Calling all light warriors - the Bees need you!

[william r sanford72]

Bayer to ditch Monsanto name after mega-merger

By AFP
Mail Online, 4 Jun 2018
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp...ga-merger.html

German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer will discard the name Monsanto when it takes over the controversial US seeds and pesticides producer this week, it said Monday.

But Bayer executives insisted Monsanto practices rejected by many environmentalists, including genetic modification of seeds and deployment of "crop protection" technologies like pesticides, were vital to help feed a growing world population.

"The company name is and will remain Bayer. Monsanto will no longer be a company name," chief executive Werner Baumann told journalists during a telephone conference.

Bayer's $63 billion (54 billion euro) buyout of Monsanto -- one of the largest in German corporate history -- is set to close Thursday, birthing a global giant with 115,000 employees and revenues of some 45 billion euros.

Bosses plan to name the merged agrichemical division Bayer Crop Science once the merger is complete, German business newspaper Handelsblatt reported, citing "industry sources".

The Monsanto brand "was an issue for some time for Monsanto management," noted Liam Condon, president of Bayer's crop science division, adding that the US firm's employees were "not fixated on the Monsanto brand" but "proud of what they've achieved".

- Weedkiller arms race -

Producing high-tech genetically modified seeds, many designed to grow crops resistant to its proprietary pesticides, Monsanto has been a target for environmentalist protests and lawsuits over harm to health and the environment for decades.

"It's understandable that Bayer wants to avoid having bought Monsanto's negative image with the billions it has spent on the firm," said Greenpeace campaigner Dirk Zimmermann.

"More important than giving up the Monsanto name would be a fundamental transformation in the new mega-company's policies," he added, accusing Bayer of having "no interest in developing future-proof, sustainable solutions for agriculture".

Activists fear the firm's addition to Bayer will further reduce competition in the hotly-contested agrichemical sector, limiting farmers' and consumers' choices if they want to avoid GM and chemically treated crops.

What's more, in recent years weeds have begun to emerge that are resistant to products like Monsanto staple glyphosate, marketed as Roundup alongside "Roundup-ready" seeds beginning in the 1990s.

As agrichemical firms scramble to respond with new pesticides and resistant seeds, there are fears of an arms race with ever-more-potent weedkillers.

Some scientists already suspect glyphosate could cause cancer, with a 2015 World Health Organization study determining it was "probably carcinogenic" -- although Bayer and other defenders of the chemical have contested the research.

In 2017, attempts to block the European Union's five-year renewal of its approval for the weedkiller were unsuccessful.

But activists are lobbying governments and France has vowed to outlaw the substance within three years.

When launching the Monsanto takeover bid, Bayer also promised it would not introduce genetically modified crops in Europe.

"We will listen to our critics and work together where we find common ground," Baumann said, but added that "agriculture is too important to allow ideological differences to bring progress to a standstill".

With the world population set to reach almost 10 billion people by 2050, Bayer argues its products and methods are needed to meet demand for food.

- 'Number one in seeds' -

Bayer has put massive resources behind the deal, raising $57 billion in financing including a new share issue worth six billion euros announced Sunday.

It will also sell large parts of its existing agrichemical and crop seeds business to BASF in concessions to competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Once the buyout and the sales to BASF are completed, Leverkusen-based Bayer's crop science business plus Monsanto will account for around half its turnover, with the remainder coming from pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter health products.

At around 19.7 billion euros in 2017, Monsanto and Bayer's combined agriculture sales outweighed those of competitors ChemChina, DowDuPont and BASF, according to figures provided by Bayer.

"We estimate that Bayer will become number one in seeds and number two in crop protection globally" following the merger, analysts at Standard and Poor's wrote Monday.

Nevertheless, the ratings agency downgraded its score for Bayer's debt from "A-" to "BBB", while upgrading the outlook to "stable".

"Bayer's stronger business position in agriculture products... does not fully offset the increased debt in its capital structure," the analysts wrote.

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

https://mailchi.mp/d167762bc18d/baye...r?e=eb54924245

[william r sanford72]

Inside the brains of killer bees
June 6, 2018, American Chemical Society

Africanized honeybees, commonly known as "killer bees," are much more aggressive than their European counterparts. Now researchers have examined neuropeptide changes that take place in Africanized honeybees' brains during aggressive behavior. The researchers, who report their results in the Journal of Proteome Research, also showed they could turn gentle bees into angry ones by injecting them with certain peptides.

In the 1950s, researchers in Brazil bred Africanized honeybees by crossing European and African bees. In 1957, swarms of the bees were accidentally released, and they have been buzzing their way across the Americas ever since.

Scientists currently don't understand what makes these bees so aggressive, but the behavior appears to involve a complex network of genetic and environmental factors, regulated by neuropeptides. So Mario Sergio Palma and his colleagues wanted to examine neuropeptide differences between the brains of bees displaying aggressive and non-aggressive behavior.

The researchers stimulated Africanized honeybees to attack by hanging spherical, black leather targets in front of their colonies. Angry guard bees quickly attacked the targets, becoming embedded in the leather by their stingers. Meanwhile, gentler bees kept their distance. The researchers collected both groups of bees and analyzed their brains by mass spectral imaging. In the brains of aggressive bees, two longer neuropeptides were cleaved into shorter ones, but this did not happen in the gentler bees. The researchers then injected the shorter peptides into anesthetized, non-aggressive bees, which became combative upon waking. The study provides new insights into the neurological basis for aggressive honeybee behavior, the researchers say.

Explore further: Genes key to killer bee's success

More information: Marcel Pratavieira et al. MALDI Imaging Analysis of Neuropeptides in Africanized Honeybee (Apis mellifera) Brain: Effect of Aggressiveness, Journal of Proteome Research (2018). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.8b00098

Abstract

Aggressiveness in honeybees seems to be regulated by multiple genes, under the influence of different factors, such as polyethism of workers, environmental factors, and response to alarm pheromones, creating a series of behavioral responses. It is suspected that neuropeptides seem to be involved with the regulation of the aggressive behavior. The role of allatostatin and tachykinin-related neuropeptides in honeybee brain during the aggressive behavior is unknown, and thus worker honeybees were stimulated to attack and to sting leather targets hung in front of the colonies. The aggressive individuals were collected and immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen; the heads were removed and sliced at sagittal plan. The brain slices were submitted to MALDI spectral imaging analysis, and the results of the present study reported the processing of the precursors proteins into mature forms of the neuropeptides AmAST A (59–76) (AYTYVSEYKRLPVYNFGL-NH2), AmAST A (69–76) (LPVYNFGL-NH2), AmTRP (88–96) (APMGFQGMR-NH2), and AmTRP (254–262) (ARMGFHGMR-NH2), which apparently acted in different neuropils of the honeybee brain during the aggressive behavior, possibly taking part in the neuromodulation of different aspects of this complex behavior. These results were biologically validated by performing aggressiveness-related behavioral assays using young honeybee workers that received 1 ng of AmAST A (69–76) or AmTRP (88–96) via hemocele.

The young workers that were not expected to be aggressive individuals presented a complete series of aggressive behaviors in the presence of the neuropeptides, corroborating the hypothesis that correlates the presence of mature AmASTs A and AmTRPs in the honeybee brain with the aggressiveness of this insect.

Journal reference: Journal of Proteome Research

Provided by: American Chemical Society

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-brains-killer-bees.html

[Stephanie]

May all your lucky stars above
shine brightly down to bless ..
All your cherished dreams today
and crown them with success.

🐝🐝Happy Birthday to our lovely bee man!🐝🐝

[william r sanford72]

Bayer: A history

Today Monsanto merges into Bayer and the Monsanto name will be dropped because of the company's toxic reputation. But if anything, Bayer's corporate record is even worse.

.......

Bayer: A history

GMWatch, February 1, 2009
https://www.gmwatch.org/en/articles/...ayer-a-history

How a chemical and pharmaceutical giant with an appalling record of corporate crimes became a key player in the development, commercialization and sale of GM crops

Bayer AG is a chemical and pharmaceutical giant founded in Barmen, Germany in 1863 by Friedrich Bayer and his partner, Johann Friedrich Weskott. Today it has its headquarters in Leverkusen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It trademarked acetylsalicylic acid as aspirin in 1899. It also trademarked heroin a year earlier, then marketed it world-wide for decades as a cough medicine for children "without side-effects", despite the well known dangers of addiction.

During the First World War, Bayer turned its attention to the manufacture of chemical weapons including chlorine gas, which was used to horrendous effect in the trenches. It also built up a "School for Chemical Warfare". During this time Bayer formed a close relationship with other German chemical firms, including BASF and Hoechst. This relationship was formalised in 1925 when Bayer was one of the chemical companies that merged to form the massive German conglomerate Interessengemeinschaft Farben or IG Farben, for short.

It was the largest single company in Germany and it became the single largest donor to Hitler's election campaign. After Hitler came to power, IG Farben worked in close collaboration with the Nazis, becoming the largest profiteer from the Second World War. Amongst much else, IG Farben produced all the explosives for the German military and systematically looted the chemical industries of occupied Europe. It's been described as the Nazis' "industrial jackal" following in the wake of Hitler's armies.

During the Second World War, IG Farben used slave labour in many of its factories and mines and by 1944 more than 83,000 forced labourers and death camp inmates had been put to work in the IG Farben camp at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland. Auschwitz was a vast labour and death camp where more human beings were put to death than were killed in the whole of World War I. It was comprised by 3 main camps: Auschwitz I, a concentration camp; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp in which by 1944 some 6,000 people a day were being killed; and Auschwitz III, which supplied slave labour for the nearby IG Farben plant (Buna-Werke, also known as IG Auschwitz).

IG Farben's Auschwitz plant was a massive industrial complex. The largest outside of Germany, it consumed as much electricity as the entire city of Berlin. Built and run by slave labour, it is thought - at a conservative estimate - to have cost at least 35,000 lives.

In 1941, Otto Armbrust, the IG Farben board member responsible for IG Farben's Auschwitz project, told his colleagues, "our new friendship with the SS is a blessing. We have determined all measures integrating the concentration camps to benefit our company." But not only did thousands of slave labourers die from the conditions in which they worked for IG Farben, those camp inmates who were viewed as too sick or weak to continue to labour in the IG Auschwitz plant were selected for the gas chambers. IG Farben paid 100,000 reichsmarks each year to the SS and in return was assured a continuous supply of fresh slave labour, while being "relieved" of unfit inmates.


Elie Wiesel, the writer, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor, came to Auschwitz in 1944 and was sent with his father to IG Farben's Buna work camp. That same year, the Holocaust survivor and author Primo Levi was among 125 men selected at the railhead for labour at IG's Buna-Werke. One of only 3 survivors from this group, Levi later wrote about his experiences in searing detail: "A fortnight after my arrival there I already had the prescribed hunger, that chronic hunger unknown to free men... On the back of my feet I already have those numb sores that will not heal.

I push wagons, I work with a shovel, I turn rotten in the rain, I shiver in the wind, already my own body is no longer mine: my belly is swollen, my limbs emaciated." In Night, Elie Wiesel's acclaimed memoir of his personal experiences of the Holocaust, he describes how veterans of IG's Buna-Werke told those who had arrived there late in the war that the brutal treatment they were experiencing was as nothing to what had previously been endured by the IG work force: "No water, no blankets, less soup and bread. At night we slept almost naked and the temperature was 30 below.

We were collecting corpses by the hundreds every day... Work was very hard... [The gangmasters] had orders to kill a certain number of prisoners every day; and every week selection [for the gas chambers] - a merciless selection."

When it came to "selection", it was an IG Farben subsidiary, with IG Farben managers on its Management Committee, that manufactured and supplied Zyklon B to the SS. This poisonous cyanide-based pesticide, on which IG Farben held the patent, was used during the Holocaust to annihilate more than a million people at both the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek extermination camps.

The form of Zyklon B used in the gas chambers was deliberately made without the normal warning odorant. IG Farben also supplied the SS with the Methanol used to burn the corpses.

In 1946 the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal concluded that without IG Farben the Second World War would simply not have been possible. The Chief Prosecutor, Telford Taylor, warned: "These companies, not the lunatic Nazi fanatics, are the main war criminals. If the guilt of these criminals is not brought to daylight and if they are not punished, they will pose a much greater threat to the future peace of the world than Hitler if he were still alive."

Their indictment stated that due to the activities of IG Farben "the life and happiness of all peoples in the world were adversely affected."Charges as grave as fomenting war and killing slave labourers were also added. In his opening statement the Nuremberg Chief Prosecutor pointed out that, "The indictment accuses these men of major responsibility for visiting upon mankind the most searing and catastrophic war inhuman history. It accuses them of wholesale enslavement, plunder and murder."

According to the Nuremberg prosecutors, "We have seen Farben integrating itself with the Nazi tyranny, turning its technical genius to the furnishing of... commodities vital to the reconstruction of the German war machine, and emerging in Hermann Goering's entourage at the highest level of economic planning and mobilization for war. We have seen Farben poised for the kill, and subsequently swollen by economic conquest in the helpless occupied countries.

Faced with a shortage of workers, we have seen Farben turn to Goering and Himmler, and persuading these worthies to marshal the legions of concentration-camp inmates as tools of the Farben war machine. We have seen these wretched workers dying by the thousands, some on the Farben construction site, many more in the Auschwitz gas chambers after Farben had drained the vitality from their miserable bodies... Literally millions of people were put to death in the very backyard of one of Farben's pet projects - a project in which Farben invested 600 million reichsmarks of its own money."

Although the Nuremberg Tribunal indicted 24 IG Farben board members and executives on the basis of crimes against humanity, only 13 received prison sentences. And the sentences they received were described by the Nuremberg Chief Prosecutoras "light enough to pleasea chicken thief". Bythe early 1950sa number of those convicted of slavery, looting and mass murder were back at the helm of the very companies - Bayer, Hoechstand BASF, formed out of the assets of IG Farben in 1952.The owners of these "new" companies were alsothe shareholders of IG Farben.

Thus, although the gravity of the crimes committed by IG Farben meant the company was considered too corrupt to be allowed to continue to exist, it was supplanted by its key constituents - companies like Bayer which were owned, and directed at the highest level, by the very same people as IG Farben. Those who had helped Hitler to power and provided the technical know-how for his wars of aggression and the Holocaust, were back in control of the industry.

The Bayer executive Fritz ter Meer typifies the bounce back. An executive of IG for many years, the most senior scientist on its supervisory board and the chairman of its technical committee, he had become a Nazi Party member in 1937 and was the executive responsible for the construction of the IG Farben factory in Auschwitz, in which tens of thousands of slave labourers met their deaths. Ter Meer's own visits to Auschwitz and the detailed reports he received made it inconceivable that he did not have a clear picture of what was occurring. The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal found him guilty ofplunder, slavery and mass murder.

As a result, Ter Meer received the longest sentence of any of the IG Farben board members. But despite being found the most culpable of the men who, in the words of Chief Prosecutor, "made war possible... the magicians who made the fantasies of Mein Kampf come true", ter Meer was already outof prisonby 1952. By 1956 he had become the chairman of the supervisory board of Bayer, a post he held until 1964.

Even today Bayer continues to honour this convicted mass murderer. On All Saints Day 2006, for instance, the corporation is known to have laid a wreath on ter Meer's grave in Krefeld-Uerdingen, Germany. Yet for decades Bayer refused to pay compensation to its surviving slave labourers. Only after international protests did it eventually agree to pay damages - more than 50 years after the end of the war.

Bayer continued to grow in the post-war period, eventually becoming bigger than the whole of IG Farben evenat its zenith. Even as part of IG Farben, Bayer had maintained its strength in pharmaceuticals. In fact, scientific experiments had been done specifically on behalf of Bayer in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. IG had footed the bill for the research of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz-Birkenau's infamous "Angel of Death", and some of his experiments utilised germs and pharmaceuticals provided by Bayer.

Wilhelm Mann, whose father had headed Bayer's pharmaceutical department, wrote as head of IG's powerful pharmaceutical committee to an SS contact at Auschwitz: "I have enclosed the first cheque. Dr Mengele's experiments should, as we both agreed, be pursued. Heil Hitler." IG employee SS major Dr Helmuth Vetter, stationed at Auschwitz, participated in human medical experiments by order of Bayer. Prisoners died as a result of many of these experiments. Vetter was convicted of war crimes in 1947 and was executed in 1949 but Bayer's role only emerged later.

In the Auschwitz files correspondence was discovered between the camp commander and Bayer. It dealt with the sale of 150 female prisoners for experimental purposes and involved haggling over the price. One exchange notes: "The experiments were performed. All test persons died. We will contact you shortly about a new shipment at the same price." According to testimony by SS physician Dr Hoven during the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal: "It should be generally known, and especially in German scientific circles, that the SS did not have notable scientists at its disposal.

It is clear that the experiments in the concentration camps with IG preparations only took place in the interests of the IG, which strived by all means to determine the effectiveness of these preparations. They let the SS deal with the - shall I say - dirty work in the concentration camps. It was not the IG's intention to bring any of this out in the open, but rather to put up a smoke screen around the experiments so that... they could keep any profits to themselves. Not the SS but the IG took the initiative for the concentration camp experiments."

In the post-war years Bayer grew to become the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world. In the mid-1980s Bayer was one of the companies which sold a product called Factor VIII concentrate to treat haemophilia. Factor VIII turned out to be infected with HIV and in the U.S. alone, it infected thousands of haemophiliacs, many of whom died in one of the worst drug-related medical disasters ever.

But it was only in 2003 that the New York Times revealed that Bayer had continued producing and selling this infected product to Asia and Latin America after February 1984 when a safe product had become available, in order to save money. Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, who investigated the scandal, commented, "These are the most incriminating internal pharmaceutical industry documents I have ever seen."

In the early 1990's Bayer is said to have placed patients at risk of potentially fatal infections by failing to disclose crucial safety information during a trial of the antibiotic Ciproxin. Up to 650 people underwent surgery using Ciproxin without doctors being informed that studies (as early as 1989) showed Ciproxin reacted badly with other drugs, seriously impairing its ability to kill bacteria.

In 2001 Bayer had to recall its anti-cholesterol drug Baycol/Lipobay, which was subsequently linked to over 100 deaths and 1,600 injuries. Germany's health minister accused Bayer of sitting on research documenting Baycol's lethal side-effects for nearly two months before the government in Berlin was informed.

It is thought to have been partly in response to the impact of the Baycol scandal that Bayer bought the rival crop sciences unit of French company Aventis, which had absorbed part of Hoechst, in October 2001. Bayer CropScience was formed in 2002 when Bayer AG acquired Aventis CropScience and fused it with their own agrochemicals division (Bayer Pflanzenschutz or "Crop Protection"). The Belgian biotech company Plant Genetic Systems, also became part of Bayervia the acquisition of Aventis CropScience.

Today Bayer CropScience is one of Bayer's core business divisions, which include:
* Bayer HealthCare: drugs, medical devices and diagnotic equipment;
* Bayer MaterialScience AG: polymers and plastics;
* Bayer CropScience: GM crops and agro-chemicals.

Bayer is the world's leading pesticide manufacturer and the world's seventh largest seed company. Bayer CropScience is responsible for the majority of GM field trials in European countries. Bayer's GM crops are mostly "Liberty Link" - designed to be resistant to its "Liberty" herbicide. Liberty is a trade name for Bayer's glufosinate weedkiller. Together with Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops, Bayer's Liberty Link crops are one of the two main types of GM herbicide resistant crops, but glufosinate is a controversial herbicide. In January 2009, the European Parliament voted to ban pesticides classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction. As a result the permit for glufosinate will not be renewed.

A European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) evaluation states that glufosinate poses a high risk to mammals. It is classified as reprotoxic, because of research evidence that it can cause premature birth, intra-uterine death and abortions in rats. Japanese studies show that the substance can also hamper the development and activity of the human brain.

Bayer's systemic insecticide Imidacloprid, sold in some countries under the name Gaucho, and Clothianidin, has also proven highly controversial as it is widely believed to have contributed significantly to bee deaths. There have been calls for neonicotinoids to be withdrawn as seed dressings for crops that might affect bees, or even for a complete ban on their use. In May 2008 German authorities blamed Clothianidin for the deaths of millions of honeybees, and the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) suspended the registration for eight pesticide seed treatment products, including Clothianidin and Imidacloprid, on maize and rape.

In 2008, Bayer CropScience was at the centre of a hugecontroversy in the aftermath ofan explosion at one ofits U.S. pesticide production facilities. A U.S. Congressional investigation found faulty safety systems, significant shortcomings with the emergency procedures and a lack of employee training hadled to the explosion which killed two employees. The region apparently narrowly escaped a catastrophe that could have surpassed the 1984 Bhopal disaster.

According to the Congressional investigation: "Evidence obtained by the committee demonstrates that Bayer engaged in a campaign of secrecy by withholding critical information from local, county and state emergency responders; by restricting the use of information provided to federal investigators; by undermining news outlets and citizen groups concerned about the dangers posed by Bayer's activities; and by providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public." Bayer CropScience were found to have deliberately removed and destroyed evidence after the chemical explosion.

Bayer CropScience has been involved in a large number of controversies related to GM crops, perhaps most notably the contamination in 2006 of much of the US long-grain rice supply by Bayer's unapproved Liberty Link GM rice. This caused the U.S. rice industry's worst ever crisis with:
* over 40% of US rice exports negatively affected
* multiple federal lawsuits filed
* trade with the 25-nation EU at a standstill
* other countries banning US long-grain rice imports
* many other countries requiring testing of all imports of U.S. rice
* some markets for medium- and short-grain rice being affected
* another unapproved Bayer GM rice (LL62) also being detected in U.S. rice supplies
* US rice farmers being warned they would never again be able to validly describe their crop as "GM-free".

Tellingly, a key factor in the sale of Aventis CropScience to Bayer was a similar crisis involving GMmaize.The Starlink fiasco started when in October 2000 traces of an Aventis GMmaize (corn) called StarLink showed up inthe food supplyin the U.S. even though it only had approval foranimal feeds or industrial use. Starlink was not approved for human consumptionbecause the Environmental Protection Agency couldn't rule out the possibility that humans would beallergic to it. The agency's approvalhad beenconditional on Aventis's agreement to keep Starlink from being eaten by humans.

The Starlink fiasco eventually led to a massive recall of over 300 U.S. food brands due to the enormous scale of the contamination. ABC News reported in late November 2000, "In Iowa, StarLink corn represented 1 percent of the total [maize] crop, only 1 percent. It has tainted 50 percent of the harvest."The 'StarLink' gene also showed up unexpectedly in a second company'smaize and in USmaize exports.United Press International reported, "Aventis CropScience Wednesday was at a loss to explain why another variety of corn besides its StarLink brand is producing the [StarLink] Cry9C protein."U.S. maize exports to big buyers were badly hurt. Federal officials blamed the unauthorized appearance of geneticially engineered maize in the food supply solely on its manufacturer.

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

https://mailchi.mp/2a3cd140e9fc/baye...y?e=eb54924245

[william r sanford72]

Honey Bees Grasp the Concept of Zero Finds Study

New research published in Science has revealed that honey bees have an elaborated understanding of numbers despite their small brains.

By Loukia Papadopoulos

A new study published in Science has revealed that honey bees can grasp the concept of zero, an ability previously believed to be reserved for more evolved species. The paper, entitled "Numerical ordering of zero in honey bees", is a collaboration of RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, the University of Toulouse in France and Monash University in Clayton, Australia.

Insects get it too

“We’ve long believed only humans had the intelligence to get the concept (of zero), but recent research has shown monkeys and birds have the brains for it as well. What we haven’t known – until now – is whether insects can also understand zero," said RMIT University's Associate Professor Adrian Dyer.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KQkP85I2UJM

Dyer and his colleagues designed a series of targeted experiments to test honey bees' potential to grasp the concept of the number zero. In the first experiment, the bees were evaluated on their ability to understand the concepts of less than and greater than.

In the second test, the researchers assessed the extent to which the insects understood the concept of zero in comparison with other animals. Finally, in a third round, the bees' grasp on the less-than concept using the numbers zero to six was appraised.

The findings were nothing short of impressive. The researchers determined that the honey bees not only comprehended the concepts of greater than and less in reference to a blank stimulus representing the number zero, but they were also able to place zero in relational order to other numbers.

Zero is lower than one

"Bees thus perform at a level consistent with that of nonhuman primates by understanding that zero is lower than one," concluded the study. The researchers are now pondering whether this numerical understanding may be common in many animals or if it is the result of some evolution particular to honey bees.

Previous research on honey bees has revealed that the pollinators can learn complex skills from their peers and even grasp abstract concepts such as same/different and above/below that rely on relationships between objects. This is particularly impressive considering bee brains have approximately 1 million neurons, significantly less than the 86,000 million neurons found in a human brain.

“The discovery that bees can show such elaborated understanding of numbers was really surprising given their tiny brain. Large brains are thus not necessary to play with numbers. This capacity is therefore probably shared by many other animals," speculated study co-author, Dr. Aurore Avarguès-Weber from the University of Toulouse in France.

Last October, researchers from the University of Edinburgh found that neurons located in the central complex of bees' brains could detect and remember changes in direction, speed, and distance. This enables the roaming insects to return to their homes using the most direct route.

The region where the cells were stored in the bees' brains was also determined to be the same one that controls the navigation system used by other species including humans. It seems these little flying beings are not so different from us after all.

https://interestingengineering.com/h...ro-finds-study

[william r sanford72]

With Bees Scarce, A Drone Pollinates A New York Apple Orchard

by Dan Robitzski

Gather ‘round! Let me tell you the story of Droney Appleseed.

You see, in the 21st century, bee populations were dying off because everyone was using too many toxic pesticides. Farmers were starting to notice that the fuzzy little workers were starting to vanish because their crops weren’t getting pollinated. Boy, was everyone in a real pickle then! Thankfully, Droney Appleseed came to the rescue, flying over the farmland and spraying pollen wherever it went.

OK, so, we’re probably not ready to make children’s books about this stuff quite yet. But! An apple orchard was just pollinated by a drone for the first time.

Two weeks ago, the Beak & Skiff Apple Orchard of LaFayette, New York commissioned a company called Dropcopter to pollinate a portion of its orchard via drone, according to Syracuse.com. This isn’t the first time that a drone has sprayed pollen over farmland, but it is the first time that it’s been done with apple trees.

By harvest season, the orchard will be able to tell whether the drone-pollenated plants resulted in a higher yield of apples compared to the rest of the orchard.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=REresGT06CY

The drone sailed about 8 feet above the trees, spraying pollen as it flew, enough to send anyone with even a mild allergy running for the hills. The ultimate goal? To see if drone pollinators, (a concept that’s popped up more than once recently among tech companies) could replace or supplement the work done by bees, should their population continue to collapse.

It’s a pretty noble aspiration: keep farms afloat and keep food on the table as bees die off, unable to complete the crucial task of pollinating on their own. But it’s also at least partially a misguided one, and not just because Dropcopter disappointingly failed to name its pollination drone Droney Appleseed (look, guys, we don’t ask for much).

Looking for the technological solution to a drop in natural pollination is putting a bandage over a big, gruesome cut that we didn’t even clean first. Technological replacements for the dwindling bee population should only happen once we’ve figured out how to protect the bees themselves.

Assuming that the drone-sprayed trees yield as many apples as the rest, Dropcopter’s plan stands to do a lot of good. And that, in itself, is a great thing. But fixing the symptoms of larger systemic problems can’t be the only type of solution we pursue.

https://futurism.com/drone-bees-poll...apple-orchard/

[william r sanford72]

New Research Showcases the Best and Brightest Fathers of the Insect World

By Adrienne Antonsen

Dads often get a bad rap in the animal world. While it’s true that mothers typically do the lion’s share of childrearing across species, there are some exceptions to that rule in the form of devoted dads. To celebrate Father’s Day this year, we have compiled some fascinating insights on exceptional paternal care in the insect world as recently discovered through entomological research. These insects are here to prove that dads are rad!

Caring Male Giant Water Bugs Attract More Females

One of the most classic examples of paternal care in insects is the giant water bug. In these animals the traditional mother and father roles are reversed, with females actively searching for males to mate with and males rearing the young. Female giant water bugs lay their eggs on males’ backs (as shown in the example pictured atop this post), after which the males are solely responsible for caring for the eggs until hatching. Males can mate with multiple females, adding eggs to their backs until no space remains.

Researchers recently collected adults of the giant water bug species Diplonychus rusticus to test whether females are differentially attracted to males with or without eggs on their back. When introduced to a group of males where half had 10 eggs on their backs and half had none, female giant water bugs preferentially laid eggs on males that already had eggs on their backs instead of egg-free males. This result led the researchers to conclude that paternal care is under sexual selection in Diplonychus giant water bugs, with female preference for egg-caring males resulting in increasingly caring males over time. These little guys take piggyback rides to a whole new level!

When Family is at Stake, Beetle Fathers Emerge Victorious Against Intruders

The best fathers protect their clan, as Lethrus apterus beetles do when confronted with intruders. This biparental species raises subterranean broods, and while the mother beetle tends and feeds the young belowground the father guards the tunnel entrance against other males who seek to take over their burrow. A new study looked at how the size of conspecific intruders affected the outcome of battles with a guarding male. Through a field experiment conducted in Hungary, researchers discovered that larger intruders are quicker and more likely to engage in fights with guarding males than smaller intruders, and are more likely to win.

However, despite their advantage over smaller competitors, larger intruders still did not fare well against guarding males, as the home beetle nearly always successfully defended its territory. The study authors hypothesize that guarding males tend to overcome intruders because they have more to lose: The motivation to protect an established family and home is stronger than the intruders’ guile to overtake a burrow of unknown quality. For these beetle fathers, home is where the heart is, and that’s something worth protecting.

Burying Beetles Use Corpse Meat to Power Through Multiple Forays Into Fatherhood

Burying beetles have one of the most elaborate and well-known biparental care systems in the insect world. Together, male and female burying beetles bury a small vertebrate corpse in the ground and then rear offspring within the crypt, feeding their offspring and themselves with the carcass meat. The fathers also defend their brood against rival beetles and other intruders. Interestingly, male burying beetles that have previously raised a brood have been found to emit higher levels of sex pheromones and subsequently attract triple the number of females than are attracted by males that haven’t bred yet.

The scientists behind that discovery recently decided to examine the potential underlying causes of that pheromone boost. They found that Nicrophorus vespilloides burying beetle males that raised a brood and fed on a vertebrate corpse emitted higher amounts of sex pheromone than unbred males that fed upon dead invertebrates. The authors concluded that increased pheromone production by burying beetle fathers is likely driven at least in part from the high quality vertebrate carrion upon which they are able to feed during brood care. Meaty carcasses thus play double duty for burying beetle fathers, fueling them through brood care and beyond to when they search for another female with which to start a family.

Courtship Songs of Fly Fathers-to-Be Depend on Their Host Cactus

Before becoming fathers, males need to find a mate. In many insect species, males have developed elaborate methods with which to attract females, such as the courtship songs that Drosophila fruit flies conduct through wing vibrations. Recently, researchers investigated whether the type of host cactus on which two different Argentinian Drosophila species were raised would impact their courtship songs. Drosophila buzzatii uses prickly pear cactus as its primary host plant, while Drosophila koepferae uses columnar cacti. The two species also differ in the purpose of their courtship song: D. buzzatii heavily relies on song for mate recognition, while D. koepferae uses song to communicate mate quality, relying instead on chemical cues for mate recognition.

With these differences in mind, the researchers expected D. buzzatii‘s song to stay the same regardless of host cactus because mate recognition depends upon a stable signal irrespective of environment, while D. koepferae‘ssong would differ because nutritional differences in the type of host cactus would lead to song variation that reflected male quality.

This is exactly what they found, with D. koepferae‘s song changing structure and increasing in volume when raised on the nutritionally superior prickly pear instead of columnar cactus, while D. buzzatii‘s song stayed the same regardless. These results show the important role host plants can play in the divergence of sibling species, and the fascinating courtship methods that can subsequently develop in fathers-to-be.

Male Fireflies Brighten Their Courtship Flashes to Better Attract Females in the Presence of Light Pollution

Sometimes it’s the flashiest guys who get the girls, and this is especially true in the case of fireflies. In urban areas, though, nighttime light from human development threatens to outshine even the brightest firefly. Investigators recently sought to discover whether male fireflies might be able to increase the brightness of their courtship flashes in the face of interfering light pollution. To find out, they exposed varying wavelengths of light to adult Aquatica ficta males, a common Taiwanese firefly that maintains small populations within the bustling metropolis of Taipei.

Typically, A. ficta males produce intermittent, one-second-long yellow-green flashes to attract mates. When exposed to short- and mid-wavelength light at dim intensities, however, the fireflies emitted brighter flashes at a less frequent rate. Short- and mid-wavelength light at bright intensities often caused fireflies to cease flashing entirely, likely because it induced daytime inactivity in the fireflies, while long-wavelength red light had no effect on flashing regardless of intensity. The researchers concluded from this data that male A. ficta fireflies are unaffected by longer wavelengths of light, while shorter wavelength light spurs them to increase the conspicuousness of their flashes to ensure visibility to females. These insects truly shine in their quest to become fathers.


Whether through flashy courtship displays or fantastic child-rearing skills, insect fathers go to great lengths to produce offspring and continue their species’ longevity. Happy Father’s Day to insect and human dads alike—thank you for shining so bright!

Pics in the link:
https://entomologytoday.org/2018/06/...nsect-fathers/

[william r sanford72]

More Research Needed to Better Balance Honey Bees and Native Bees

By Andrew Porterfield

Just in time for World Bee Day on May 20, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization issued a call to protect bees, citing a need to control pesticide and fertilizer use to reduce threats to pollinator populations.

The FAO call left out one potential threat to bees native to the United States: Apis mellifera, the European honeybee.

Pollinators are essential to food production—almost all of the world’s most common crops depend on pollinators to reproduce. Of those pollinators, bees are the most important. About 22.6 percent of developing world agriculture and 14.7 percent of developed world farming is connected to bee behavior.

There are at least 25,000 species of bees worldwide, but the key bee for managed agriculture is A. mellifera, which is native to Europe but was introduced to the United States.

While much attention has been paid to a variety of threats to A. mellifera populations, including chemical pesticides, habitat alteration, varroa mites, and beekeeping hygiene, relatively little attention has been paid to the effects the European import may have on the 4,000 species of wild American bees, which also play important roles in pollination. In fact, wild pollinators are often more efficient at their tasks than managed honeybees and can contribute the majority of pollination to up to 86 percent of crops that depend on pollinators. Thus, the impacts of honeybee management on wild bees can have a significant effect on agriculture.

Victoria Wojcik, Ph.D., research director Pollinator Partnership, and a team of entomologists at the San Francisco-based nonprofit, which conducts research and engages in educational and conservation efforts to protect populations of bees and other pollinators, reviewed published literature to identify studies that focused on the relationships between A. mellifera and native bees. The review, published this month in the journal Environmental Entomology, revealed a yawning gap of knowledge surrounding this relationship between honey bees and wild bees.

Working back through literature that appeared in searches conducted between April 2013 and August 2017, Wojcik and her team identified 19 papers that addressed A. mellifera versus wild bees. Of those papers, 14 were experiments in which density of honeybees or wild bees was manipulated, and five were observations of managed honeybees and wild insects. Seven studies looked at reproductive output in wild bees. Most of the studies were very short-term, and none were conducted in areas of current concerns over competition (western U.S. forests, southeast and northeast U.S. conservation areas, and open space in central California).

Even with this low volume of published research, the team did find common threads on bee behavior:

Foraging patterns by bumble bees decreased with increases in A. mellifera foraging. Increasing honeybee colonies in natural areas appeared to “push” bumble bee foragers to flowers that weren’t used by A. mellifera.

Bumble bees were not as likely to visit a foraging site a second time if they had encountered a competing honeybee.

Only seven studies examined reproductive impacts of bee competition, but six of those found exploitative competition and a negative developmental or reproductive effect on native bees when confronted with honey bees. A 1991 study showed that honey bee presence reduced larvae number, size, and reduced pollen carrying among Exoneura asimillima, a social wild bee.

Interference competition, in which organisms fight or otherwise contact each other, did occur but not as frequently as another form of competition. Instead, exploitative competition, in which resources are depleted by one species at the expense of another, was observed as far more common.

The review, the researchers emphasize, shows that “maintaining honey bee colony health for pollination services while causing minimal impact to already threatened communities of native bees should be considered when putting honey bees in floral-rich areas.”

“Trends in rural landscape development … have dramatically changed honey bee forage ability within agricultural landscapes,” the researchers write. “Where beekeepers once had ample forage in managed agricultural lands, today many more seek access to alternative lands, such as natural areas, to make up deficits.”

And there they run directly into habits of wild bees. “Decisions in these cases have largely been based on opinion rather than on scientific evidence,” they write.

Read More
“Floral Resource Competition Between Honey Bees and Wild Bees: Is There Clear Evidence and Can We Guide Management and Conservation?”
https://academic.oup.com/ee/advance-...dFrom=fulltext


https://entomologytoday.org/2018/06/...d-native-bees/

[william r sanford72]

usda NATIONAL HONEY REPORT for may 2018

[william r sanford72]

Bees get stressed at work too (and it might be causing colony collapse)

June 18, 2018 by Amélie Cabirol And Andrew Barron, The Conversation

Ever been overworked, tired and felt muddle-headed? Research now shows honey bees suffer from the same thing – and we understand why.

A honey bee's life is hardly relaxing. Every day forager bees make many trips, travelling long distances, to gather vital resources of pollen and nectar from flowers. They have to deal with predators, challenging weather conditions and the very real risk of getting lost.

Just as chronic stress affects mental abilities in humans, our recent study suggests these stressful foraging activities reduce bees' ability to solve problems, by changing the connectivity between specific neurons in the brain.

Intense foraging affects bees' mental health

We studied the impact of foraging activity on bees' problem-solving skills by using radio tags to track individual bees. We tested foragers' ability to distinguish between different floral smells, which is essential to identify the flower species producing nectar or pollen in the environment.

We then tested bees' ability to switch their preference between floral scents when the smell changed to indicate the presence or absence of food. This is important for efficient foraging because different flower species produce pollen and nectar at different times of the year.

Honey bees also need to be working at their mental best to navigate between the flowers and the hive, otherwise they cannot collect enough food for the colony.

Our study found bees that had been foraging for a long time or at high intensities were less able to learn new smells. We believe this might be due to stress. Stress in mammals causes similar learning difficulties, and another recent study described stressed bees as poor foragers.

Foraging was particularly stressful for young bees, which seemed to be less resilient to environmental conditions. It was surprising that foraging had such a negative impact on bees, though, as it has previously been seen as a time for valuable mental training in a rich and complex environment.

We also identified stress-induced changes in brain structure that affected learning ability. Intense foragers had more connections between the brain regions used for processing smells and a region involved in learning and memory. This raises the exciting possibility that future research may be able to predict problem-solving abilities simply by looking at a brain's structure.

Why should we care about bees?

Honey bee decline – known as colony collapse disorder – is a global problem. We don't know exactly what's happening to Australia's bee population, but losses in New Zealand and the United States are well above sustainable levels.

The contribution of bees to the Australian economy has been valued at A$100 million a year. Identifying the factors that cause stress to bees could help us manage and reduce their decline.

We would do well to learn from the European Union, which has recently banned neonicotinoid pesticides that directly affect bees' brains. Looking forward, we could also develop simple tests for beekeepers to check the problem-solving abilities of their hives. This would help them identify weak colonies before they collapse, by spotting issues early and preserving the health of the colony.

Explore further: 'Stressed' young bees could be the cause of colony collapse

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-bees-s...lapse.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-bees-s...-collapse.html

[william r sanford72]

Seeds That Poison...

Studies and data have found that pollinators such as honey bees, native bees, butterflies and birds, are in decline. Scientists have identified several factors that are contributing to bee decline, including pesticides, parasites, improper nutrition, stress, and habitat loss. The neonicotinoid (neonics) chemical class has been singled out as a major suspect due to its widespread use as a seed coating, high toxicity to bees, systemic nature (the chemical moves through the plant’s vascular system and is expressed in pollen, nectar, and guttation droplets), and persistence.

Beyond Pesticides:https://beyondpesticides.org/

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=x3s3DVLdv6I

[william r sanford72]

French Beekeepers Sue Bayer/Monsanto on Glyphosate in Honey; U.S. Court Allows Glyphosate Contamination of Honey Labeled “100% Pure”

(Beyond Pesticides, June 19, 2018)

Some 200 members of a French beekeeping cooperative in the northern Aisne region have sued Bayer — on the same day the giant chemical company’s acquisition of Monsanto was finalized — after discovering that their honey was contaminated with toxic glyphosate, a known endocrine disruptor and probable human carcinogen (according to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer). Monsanto is the long-time manufacturer of Roundup, the popular glyphosate pesticide; Bayer now owns not only the company, but also, the liabilities that come with it, including the “Monsanto” name.

Environmental activists had denounced the merger, which creates an agrichemical leviathan that promotes use of chemical herbicides and genetically engineered/modified (GE/GMO) seeds.

The beekeepers’ suit was filed in early June after Famille Michaud, a large French honey marketer, detected glyphosate contamination in three batches from one of the coop’s members — whose hives happen to border large fields of rapeseed, beets, and sunflowers. Glyphosate is commonly used in French agriculture; President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to ban its use by 2021.

Emmanuel Ludot, a lawyer for the cooperative, is looking for an outcome that includes mandated investigation of the extent of glyphosate contamination of honey, and of health consequences the pesticide represents for people. Mr. Ludot said, “It’s also a matter of knowing how widespread this might be. Famille Michaud tells me this isn’t an isolated case.”

Familles Michaud president Vincent Michaud noted that “we regularly detect foreign substances, including glyphosate. Usually, beekeepers will say, ‘In that case I’ll sell the honey at a roadside stand or a market,’ where there’s no quality control. But this beekeeper had the courage to say, ‘I’m not going to be like everyone else, I’m going to file suit against Monsanto.’”

French beekeepers are not alone in pushing back on glyphosate contamination of honey. Stateside, several organizations and individuals have approached the issue with a different strategy. Rather than suing the manufacturer, in November 2016, Beyond Pesticides, along with the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), brought suit against Sioux Honey Association (Sue Bee Honey) in Superior Court in Washington, DC for deceptive and misleading labeling of its products.

The suit, which followed revelations that Sue Bee honey products labeled “100% Pure” and “Natural” tested positive for glyphosate residue, claimed that Sioux Honey’s labeling and marketing practices violated the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act. Plaintiffs’ argument was that consumers expect a product labeled “100% Pure” and “Natural” to contain only honey, and that contamination of the product makes that labeling deceptive and misleading.

The introduction to the filed complaint says, “Beekeepers are often the victims of, and have little recourse against, contamination of their hives caused by pesticide applications in the fields where bees forage.

Given the failure of current law to protect beekeepers, retailers like Sioux Honey can and should use their market power to promote practices that protect beekeepers from contamination to ensure that consumers are provided products free of glyphosate and other pesticide residues. . . . Unless the paradigm of modern agriculture is shifted, however, synthetic chemicals will continue to contaminate everyday consumer products, and until that time, producers, distributors, and retailers of food products must be mindful of the fact that products containing such contaminants are not ‘natural’ or ‘pure,’ as a reasonable consumer would define the terms, and it is unlawful to label or advertise them as such.”

The intent of the suit was, broadly, to highlight the issue of pesticide contamination in the food supply. OCA director Ronnie Cummins said, “Regardless of how these products came to be contaminated, Sioux Honey has an obligation to . . . prevent the contamination, disclose the contamination, or at the very least, remove these deceptive labels.”

Beyond Pesticides and OCA lost the case. In March 2017, Associate Judge William Jackson of the DC Superior Court granted Sioux Honey’s motion to dismiss, finding that there was no evidence consumers had been misled by Sioux’s labeling on the honey.

He also found that the trace amounts of glyphosate in the honey “were not ingredients or additives because the chemical had been introduced into the products by bees carrying it back to the hive rather than something the company added during production.” The judge found that the court did not believe that consumers expect “pure” honey to be free from small amounts of glyphosate.

Beyond Pesticides has not yet announced next steps in the case, but is determined, on all fronts, to highlight the fact that our food supply is being contaminated by glyphosate (and other pesticides).

In a similar case brought before a District Court in California — Susan Tran v. Sioux Honey Association, Cooperative — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) responded to an order by Judge Josephine Staton, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, asking FDA to determine whether and in what circumstances honey containing glyphosate may or may not be labeled “Pure” or “100% Pure.” The FDA declined to provide a determination, saying “FDA’s role is to ensure that pesticide chemical residues on or in food are lawful because they do not exceed the limits established by EPA or, if present on or in foods without a tolerance, EPA has established an exemption from the need for a tolerance. . . . Any food that bears or contains a pesticide chemical residue that is not within the limits of a tolerance established by EPA, or is not exempted from the need for a tolerance, is adulterated. . . .

EPA has established tolerances for glyphosate on such crops as corn, soybean, oil seeds, grains, and some fruits and vegetables, EPA has not established any tolerances or exemptions for glyphosate in honey. FDA understands that EPA’s review of the safety of glyphosate is ongoing. FDA intends to consider the need for any appropriate actions with regard to glyphosate findings in honey in consultation with EPA.”

Essentially, FDA declined to issue a determination based on a lack of clarity about whether or not the presence of glyphosate residues in honey is lawful. Because EPA has issued neither a tolerance level, nor an exemption from such tolerance, for glyphosate, FDA asserts that its presence is in a sort “legal limbo” until, apparently, EPA decides to take up the matter. Beyond Pesticides contends that the lack of an established tolerance means that glyphosate should not be present in honey.

Oddly, one of FDA’s points in its letter — “Any food that bears or contains a pesticide chemical residue that is not within the limits of a tolerance established by EPA, or is not exempted from the need for a tolerance, is adulterated” — would appear to support the contention of the plaintiffs.

The real and lasting solution is, of course, to disallow EPA registration of pesticides that will (or can) contaminate the food supply. Beyond Pesticides executive director Jay Feldman notes, “It is our hope that beekeepers in the U.S. will, as did those in France, join the effort to push back against the registration of pesticides that invade the environment and cause indiscriminate poisoning and contamination. Until that is achieved, it is misleading to label contaminated food — especially food without a tolerance — as ‘100% pure’ or ‘natural.’”

Beyond Pesticides works to educate the public and policy makers about the issues that attend pesticide use, and the multiplicity of impacts pesticides cause, or to which they contribute. See these Beyond Pesticides website pages, in particular: Center for Community Pesticide and Alternatives Information, Organic Agriculture, the Daily News Blog, and its journal, Pesticides and You. For more on pollinators and action steps you can take to protect them, go to Beyond Pesticides’ National Pollinator Week actions.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source https://www.afp.com/en/products/web-mobile:

https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/fren...ey-doc-15q7rk1

https://beyondpesticides.org/dailyne...eled-100-pure/

[william r sanford72]

Hows about Some Pink Floyd....Childhoods End.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SnTz09-nk9c

Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

Scientists find evidence of 27 new viruses in bees

June 20, 2018 by Sara Lajeunesse, Pennsylvania State University

An international team of researchers has discovered evidence of 27 previously unknown viruses in bees. The finding could help scientists design strategies to prevent the spread of viral pathogens among these important pollinators.

"Populations of bees around the world are declining, and viruses are known to contribute to these declines," said David Galbraith, research scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb and a recent Penn State graduate. "Despite the importance of bees as pollinators of flowering plants in agricultural and natural landscapes and the importance of viruses to bee health, our understanding of bee viruses is surprisingly limited."

To investigate viruses in bees, the team collected samples of DNA and RNA, which is responsible for the synthesis of proteins, from 12 bee species in nine countries across the world. Next, they developed a novel high-throughput sequencing technique that efficiently detected both previously identified and 27 never-seen-before viruses belonging to at least six new families in a single experiment. The results appear in the June 11, 2018, issue of Scientific Reports.

"Typically, researchers would have to develop labor-intensive molecular assays to test for the presence of specific viruses," said Zachary Fuller, postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and a recent Penn State graduate. "With our method, they can sequence all the viruses present in a sample without having any prior knowledge about what might be there."

Fuller noted that because the cost of high-throughput sequencing continues to decrease, the team's approach provides an inexpensive and efficient technique for other researchers to identify additional unknown viruses in bee populations around the world.

"Although our study nearly doubles the number of described bee-associated viruses, there are undoubtedly many more viruses yet to be uncovered, both in well-studied regions and in understudied countries," he said.

Among the new viruses the team identified was one that is similar to a virus that infects plants.

"It is possible that bees may acquire viruses from plants, and could then spread these viruses to other plants, posing a risk to agricultural crops," said Christina Grozinger, distinguished professor of entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State. "We need to do more experiments to see if the viruses are actively infecting the bees—because the viruses could be on the pollen they eat, but not directly infecting the bees—and then determine if they are having negative effects on the bees and crops.

Some viruses may not cause symptoms or only cause symptoms if the bees are stressed in other ways."

Beyond identifying the new viruses, the team also found that some of the viruses exist in multiple bee species—such as in honey bees and in bumble bees—suggesting that these viruses may freely circulate within different bee populations.

"This finding highlights the importance of monitoring bee populations brought into the United States due to the potential for these species to transmit viruses to local pollinator populations," said Galbraith. "We have identified several novel viruses that can now be used in screening processes to monitor bee health across the world."

According to Galbraith, the study represents the largest effort to identify novel pathogens in global bee samples and greatly expands our understanding of the diversity of viruses found in bee communities around the world.

"Our protocol has provided a foundation for future studies to continue to identify novel pathogens that infect global bee populations using an inexpensive method for the detection of novel viruses," he said.

The National Geographic Society and the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service supported this research.

Explore further: Movement and threat of RNA viruses widespread in pollinator community

More information: David A. Galbraith et al. Investigating the viral ecology of global bee communities with high-throughput metagenomics, Scientific Reports (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-27164-z

Journal reference: Scientific Reports

Provided by: Pennsylvania State University

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-scient...uses-bees.html

[william r sanford72]

New and Easy Marking Method Tracks Bees Without Killing Them

By Leslie Mertz, Ph.D.

A wide range of bees play an important role in pollinating everything from wildflowers to agricultural crops. In fact, many farmers purchase bees to help get their fruits and vegetables pollinated. The question then becomes: Are those released bees actually staying in the farmer’s field to do the job, or are they flying off to places unknown?

Scientists have long sought a cheap and easy way to track released bees, but so far it’s been an uphill battle. Typically, scientists use a mark-and-recapture study, which means that bees are given an identifying mark of some sort, released into the field, and later collected in a trap or net to see how many of the captured bees are marked. That usually involves killing the bees to identify them to species and to check for the mark. Such mark-and-recapture studies don’t follow every single bee in a release, but they do provide an idea of whether it is the released bees—or other wild bees—that are actually doing the pollinating.

Current methods to mark bees include painting little dots or gluing tiny numbered tags onto the bodies of individual bees. While that works, it is grossly inefficient in pollinator studies where a typical release may number in the thousands of bees per acre.

Fortunately, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. A new study published in June in the open-access Journal of Insect Science outlines a new technique that quickly, simply, and inexpensively marks bees—and it’s non-lethal, too.

Taking a Powder

The idea for the new technique grew from frustrations in research with blue orchard bees (Osmia lignaria), according to study co-author Natalie Boyle, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) Pollinating Insects Research Unit. “Blue orchard bees are really good pollinators, and we’ve been using them in a number of trials, including for pears, sweet and tart cherries, and almonds. One of the biggest limitations is that we’re releasing hundreds of thousands of bees in our trials, so we never know how many of them are staying in the orchard or where they’re nesting,” she says.

Her frustrations progressed into a project during a 2016 visit to the USDA-ARS laboratory in Maricopa, Arizona. There, Boyle met up with USDA researchers Amber Tripodi, Ph.D., Scott Machtley, and James Hagler, Ph.D. Tripodi and colleague Jamie Strange, Ph.D., were similarly interested in marking bees, specifically certain bumble bees that are used to pollinate tomatoes and other crops in greenhouses. Machtley and Hagler, on the other hand, had considerable experience studying marking techniques for various insects. Before long, Hagler mentioned a good marking technique that has been used with many other insect species, and the group felt it might be a good option for bees.

That technique relies on the application of powder made from dried egg whites (albumin): The powder sticks to the insect, and collected insects can later be checked for the presence of the powder with a straightforward test called an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). It seemed feasible for tracking bees, Boyle says, because albumin powder is readily available at grocery stores and very inexpensive to test for.

To test whether it would work, the group had to figure out how to get the powder onto the bees with as little work as possible. That turned out to be relatively simple with the orchard bees and also with alfalfa leaf-cutting bees (Megachile rotundata), Boyle says. “Because it’s a dry powder, you can just roll the bee cocoons in that powder. As they chew their way out of the cocoon in the spring or summer to start foraging or looking for shelter, they self-mark themselves. For the bumble bee species Bombus bifarius, Amber had a colony in the lab and she used a little mesh sifter to sift a little bit of powder over the top of the colony and that was sufficient in marking them.”

Devising a No-Kill Method

The last hurdle in the method was to come up with a way to check bees for the mark without killing them. “The common method is to do lethal sampling, so we were pulling these individual pollinators out of the population in order to sample them for this protein. That was problematic, because the bees are not only providing this crucial pollination service, but they are retailing right now for about $1.50 per female,” Boyle explains. “We really needed to come up with a way to test for the powder without sacrificing these insects.”

They came up with an idea. Instead of killing the bees, perhaps they could rinse the bee in a saline buffer solution, and check the solution for a telltale sign of the albumin powder. To do it, they put a milliliter of the solution in a test tube, used forceps to carefully place a bee in the tube, shook the tube a bit to get the bee good and soaked, and then removed the wet but undamaged bee from the tube. An assay easily picked up the powder signature.

It worked perfectly in all three of the tested bee species: the blue orchard, leaf-cutting, and bumble bees. “I don’t think we could have asked for better results with this trial. Across the board, we got 100 percent detection of the mark and with no statistical difference at all in the survival of shaken versus not-shaken bees,” Boyle reports. “It seems like a pretty fool-proof method in our lab studies, so we’re really excited to take a final step this year and make sure everything works just as well in an open-field environment.”

With good results from the field work, this method could be useful beyond agricultural surveys, according to the paper’s authors. It could help investigate bee behavior in native ecosystems and provide insight into studies that explore the effect of urbanization, pesticides, or pathogens on bees, many populations of which are experiencing declines.

Overall, Boyle remarks, “This was a really fun project, and I couldn’t have imagined it going any more simply for us. It was very easy, very affordable, and very effective. That’s a triple-win right there.”

Read More
“A Nonlethal Method to Examine Non-Apis Bees for Mark-Capture Research”
https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscie...8/3/10/5020712

https://entomologytoday.org/2018/06/...-killing-them/

[william r sanford72]

Bit more tunes..How To Shake Hands.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yuphcpY5a5A

Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

Saving bees and helping folks out, now THAT'S living large!

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

It is not often that I get the opportunity to remove a feral colony of bees from a tree that is to be cut down, so when I got the call in late April, I was very happy to do the job. I was told that it would be a few weeks before the job could be done as the son of the homeowner was out of town, and as soon as he returned, he would cut the tree down.

When the day arrived for the tree to be cut, I got to the site around 8 in the morning to discover the tree cutting was going to be a shared family experience, there were cousins, uncles, grandsons, nieces, and the matriarch herself, Mrs. Jones. There was even the long distance share with a brother in New Jersey via cell phone. Everyone pitched in to down the tree, and all stayed to watch the removal itself. It was a great way to spend my morning, wrangling bees, and sharing a lot of laughs.

To be honest,I was a bit disappointed because the bees had already swarmed, but despite that fact, the removal went very well, and the bees took to the nuc. I left the nuc for two days at the location, and went back in the evening, closed it up, and took it to the abbey, and there it stayed for about 4 more weeks......growing.

I'm sure many of you are wondering why the thumbnail for this video shows three young ladies holding nuc boxes instead of maybe a picture of bees in a fallen tree. Well, as Paul Harvey was fond of saying," Now, the rest of the story."

On Monday of this week, 3 young bee keepers from the Franklinton area, about 30 miles north of the abbey, stopped by to see the bees at the abbey, two were sisters, and the third was their best friend. As we were walking the fields looking at the bees, they were telling me about how they are raising bees, and their plans for the two hives they had. As the tour continued, I asked them if they would be interested in getting a few nucs that were way past time to be transferred into larger hives, you would have thought these kids just won the lottery they were so happy. The bees from this video, and the bees from the video I posted 2 weeks ago, Swarm catching and swarm trap baiting,
were closed off and loaded into their truck.

I know the video does not show any of the above story, but I felt I needed to include it in the description just to give closure to the destiny of these bees and the obligation we have as bee keepers to perpettuate this wonderful fasciation we share in the love of God's lowly creature, the honey bee. God's peace to all.

Mr. Ed

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=15RdKqyPvU4

[Star Tsar]

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

[william r sanford72]

usda..NATIONAL HONEY REPORT for the month of June/2018

[william r sanford72]

Can somebody give me a hand!!!!

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

OK, I'm going to bee honest here, that was the largest swarm I have caught all year, but here's the rest of the story:

On Monday morning, May 14th, I went to the car port in Mandeville to remove a swarm that had just moved in two days prior. I had to remove the soffit on the car port to get to the bees, and there the swarm was.....it was HUGE. I started removing double handful of bees till I had taken about 3/4 of them out, and then the bees ran to the back, out of my reach. I then sprayed Honey robber into the space to chase them towards me, and it worked. The bees ran along the joist towards daylight. Then, out of the mass of bees, I spotted the queen, a big girl, and I made my move. Unfortunately, when I looked into the cage, she was not there, she had eluded me. The next thing I know, the air was full of bees and all the bees in the box were gone. The entire mass of bees had gone up into an oak tree 80 feet up.

Mr. Ed..

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=pywh8NMd_eU