honeybee health” they concluded. “Such unacceptable effects are occurring at a landscape level and between seasons.”

Professor Ian Boyd, chief scientific advisor at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: “The important question is whether neonicotinoids’ use results in harmful effects on populations of bees and other pollinators as a whole. The available evidence [now] justifies taking further steps to restrict the use of neonicotinoids.”

Boyd warned in September that the assumption by regulators around the world that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes is false. This followed other highly critical reports on pesticides, including research showing most farmers could slash their pesticide use without losses and a UN report that denounced the “myth” that pesticides are necessary to feed the world.

Gove’s decision has delighted campaigners and scientists who have long argued that heavy pesticide use, along with the destruction of habitat and disease, are having a devastating impact on insects.

“Michael Gove is to be congratulated for listening to the experts on this issue and backing tougher restrictions,” said Friends of the Earth’s chief executive Craig Bennett. “But lessons also need to be learned – we now need to move away from chemical-intensive farming and instead boost support for less damaging ways of tackling persistent weeds and pests.

“We warmly welcome the UK’s change of position,” said Matt Shardlow, at insect conservation group Buglife. “Brexit will give the UK more control over the health of our ecosystems and it is essential in doing so that we apply the highest standards of care.”

He said the EU had been stuck on the issue of a full neonicotinoid ban, unable until now to get sufficient votes from member states: “In taking this ‘unfrozen moment’ in British politics to put bees and science at the centre of our priorities for sustainable agriculture, Michael Gove may also unfreeze the EU and secure an EU-wide ban that will benefit insects across the continent.”

Chris Hartfield, the National Farmers Union’s acting chief science adviser, said: “Farmers are acutely aware that bees play a crucial role in food production and have done an enormous amount to help them.” But he said the committee’s finding of “unacceptable effects” came despite their acknowledgement of a gap in understanding in whether neonicotinoids damage overall ecosystem services: “In our view, the ECP has leapt beyond its brief.”

But Gove said: “While there is still uncertainty in the science, it is increasingly pointing in one direction.” He said a post-Brexit farming subsidy system would channel more money into environmentally sustainable ways of farming.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...l-gove-reveals

[william r sanford72]

Honeybees fumble their way to blueberry pollination

But the berry pollen doesn’t end up in the insects’ hives



Denver-Honeybees may be the world’s most famous pollinator, but a new study shows that blueberry blooms reduce the insects to improvisational klutzes. Not useless ones though.

Pollination specialists have realized that the pollen haul found in hives of Apis mellifera honeybees has little, if any, from blueberry flowers, ecologist George Hoffman said November 5 at the Entomology 2017 meeting. Yet big commercial blueberry growers bring in hives of honeybees in the belief that the insects will help wild pollinators and boost the berry harvest.

It isn’t easy for honeybees to stick their heads into jar-shaped blueberry flowers, which narrow at the top, to get at the nectar. Nor do honeybees do the buzz-in-place move that some other bees use to shake pollen out of the pores on the blueberry flower anthers.

Still, fumbling honeybees often get blueberry pollen on their bodies as they grab and stretch, sometimes even poking a leg down into a bloom. In more than 60 percent of bee visits analyzed, a leg brushed against the receptive female part of the flower, Hoffman, of Oregon State University in Corvallis, found. And more of the pollen sticks to their legs than to the more usual pollination pickup spots around the bees’ heads, he observed (SN: 9/30/17, p. 32).    

Honeybees certainly are pollinating blueberries, Hoffman concludes, but he has seen them scrape blueberry pollen down their legs and then kick the gob away. The stuff doesn’t end up in their hive, he speculates, because for some reason “they don’t like it.”

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...ry-pollination

[william r sanford72]

Goulsons Open Letter, UK Ban, Songbird Decline

Published on Nov 10, 2017

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk about Professor Dave Goulson's "Open Letter", the UK's decision to ban neonicotinoids and more research about the decline of songbirds.www.theorganicview.com

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dGkr7c_2l2o

[william r sanford72]

Apis Arborea - Rewilding Honeybees

Published on Nov 10, 2017

Apis Arborea - protecting and preserving honeybees through rewilding. www.apisarborea.com

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9AQ8WNvBK1A

[william r sanford72]

Land of grouse and honey

HIGHLIGHTING the role of honeybees on shooting estates, a short film documenting the successful partnership between Tomatin estates and a local honey producer has been commissioned by the Tomatin Moorland Group.

Many Scottish honey producers work in partnership with grouse estates to give their bees access to the prolific flowering plants on moorland around the country. Estates in Tayside, the Angus Glens and the Lammermuirs let beekeepers position their hives on the moors every August and September.

HIGHLIGHTING the role of honeybees on shooting estates, a short film documenting the successful partnership between Tomatin estates and a local honey producer has been commissioned by the Tomatin Moorland Group.

The Tomatin film, titled "A Bee’s Life on the Moor", features Nigel Robertson of Struan Apiaries, a company which has 500 hives feeding on the heather on several estates in the area.

“Managed heather is perfect for honey bees – young heather is great for the bees to forage on as the flowers are soft and don’t damage their wings," said Mr Robertson. "A well-looked after grouse moor is an ideal territory for bees. Heather honey is my best-selling product. I wouldn’t get the kind of crop that I do if I didn’t have access to a managed grouse moor, because there wouldn’t be the same percentage of young heather as a guaranteed source of food.

"Our business wouldn’t survive if I did not have access to these estates,” stressed Mr Robertson.

Calum Kippen, a gamekeeper at Clune and Corrybrough Estate, a member of the Tomatin Moorland Group, said: “Our land is managed mainly for grouse. Heather needs to be burnt regularly to kill off the old plants and encourage new growth. Muirburn provides a favourable habitat for grouse and other ground nesting birds. The bees also thrive on young heather.

“There are 13 different species of bumble bee on Scottish moors, separate to the honey bees," said Mr Kippen. "Seven of these are common types and there are five or six scarce species; most of the common species live happily on moorland in Scotland. Wild bees feed on the cowberry initially in June; then blaeberry flowers and bell heather, then the ling or common heather in August and September. The heather has to be pollinated and managed moors are a great place for bees to feed undisturbed.

“Some of the estates in Tomatin have hosted hives on their land for the past 25 years and it adds another layer of biodiversity to the work that we do. We are delighted to work in partnership with local honey producers and it is exciting from our point of view that we can play a small role in creating a Scottish food product that is in demand around the world.”

Struan Apiaries, based in the Ross-shire village of Conon Bridge, is now pushing into new markets for quality honey products, with increasing sales both in Scotland and in the rest of the UK, Belgium, Holland, South Africa and the USA. Depending on the weather, the firm can produce as much as 30 tonnes of honey annually, though this figure can fall to just six tonnes in a poor year.

Mr Robertson continued: “On the moor the hives are safe – people do steal our hives sometimes but they don’t steal them from the grouse moors. Scotland is renowned for its heather honey and tourists want to buy something distinctively Scottish.”

http://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/n...use_and_honey/

A Bee's Life

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3GC5cd2aReg

[Ewan]

That was the land of my youth, at least the summer holidays. My grandfather had a cottage on the side of a hill where the heather just turned the landscape that familiar hue, he kept a hive from a local farmer in the back paddock and we always had a slab of fresh honey to sample whenever I was there. I loved the waxy bits the best because you could chew and savour them for quite some time before they lost their flavour. My father, as a teenager, worked as a beater on the grouse moors during late summer.
Its a different world up there these days, and the cottage is long gone - burnt to the ground by arson following a burglary.

I started a thread just yesterday William that you might find some interesting links in regarding apiculture. All the best.

[william r sanford72]

Genomic study explores evolution of gentle 'killer bees' in Puerto Rico

A genomic study of Puerto Rico's Africanized honey bees - which are more docile than other so-called "killer bees" - reveals that they retain most of the genetic traits of their African honey bee ancestors, but that a few regions of their DNA have become more like those of European honey bees. According to the researchers, these changes likely contributed to the bees' rapid evolution toward gentleness in Puerto Rico, a change that occurred within 30 years.

The findings, reported in the journal Nature Communications, could lead to advances that will bolster honey bee populations in the Americas, the researchers said.

Africanized bees are the offspring of African honey bees and their European counterparts. In the late 1950s, these aggressive "killer bees" escaped from an experimental breeding program in Brazil. That program had set out to produce a desirable mix of traits from the gentle European bees and their African counterparts, which were more aggressive, disease-resistant and adapted to a tropical climate.

Ironically, what scientists failed to do in the laboratory was eventually accomplished by happenstance. Africanized honey bees arrived in Puerto Rico (most likely on a ship, by accident) in the 1990s, and within three decades had evolved into the gentle, yet hardy, Africanized bees that dominate the island today. Biology professor Tugrul Giray, of the University of Puerto Rico, first reported on the gentle Puerto Rican bees in the journal Evolutionary Applications in 2012. Giray is a co-author of the new study.

To gain insight into how the bees became gentle, the researchers sequenced the genomes of 30 gentle Puerto Rican bees, 30 Africanized bees from Mexico and 30 European honey bees from central Illinois.

"The benefit of having these three populations is that you can compare and contrast between the three," said University of Illinois postdoctoral researcher Arian Avalos, who conducted the research with U. of I. entomology professor Gene Robinson; crop sciences professor Matthew Hudson; and Guojie Zhang and Hailin Pan, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "We asked, 'How is the genome of the gentle Africanized bee different than other Africanized populations? What parts of the genome are similar to European bees?'"

The team discovered that, for the most part, the genomes of the gentle bees resembled those of their Africanized forebears. Specific regions of the DNA, however, had shifted in the gentle bees, reflecting more of their European heritage.

These regions appeared to be under "positive selection." This means that something in the bees' environment was favoring these genetic signatures over others.

A genomic study of Puerto Rico's Africanized honey bees - which are more docile than other so-called "killer bees" - reveals that they retain most of the genetic traits of their African honey bee ancestors, but that a few regions of their DNA have become more like those of European honey bees. According to the researchers, these changes likely contributed to the bees' rapid evolution toward gentleness in Puerto Rico, a change that occurred within 30 years.


The findings, reported in the journal Nature Communications, could lead to advances that will bolster honey bee populations in the Americas, the researchers said.

Africanized bees are the offspring of African honey bees and their European counterparts. In the late 1950s, these aggressive "killer bees" escaped from an experimental breeding program in Brazil. That program had set out to produce a desirable mix of traits from the gentle European bees and their African counterparts, which were more aggressive, disease-resistant and adapted to a tropical climate.

Ironically, what scientists failed to do in the laboratory was eventually accomplished by happenstance. Africanized honey bees arrived in Puerto Rico (most likely on a ship, by accident) in the 1990s, and within three decades had evolved into the gentle, yet hardy, Africanized bees that dominate the island today. Biology professor Tugrul Giray, of the University of Puerto Rico, first reported on the gentle Puerto Rican bees in the journal Evolutionary Applications in 2012. Giray is a co-author of the new study.

To gain insight into how the bees became gentle, the researchers sequenced the genomes of 30 gentle Puerto Rican bees, 30 Africanized bees from Mexico and 30 European honey bees from central Illinois.

"The benefit of having these three populations is that you can compare and contrast between the three," said University of Illinois postdoctoral researcher Arian Avalos, who conducted the research with U. of I. entomology professor Gene Robinson; crop sciences professor Matthew Hudson; and Guojie Zhang and Hailin Pan, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "We asked, 'How is the genome of the gentle Africanized bee different than other Africanized populations? What parts of the genome are similar to European bees?'"

The team discovered that, for the most part, the genomes of the gentle bees resembled those of their Africanized forebears. Specific regions of the DNA, however, had shifted in the gentle bees, reflecting more of their European heritage.

These regions appeared to be under "positive selection." This means that something in the bees' environment was favoring these genetic signatures over others.

Explore further: New insights on how bees battle deadly varroa mite by grooming

More information: Arian Avalos et al, A soft selective sweep during rapid evolution of gentle behaviour in an Africanized honeybee, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01800-0

Journal reference: Nature Communications
Provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-genomi...le-killer.html

[william r sanford72]

Fungicides may have negative impact on bees
Cornell-led team studies "landscape-scale" connections.



New research by a Cornell-led team of scientists show fungicides - particularly chlorothalonil, a general-use fungicide often found in bumblebee and honeybee hives – may negatively affect bee health, according to Scott McArt, assistant professor of entomology and the lead author of a new study, “Landscape Predictors of Pathogen Prevalence and Range Contractions in United States Bumblebees,” published Nov. 15 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 

“Fungicides have been largely overlooked because they are not targeted for insects, but fungicides may not be quite as benign – toward bumblebees – as we once thought. This surprised us,” said McArt, a fellow at Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. 

Building on a large data set collected by Sydney Cameron, professor of entomology at the University of Illinois, the scientists discovered what they call “landscape-scale” connections between fungicide usage, pathogen prevalence and declines of endangered United States bumblebees. 

While fungicides control plant pathogens in crops, the bees pick up their residue when foraging for pollen and nectar. As farms use both insecticides and fungicides, the scientists worry about synergy. “While most fungicides are relatively nontoxic to bees, many are known to interact synergistically with insecticides, greatly increasing their toxicity to the bees,” McArt said. 

Chlorothalonil has been linked to stunted colony growth in bumblebees and an increased vulnerability to Nosema, a fatal gut infection in bumblebees and honeybees.

“Nosema can be devastating to bumblebees and honeybees,” said McArt. “Since fungicide exposure can increase susceptibility of bees to Nosema, this may be the reason we’re seeing links between fungicide exposure, Nosema prevalence and bumblebee declines across the United States in this data set.” 

For domestic and global agriculture, bumblebees are a key component due to their ability to use “buzz pollination” that vibrates and shakes pollen loose from flowers. In the United States, bees contribute more than $15 billion to the economy and $170 billion to global agribusiness, according to global economic research and a 2012 Cornell study. While half of crop pollination work is done by commercially managed honeybees in the U.S., the other half is done by bumblebees and wild bees.

McArt and his Cornell colleagues will continue to investigate fungicide-insecticide synergisms and fungicide-pathogen interactions under the New York State Pollinator Protection Plan and a new grant from the New York Farm Viability Institute.

Funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation. 

Source: Cornell University

http://www.southeastfarmpress.com/fa...ve-impact-bees

[william r sanford72]

Japanese flower attracts pollinators by pretending to be a mushroom

"The fungus gnats may be deceived by both visual and chemical mimicry," researcher Suetsugu Kenji said.


The mushroom-like flower of the cast iron plant is pictured emerging from the soil. Photo by Kobe University.


Attracted by its mushroom-like appearance, a fungus gnat visits a cast iron plant's flower.

Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Until now, scientists thought slugs and amphipods pollinated the mysterious flowers of cast-iron-plants, native to the southern islands of Japan. But new research suggests fungus gnats are the main pollinators of Aspidistra elatior.

Though native to the islands of Japan, the cast-iron-plant grows all over the world. Its English name recalls its ability to thrive despite neglect, making Aspidistra elatior a popular house plant.

The plants are mostly appreciated for their long, glossy leaves. But the flowers lend the plant a certain strangeness. The thick and fleshy purple flowers appear as if they're half-burrowed in the soil and are often covered by leaf litter.

Many liken the flower's appearance to that of a mushroom, and the latest research suggests its fungal mimicry promotes pollination by mushroom-loving gnats.

Scientists have previously observed slugs regularly visiting Aspidistra elatior. Studies credited the gastropod with pollinating the flower, but the conclusion was based on observations made outside the plant's native habitat.

To clear up the confusion, scientists at Kobe University in Japan studied the log of visitors to Aspidistra elatior plants in their native habitat on the island of Kuroshima.

"We discovered that no slugs visited, and hardly any beach fleas," Kobe professor Suetsugu Kenji said in a news release. "The candidate that emerged as an effective pollinator was the fungus gnat."

Scientists observed the gnats crawling into the center of the flower and picking up pollen.

Researchers published their findings this week in the journal Ecology.

"We believe that the similar appearance of A. elatior and mushroom fruit bodies may help attract fungus gnats," Suetsugu said. "In addition, A. elatior emits a strong musty odor.

Therefore, the fungus gnats may be deceived by both visual and chemical mimicry."

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/201...510771459/ph2/

[william r sanford72]

Learn the Basics of Keeping Bees, Build a DIY Top Bar Hive, and Start Backyard Beekeeping

https://www.motherearthnews.com/home...s-zl0z1304zpit

[william r sanford72]

Fire and wild Honeybees....

Published on Nov 17, 2017

www.apisarborea.com

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qGYSJgRuzyw

[william r sanford72]

Massive bee infestations have us buzzing – and many of us terrified



Victorian families are locking themselves in sealed rooms and cars while waiting to be saved from swarms of squatter bees.

It’s swarming season, when bee colonies produce more than one queen, and half of the hive leaves in search of a new home – wall cavities and chimneys being favoured locations.

What starts out as a football-sized swarm can grow over a year into the size of a small car in your roof cavity.

The previous two years, swarming season – when the weather turns warm and bees get ready for pollination orgies – were almost non-events.

“At best they were a fifth of what we’re seeing this year,” says Frankie Spranger, who heads a Melbourne-based family business called Bee Rescue. “This season is extreme.”

The comments follow the death of a groundsman after he was stung by a swarm of bees at a regional Victorian farm on Wednesday.

Mr Spranger, who was driving between jobs before pulling over to speak to The New Daily, says he’s getting 25 to 30 calls a day from people wanting hives removed from their homes. And some are armchair bee-keepers who caught the recent home-grown honey buzz and are now out of their depth.

“Some people are a mess when they call me,” he says. “It’s the fear factor. They can’t do anything. They’re locked up and paralysed in their own house … but it’s confronting, there could be 60,000 bees that have moved in.”

Some of Mr Spranger’s customers were people who’d bought bees off him to get started as hobby honey farmers.
“The problem is, there are these bee seminars and books that make it sound romantic. But there’s a lot you need to know.”

As of May, there were reportedly 6000 bee-keepers registered in Victoria – four times the number 15 years ago. At the time of the report, Victorian Apiarists Association president Kevin MacGibbon predicted beekeeper numbers could grow to 7000 by the end of the year.

Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources senior apiary inspector Joe Riordan told The Weekly Times: “There is no other (form of) agriculture, farming or hobby that has grown like bee-keeping — nothing at all.”

Ben Moore, beekeeper and rescuer, is working 15-hour days pulling hives out of buildings.

“It is absolutely crazy,” he says. “A classic story is the family in Bentleigh [in bayside Melbourne] hiding inside the car, inside the garage, waiting for me to get there. It’s not unusual behaviour in my business.”

Mr Moore’s voicemail advises that he’s booked out for the next week, and gives the number of another rescue business. He’d just been attending a bee emergency at a school.

The reason why bee people talk about rescuing bees, is because people previously tended to try and kill the invaders.

“It’s better that we get to rescue them,” he says. “But people are in fact motivated by the wrong information. They read about bees suffering Colony Collapse Disorder in Europe or the United States … they hear bees are disappearing, but that’s not actually happening in Australia. We have the healthiest bees in the world.”

John Powell calls himself The Bee Wrangler. He says that from Monday to Wednesday this week, with the hot weather, “demand has been overwhelming”.

He says that bees can set up home in a wall cavity or chimney without the human occupants being aware of it — until the bees get curious about what else is happening in the house. “Suddenly you might have a few dozen in your loungeroom. They’re a scout party conducting an investigation.’’

Dr Ronelle Welton is a public health expert with the Australian Venom Research Unit at the University of Melbourne’s Department of Pharmacology. She says that about 900 people are hospitalised each year with bees stings, including 25 deaths from bee stings between 2000 and 2013.

“Bees are the most common cause venomous animal bite,” she says. “But it’s not the sting that kills someone. It’s their body’s allergic reaction to the sting.”

Bee rescuer Frankie Stranger says the best way to get bitten is to try and kill the hive. Kill one bee, and the hive is alerted to the threat by pheromones. Kill a few dozen and you set off bee bomb.

“I’ve seen people end up in hospital from so many stings because they tried killing the bees … or their faces are so puffed up they can barely see me.’’

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/natio...arming-season/

[bluestflame]

another one i collected last night and kept locked up till this afternoon , had a frame of honey and a couple of thier combs i transferred ( had to drill the holes carefully this afternoon)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=EFJc1AB6MU4

sticks are temporary landing platforms till i can make up and secure something a little more fitting ( pardon the pun)

[william r sanford72]

Log Hive with young swarm.
www.apisarborea.com

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QNudgfmBg_Y

[william r sanford72]

Scientists develop temperature-controlled homes for stingless honey bees

PANTNAGAR: In a first, scientists at G B Pant University in Pantnagar have designed special temperature-controlled beehives that would allow rearing of stingless honey bees (Tetragonula iridipennis), also known as dammer bee, in North India.

The stingless bees require temperatures of 15 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius to survive. The species has been reared in South India due to favourable climatic conditions. Since in North India, especially in the hills, temperatures usually plunge below 15 degrees C, stingless bees have not been reared here. The honey produced by the dammer bee is more nutritious compared with that obtained from other bee species and therefore fetches a substantially higher price.

Talking to TOI, Dr M S Khan, dean of the entomology department at G B Pant university, said, “We have designed wooden boxes with sal and teak wood which maintain a temperature between 30 and 35 degrees Celsius. We are conducting experiments with the thickness of wood from various trees to bring down cost of manufacturing of these boxes so they are affordable."

"We have sent a proposal to the state government and if we get funding we will distribute the beehives to apiary owners for free next year," he said.

Scientists said that the boxes would also allow for complete honey extraction from dammer bees which is a difficult task since they usually nest among boulders, old walls and tree cavities.

Dr Poonam Srivastava, assistant director of the Beekeeping Research and Training Center at the varsity, said that scientists have been working on developing the boxes since 2008. “We hope that with these special beehives will help boost income of apiary owners as many of them would take to rearing stingless bees.”

The project has created quite a buzz among beekepers.

Vikram Singh Randhawa, an apiarist from Kalinagar village in Gadarpur, said, “The honey produced by stingless bees is of higher quality and better nutrition and can fetch up to Rs 1,500 per kg. In comparison, honey produced by other bee varieties sells for Rs 100 to 150 per kg. The beehives can also be used in South India where they use the rudimentary technique of rearing bees in mud pots. During honey gathering, the mud pots often get broken. The pots also attract all sorts of insects that feed on the honey and drive the bees out.”

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/61785183.cms

[william r sanford72]

Royal Jelly: Beauty Product Or Food For Baby Queen Bees?

This coveted yet controversial honeybee product is what queens are made of. Here are facts about royal jelly and its responsible harvest methods.



Royal Jelly. What an odd thing to see on a shelf in the cosmetics aisle. The name might sound like a quirky marketing scheme, but without royal jelly, the structure of the honeybee hive wouldn’t be possible. This substance is responsible for so many wondrous and miraculous feats in the hive. As a supplement, royal jelly is not without its own controversy.

So what is royal jelly, and what is its intended purpose? This secretion comes from the honeybee nurses. These home-bound hive bees care for the young larvae of the colony. For the first three days of life, all honeybee larvae, regardless of sex or caste, are fed royal jelly. After that time, most bees, those destined to be workers, and a smaller percentage to be drones, are switched to a diet of honey, pollen and the digestive enzymes of their older sisters, the nurse bees. They’ll remain on this diet indefinitely.

Young larvae destined to be queens, however, are continually fed the royal jelly secretion. Queen larvae are fed this diet exclusively, and it is this diet that determines that they will become queens rather than female workers.

What exactly is royal jelly? Well, like most substances on our planet, it’s mostly water—about two-thirds. Another 13 percent (give or take) is protein; about 12 percent is sugar, another 5 percent is fat and another 4 percent is a mix of amino acids and vitamins. All of these percentages are estimates and the exact number fluctuates between various colonies and individual bees, wherever they might live.

Royal jelly is important in the honeybee hive. Yet as we humans tend to do, we have taken something that another creature uses and found our own applications for it.

Despite its high cost, royal jelly, also called “bee milk,” has been used as a supplement in human health, medicine and beauty for a long time, particularly in Chinese medicine.

There’s not much conclusive research about its health benefits in the West, but many continue to produce, sell and use it for a variety of health and beauty applications. Royal jelly has been used to treat:

Indigestion and stomach ulcers
The symptoms of PMS and menopause
Liver and kidney disease
Insomnia
Infertility
Skin disorders
High cholesterol

As a beauty supplement, it’s added to creams, lotions and other products to support skin health and offset the effects of aging.

The controversy lies in the harvest. Harvesting products from the honeybee hive is a precarious and delicate dance, which should be conducted with the seasons and timed just right. Each item that comes from the hive must be thoughtfully taken with great care and preparation—taking too much of any one thing, be it honey, pollen or wax, could leave the hive at a significant disadvantage and result in its demise. Royal jelly takes this challenge one step further. In order to harvest royal jelly, nurse bees must be led to believe they are raising a queen. Special frames are placed in the hive that contain preconstructed queen cells. Nurse bees then raise queens within those hundreds of cells, feeding each larva royal jelly. Before the larvae fully form (when they’re about only four days old), the frame is pulled, the larvae removed and discarded, and the royal jelly harvested, cell by cell with a special spoon.

As with any honeybee product, special care and consideration should be given before consumption, ethically as well as medicinally. Just as it is with honey, if you choose to consume royal jelly as a supplement, take the time to find responsible and locally produced sources, if possible, knowing that much of the commercially available royal jelly comes from overseas. There are wonderful resources in the natural world to help us grow and heal, but we must always be mindful of the way we harvest and whose efforts we support.

http://www.hobbyfarms.com/royal-jell...ueen-bee-food/

[william r sanford72]

Honey bees fill ‘saddlebags’ with pollen. Here’s how they keep them gripped tight



Bees don’t just transport pollen between plants, they also bring balls of it back to the hive for food. These “pollen pellets,” which also include nectar and can account for 30% of a bee’s weight, hang off their hind legs like overstuffed saddlebags (pictured). Now, researchers have investigated just how securely bees carry their precious cargo. The team caught roughly 20 of the insects returning to their hives and examined their legs and pollen pellets using both high-resolution imaging and a technique similar to an x-ray. Long hairs on the bees’ legs helped hold the pollen pellets in place as the animals flew, the team reported last week at the 70th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics in Denver. The researchers then tugged on some of the pollen pellets using elastic string. They found that the pellets, though seemingly precarious, were firmly attached: The force necessary to dislodge a pellet was about 20 times more than the force a bee typically experiences while flying. These findings can help scientists design artificial pollinators in the future, the team suggests.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/...-gripped-tight