Calling all light warriors - the Bees need you!

[william r sanford72]

Transportation of Colonies Affects Stingless Bees’ Genetic Structure
November 9, 2016

http://i1.wp.com/www.scienceandtechnologyresearchnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/timthumb-53.jpg
The unregulated practice of taking colonies from one place to another has made managed stingless bee populations in the Americas more genetically homogeneous

Unregulated transportation of colonies by apiculturists in the Americas has led to increasing standardization of the genetic profile of stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini), which are key pollinators of many native plants and commercial crops.

One of the possible consequences of this genetic homogenization could be the disappearance of bee populations that are better adapted to certain climate and environmental conditions, according to an international study conducted by Brazilian researchers in collaboration with colleagues in the United States, Portugal and Spain.

The study, which resulted from a postdoctoral fellowship and a research internship abroad, both supported by scholarships from FAPESP, has been published in the journal Molecular Ecology.

Rodolfo Jaffé, lead author of the paper and a researcher at Vale Institute of Technology (ITV) in Brazil, told Agência FAPESP, “We found that the unregulated and uncontrolled practice of transporting colonies has made stingless bee populations in the Americas more genetically homogeneous.”

The study focused on a number of factors that might hypothetically influence stingless bee gene flow, such as geographic distance between populations, beekeepers’ management practices, bee body size, deforestation and other changes in land use, and environmental conditions in the bees’ natural habitats such as temperature, elevation and rainfall.

The researchers analyzed data on these variables for 135 wild and managed populations of 17 stingless bee species from various tropical biomes in the Americas for which estimates of genetic distances between populations based on microsatellite molecular markers were available in the literature. Microsatellites are short segments of DNA that are inherited from both parents, making them useful for kinship analysis and population genetic studies.

Based on these microsatellite markers, they estimated isolation by distance (IBD) for the 135 bee populations studied. IBD is a measure of local genetic variation under conditions of geographically limited dispersal.

The results showed that IBD was significantly affected by beekeeper transportation of colonies. It was weaker for managed populations than for wild populations.

“What we would normally expect is an increase in genetic differentiation as the distance between managed populations increases, but this is not what we found,” Jaffé said. “That probably means beekeepers are transporting colonies from one region to another, and it is this practice that has caused standardization of the bees’ genetic profiles.”

Impact

Transporting colonies of stingless bees is a common practice and recommended by beekeepers in deforested areas that have lost their native bee populations. In the case of protected areas, the recommendation is to maintain the natural dynamics of existing bee populations and to avoid introducing bees from other regions.

“Transporting stingless bee colonies is a delicate matter,” Jaffé said. “It should be regulated and controlled. Transportation could be allowed within the same species’ natural habitat provided colonies are healthy and populations are evaluated beforehand.”

Limited dispersal

Stingless bees are believed to be especially susceptible to environmental degradation owing to their limited dispersal. Because a daughter colony relies on resources from the mother colony during its initial establishment, it is typically located not very far away.

Jaffé said limited dispersal of stingless bees, which are essential to the reproduction of many plant species and critical pollinators for several commercial crops, makes them particularly sensitive to changes in land use such as those caused by deforestation.

“If an area of primary forest is cleared, the bees that used to live there will have difficulty relocating to a new habitat because of limited dispersal,” he explained.
Earlier research showed that the degradation of stingless bees’ natural habitats could hinder gene flow and lead to depletion of genetic diversity, heightening the risk of extinction, and that topography, temperature and precipitation could also influence patterns of genetic differentiation in bee populations.

However, this study found that environmental factors and deforestation did not influence gene flow for the stingless bee species analyzed.
“These species are able to disperse and maintain gene flow across different altitudinal gradients and temperature patterns, and in deforested areas,” Jaffé said.

He added that one possible impact of unregulated colony transportation between regions is the introduction of diseases to places where none had previously existed.
Bringing new populations into a region can also lead to the loss of local populations that have hitherto been isolated and well adapted to local climate and environmental conditions in their native habitats.

“When colonies are transported, this can wipe out the genetic differentiation previously existing between bees in different areas,” Jaffé said.

This finding suggests maintaining connectivity between populations is not especially important to the conservation of these stingless bee species since they are already connected, even in deforested areas, he added. Instead, the focus should be on maintaining and rehabilitating environments that are “friendly” to pollinators.

“In other words, there should be sufficient resources in these areas for bees to establish colonies and forage,” Jaffé said.
“Given their ability to disperse across heterogeneous environments, they need environments where they can build nests and with enough flowers for them to obtain nectar.”

http://www.scienceandtechnologyresearchnews.com/transportation-colonies-affects-stingless-bees-genetic-structure/

[william r sanford72]

Artist Diane Thater is transforming the landscape of video installation

November 8, 2016

By Lauren Ball

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/11/IMG_3175-1-1038x576.jpg

As if entering hallowed ground, stepping into an art museum implies formality. We try not to click our heels too loudly against the wood floor. We make ourselves as small as possible to avoid blocking the views. And, somewhere in there, we attempt quiet contemplation. This type of learned behavior is exactly what renowned video installation artist Diane Thater destroys.

Wandering through the spaces Thater creates, the initial effect of color is dizzying. Her current exhibition, the Sympathetic Imagination at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, saturates walls in light projections of glowing red and darkened shades of blue, every segment of space carefully cultivated for spontaneous interaction and response. Thater rebels against the typical gallery convention of a framed picture on a simple white wall.

“This building, in particular, gives me a great opportunity to grow with the architectural elements,” said Thater at an MCA public artist’s talk. “These are not just white surfaces. They have this wonderful vaulted ceiling that I can work with, and use to sculpt the artwork.”

Thater began her career in Los Angeles in the early 1990s and her use of video installation as a medium has transformed over the past couple of decades. Projecting only rectangular images on a darkened wall at her first show, her exhibitions now explode with experimentations of color, variations of light, and differing mediums of video, from film to digital. But this artistic growth evolved along with bouts of hardship.

cj_owJrd8R8

“I felt very alone (in my work),” said Thater of her beginnings as an artist. “I had this professor, Patti Podesta, who was a film and video artist, and worked in experiments with time, space, and narrative. But she didn’t do things like this, and I kept thinking ‘What could I add to this medium that would transform it and make it new again?’”

Within Knots + Surfaces, one of Thater’s largest projections, honeybees wildly skim the wall’s surface while surrounded by colorful hexagonal structures, creating a multi-dimensional impression. “I started to experiment with breaking video images out of the rectangle,” said Thater of Knots + Surfaces. “I wanted to break into architecture and work spatially because, for me, installation is halfway between sculpture and architecture.”

ndOqyVtsdCs

Perhaps the most unprecedented theme that courses throughout Thater’s work is the inclusion of the audience as forms moving within the installations and as part of them. “We’re seeing, in these videos, the shadows of viewers melting into the piece,” said Joey Orr, MCA postdoctoral fellow and curator. “That’s something that (Thater) very much welcomes and engineers into the work.” While Thater’s light show buzzed and oscillated within various wall crevices and surfaces, darkened silhouettes continuously broke up the displayed images.

“I have always wanted viewers to penetrate the projections,” said Thater. “The idea is that the viewer is never outside of the artwork. I never want them to be outside the work of art, just looking at it. I want them to be inside looking through it, in it, and with it. They should be conscious of their own body’s relationship to the work of art, and of themselves experiencing something in space and time.”

c9Ut1WwrsyA

Yet, even after being welcomed to participate in the pieces by the artist herself, viewers at the October 29 exhibition debut seemed hesitant to walk in front of, or even near, the projection devices. Some shyly opted to wait until others walked out of a room before experiencing the work for themselves.

As I wandered around Thater’s gallery space, ghostly in its silent openness, I came to understand the audience’s general reluctance. To have one’s body displayed in such a public manner is disquieting – viewers have grown to expect art to remain static. Within Thater’s space, we become hyper-aware of our bodies, our breath, our off-kilter walks and flyaway hair. But we also see these imperfections mimicked in the jolted video movements, light leaks, and film grains. In this way, Thater’s work invites us to feel the warmth of acceptance and familiarity.

“I wanted to do something that hadn’t been seen before,” said Thater. “I don’t innovate for the sake of innovation; I innovate for the sake of the content and the medium of the work. I do things that I think need to be done.”


http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/artist-diane-thater-is-transforming-the-landscape-of-video-installation/

[Cidersomerset]

Beekeepers Accuse EPA Of Hiding Pesticide Files

By David on 9 November 2016 GMT

http://www.naturalblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/NBlogo1.jpg

Beekeepers Accuse EPA of Hiding Pesticide Files
Posted on November 8, 2016

https://www.davidicke.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/sweat-bee-1107327_960_720-1.jpg

‘Beekeepers and environmentalists on Thursday accused the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency of withholding documents they say will prove the agency has a “pattern and practice”
of shirking its duty to regulate bee-killing pesticides.

Lead plaintiff Jeff Anderson, a beekeeper who owns honey farms in California and Minnesota,
sued the EPA this past January, claiming a guidance document the agency issued in 2013
illegally widened exemptions for pesticide-coated seeds and their resulting dust-off.’

Read more: Beekeepers Accuse EPA Of Hiding Pesticide Files

http://www.naturalblaze.com/2016/11/beekeepers-accuse-epa-of-hiding-pesticide-files.html

[ThePythonicCow]

As macro photographers know, the shallow depth of field when shooting a subject very close can make capturing sharp images quite difficult. To help create images that are sharp from front to back, you can utilize focus stacking, a technique wherein you capture images at different focus distances and then combine them during post-processing to digitally increase the depth of field. If you'd like to read more about this, particularly in the context of insect macro photography, check out our piece from earlier this year on Levon Biss, who combines up to 10,000 images of a single insect captured with a microscope lens to create highly-detailed, massive photographs.
This appears to be done on dead specimens, allowing 10,000 images to be taken without the subject moving.

I imagine that a similar technique could be done on a live, free insect by using something rather like what we called "phased array radar" in the US Air Force back in the 1970's. Many radar receivers were arranged in a large plane (football field size, but at a 45 degree angle). Multiple targets, at various angles and distances, could be tracked at the same time, by post processing the returns from the multiple radar receivers.

If one used an array of lenses and sensors, each with a sharp focus, such that the regions of space within the focus and field of view, of the various lenses/sensors combined mananged to fill some entire volume within which a live insect happened to pass by, then in a single flash, one might get enough data to allow such high resolution, full depth of field across the entire subject, sharply focused images to be created, even of a rapidly moving insect. In multiple flashes, perhaps with a bit larger volume covered by more lenses/sensors, one might get motion pictures of live, moving, insects in such detail.

Perhaps that's how a fly's eye focuses ?

That would sure be cool to see :).

[Cidersomerset]

Bayer Forced To Stop Advertising That Neonics Give Plants 'A Daily Vitamin'

By David on 10 November 2016

https://www.davidicke.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/get-attachment-41.jpg


http://www.naturalblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/NBlogo1.jpg

Bayer Forced to Stop Advertising That Neonics Give Plants “A Daily Vitamin”
Posted on November 9, 2016

http://www.naturalblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/bee-deaths-bayer.jpg

By Heather Callaghan, Editor

‘Despite the public ire growing against monolithic chemcial corporations like Bayer; the
chemical and seed companies are merging to become an even bigger force of contention
for consumers and the eco-system at large. Bayer and Monsanto recently “got married”
and one thing the newly wedded couple can agree on is that the world’s bee population
doesn’t matter. “Just plant more flowers” around the crops, they’ve been known to say
when confronted about their chemical Molotovs.

Neonicotinoids (often called neonics) are a class of pesticides that have been repeatedly
linked to bee colony declines…except for those studies that are quietly funded by Monsanto, Bayer etc…’

Read more: Bayer Forced To Stop Advertising That Neonics Give Plants ‘A Daily Vitamin’

http://www.naturalblaze.com/2016/11/bayer-forced-stop-advertising-neonics-give-plants-daily-vitamin.html

[william r sanford72]

From Mars to a greenhouse near you: WVU team transitions robot from rover to pollinator

http://wvutoday.assets.slate.wvu.edu/resources/1/1478788703_story.jpg
Robot Agriculture — Pictured are researchers, Nicole Waterland, Yong Lak Park, Xin Li and Jason Gross.

Pollinators play a significant role in the production of more than 150 food crops in the United States with almost all fruit and grain crops requiring pollination to produce their crop. Pollinators come in all shapes and sizes and if a research team from West Virginia University has its way, they may also one day come in the form of a robot.

And it’s not just any robot; it’s Cataglyphis, winner of the Sample Return Robot Challenge, part of NASA’s Centennial Challenge.

Yu Gu, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, will lead a team of researchers that includes faculty from the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design as they attempt to turn the robot into a precision pollination robot. The three-year study is being funded by a more than $700,000 grant for the first two years from the National Robotics Initiative, a multi-agency effort that includes the National Science Foundation, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense.

Other members of the research team from WVU include Jason Gross, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; Xin Li, professor of computer science and electrical engineering; Giacomo Marani, research engineer with West Virginia’s Robotic Technology Center; Yong Lak Park, associate professor of entomology; and Nicole Waterland, assistant professor of horticulture.

The former collection basket on Cataglyphis will be turned into a robotic arm that will be used for precise flower manipulation including pollination. It will be tested in a greenhouse environment on bramble fruit, most notably blackberries and raspberries.

“Approximately $24 billion worth of crops per year in the U.S. rely on pollination by various pollinators,” said Park. “However, the recent decline of honey bees has greatly threatened productivity and the shortages of pollinators in the U.S. have significantly increased the cost of farmers’ renting them for pollination services.”

The pollinator robot design will support four main functions: robot navigation and mapping; flower detection, localization and evaluation; flower manipulation for pollination; and human-robot interaction.

Through the use of computer vision algorithms, which use image and video data to control the robot’s function, the robot will be able to estimate the flower position, size, orientation and physical condition, and to guide the robotic arm to capture and interact with flowers. A set of soft brush tips, mimicking bee’s hairs and motion, will then be used to pollinate the flowers.

The design parameters of the delicate robot-flower interface will be driven by a series of insect pollination experiments. The precision rover navigation, mapping and localization of individual flowers within complex greenhouse environments will be provided through a sensor fusion algorithm.

“A database will be automatically generated and updated by the robot, recording the history of flower development and pollination status,” Gu said. “This intelligent system will allow more selective, consistent and uniform pollination, which has the potential of leading to better fruit set and production at a large scale.”
According to Gu, robot experiments will be performed with incremental difficulties.

“The first two years of the project will be spent achieving precision autonomous robot navigation and mapping inside a greenhouse and identifying and cataloging the flowers through computer vision,” he said. “In year two, we will begin using the robotic manipulator, which will initially be fixed to a bench top, to pollinate flowers.”
The final evaluation of the prototype pollinator robot’s effectiveness will be performed in WVU’s Evansdale Greenhouse during the third year of the project.

“Blackberries and raspberries will be grown in the greenhouse under ambient light,” Gu said. “Four methods of pollination—bee pollination, manual pollination, autonomous robot pollination and mixed human-robot teaming on pollination—in addition to no pollination, will be performed and the efficiency of each pollination method will be compared.”

The effectiveness of pollination will be evaluated by determining the fruit yield per plant, fruit size, fruit weight, harvest time and overall distribution of fruit across a plant.

“Although the proposed experiments will only be focused on pollination, the technology can be further adapted for many other precision agriculture applications,” Waterland said. “Toward the end of the project, we will identify and work with 17 commercial partners to transition the developed precision robotics technology into real productivity in the agriculture field.”

Consulting on the project are Aaron Dollar, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Yale University, and Bob McConnell, grower, with McConnell Berry Farm, in Independence.

http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2016/11/10/from-mars-to-a-greenhouse-near-you-wvu-team-transitions-robot-from-rover-to-pollinator

[william r sanford72]

Secrets of Bees and Honey Production Revealed

Despite the importance of honey for honey bees and humans, little is known about its production by worker bees.  Floral pollen is the main source of protein for the honey bee. Nectar is obtained from flowers and honey-dew is derived from plant-sucking insects

From never seen before X-ray images of honey bee combs, a research team from Agroscope and the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern (both Switzerland) could study how honey is produced. The team used computer tomography to measure sugar concentration in the wax cells, without disturbing the sensitive mechanisms of the colony. They found that bees use several techniques to ripen honey.

Honey bees, Apis species, obtain carbohydrates from nectar and honeydew. These resources are ripened into honey in wax cells that are capped for long-term storage. These stores are used to overcome dearth periods when foraging is not possible.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IqGfqbIiBWc/WCOsBEP8GrI/AAAAAAABQRg/8ngNtM9hHzguNqigI8LLu1DsZRxMl_LZQCLcB/s640/45287.jpg

Honeybees collect nectar from flowers and concentrate the sugar it contains to produce honey. Honey reserves in their wax combs allow colonies to survive over winter when no food is available in the environment. This rich source of sugar is also appreciated by humans and honey is harvested for consumption.

In an article in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, a joint research team from Agroscope at the Swiss Confederation and from the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern (Switzerland) could quantify the changes in sugar concentration in wax cells during honey production by worker bees.

X-ray image of a cell with a ring of highly concentrated sugar along the walls. 

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1-kiXnHc7ZY/WCOrvXeY1FI/AAAAAAABQRc/1br9iOa9qHQAztMXJGt6BN2zKWN-uDwggCLcB/s640/Abbildung_2.jpg

"Due to the technical difficulties of measuring sugar concentration in wax cells without disturbing the bees, we still ignore much of how nectar is transformed into honey," says senior author Vincent Dietemann from Agroscope. "Computer tomography is conventionally used to examine humans or animals for medical purpose, but here we used this technique to scan whole honey bee hives. We could, for the first time, measure and literally see the sugar concentration of honey in the wax cells," adds lead author Michael Eyer from both Agroscope and Institute of Bee Health, who has been working on this project for the past two years.

Secrets discovered in the cells

During the honey ripening process in the cells, X-ray images showed different patterns of brightness that reflect sugar concentration. The patterns indicate that workers use different behaviours to produce honey. They either paint the walls with loads of concentrated nectar to create rings or deposit them randomly in the cell, forming clumps. Over time, clumps grow in size and ring patterns disappear to converge to the inhomogeneous pattern of ripe honey.

Surprisingly, ripe honey thus turns out to be a matrix of inhomogeneous sugar concentration. A few cells showed a content of homogeneous high sugar concentration and this concentration exceeded the average normally measured for honey.  "These new findings were unexpected based on previous knowledge and complete our understanding of honey making by bees" explains Peter Neumann from the Institute of Bee Health, who also took part to the study.

Understanding honey production and storage is important for beekeeping and for colony health

The new findings resulted in the most detailed insight into honey ripening available to date. Increased knowledge on the honey production by bees is of high importance to beekeepers, since it might lead to better management of colonies to improve the quality and quantity of honey harvests. In addition, by tracking the destiny of nectar brought back to the hive by the forager bees, such studies could contribute to a better understanding of hive contamination by pathogens and pesticides, two currently important fields of research in honeybee health.

Honey production, use and computer tomography - Background

Honey bees collect their food from plants in their environment. Floral pollen is the honey bee’s main source of protein. Nectar gained from flowers and honeydew derived from plant-sucking insects, provide the sugars to fuel their muscle activity. During honey production, enzymes are added to nectar and honeydew by the bees and water is eliminated to concentrate sugar. Water is evaporated actively by workers who manipulate regurgitated droplets of nectar with their mouthparts. In parallel, passive evaporation operates on the cell content.

Apis mellifera flying back to its hive carrying pollen in a pollen basket.
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1aCpMniRWkc/WCOvqW2ar6I/AAAAAAABQRw/DEdrb-lRK_MTeq34hgSfLjV-clRtX7wngCLcB/s640/1280px-Apis_mellifera_flying.jpg

Honey is a rich source of sugar exploited by humans since at least 15,000 years. In addition to its role as sweetener, honey is also used for its health benefits that include healing of wounds and fighting off infections. Switzerland has an annual average honey production of 3,400 tons, with an annual consumption of 1.3 kg honey per person.

Computer tomography generates three dimensional X-ray images and is based on the measurement of density and the visualization and quantification of the differences in density of the component materials. Since the density of a sugar solution varies with its concentration, the former parameter can be used as a proxy for the latter.

The study showed the occurrence of two cohorts of cells with different provisioning and ripening dynamics. "The relocation of the content of many cells before final storage was part of the ripening process, because sugar concentration of the content removed was lower than that of content deposited. The results confirm the mixing of solutions of different concentrations in cells and show that honey is an inhomogeneous matrix. The last stage of ripening occurred when cell capping had already started, indicating a race against water absorption. The storage and ripening processes as well as resource use were context dependent because their dynamics changed with sugar concentration of the food," according to the study.

The study was supported by the Vinetum Foundation, the Foundation Sur-La-Croix and Agroscope. It was performed by researchers from Agroscope, Switzerland (Swiss Bee Research Center, Swiss Confederation) and the University of Bern, Switzerland (Institute of Bee Health, Vetsuisse Faculty).

 Contacts and sources:
Dr. Michael Eyer Agroscope, Zentrum für Bienenforschung / Institut für Bienengesundheit (Vetsuisse Fakultät), Universität Bern 

http://www.ineffableisland.com/2016/11/secrets-of-bees-and-honey-production.html

[william r sanford72]

Why Death By Neonicotinoids Is A Matter Of Time

Published on Nov 10, 2016
In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk to bee health advocate and environmental author, Graham White about the importance of the dose-time ratio. Stay tuned!

www.theorganicview.com.

Y9em9SuM8zI

[bluestflame]

quite chuffed actually, just got home from work , went to the fridge to get some lemongrass based oil to put in the newly made beehive , noticed there were a few bees on the outside of the box , not moving round much just sorta fumbling around ( bumbling?) , i lifted the lid to see if there were any inside and the lid was very heavy , looks like i have an automatic bee installation

[mischief]

Oh Blueflame! That is fantastic, congrats!!

I was going to build my hive this year but instead opted to buy one that was pretty much what I had in mind.
Its a long hive with an observation window, follower boards, a main entance and smaller entrance on the end to do splits.

I had a few bees check it out while I was setting up but havent had any move in yet. Its getting a bit late for a swarm so I have put the word out to other bee friendly people. Hopefully one of them may be able to help me, if not, I think I still have time to buy a nuc to install and get built up before winter.(Its barely summer here in New Zealand, but as I understand it, they should be in and started before too much longer).

I have spent the last couple of years slowly building up my permanent and annual plantings and now feel that I have enough going to support a hive as well as the obvious other locals that have been visiting.

This winter gone, I added a pink and white Manuka. Interestingly, I havent seen any honey bees on them but am sure there are small natives bees that have started visiting- they look more like flies but very very small.

I hope everything goes well for us both with our little friends.
Please keep us posted.

[william r sanford72]

quite chuffed actually, just got home from work , went to the fridge to get some lemongrass based oil to put in the newly made beehive , noticed there were a few bees on the outside of the box , not moving round much just sorta fumbling around ( bumbling?) , i lifted the lid to see if there were any inside and the lid was very heavy , looks like i have an automatic bee installation


bluestflame and mischief.....your seasons threw me off a bitt.:o..makes more sense now..and its rewarding and a blessing to have Bees just move in on there own accord.saves money too..as is blessings to you and your bees and may you learn much and find joy and grace with the bees.:sun:

William.

:heart:

[william r sanford72]

New findings about the honey bee infecting deformed wing virus
November 11, 2016

https://bioengineer.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/126796_web-1.jpg

The honey bee Apis mellifera plays an important role for the pollination of fruit and vegetable plants, besides its significance for the production of honey and wax. Losses of entire bee colonies during winter have economic and — in particular — ecological consequences as pollinators are missing in spring during blossom. Apiculture in North America and Europe is especially affected by partly massive losses. Only during the winter months of 2014/2015, up to fifty per cent of all bee colonies in some Austrian regions collapsed.

The main trigger of this bee mortality does not seem to be the use of pesticides in modern agriculture. Many studies have shown that the survival of bee colonies strongly depends on the infestation with Varroa mites, widespread blood-sucking parasites, and the transmission of deformed wing virus by these mites. A research group from the Institute of Virology at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna has developed a new laboratory system, which enabled them to make an important step forward in the investigation of the virus. By using a molecular clone, they have simulated the course of disease in a targeted way under laboratory conditions.

Artificial viral genomes of deformed wing virus

Up to now, scientists have only used samples of the deformed wing virus, which they had taken from infected bees. "However, mixed and multiple infections can bias the results of such tests", stated lead author Benjamin Lamp. For the new test system, the researchers used artificial genetic material instead of natural samples of the deformed wing virus, in order to clearly correlate the course of disease to the virus."Initially, we amplify the genetic RNA material of a virus and save it as a DNA copy in a vector, a specific transport vehicle for genetic material. The resulting molecular clone enables us to produce artificial viruses, which are identical and genetically defined," explained Lamp. Insects infected with the artificial virus showed the same symptoms such as discolouration, dwarfism, death or the eponymous deformation of the wing that also occur in natural infections. Thus, it could be unambiguously shown that these symptoms are caused by the deformed wing virus.

Deformed wing virus detected in gland tissue

Besides the infection with the viral RNA under controlled laboratory conditions, also an unbiased picture of the disease process could be shown. The scientists infected not only fully developed bees with the artificial genetic material of the virus, but also larvae and pupae. During the pupal stage, Lamp and his team analysed the target tissues and the host cells — the cells the virus preferably infects. The scientists found viral antigens — the specific protein molecules of the deformed wing virus – in all body areas. However, neural, gland and connective tissue cells were particularly affected. "The high concentrations of viral proteins — the antigens — in the glands could also indicate an oral transmission of the virus from one bee to another in the hive," explained Professor Till Rümenapf, last author and head of the Institute of Virology at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna. This could explain why the virus also remains present in the hives if it is not transmitted by the Varroa mite. However, no viral proteins were detected in muscle and blood cells.

Various applications of the new method

By using the molecular clone, different aspects of the viral lifecycle could be simulated, manipulated and studied under laboratory conditions. This concerns the transmission of the virus by the Varroa mite, the course of the infection and the viral replication in different stages of development of honey bees. Controlled experimental conditions will enable the development of new strategies in order to effectively reduce the losses of bee colonies caused by the virus. The described experiments involved only one DWV strain, but the method can also be used for other strains. "In many cases, a bee is not only infected with one virus species. Our test system provides a tool to find out, which viruses are especially harmful and how viruses behave in multiple infections," explained Lamp. "Thus, we can develop targeted strategies against disease-causing viruses."

About the deformed wing virus

The deformed wing virus (DWV) belongs to the family of Iflaviridae. These viruses are so-called RNA viruses. Their genetic material only consists of one ribonucleotide strand, unlike the prevailing double-stranded DNA in mammals. In most but not all cases, infections with the deformed wing virus are bound to an infestation of a hive with the Varroa mite. "The virus persists in the hives and can even be detected if there are no parasites in the hive," explained Benjamin Lamp.

###

>Service:

The article "Construction and Rescue of a Molecular Clone of Deformed Wing Virus (DWV)" by Benjamin Lamp, Angelika Url, Kerstin Seitz, Jürgen Eichhorn, Christiane Riedel, Leonie Janina Sinn, Stanislav Indik, Hemma Köglberger and Till Rümenapf was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0164639

About the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna
The University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna in Austria is one of the leading academic and research institutions in the field of Veterinary Sciences in Europe. About 1,300 employees and 2,300 students work on the campus in the north of Vienna which also houses five university clinics and various research sites. Outside of Vienna the university operates Teaching and Research Farms. http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at

https://bioengineer.org/new-findings-about-the-honey-bee-infecting-deformed-wing-virus/

[william r sanford72]

The Toxic Bouquet: Pesticides In Farmland Wildflowers

The Toxic Bouquet

It is November, and autumn has arrived with a vengeance. A succession of sharp frosts has finished off the last of the flowers in my garden in East Sussex, and the last few bumblebees of the year with them.

I find myself looking forward to spring, when the countryside will be cheered once more by spring blossom; first the blackthorn in the hedges, soon to be followed by hawthorn, and primroses, bugle, wood anemones and ground ivy in the hedge bottoms.

https://www.soilassociation.org/media/8909/hypnorum1-2.png?width=750&height=387.9654255319149

Sadly, there aren’t anywhere near as many flowers in the countryside as there once where; the riot of spring flowers has become muted. Decades of herbicide drift and fertilizer runoff mean that field margins are dominated by coarse grasses, nettles, docks and hogweed, the few plants that thrive in these conditions. Heartbreakingly, it now turns out that the remaining flowers are often contaminated with a mixture of pesticides, so that hungry bees, butterflies and other pollinators emerging from hibernation consume a toxic cocktail of neurotoxins and fungicides when they drink nectar or gather pollen from a flower. 

In my research group at the University of Sussex we’ve been studying the impacts of pesticides used in farming on bumblebees. There has been great concern that some classes of insecticide used on crops, particularly a group known as neonicotinoids, might be harming them. These are very powerful neurotoxins, synthetic variants on nicotine, that are widely applied to wheat and oilseed rape seeds before sowing; as the plant grows, it absorbs the seed coating through its roots, and the chemical spreads throughout the plant, protecting it from pests. Unfortunately this systemic action means that the chemicals also get in to the pollen and nectar of flowering crops. Concern as to the harm this was doing to bees led to the European Union agreeing on a ban on their use on flowering crops from December 2013, although in 2015 recently our Environment Secretary Liz Truss chose to overturn this ban in the main arable belt of central and eastern England.

https://www.soilassociation.org/media/8832/dsc_5976-2.jpg?width=750&height=499.0601503759398

In our research, we placed honey bee hives and bumblebee nests on arable farms in East Sussex, and then looked at the pesticides in the pollen and nectar they collected. We began this work before the EU ban came into effect, when the oilseed rape nearby had all been treated with a neonicotinoid known as thiamethoxam. Through analyses of the pollen grains we could work out what flowers the bees had been visiting, and by separating balls of pollen collected from different plants we could analyse pesticide residues in the pollen of the different flower species.

Alarmingly, the food collected by both honey bees and bumblebees contained all sorts of pesticides; not just the thiamethoxam but also often three other neonicotinoids,
clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiacloprid. On top of that, there was a cocktail of fungicides: carbendazim, boscalid, flusilazole, metconazole, tebuconazole, trifloxystrobin, and others1,2, chemicals some of which we know can act as synergists with insecticides, effectively making them more toxic. What was most disturbing was that the large majority of these chemicals seemed to be coming from the wildflowers, not from the crop. For pollen collected by honeybees, 97% of the neonicotinoids being brought into the hives were from wildflowers, even during the flowering of the oilseed rape. A lot of it was coming from the hawthorn blossom.

Can wildflowers really be so badly contaminated with pesticides? To test this, we collected pollen and nectar by hand from flowers growing in hedgerows on the farms; a very slow and tedious job which bees are much more adept at than people. When these samples were analysed, sure enough we found the same cocktail of chemicals. It was very variable – some plants had nothing, others had very high concentrations, higher even than the crop. Among the wildflowers containing neonicotinoids were buttercups, violets, forget-me-nots, St John’s wort, hogweed and poppies.

How did all these chemicals get in to the wildflowers? We don’t know for sure, and would love to get funding to investigate this, but we have some good guesses. A little bit of dust is created during the sowing of neonicotinoid-coated crops, and this can blow into hedgerows, but it seems unlikely that this is enough to explain what we found. However, it turns out that only about 5% of the neonicotinoids applied to the crop seed are actually sucked up by the growing seedling as intended. The remaining 95% goes in to the soil and soil water, where it can sit for many years, for these chemicals break down very slowly. The residues can accumulate over time, and can leach in to nearby streams. They are also liable to be sucked up by any other plants with roots in the same soil – such as the field margin flowers and hedgerow plants. 

https://www.soilassociation.org/media/8906/ter-queen-34.jpg?width=709&height=379

What harm is this likely to be doing to bees? We don’t know for sure, but the concentrations  of neonicotinoids found in many of our bumblebee nests are higher than those that have been found to reduce nest growth and queen production, impair learning and navigation, and cause deaths. Of course it isn’t just bees; any insect visiting these flowers will be getting a dose of neurotoxin. Indeed, harmless herbivorous insects such as butterfly and moth caterpillars and grasshoppers are all likely to be being gently poisoned, for if the chemicals are in the nectar and pollen then they are surely also in the leaves. We recently found that the rates of declines of many UK farmland butterflies are strongly correlated with the amounts of neonicotinoids applied each year3.

We can’t say for sure that this is cause and effect, but it cannot be good for our wildlife to be chronically exposed to chemical cocktails, and in these circumstances it should not surprise us that our wildlife is disappearing at an alarming rate. Sadly, for me the sight of the hedgerows blooming next spring will not bring the joy it once did. What madness has led us to pollute our countryside with persistent, systemic neurotoxins?

The Soil Association part-funded research by Sussex University to investigate the presence of pesticide cocktails in UK wildflowers.

Thanks are due to my colleagues Cristina Botias, David Arthur and Liz Hill, particularly to Cristina for tackling the terribly tedious job of collecting pollen and nectar by hand from flowers.  

1 Botías C et al. Neonicotinoid Residues in Wildflowers, a Potential Route of Chronic Exposure for Bees (2015) Envir. Sci. Technol. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b03459 View article

2 David A et al. Widespread contamination of wildflower and bee-collected pollen with complex mixtures of neonicotinoids and fungicides commonly applied to crops (2016) Environment International 88:169-178 View article

3 Gilburn, A.S. et al. Are neonicotinoid insecticides driving declines of widespread butterflies? (2015) PeerJ 3:e1402. View article

To find out more about the lives of bumblebees you might like to read A Buzz in the Meadow by Dave Goulson.

https://www.soilassociation.org/blogs/2016/the-toxic-bouquet-pesticides-in-farmland-wildflowers/

[william r sanford72]

This is in reference to European foul brood/EFB and a Natural treatment.

EFB & Lactobacillus/Biobifidobacterium

Written by: Lady Spirit Moon

EFB & LACTO FORMULA
When you open your hive and you don’t smell honey right off, you need to check why for the following diseases:

1.   If it smells like road kill rotting and looks like nasal mucous when you prick a cell with a toothpick, you probably have American Foulbrood (AFB). You need to take care of the hive and bees according to your states’ or country’s regulations. AFB is highly contagious to honeybees.

2.   If it smells like something between rotting or spoiling, you probably have Idiopathic Brood Disease (IBDS). Just replace the frames with the odor and grey/brown puddle in the cells.

3.   If it smells more like a spoiled meat or something sour, you probably have European Foulbrood Disease (EFB). It, too, is contagious. It will appear off-white in color where the white larva has started decaying or like a yellow blob in the cell. But it can be cleared up.  

As a natural, organic, no-treatment beekeeper I do not use antibiotics. I wrote an article for the Center for Honeybee Research Newsletter about my using live cultures Lactobacillus/Biobifidobacterium of freeze-dried, room temperature probiotics in water for use as a spray and feed for honeybees with EFB. I have used this formula before, and it is mine, with great success. This time around, not used to diseases and through my own stupidity, I passed the EFB throughout my 7 hives because I didn't clean (burn) my tools or clean my gloves. Below is a version of that formula with more detailed instructions.

Not to worry, my formula used in a spray and feed took care of the EFB in all hives that are now thriving, humming, and growing. It also took about a week longer because of the humid, rainy weather we have had for several weeks now, so I may have used the formula more than needed. The formula will not harm the bees if it is used as indicated and will actually make the bees healthier.

WHAT YOU NEED

From a health food store or pharmacy purchase a bottle of freeze-dried (lyophilized) probiotic supplement that can stay at room temperature. It needs to contain at least the following 10 bacterium (you don’t really need any more than 10):

Bifidobacterium lactis
Bifidobacteriu, breve
Bifidobacterium longum
Lactobacillus acidophilus
Lactobacillus casei
Lactobacillus plantarum
Lactobacillus paracasei
Lactobacillus salivarius
Lactobacillus rhamnosus
Lactobacillus bulgaricus

How to prepare the Lacto Formula:

Pull apart 1 capsule of Lactobacillus/Biobifidobacterium and empty the contents into 1 cup of tepid water in a glass container. Do not use plastic. Stir to dissolve, put on lid, and refrigerate until ready to use. (NOTE: you can dissolve the capsule but it takes too long and the bees don’t need the gelatin from the capsule itself.) You can keep this mixture in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Shake before each use.
You can use the Lacto Formula in two different ways:

SPRAY: Put 1 teaspoon. of lacto formula into 1 quart of water in a plastic spray bottle and lightly spray both sides of the frames and spray the bees. A light spray will not harm the bees. Spray the frames every other day the 1st week (3-4 times the 1st. week). The odor will most likely be gone after the first or second spray.

Spray the frames twice the 2nd week, and once the 3rd week. If you wish, you can also use 1/2 teaspoon in 1 pint of water in a spray bottle. (Throw away any contents left in the bottle after each use as it will deteriorate in the hot weather.)

If you have humid conditions and see any new signs of EFB, repeat the spray schedule. It took me 4 weeks. The bees will remove any dried up larvae, which will be brown/black in color.

FEED: In 1 gallon container (I use glass), 11 cups of sugar (or about 3/4 of container) and add enough hot water to fill container above the sugar. Stir until sugar is dissolved then let it cool. Add enough cool water to fill the container nearly to the top.

When you are ready to feed the sugar water, add only 2 Tablespoons of Lacto Formula. DO NOT PUT LACTO FORMULA IN HOT SUGAR MIXTURE.
 

NOTE: One capsule is enough for one adult human being and far too much for a single honeybee. 2 Tbsps of the lacto formula in the sugar water and 1 tsp in quart of water is enough for the bees.

Lady Spirit Moon

PS: Just received news from the FOA-TECA forum that Central Italy found great success in using lactobacillus in the hives.

http://www.chbr.org/WaggleDancing/tabid/63/EntryId/70/EFB-Lactobacillus-Biobifidobacterium.aspx

[william r sanford72]

Musical Intermission...Honor and Blessings to the Late Great LEON RUSSELL...R.I.P.

Leon Russell - Hummingbird

fXs29SpLGpU

[william r sanford72]

Flight simulator shows pesticide effects
High-tech approach at the University of Saskatchewan uses virtual reality more common to video games

http://static.agcanada.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/11/jack-gray-rachel-parkinson_.jpg
Rachel Parkinson (r) and Professor Jack Gray use a “video game” to study pesticide effects on insects.

A research project at the University of Sask­atchewan is using a virtual reality flight simulator to measure how locusts are affected by pesticides.

Rachel Parkinson, a biology master’s student, is trying to see how insects react to neonicotinoids.

“There is a lot of controversy over these pesticides,” said biology professor, Jack Gray, Parkinson’s supervisor. “They are used on a large scale because they are considered safer than other pesticides, but many recent studies show it is more complicated.”

Parkinson’s results suggest that the pesticide, even at low doses, may affect an insect’s ability to visually detect moving objects such as trees and predators, and possibly play a role in the “colony collapse disorder” responsible for the deaths of millions of bees worldwide.

Bees and locusts both have complex social and flying behaviours, which makes anything that can disorient them a potential threat.

Back in his own student days, Gray modelled the simulator’s software after the 1995 video game “Descent,” a spaceship shoot-’em-up.

The simulator works much like old rear projection televisions, but instead of a flat screen, images are projected onto a curved dome that sits in front of a tethered locust.

Once the locust is in the simulator, images of looming objects and trees are projected onto the dome, immersing the insect in a virtual world that it can “move through” and “explore.”

By using a small electrode in the insect’s thorax, that controls flight.
The reaction time of locusts treated with the pesticide slows down, impairing their ability to avoid objects for as long as one day after treatment, Parkinson said.

http://www.manitobacooperator.ca/news-opinion/news/flight-simulator-shows-pesticide-effects/

[william r sanford72]

Beekeepers: EPA is hiding pesticide files
Tuesday, November 15, 2016

http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/640/GMOs/Chemicals-Pesticides-GMO-Spray.jpg

(NaturalNews) A group of beekeepers and environmentalists suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has accused the agency of concealing documents that would prove the agency illegally decided to exempt neonicotinoid-treated seeds and their dust from pesticide regulatory laws.

Neonicotinoids are a family of pesticides that are typically applied to seeds prior to planting. As they grow, the plants take the toxins up into all of their tissues, including pollen, nectar, flowers, leaves and seeds. These toxins then affect any organisms, from honeybees to humans, that later eat any part of the plants.

These pesticides have been singled out as one of the major factors causing an ongoing, worldwide crash in pollinator populations. A 2015 review in the journal Nature found that the rise of neonicotinoids has led to a crash in bird populations, both by poisoning birds directly and by wiping out their food sources. The same year, the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides concluded from a review of 800 studies that neonicotinoids are widely destroying "non-target" animals including soil and aquatic life from earthworms to fish.

The ecological effects of neonicotinoids have been compared in scale to those formerly caused by DDT.

EPA protecting pesticide companies

According to the lawsuit, the EPA issued a guidance document in 2013 that amounted to an exemption from the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) for neonicotinoid-treated seeds and their dust-off, even though these substances are materials that can release the pesticides into the environment. But such an exemption is illegal, the plaintiffs say.

Lead plaintiff Jeff Anderson is a beekeeper who says that neonicotinoid-treated seeds and dust have killed hundreds of thousands of bees, contaminated soil and water, and killed birds.

Indeed, at least two studies have implicated dust from neonicotinoid-treated seeds in a massive die-off of more than 37 million bees that took place following the corn planting season in Ontario in 2013.

Yet according to plaintiffs' attorney Adam Keats, the EPA submitted only 200 pages of internal emails and documents related to the case, and these were "riddled with redactions." The agency held back another 5,000 pages of material related to the lawsuit.

"The administrative record is woefully incomplete," Keats said. "It left us in the dark on many issues we feel would be relevant to the case."

Keats is an employee of the Center for Food Safety, another of the plaintiffs.

Beekeeping industry devastated

U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the EPA to supply him with the 5,000 pages of documents so that he could privately review them and decide if they are relevant. The plaintiffs have asked that he see if the documents indicate that the EPA took any position on whether neonicotinoid-coated seeds and their dust-off are exempt from FIFRA, as well as any evidence that those two seed products might harm bees.

Alsup admitted that his experience as a Justice Department attorney in the 1970s made him sympathetic to the plaintiffs' claims. During that time, he said, he regularly saw government attorneys conceal evidence from the courts.

"I was jaded by that experience," Alsup said.

The heart of the lawsuit centers on whether the EPA's 2013 guidance was simply meant as an informal document, or whether it constituted an unofficial policy that has been near-universally applied. In the latter case, the EPA would be in violation of its obligations under FIFRA.

The lawsuit is opposed not just by the EPA, but also by the farming industry. Industry attorney Karen Carr claimed that regulating neonicotinoid-treated seeds and their dust-off "would have a crushing effect on American agriculture."

Keats replied that unregulated use of "incredibly toxic and incredibly deadly" neonicotinoid-coated seeds has already had such an effect on beekeepers, costing the industry billions.

Sources:

NaturalBlaze.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/056020_bees_neonicotinoids_EPA_cover-up.html

[bluestflame]

https://www.facebook.com/100010265073912/videos/358030187882481/
^^ link to vid


https://scontent.fmel3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15085453_358035534548613_696532948066786585_n.jpg?oh=4a1d9992c7cc03930dd13e89369582de&oe=588F5581

second one i'm working on https://scontent.fmel3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15032331_358035531215280_1031021889100517612_n.jpg?oh=860867027e966c4278ad531180cbb55d&oe=58C2E12C

https://scontent.fmel3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15036672_358035537881946_4063941932817883989_n.jpg?oh=67ce1bb1a68765bc7c5ee20be8877afc&oe=58C47985

had no idea is was so easy , just built it added a few things they needed and they just moved right in

[Krist]

For the bees!

[william r sanford72]

John Trudell 1980 Thanksgiving Day speech/Full.....

AEYUsGHGlBo



:heart:

[mischief]

I had a really weird experience yesterday.
It was cold so I lit my fire and went out to get some more wood for it.
On the way, I had the urge to go the long way around my backyard and decided to stop off to admire my still empty chest hive.

There on the lid, I found a bee, stuck to it upside down to it by rainwater.
There had only been a 5 minute lull in the rain so I was really surprised to see it there.
I scooped it up and popped it inside the hive so it could hopefully dry out and eventually go home.
Later on, I checked the hive, hoping that I had a swarm arrive and this bee had been a part of that but no such luck.
Good luck for THAT bee though.

I do hope that this is a personal sign that I am becoming more in tune with the needs of our little friends!!

[william r sanford72]

I had a really weird experience yesterday.
It was cold so I lit my fire and went out to get some more wood for it.
On the way, I had the urge to go the long way around my backyard and decided to stop off to admire my still empty chest hive.

There on the lid, I found a bee, stuck to it upside down to it by rainwater.
There had only been a 5 minute lull in the rain so I was really surprised to see it there.
I scooped it up and popped it inside the hive so it could hopefully dry out and eventually go home.
Later on, I checked the hive, hoping that I had a swarm arrive and this bee had been a part of that but no such luck.
Good luck for THAT bee though.

I do hope that this is a personal sign that I am becoming more in tune with the needs of our little friends!!


Hello mischief.The little lady/bee coulda been a scout as they will send out several in search of a viable safe new home prior to swarming...also coulda been seeking shelter and or rain damaged and needed a place to dry off.It also coulda been just a little ...hello from the bees to you....and or...All thee Above...Don't bee surprised if they already seen and know that there could bee a new home waiting made by you for them.
Enjoy your adventure and connection with the bees and momma earth.
and thanks for sharing....
:heart:
William.

[william r sanford72]

Epa Sued Over Bee Killing Seeds

Published on Nov 16, 2016

Once again the EPA is being sued by the Center For Food Safety in regards to issues concerning pesticide coated seeds. In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk to Amy van Saun from the Center For Food Safety about the law suit.
www.theorganicview.com.

iyl1RqRxDlQ

[william r sanford72]

The remarkable history and healing power of honey

http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2016/11/stingless_honey_bees.jpg.662x0_q70_crop-scale.jpg
The curious stingless honey bees of the Yucatan, Mexico

How did honey go from being the world's most important food to an undervalued afterthought? Gastropod explores why this happened.

Honey is one of those ordinary pantry staples that we take for granted, and yet it used to be one of the world’s most important foods. This makes it an excellent topic for exploration on Gastropod, a collection of podcasts hosted by Nicola Twilley and Cynthia Graber, that explore food from an historical and scientific perspective.

Gastropod’s 45-minute podcast, called “The Buzz on Honey,” is a fascinating journey into an ingredient that once featured prominently in the lives of our ancestors, but has now become as ordinary as butter and jam—a most unfortunate loss.

Although there is evidence of wild honey-seeking by humans as far back as 6,000 B.C.E., the earliest records of domesticated beekeeping date to 2450 B.C.E., on an ancient Egyptians bas-relief. Described by entomologist Gene Kritsky, author of Tears of Re: Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt, this image is the first to depict honey bees being kept in an artificial cavity.

Honey was so valuable in Egypt at the time that it was used as currency. Marriage vows included a husband’s promise to provide his new wife with honey. There was even a civil service devoted to honey. The Egyptians knew how to use smoke to calm bees, although they wouldn’t have understood the science behind inhibiting the bees’ chemical communication and preventing them from panicking.

Later, the ancient Romans used honey, and honey still features in many modern Italian recipes from that region, according to Hattie Ellis, author of cookbook Spoonfuls of Honey. The 1100s, however, were the peak of honey consumption, with Europeans eating an estimated 4.5 pounds of honey per person each year. It was the only source of sweetness at the time. (While dates are sweeter, they require a hot, dry climate to grow.) Consumption dropped to less than a half-pound per person per year at the turn of the 20th century, having lost its supremacy to sugar.

Monasteries were the main beekeepers in the Middle Ages, as Europe’s immense, dark cathedrals required beeswax for illumination. Beeswax, unlike tallow made from animal fat, burns bright and clean, leaving almost no ash. It wasn’t until 1900 that the Pope allowed churches to burn non-beeswax candles, which meant that monks had a big responsibility to produce sufficient beeswax. A related benefit, of course, was the mead (fermented honey) that they were able to drink on the side!

http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2016/11/beeswax_candles.jpg.650x0_q70_crop-smart.jpg
storebrukkebruse -- Beeswax tapers/CC BY 2.0

Honey is a natural antibacterial substance, used since Egyptian times to heal cuts and burns. Because it contains so little water, it can kill yeast and other bacteria by sucking water right out of the cells. Certain kinds of honey even react with human bodily fluids to produce hydrogen peroxide, a natural antiseptic. It’s not hard to see why the Egyptians considered honey to have magical powers.

Bees themselves are incredible little creatures. They collect both nectar (sugars) and pollen (essentially plant sperm, rich in lipids and protein). The pollen is used to feed their young and the nectar is inserted into wax cells where the water evaporates, the sugars are broken down, and the bees are left with a rich source of carbohydrates—basically, energy goo—with which they can survive the long winters.

Climate change, pesticides, and mites, however, are wreaking havoc with bee populations. Every year in the United States, colonies lose 30 to 40 percent of their population on average. The losses appear to have stabilized in recent year, but bees are far from safe.

The podcast calls on consumers to appreciate honey, to realize its incredibly rich history and uniqueness, and to do whatever we can to preserve bee populations, both honey bees and the other 20,000 bee species that exist. The best thing one can do? Plant flowers and do not spray them.

http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/remarkable-history-and-healing-power-honey.html

Take a listen here, and your morning toast with honey will never be the same.
The Buzz on Honey
https://gastropod.com/the-buzz-on-honey/

[william r sanford72]

Another Species of Varroa Mite Threatens European Honeybees

A sister species of the Varroa destructor mite is developing the ability to parasitize European honeybees, threatening pollinators already hard pressed by pesticides, nutritional deficiencies and disease, a Purdue University study says.
http://www.pctonline.com/article/varroa-mite-threatens-european-honeybees/

Differential gene expression in Varroa jacobsoni mites following a host shift to European honey bees (Apis mellifera)

Gladys K. Andino
Email author

, Michael Gribskov, Denis L. Anderson, Jay D. Evans and Greg J. Hunt
BMC Genomics201617:926
DOI: 10.1186/s12864-016-3130-3©  The Author(s). 2016
Received: 19 April 2016Accepted: 27 September 2016Published: 16 November 2016

Abstract

Background
Varroa mites are widely considered the biggest honey bee health problem worldwide. Until recently, Varroa jacobsoni has been found to live and reproduce only in Asian honey bee (Apis cerana) colonies, while V. destructor successfully reproduces in both A. cerana and A. mellifera colonies. However, we have identified an island population of V. jacobsoni that is highly destructive to A. mellifera, the primary species used for pollination and honey production. The ability of these populations of mites to cross the host species boundary potentially represents an enormous threat to apiculture, and is presumably due to genetic variation that exists among populations of V. jacobsoni that influences gene expression and reproductive status. In this work, we investigate differences in gene expression between populations of V. jacobsoni reproducing on A. cerana and those either reproducing or not capable of reproducing on A. mellifera, in order to gain insight into differences that allow V. jacobsoni to overcome its normal species tropism.

Results

We sequenced and assembled a de novo transcriptome of V. jacobsoni. We also performed a differential gene expression analysis contrasting biological replicates of V. jacobsoni populations that differ in their ability to reproduce on A. mellifera. Using the edgeR, EBSeq and DESeq R packages for differential gene expression analysis, we found 287 differentially expressed genes (FDR ≤ 0.05), of which 91% were up regulated in mites reproducing on A. mellifera. In addition, mites found reproducing on A. mellifera showed substantially more variation in expression among replicates. We searched for orthologous genes in public databases and were able to associate 100 of these 287 differentially expressed genes with a functional description.

Conclusions

There is differential gene expression between the two mite groups, with more variation in gene expression among mites that were able to reproduce on A. mellifera. A small set of genes showed reduced expression in mites on the A. mellifera host, including putative transcription factors and digestive tract developmental genes. The vast majority of differentially expressed genes were up-regulated in this host. This gene set showed enrichment for genes associated with mitochondrial respiratory function and apoptosis, suggesting that mites on this host may be experiencing higher stress, and may be less optimally adapted to parasitize it. Some genes involved in reproduction and oogenesis were also overexpressed, which should be further studied in regards to this host shift.

Keywords
Apis mellifera Apis cerana Asian honey bee European honey bee RNA-Seq Transcriptome Varroa destructor Varroa jacobsoni

Background

Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) are the most important insect for pollination of crops and wildflowers [1, 2, 3], but they have experienced increasing colony die-offs during the past two decades [4, 5, 6]. Varroa destructor is widely considered the most serious risk factor for honey bee colony mortality worldwide [7, 8, 9, 10]. These large ectoparasitic mites are associated with a condition known as parasitic mite syndrome (PMS), or “Varroosis”. In colonies exhibiting PMS or “Varroosis”, pathogens, including brood diseases and viruses, are present at unusually high levels [11, 12, 13]. Varroa mites feed on the hemolymph of the larva, pupa and adults, and the open wounds caused by mite feeding can allow microorganisms to enter and weaken the host [14]; Mites themselves are vectors for viruses and perhaps other bee pathogens [13]. The Varroa mite’s life cycle consists of two phases, the phoretic phase, during which the adult female mite lives, feeds, and disperses on the adult bee, and the reproductive phase in which the female mite feeds and reproduces inside the sealed brood cell of the pupating honey bee [15]. After a female mite invades the brood cell, the first egg laid will develop into a haploid male, which will later mate with his sisters (unless two females invade the same cell) to give rise to the next generation. The most common Varroa-associated viral infection is deformed wing virus (DWV). The incidence of DWV is closely associated with mite infestation and colony mortality, but other bee-pathogenic viruses such as acute bee paralysis virus have also been identified as part of the “Varroosis” [15, 16]. Failure to treat infested colonies with miticides typically results in colony death within 1–3 years.

V. destructor was originally a parasite of the Asian honey bee, Apis cerana. At least 60 years ago, it made a host switch and now parasitizes several European and African races of A. mellifera [17]. Population studies indicate that there was a genetic bottleneck associated with the host switch to A. mellifera [18, 19, 20]. These studies revealed a remarkable absence of heterozygosity in the Varroa populations of Europe and USA collected on A. mellifera [21, 22, 23]. Furthermore, a study using microsatellite markers in 45 different populations of Varroa mites from around the world showed a relative lack of polymorphisms within each of the two V. destructor mitochondrial haplotypes, Japan (J) and Korea (K), that successfully infest A. mellifera outside of Asia. These results suggested that these two haplotypes, J and K, each correspond to a single host capture event, followed by a rapid spread, particularly by K, which has now almost spread worldwide. These haplotypes also seem to be completely reproductively isolated from each other. Two routes of invasion of V. destructor into the Americas, and specifically into the USA, have been proposed based on the dates and places where each haplotype was first detected [18, 19, 20]. The J haplotype first shifted from A. cerana to A. mellifera in Japan during the last century, following the introduction of A. mellifera. From Japan, it spread to Thailand, to Paraguay in (1971), to Brazil in 1972, and was later found in North America in 1987. The K haplotype first shifted from A. cerana to A. mellifera near Vladivostok (north of the Korean peninsula), following the introduction of A. mellifera from Ukraine in the 1950s. Later, it spread from eastern Russia to western Russia, to Bulgaria in 1972, to Germany in 1977, and then continued spreading around Europe and also to the U.S.

Other haplotypes of V. destructor as well as haplotypes of a sister species, V. jacobsoni, are reportedly restricted to A. cerana and only reproduce on drone brood in this species. All of these Varroa mites routinely invade sympatric non-host colonies and enter the drone and worker brood, but for unknown reasons do not produce offspring, perhaps as a result of failure to recognize host signals to initiate reproduction. Single V. jacobsoni female mites with dead immature offspring were found inside A. mellifera drone brood cells in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1991 and 1993, and these single events were reported in 1994 [24]. Recently, a population of V. jacobsoni was found reproducing on A. mellifera drone and worker brood, and was associated with colony mortality in PNG [25]. Evidence suggests that this host switch occurred by mites first gaining the ability to reproduce on drone brood, followed by adaptation to reproduce on worker brood. Since V. destructor has caused widespread losses wherever it has become established, it is important to study the V. jacobsoni host switch to A. mellifera to gain understanding of the evolutionary host shift from the Asian to the European honey bee. In addition, it is important to understand how this mite has become established, whether host-parasite signaling may be involved, and what cues may be associated with alterations in mite reproduction.

It is reasonable to expect that Varroa mites must change their gene expression in order to grow and reproduce in a different host species. As a first step, to understand the evolutionary host shift of Varroa mites to a new host, we have studied the transcriptome profile of V. jacobsoni reproducing on A. mellifera and compared it to that of V. jacobsoni restricted to reproducing on A. cerana.

http://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-016-3130-3

[william r sanford72]

usda NATIONAL HONEY REPORT.November 17, 2016

www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf

[william r sanford72]

Glyphosate: Can you handle the truth?

http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/640/Misc/Glyphosate-Red-Hand-Herbicide.jpg

(NaturalNews) Largely due to Monsanto's efforts to hide the truth from the public regarding the dangers of glyphosate, many people have no idea of the real extent of the threat posed by what has become the most widely used herbicide in the world – nor do most realize how widespread its use has become within the United States.

Glyphosate – the main ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide – is a particularly toxic substance that causes a range of health problems in humans, including cancer, autism, birth defects and at least a dozen other serious illnesses.

Roundup has been around since 1974, but sales began to skyrocket after Monsanto developed its Roundup-resistant GMO technology in the 1990s.

Since then, America and much of the rest of the planet has been deluged with millions of tons of glyphosate – the most heavily-used agricultural chemical in the history of the world – and 25 percent of it gets dumped on the United States, even though we account for only 5 percent of the world's population.

Nearly 2 million tons of glyphosate have been used in the U.S. since Roundup came on the market, and worldwide the total is 9.4 million tons – "enough to spray nearly half a pound of Roundup on every cultivated acre of land in the world," according to Newsweek.

Monsanto's glyphosate propaganda – a line which is parroted by the Monsanto-influenced FDA – holds that the substance poses no threat to humans and affects only plants.

From Natural Health 365:

"Scientists for Monsanto – the most hated corporation in the world – insist that glyphosate is safe because it targets a metabolic system called the shikamate pathway – which humans and animals lack. Yet the trillions of beneficial bacteria in the human digestive tract do have this pathway – and disrupting it can have catastrophic consequences.

"In truth: Glyphosate harms critical beneficial bacteria, causing an overgrowth of pathogens, which in turn produce toxic phenols that cause inflammation ... ."

Glyphosate: a 'wrecking ball' to the human body

Dr. Stephanie Seneff, an MIT senior research scientist and environmental toxins expert, is known for having documented the link between glyphosate and autism.

She also believes that glyphosate is responsible for many other chronic diseases whose rates have soared in recent years, since the introduction of glyphosate. Dr. Seneff labels glyphosate as "the most significant chemical used today," and one that has the effect of a "wrecking ball" on the human body.

From Pompa:

"Glyphosate is what Dr. Seneff calls a 'monster molecule,' and affects human biology in many ways. ...

"Dr. Seneff believes that glyphosate exposure is catapulting gluten sensitivity into epidemic proportions."

Aside from its effects on the gut, glyphosate has been linked to liver, kidney, pancreatic, thyroid and colon cancer – as well as ADHD, Alzheimer's, birth defects, brain cancer, breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis and more.

Meanwhile, the EPA – another agency bribed into doing Monsanto's bidding – continues to quietly raise the acceptable levels of glyphosate in our food supply. Fifty times the amount of glyphosate is now allowed on corn than was permitted in 1996, for example, and the total allowed amount has increased by a factor of 17.

Health risks are only part of the damage caused by glyphosate

And meanwhile, GMO agriculture is wreaking havoc on the environment while also destroying small farmers. The promise of increased crop yields was a lie that failed to materialize, and herbicide-resistant superweeds are threatening the crops of traditional and organic farming operations.

Not to mention the honeybees, which glyphosate has been proven to kill.

No wonder people are hesitant to face the truth about glyphosate. It indeed boggles the mind to consider the fact that a company like Monsanto has been allowed to legally poison virtually the entire United States and much of the rest of the world without being held accountable for it.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/056079_glyphosate_environmental_damage_toxic_herbicides.html#ixzz4Qf8W0ovO

[william r sanford72]

Court Fails to Protect Bees and Beekeepers from Toxic Pesticides
November 22nd, 2016

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/thumbs/488x272/files/zc/beekeeper_48208.jpg

Pesticide-coated seeds remain unregulated by EPA as pollinator populations plummet

SAN FRANCISCO— Yesterday a judge in the Northern District of California delivered a crushing blow to the nation’s beekeepers and imperiled honey bees. The judge ruled against the beekeepers and public interest advocates in a lawsuit seeking to protect honey bees and the broader environment from unregulated harms caused by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) lax policies for seeds coated with certain insecticides known to cause massive die-offs of honey bees.

“It is astounding that a judge, EPA or anyone with any common sense would not regulate this type of toxic pesticide use, especially when the seed-coatings are so broadly applied and there is so much at risk. Study after study has shown that seeds coated with these chemicals are a major culprit in catastrophic bee-kills. Now more than ever our country’s beekeepers, environment and food system deserve protection from agrichemical interests, and it is EPA’s job to deliver it,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Director of Center for Food Safety.

The seed-coatings in question are the bee-killing neonicotinoids, or “neonics”, which are strongly linked to the record-high colony mortality suffered by commercial beekeepers, as well as to water pollution and risks to birds and other beneficial species. Corn and soybean seeds, in particular, coated with these chemicals are planted across nearly 150 million acres of the United States, in what is by far the most extensive type of insecticide application in the nation.

EPA has exempted the seeds from regulation or mandatory labeling, despite their known toxicity. This exemption was the basis of the lawsuit filed by Center for Food Safety (CFS) in the public interest and on behalf of several impacted beekeepers.

“The broader implications of this decision drive the nails in the bee industry’s coffin. Of course as a beekeeper I am concerned about my livelihood, but the public at large should also be alarmed. More than one-third of the average person’s diet is generated by pollinators that I help manage,” said Jeff Anderson, a California and Minnesota-based commercial beekeeper and honey producer, who was the lead plaintiff in the case.

The judge dismissed the case on an administrative procedure basis, not on the fundamental question of whether the exempted seeds are harming honey bees. In fact, the judge stated in his conclusion: The Court is most sympathetic to the plight of our bee population and beekeepers. Perhaps the EPA should have done more to protect them, but such policy decisions are for the agency to make.

CFS is representing the plaintiffs in the case and says the group is considering all options.
###

Background

Impacts to bees from neonics are well-documented, as are impacts to the nation’s beekeepers. For example, in 2015, one plaintiff in the case, Bret Adee, co-owner of the nation’s largest commercial beekeeping operation, suffered approximately $800,000 in damages in just one bee-kill incident from toxic neonicotinoid-laced dust during planting of corn fields near his hives. Due to EPA’s exemption for the coated seeds and their dust, Mr. Adee could obtain no enforcement action to protect his bees. In effect, the nation’s beekeepers have been told to fend for themselves as EPA will not enforce any mandatory requirements from the federal pesticide law to protect their bees. Neonics also negatively impact soil health by harming beneficial insects, and can have dire effects on other non-target species, like birds.

Efforts by the attorneys from CFS to obtain relevant public documents were blocked by EPA. EPA gave CFS attorneys only 200 of 5,000 pages of documents relevant to EPA’s 2013 statements regarding the exemption for these pesticide-coated seeds. When CFS moved to get the full record, the Court ordered EPA to produce the rest of the documents to the Court only, which the Court itself reviewed, without allowing the plaintiffs to see them.

The plaintiffs in the case were beekeepers Jeff Anderson, Bret Adee, and David Hackenberg; farmers Lucas Criswell and Gail Fuller; and the Pollinator Stewardship Council, American Bird Conservancy, Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), and the Center for Food Safety. The Judge’s Order was issued on Nov. 21 in the case of Anderson et al. v. McCarthy, No. 3:16-cv-00068-WHA (N.D. Cal.). 
###

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/4582/court-fails-to-protect-bees-and-beekeepers-from-toxic-pesticides#

[william r sanford72]

Heat treatment for New Zealands problem with Nosema ceranae......

Plant & Food scientists report a breakthrough for the bees
Posted November 23

Preliminary results from a pilot study undertaken by scientists at Plant & Food Research indicate that a breakthrough has been made in the fight against the pathogen Nosema ceranae, a deadly disease for bees.

This relative newcomer to New Zealand is a cousin of Nosema apis, which has been present in the country since the 1800s.

Both N. apis and N. ceranae are spore-producing parasites that attack the gut lining of bees, leading to a shortened lifespan in adults. Severe cases of N.ceranae may cause the collapse of an entire colony.

Because Nosema is primarily spread through faeces on contaminated honeycomb, preventing infection is a near-impossible task, meaning the commercial costs associated with Nosema infection have simply been “a fact of life”.

During the springs of 2014 and 2015 many New Zealand beekeepers, particularly in the Coromandel, experienced severe and unexplained colony losses. This pattern had not been experienced before and resulted in honey loss estimated at between 40-60% for the season.

N. ceranae had first been found in New Zealand in 2010 and was identified as a potential culprit for the calamity.

In response, a team from Plant & Food Research began working closely with Coromandel beekeeper Dr Oksana Borowik – first confirming high levels of N. ceranae in affected colonies, and then exploring ways to prevent the spread of the disease between hives.

Their early research findings have been announced in a press release from Pland & Food: heat-treating the hive and internal comb to only 50C for 90 minutes resulted in an increase in brood viability and a 50% increase in adult bee numbers.

The treatment is effective because heat kills N. ceranae spores lurking on contaminated comb before the new colony is introduced to the hive.

“Nosema ceranae has had a notable impact on hives and the honey industry in countries like the United States and China,” says Plant & Food Research scientist Dr Mark Goodwin.
“We need to take the threat of this disease very seriously, particularly as the honey industry and the pollination services of honey bees are very important to New Zealand’s economy.

“The initial findings of this research are a very encouraging first step in the fight against this threat.”
The team will build on this initial study with further investigations into the effect of seasonality and long-term treatment on bee populations.

If heat treatment is found to be a safe and consistent management option for beekeepers plagued by Nosema, there is the potential to greatly improve the health and productivity of New Zealand beehives.

https://agscienceblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/23/pland-food-scientists-report-a-breakthrough-for-the-bees/

[william r sanford72]

Court Battle To Protect Honey Bees Fails

Published on Nov 23, 2016

On November 21, 2016 a judge in the Northern District of California delivered a crushing blow to the nation’s beekeepers and imperiled honey bees. The judge ruled against the beekeepers and public interest advocates in a lawsuit seeking to protect honey bees and the broader environment from unregulated harms caused by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) lax policies for seeds coated with certain insecticides known to cause massive die-offs of honey bees.
In this special edition of The Neonicotinoid View, Amy van Saun from the Center For Food Safety talks to host, June Stoyer about the decision rendered in the failed battle to protect honeybees from the deadly impact of neonicotinoid-coated seeds

0cGaJjO3saY

[william r sanford72]

Scientists propose ten policies to protect vital pollinators

Date:
November 24, 2016

Source:
University of East Anglia

Summary:
Pesticide regulation, diversified farming systems and long-term monitoring are all ways governments can help to secure the future of pollinators such as bees, flies and wasps, according to scientists.


Pesticide regulation, diversified farming systems and long-term monitoring are all ways governments can help to secure the future of pollinators such as bees, flies and wasps, according to scientists.

In an article published in the journal Science, a team of researchers has suggested ten clear ways in which governments can protect and secure pollination services -- vital to the production of fruits, vegetables and oils.

A recent global assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) confirmed that large-scale declines in wild pollinators are happening in north Europe and North America.

The ten policies report, led by Dr Lynn Dicks at the University of East Anglia who also took part in the assessment, expands on its findings to provide clear suggestions on how to tackle the problem.

Dr Dicks said: "The IPBES report has made it very clear that pollinators are important to people all over the world, economically and culturally. Governments understand this, and many have already taken substantial steps to safeguard these beautiful and important animals. But there is much more to be done. We urge governments to look at our policy proposals, and consider whether they can make these changes to support and protect pollinators, as part of a sustainable, healthy future for humanity.

"Agriculture plays a huge part. While it is partly responsible for pollinator decline, it can also be part of the solution. Practices that support pollinators, such as managing landscapes to provide food and shelter for them, should be promoted and supported. We also need to focus publicly funded research on improving yields in farming systems like organic farming, which are known to support pollinators."

"Pressure to raise pesticide regulatory standards internationally should be a priority. The World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations have worked for many years to develop a global code of conduct on pesticide management, but there are still many countries that don't follow it. This means pesticides are in widespread use that are unacceptably toxic to bees, birds, even humans."

The report stresses the need to develop more in-depth knowledge about the status of pollinators worldwide. Dr Dicks said: "We need long-term monitoring of pollinators, especially in Africa, South America and Asia, where there is little information about their status, but the processes driving declines are known to be occurring."

The ten suggested policies in full are:

1. Raise pesticide regulatory standards
2. Promote integrated pest management (IPM)
3. Include indirect and sublethal effects in GM crop risk assessments
4. Regulate movement of managed pollinators
5. Develop incentives, such as insurance schemes, to help farmers benefit from ecosystem services instead of agrochemicals
6. Recognize pollination as an agricultural input in extension services
7. Support diversified farming systems
8. Conserve and restore "green infrastructure" (a network of habitats that pollinators can move between) in agricultural and urban landscapes
9. Develop long-term monitoring of pollinators and pollination
10. Fund participatory research on improving yields in organic, diversified, and ecologically intensified farming

Prof Simon Potts, co-author and research professor in Agri-Environment at the University of Reading, said: "The definitive UN report is a sign that the world is waking up to the importance of protecting these vital pollinators. We hope that by going a step further and implementing these top policy opportunities, we can encourage decision-makers to take action before it's too late.

"Three quarters of the world's food crops benefit from animal pollination, so we must safeguard pollinators to safeguard the supply of nutritious foods."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161124150203.htm

[william r sanford72]

Canadians Ban Deadly Bee Killing Neonicotinoid Pesticide

Published on Nov 26, 2016
On November 22, 2016, officials from The Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency ( PMRA ) which is responsible for pesticide regulation in Canada, held a media technical briefing by teleconference about neonicotinoid pesticides.

LB9_DKm3D8g

[Star Tsar]

A Fishing Spider wanders into the wrong part of town!

e3-wmHgx_iE

[william r sanford72]

Walking Among Giants in Northwest Thailand

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/robinson-with-bivouac-cropped.jpg?w=460

“This is my office,” Dr. Robinson says jokingly, slinging his backpack onto his back and mounting his bike with a gesture of familiarity. We take off in the sticky heat of the morning, leaving the charming mountain town of Mae Hong Son in northern Thailand and heading for Dr. Robinson’s field research site at the Mae Hong Son Agricultural Research and Development Centre along the Pai River.

I traveled to this secluded provincial capital, just west of the tourist hub of Pai, to meet Dr. Robinson and try to see his study organism, the giant honey bee, Apis dorsata. Dr. Robinson first became interested in honey bees during a beekeeping course in his undergraduate studies at Cornell. He later pursued a master’s at Washington State University and then a Ph.D. under Roger A. Morse at Cornell, both focusing on honey bees. After his Ph.D., Dr. Robinson ended up Wyoming, where his wife Maria is from, teaching at a local community college, Casper College.

Dr. Robinson enjoys teaching and has led several study abroad trips to Kenya, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. During his time teaching, Casper College decided to make the Mae Hong Son Community College their sister college. Dr. Robinson had a sabbatical coming up and jumped at the chance to visit the sister college and study native Asian bees in Thailand.
When Dr. Robinson first arrived, he expected to study the Asian dwarf bee, Apis florea, though he found only one small colony that was quickly ransacked by hornets before he could study it. Then, by chance, Dr. Robinson stumbled across two thrumming masses of A. dorsata hanging on a mango tree while biking through the Agricultural Research and Development Centre along the Pai River. At first, he thought the larger of the two was a colony and that the smaller had split off and was swarming, but then a strong breeze passed through the valley and the colonies started waving back and forth on the branches. He realized he had found two migrating colonies of A. dorsata — the first time anyone had found an annual migration stopover site for this species.

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/robinson-on-bike-cropped.jpg?w=460

The giant honey bee host range stretches from Pakistan to Indonesia. This honey bee is known for some incredible migrations, including one across the Malacca straight between Indonesian Sumatra and peninsular Malaysia. While migrating, the bees stop periodically to rest in trees, forming combless bivouacs. During these periods, the bees will collect food reserves at the bivouac sites.

Such a site resides a few miles outside Mae Hong Son. It is a narrow strip of orchard space and agricultural land stretching north-south along the Pai River. You can hear the excitement in Dr. Robinson’s voice as he describes the bees that he first found. He came back daily to ride slowly up and down the transect, tagging branches with new bivouacs, even seeing some swarms arrive, during the late part of the monsoon season in Thailand, from August to early November.

Dr. Robinson then received some funds and permission from Casper College to return again in 2010 to continue studying what was to be the first discovery of an annual migration stopover of giant honey bees and to try to understand what conditions were attracting the giant honey bees to the site as well as where they might be traveling. Some trends soon became apparent. The bees showed a preference for mango trees, and to a lesser extent the macadamia trees, though they did not bivouac in pomelo trees. The bivouacs would also find harbor in some other native tree species, including teak and cluster fig.

Despite its small size, the site provided shelter for 52 A. dorsata bivouacs over the two-year study period. The bivouacs ranged from the size of a Ping Pong ball hanging under a mango leaf to the size of an adult human, spanning an entire branch.

Like other species of honey bees, the giant honey bee communicates through dance. Dr. Robinson recorded the angle and length of these dances to determine where the bees may be headed but found that they were flying in different directions, likely migrating to nesting sites at a higher elevation where more shade and water could be found during the upcoming dry season.

There are a few hypotheses as to why the site is so attractive to bees migrating annually. Annual migration stopovers probably have physical landmarks that make them easily recognizable to giant honey bees, and they likely also have flowering plants to provide food. The Agricultural Research and Development Centre has flowering teak as well as non-native eucalyptus trees bordering the orchard site that are in bloom during the late monsoon season when the stopover occurs. Dr. Robinson also hypothesizes that the density and shade provided by the mango trees, as well as their bark pattern, may be appealing to bivouacs, in comparison to the heavily pruned, open canopies and smoother bark pattern of the unattractive pomelos nearby. Even details like branch angle and distance from a water source, the river, may have significant impact on bivouac sites, which are limited to a small area of the transect. (The mango orchard attracting most bivouacs is now approximately 270 x 30 m due to a recent removal of several trees as part of a small construction project.)

The discovery of annual migration stopovers of A. dorsata is important for many reasons. Honey bees are important for pollination of agricultural crops as well as native flowers. The giant honey bee and other native Apis species are also valued for their honey and wax in southeast Asia, besides being an important part of local culture. While declining nest sites are receiving attention of conservationists, it is vital that these migration stopovers receive more study and conservation research and work to protect the declining species.

As for me, I had arrived at the field site one day too late and missed the last bivouac of the season, but I learned a lot about the bees and conservation. Seeing just how small the area is where the bees prefer to bivouac year after year brings home how fragile these stopover sites are and how desperately they need our attention to conserve native Asian honey bees.

https://entomologytoday.org/2016/11/29/walking-among-giants-in-northwest-thailand/

[william r sanford72]

Colony Collapse Disorder by Dave Tarpy

Published on Nov 29, 2016
A lecture given by Dave Tarpy at the 2016 National Honey Show entitled "Colony Collapse Disorder an American Perspective".

kloZU6-JnK0

[william r sanford72]

Beekeeper Talks About Impact Of Neonicotinoid Coated Seeds On Bees

Published on Nov 28, 2016
Recently, a law suit was filed by the Center For Food Safety against EPA regarding issues concerning pesticide coated seeds. Previously, Amy van Saun from the Center For Food Safety discussed the finer points of the law suit. In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk to commercial migratory beekeeper, Jeff Anderson is going to discuss how pesticide coated seeds impacts honeybees.
www.theorganicview.com.

sLz3xXEGFdY

[william r sanford72]

Intensification of land use leads to the same species everywhere
November 30, 2016

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2016/intensificat.jpg
The common restharrow or Ononis repens is a host plant for the insect Macrotylus paykulli, which feeds on its sap. Credit: Lars Skipper

In places where humans use grasslands more intensively, it is not only the species diversity which decreases—the landscape also becomes more monotonous, and ultimately only the same species remain everywhere. This results in nature no longer being able to provide its 'services', which range from soil formation for food production to pest control. Led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), 300 scientists studied the consequences of land-use intensification across different species groups at the landscape level for the very first time.

Normally, every meadow is different, and different species are able to find a suitable habitat somewhere. Intensified human land use leads to a smaller number of distinct plant communities on grasslands, which can therefore sustain fewer and fewer species: This is the catalyst for the increasing loss of species. In previous studies, only individual groups of species, such as birds, were studied within a particular habitat, and only over a specified area. But could the local loss of species not have a much greater effect if it were to be studied on a larger spatial scale and viewed in the context of the full diversity of life—from single-celled organisms to vertebrates?

For a study published in Nature, scientists analyzed and evaluated a unique data set with exactly this question in mind. For the very first time, it provided statistical evidence that intensified use led to all grasslands becoming homogeneous and only being able to provide habitats for a few species, and this proved to be the case across regions.

"The data comes from the Biodiversity Exploratories, which are funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), and were collected from 150 grassland areas starting from 2008," according to Professor Wolfgang Weisser from Terrestrial Ecology Research Group at TUM, who is also one of the founders of this focus project. "These are probably the most comprehensiveecological field research sites in Europe," says Weisser.

4,000 species evaluated for the study

The research areas, whose data was used in the study, include the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Swabian Alb, the Hainich National Park and its surroundings, and the Biosphere Reserve Schorfheide-Chorin. All three regions differ in terms of climate, geology, and topography, but are cultivated by farmers in a manner typical for Europe. More than 4,000 species were analyzed using an innovative statistical procedure. This new method allows for nonlinear effects on the the dissimilarity of species communities between grassland areas to be tracked along a continuous land-use gradient (cutting of grass, fertilizing, and grazing).

Data along the food chain ranged from single-celled soil organisms to birds

What was unique in this case was that data from organisms in the ground such as from bacteria, fungi, and millipedes were also included. "For the first time, we investigated all groups of species along the food chain on grasslands with different forms of land use in a variety of regions," said Dr Martin M. Gossner, lead author of the study, who is now working at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. The species were subdivided into twelve groups according to their position on the food chain, and whether they live above- or belowground. For example, one group of aboveground species is that of the primary producers, which mainly comprises plants. Other groups include herbivores and plant pollinators, as well as their predators.

Even moderate land use results in a decline in species

The findings showed that it did not matter whether grassland areas were used moderately or intensively by humans. For example, a distinction was made between areas where grass was cut twice or four times a year. "According to our observations, the homogenization of species does not progress proportionally to the intensity of use. Instead, even a moderate management of grassland results in cross-regional communities being reduced to the same, less demanding all-rounders," said Gossner—"a further increase in the intensity of use simply doesn't have a comparably large effect."

An example for a high-maintenance species: The common restharrow (Ononis repens, pictured) is a host plant for the insect Macrotylus paykulli, which feeds on its sap, or occasionally also on insects which get stuck to the glandular hairs of Ononis repens. If the common restharrow becomes increasingly rare due to the cultivation of common grass species with a high fodder value, Macrotylus paykulli no longer has a suitable habitat, and ultimately both go extinct. This means that even a slight intensification of the use of meadows and pastures makes it impossible for many species of flora and fauna such as the common restharrow and Macrotylus paykulli to survive, resulting in only those species remaining which do not have specific requirements regarding host plants or abiotic environmental conditions. This effect is called 'biotic homogenization'. "More intensive mowing is the main cause of biotic homogenization," said Professor Eric Allan from the University of Bern, the senior author of the study.

"What is new here is the finding that the homogenization of species takes place across landscapes, thereby reducing the diversity of species at a regional and national level," said Gossner—"which is probably a more significant consequence of the intensification of land use than the local loss of species alone."

Less interaction between species changes the ecosystem

Hence, grassland areas that are cultivated extensively by humans are essential for protecting species diversity because the decline in species diversity also results in less interactions between individual species: "Interactions between plants and their consumers are increasingly weakened by more intensive agricultural usage," says Gossner—"which ultimately causes processes in the ecosystem to shift and change."

It is only when as many species as possible are able to find the unique habitats they require across large areas that 'ecosystem services', which improve human well-being, can remain intact. Because 'nature's services' help increase food production by improving soil formation, for example, but they also help keep pests in check.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-intensification-species.html#jCp

[Star Tsar]

A Fishing Spider wanders into the wrong part of town!

e3-wmHgx_iE

I had not realised that this youtuber had placed the spider on hive until my sun told me it was so, which is not cool in my book I apologise William my friend....

[william r sanford72]

A Fishing Spider wanders into the wrong part of town!

e3-wmHgx_iE

I had not realised that this youtuber had placed the spider on hive until my sun told me it was so, which is not cool in my book I apologise William my friend....

No Worrys Kev...seen it on my stream watched it and decided not to post for that reason...as is interesting to note..i have found mice who tried to overwinter in hives dead and preserved in bees wax and propolis..and even bumble bees.. voles and shrews.Hives are warm during the winter with lots of food near by so it draws them in.If the mouse lets it slip its there they make quick work of em.Ants and spiders tend to live on or under the inner covers and the bees don't normaly notice or they tolerate it.This year we had alotta Very large Orchid/garden spiders around the house and hives and they like to build webs near the front entrance of the bee hives to catch the stray bee coming home and the bees tolerate that or don't seem to notice.

William.
:heart:

[william r sanford72]

Predation on pollinating insects shaped the evolution of the orchid mantis
December 1, 2016

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2016/predationonp.png
A typical female orchid mantis, Hymenopus coronatus, shows conspicuous white coloration and large flower mimicking lobes on the legs. Credit: Rick Wherley

A team of scientists at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Australia, and Germany discovered that the orchid mantis looks like a flower due to the exploitation of pollinating insects as prey by its praying mantis ancestors. By studying the evolutionary relationships of the orchid mantis and its distant relatives, the team discovered that females in the orchid mantis lineage increased in size and changed color over their evolutionary history to gain advantage over large pollinating insects, such as bees, as well as the ability to attract them for predation. However, the morphologically dissimilar males are small and camouflaged, enabling them to live a life of predator avoidance and mate finding. The team found that this difference in males and females, termed sexual dimorphism, was likely the result of female predatory success that favored larger and more conspicuously colored individuals. This result challenges the traditional explanation for sexual dimorphism in arthropods as an increase in female egg production and suggests female predation strategy led to the differing male and female ecologies in the orchid mantises.

The research was published online in the journal Scientific Reports.

Lead author Dr. Gavin Svenson of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and co-authors used their evolutionary reconstruction of the group to demonstrate that a size increase in floral associated mantises provided access to more prey options, which set the stage for the evolution of floral simulation through size, shape, and color modifications that helped attract insect pollinators as prey. Thanks to a body of ecological research on the orchid mantis previously conducted by co-author Dr. James O'Hanlon of Macquarie University in Australia, it was known that females masquerade as flowers (floral simulation) to attract pollinating insects to eat, but that they do not sit on flowers themselves. This knowledge helped the team decipher the likely evolutionary scenario that gave rise to floral simulation in the orchid mantises and provided the opportunity to correct the long-held misunderstanding that orchid mantises sit on orchids, which their namesake incorrectly suggests.

"This study is a demonstration of how basic systematics research can inform our understanding of evolution by establishing patterns not previously seen," said co-author Henrique Rodrigues.

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2016/1-predationonp.png
A typical male orchid mantis, Hymenopus coronatus, shows brown and white coloration with transparent wings. Credit: Rick Wherley

"Bringing together ecological research with an evolutionary analysis enabled us to explain how such a remarkable, flower masquerading lineage of praying mantis could evolve," said co-author Sydney Brannoch. Co-authors Rodrigues and Brannoch are both Ph.D. candidates at Case Western Reserve University and are based at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Svenson's laboratory.

The research project, under the direction of Svenson, was primarily focused on the systematics and taxonomy of a broader lineage of praying mantises, which included the orchid mantises. Acting on a suggestion made by co-author Dr. Frank Wieland of the Palatinate Museum of Natural History in Germany, the team took notice of a small group of extremely large and colorful mantises that grouped together in the evolutionary analysis. Although these relationships were never before outlined, they suggested a clear pattern of extreme sexual dimorphism in the orchid mantis lineage.

"It was not our intention to study the orchid mantises specifically, but when a unique pattern emerges, one must pursue fascinating results," said Svenson, curator of invertebrate zoology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History and adjunct assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University. "Finding the first case of males and females of a praying mantis species living extremely different adult lives was interesting and unique, but discovering the first case of arthropod sexual size dimorphism caused by female predatory success rather than investment in reproduction was both surprising and rewarding. This is particularly true when the original research focus was to fix the classification system to reflect true evolutionary relationship. Finding patterns in your study group that inform broader evolutionary understanding is the holy grail of systematics research."

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2016/predationonp.jpg
A mating pair of the orchid mantis, Hymenopus coronatus, shows extreme size difference between the male and female. Credit: Jason Zhu


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-predation-pollinating-insects-evolution-orchid.html#jCp

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-predation-pollinating-insects-evolution-orchid.html

[william r sanford72]

King Poisoned Himself Regularly and Used Honey to Destroy Romanians

Mithridates the Great, is literally one of the weirdest kings ever. His phobia caused him to be the one who used honey as the first chemical weapon in the history. He is the only king who poisoned himself regularly for years and created an antidote.

Mithridates VI, also known as Eupator Dionysius, was the king of Pontus in the northern Anatolia, (Now in Turkey) between around 120–63 BC. As a king, he describes as one of the most powerful enemies of Roman Empire. And he truly destroyed the Roman troops by using mad honey as the first chemical weapon in history.

http://cdn.interestingengineering.com//wp-content/uploads/2016/11/mithridates-honey-black-sea.jpg
Black Sea Region, Turkey

For fear of being poisioned like his father, he spent his years researching poisons and paved the way for new medical knowledge about the immune system, antidotes and herbalism as well. His fear obviously became an obsessive phobia but presented the first theriac, called Mithridate. It was a semi-mythical remedy made with 65 ingredients and was used as an antidote for poisoning. We still have the recipe for his mixture, and it is still beneficial nowadays. Records says that Mithridate has been used to treat peanut allergies.

http://cdn.interestingengineering.com//wp-content/uploads/2016/11/mithridates-2.jpg

Mithridatism

His practice, known as Mithridatism, is based on a principle to poison yourself by regular self-determined doses to help develop the immune system. Sounds crazy, but his work had an important role in medicinal history; it still has. According to records, Mithridates had a big trauma caused by his father’s death by poisoning, by his mother’s order. This trauma shaped his life and forced to him work on medical research until he ascended the throne. Unfortunatryl, the throne gifted him new enemies, who would possibly try to poison him as well.

http://cdn.interestingengineering.com//wp-content/uploads/2016/11/mithridates-honey-1024x768.jpg

But there is another big historical record that he used the first chemical weapon on a Greek army after hearing about a potential attack his kingdom. That was a sort of honey, called ‘Mad honey’ or ‘Deli Bal’ in modern Turkish. According to Professor of Anthropology Vaughn Bryant, the first report came from Xenophon of Athens.

“In his chronicle Anabasis, Xenophon wrote that in 401 B.C.E., a Greek army he led was returning to Greece along the shores of the Black Sea after defeating the Persians. The Mithridates decided to feast on local honey stolen from some nearby beehives. Hours later the troops began vomiting, had diarrhea, became disoriented and could no longer stand; by the next day the effects were gone and they continued on to Greece.”

http://cdn.interestingengineering.com//wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rhododendron.jpg

Mad Honey is a local honey in Turkey and Georgia. The nectar is collected by caucasian bees from a local poison flower called Rhododendron. The honey is still in use by local South Caucasian people. Less than half a teaspoon is taken once a year to develop the immune system. To protect themselves against to the psychotropic and hallucinotic effects, locals are warning the people to be really careful and only eat a really small amount.

Historians claim that the Mithridates has tried to kill himself, to not be killed by his enemies. He could not find any poison that would have an effect on him and ordered his soldiers to kill him with a sword in the end.

He is still one of the weirdest kings in the world, whether or not Mithridates’s recipe is effective against all types of poison.

http://interestingengineering.com/mithridates-mad-honey-first-chemical-weapon/

[william r sanford72]

Bees of the sea: Tiny crustaceans pollinate underwater plants

https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/02114110/1429215805002.jpg
Turtle-grass can be spread by pollinators, not just the tides

By Emily Benson
Seagrass pollen swirls around on currents and tides, but it turns out that the grains can also hitch a ride on tiny marine creatures. Underwater invertebrates can ferry pollen between flowers, in the same way that bees and other animals pollinate plants on land.

Seagrasses provide food and a habitat for everything from microscopic crustaceans to manatees, and stabilise coasts by anchoring sediment with their roots. They can propagate by cloning, or by sexual reproduction through the transfer of pollen from male to female flowers.

Until recently, scientists thought that their pollen was conveyed from bloom to bloom by water alone, without the help of pollinators, says Brigitta van Tussenbroek at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s marine science institute in Puerto Morelos. So van Tussenbroek and her colleagues were surprised when underwater video footage of a turtle-grass bed revealed hundreds of invertebrates, mostly small crustaceans, visiting flowers.

“We saw all of these animals coming in, and then we saw some of them carrying pollen,” says van Tussenbroek (see video below).

B7VLBhQ-rQo

To see if the creatures could act as pollinators, the team added crustacean-containing seawater to laboratory aquariums containing male and female turtle-grass flowers, some of which already sported pollen grains.

Within 15 minutes, several extra grains appeared on the female blooms, whereas flowers in control tanks without invertebrates did not gain any pollen. In the absence of water movement, grain germination that would indicate successful pollination was frequent when marine invertebrates were present, but rare or non-existent without them.

Gooey and tasty

Pollinators are probably attracted to the tasty, gooey pollen masses that the male flowers produce. While the invertebrates chow down, some pollen probably sticks to their bodies and is then deposited when they later visit a female flower.

“That pollination by animals can occur adds an entirely new level of complexity to the system, and describes a very interesting plant-animal interaction that hasn’t really fully been described before,” says Kelly Darnell at The Water Institute of the Gulf, a non-profit research group in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/02115517/ncomms12980-f2.jpg
Marine fauna carrying pollen grains

So far, underwater pollinators have only been seen visiting turtle-grass, which has relatively large flowers. It would be interesting to see whether, for example, other plants with much smaller flowers can also be pollinated in this way, says Darnell.

It’s not clear how important invertebrate pollinators might be for other seagrass species. Nevertheless, expanding our basic knowledge of their biology is crucial in the face of a drastic worldwide decline in seagrasses, says Darnell.

“It’s important that we understand all aspects of the seagrass life cycle, including reproduction,” she says.

Journal reference: Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12980

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2114930-bees-of-the-sea-tiny-crustaceans-pollinate-underwater-plants/

[william r sanford72]

EPA Lawsuit Reaction and PMRA Bans Neonic
Published on Dec 1, 2016

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald discuss the recent decision about the law suit filed by the Center For Food Safety against EPA regarding neonicotinoid-coated seeds and the decision by Canada’s PMRA to ban imidacloprid. Stay tuned!
www.theorganicview.com.

WOC0N6Sh1nU

[william r sanford72]

We need to save the (weird) bees

http://tedxinnovations.ted.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/bees.jpg

Biologist Joseph Wilson thinks that bees have an image problem — and he wants to correct it. We all know about the honey bee and the bumble bee, he says in a talk at TEDxUSU, but when it comes to “saving the bees,” we forget about the other 95% of the species. And if we really want to save the bees (and our favorite crops) he says, we have to get to know all of the bees first.

There are 4,000 native bee species in the United State alone, and these bees have their own preferences, habits, diets and needs, Wilson says. There are ground nesting bees; leafcutter bees; bees that prefer blueberries; bees that dine on squash; bees that are bright blue and those that are bright green. Some bees shake pollen free from flowers (buzz pollination/sonication); others collect pollen on their hair and bodies.

http://tedxinnovations.ted.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4826632815_2de8c5b0bb_b.jpg
A sweat bee

Each plant requires a different sort of pollination, and each bee requires a different sort of plant. Wilson asks that you get to know your local bee species — so that all the bees can be saved (not just the ones making honey).

Watch his whole talk below:

MVDXD3oyMJg


https://tedxinnovations.ted.com/2016/12/02/we-need-to-save-the-weird-bees/

[william r sanford72]

We've Been Sold a Lie for Two Decades About Genetically Engineered Foods
GE food has failed to achieve two of its primary objectives: higher crop yields and reduced pesticide use. Meanwhile, corporate profits have surged.

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/14255456752_63f634bcb7_k.jpg

[Editor's note: The terms GE (genetic engineering) and GMO (genetically modified organism) are often used interchangeably, but their meanings are different. GMOs, which are produced when plant breeders select genetic traits that may also occur naturally, such as seedless watermelons and modern broccoli, have been around for centuries. The subject of much recent debate centers on GE foods, which have only been around in recent decades, and are produced by transferring genes between organisms. The resulting GE organisms—either plant-, or in the case of GE salmon, animal-based—would not otherwise occur in nature. This article is about GE foods.]

In 1994, a tomato known as "Flavr Savr" became the first commercially grown genetically engineered food to be granted a license for human consumption. Scientists at the California-based company Calgene (which was scooped up by Monsanto a few years later) added a specific gene to a conventional tomato that interfered with the plant's production of a particular enzyme, making it more resistant to rotting. The tomato was given the all-clear by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Since then, both the United States and Canada have embraced the genetic engineering of food crops, while Europe has broadly rejected the use of such technology. Only five EU nations—the Czech Republic, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain—grow GE crops. And they do so in such minor amounts that all five countries make up less than 0.1 percent of GE cultivation worldwide.

It appears that Europe has been right all along to renounce GE crops. An in-depth examination recently published by The New York Times found that GE crops have largely failed to achieve two of the technology's primary objectives: to increase crop yields and decrease pesticide use. Pesticides in particular have come under increasing fire in recent years, not only for their negative impact on human health and wildlife, but also for decimating populations of key food crop pollinators; specifically, bees, which are responsible for pollinating a third of food crops.

While consumer awareness of the effects of pesticides has grown, the ongoing battle over GE crops has largely zeroed in on whether or not such foods are safe to consume. But, as Times investigative reporter Danny Hakim points out in his article about the paper's analysis, "the debate has missed a more basic problem"—that GE crops have "not accelerated increases in crop yields or led to an overall reduction in the use of chemical pesticides."

Analyzing academic and industry research, as well as independent data, The Times compared results on the two continents and found that the "United States and Canada have gained no discernible advantage in yields—food per acre—when measured against Western Europe." The paper also cited a recent National Academy of Sciences report that found "little evidence that the introduction of GE crops were resulting in more rapid yearly increases in on-farm crop yields in the United States than had been seen prior to the use of GE crops."

New York Times: Behind the times?

For many farmers, researchers and activists, The Times' conclusion was not news. Ronnie Cummins, co-founder of Organic Consumers Association, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Minnesota, told AlterNet that the paper's analysis simply "confirms what many of the world's best scientists have said for years: GE crops have benefitted no one except the corporations selling the chemicals required to grow them."

"I'm glad that the New York Times has now discovered what those of us in agriculture have known for twenty years, that the old and exaggerated claims of genetic engineering by Monsanto and their allies are bogus," Jim Gerritsen, an organic farmer, told AlterNet. "They have not panned out and I'm glad that now the newspaper of record has made this clear to a lot of people," said Gerritsen, who has owned and run Wood Prairie Family Farm with his wife Megan in northern Maine for 40 years. "A lot of us have been saying this for a long time."

While it may not be news for many working towards a more sustainable food system, The Times story was unexpected. Andrew Kimbrell, the executive director of the Center for Food Safety, an environmental nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., told AlterNet that The Times' piece is "a surprising ray of light illuminating the longstanding GE crops debate," noting that the paper "for so many years had ignored the science about genetic engineering and bought the Big Lie" that Monsanto and its cohorts have been telling the public for so long: "that GE crops 'reduce pesticide use, increase yield and are key to feeding the world.'"

Seeing through Monsanto's propaganda

These recent findings fly in the face of Monsanto's stated claim that "the introduction of GM traits through biotechnology has led to increased yields." But the company is sticking to its guns. When shown The Times' findings, Robert T. Fraley, the company's chief technology officer, said the paper had selectively chosen the data in their analysis to put the industry in a bad light. “Every farmer is a smart businessperson, and a farmer is not going to pay for a technology if they don’t think it provides a major benefit,” said Fraley. “Biotech tools have clearly driven yield increases enormously.”

On their website, Monsanto backs their claim by citing statistics reported by PG Economics, a U.K.-based agricultural industry consultancy. However, that firm that has been exposed as a corporate shill by Lobbywatch.org, a U.K.-based nonprofit that tracks deceptive PR practices. PG Economics has been commissioned to write reports on behalf of industry lobby group whose members include the "Big Six" agrichemical giants: BASF, Bayer, Dupont, Dow Chemical, Monsanto and Syngenta.

"Most of the yield advancement, since GE crops were first commercialized, is attributable to traditional breeding techniques, not the GE traits," Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group based in Wisconsin, told AlterNet. Kastel, who worked for several agribusiness giants, including International Harvester, J.I. Case and FMC, before making what he calls the "paradigm shift to sustainable farming," said that since GE crops were introduced in the U.S., farmers have experienced boom-and-bust cycles and today are "generally hurting," regardless of the scale of their farming operations. "GE crops have not been a panacea for economic sustainability," he said.

Instead, they have been a source of financial growth for the agrichemical industry. Kimbrell said that the Big Six "make tens of billions of dollars in profits by selling ever more pesticides, especially herbicides. Why would they spend hundreds of millions of research dollars and then billions in advertising and lobbying to promote crops that actually 'reduce pesticides' and thereby destroy their bottom line? Are these companies committing economic suicide in an altruistic attempt to feed the world? Obviously not. You can accuse Monsanto of many things, including myriad corporate crimes over many decades, but altruism is not one of them. The vast majority of [genetically engineered crops] are not designed to decrease herbicide use, but to massively increase it."

A toxic plague

Hakim notes that, according to U.S. Geological Survey data, while insecticide use has actually fallen by a third since GE crops were introduced in the U.S. in the mid-1990s, herbicide use has exploded, growing by more than a fifth over that same period. French farmers, by contrast, have been able to reduce insecticide use by a far greater margin—65 percent—while decreasing herbicide use by more than a third. "Although some insecticide use has been reduced, overall agrochemical applications have grown exponentially," said Kastel. 

American tomatoes may take longer to rot than their conventionally-grown European counterparts. It's a neat trick. But with GE tomatoes being one of the most pesticide-contaminated foods in the U.S. food supply—not to mention the fact they won't feed more people (there'll be a staggering 8.5 billion of us by 2030, 11.2 billion by 2100)—that's all the Flavr Savr is, a trick—and perhaps ultimately a dangerous one. While the real toll of industrialized GE agriculture on human and environmental health is hard to calculate, the track record is dismal. By some estimates, pesticides have killed an estimated 250 million bees in a just a few years. The New York Times reported that some commercial beekeepers have lost more than a third of their bees in 2013. Pesticides have also impacted populations of fish and amphibians.

But it's not just wildlife that suffers. The general public is ingesting pesticides on a regular basis. Kastel notes that "eaters are consuming copious amounts of biological insecticides built into the genome of corn," adding that "the cumulative health impacts are unknown." People who live near GE crops have to contend with an additional health impact: "pesticide drift," agrichemicals blown into their communities by the wind.

The heavy reliance on pesticides has started a vicious cycle, leading to the rise of pesticide-resistant superweeds. "Weeds and insects are becoming resistant to the herbicides and genetic insecticides that are spliced into the plants," said Gerritsen. "To combat resistance, some farmers are using a 'chemical cocktail' of multiple herbicides while biotech companies are introducing resistance to even more powerful and toxic chemicals." He estimates that there may be 60 to 80 million acres of farmland in the U.S. that have "superweeds" that have built up a resistance to RoundUp. Cummins said superweed resistance has forced farmers to "use higher and higher amounts of increasingly dangerous poisons" so that "soils are eroded and degraded. Water is polluted. Foods are contaminated. And to what end?"

It may take years, even decades to fully understand the real ends, particularly the accidental by-products of industrialized agriculture. "These chemicals are largely unknown," David Bellinger, a professor at the Harvard University School of Public Health, told The New York Times. His research has linked the loss of millions of I.Q. points among children 5 years old and younger in the U.S. to a single class of insecticides. "We do natural experiments on a population," he said, referring to human exposure to agrichemicals, "and wait until it shows up as bad."

Activists of the world, unite

Hakim also points out that "profound differences over genetic engineering have split Americans and Europeans for decades," noting that anti-GE sentiment across the pond has been much more active, with Monsanto drawing the ire of thousands of protesters in cities like Paris and Basel, while GE opposition has been firmly established as a primary plank of the Green political movement.

The prospect of a Monsanto-Bayer merger has only galvanized the opposition in Europe, even as activists recognize new and different kind of challenge ahead. Jan Perhke of the Coalition Against Bayer-Dangers, a German NGO, says that Bayer's diversification has made it a more difficult target than Monsanto, whose business is simple: GE seeds and pesticides. Monsanto, which has emerged as the primary worldwide target of the anti-GE movement, has been steeped in controversy recently, particularly since RoundUp's main ingredient glyphosate was deemed a "probable carcinogen" by the World Health Organization in 2015.

"We have tried to put the focus not only on Monsanto, and to let people know that behind Monsanto there are many agrochemical multinationals which are very big and also have very dangerous products," Perhke told DW. There has been speculation that, if the merger goes through, Bayer will drop the Monsanto name, which would force activists to rebrand their campaigns.

Many anti-GE activists can be found in Vermont, the first state to pass GMO-labeling legislation. In their 2016 report "Vermont's GMO Addiction: Pesticides, Polluted Water, and Climate Destruction," Regeneration Vermont, a nonprofit group that promotes regenerative agriculture, describes the terrible impact that chemical-based industrial agriculture has had on the state's economy and environment:

The history of Vermont’s heavy adoption of industrial—or degenerative—forms of agriculture is also the history of its failure and decline. At every stage, beginning with chemical agriculture in the post-WWII era, the new techniques being promoted by the increasingly corporate and industrial agriculture came with mighty promises: Labor would be saved, yields would increase, bugs and insects would be eliminated, and pro ts would soar. Just get in line, and follow the edicts coming out of the USDA and the agricultural extension centers.

But, more often than not, the promises were false—or short lived—while the damage was deep, most notably in the way further industrialization all but mandated the consolidation of Vermont’s farms. “Get big or get out” has been the dominant mantra in agriculture since the late 1950s. And it worked. Many did get big, but most got out. Vermont lost a staggering number of farmers as commodity dairy took over. More than 10,000 dairy farms were gone within a sixty-year period from the 1950s to today. …

The true nature of GMO agriculture in Vermont today is a stark and dangerous difference from the promises of its corporate advocates. According to data collected by the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, pesticide use is up 39% and increasing rapidly while, at the same time, new pesticides are being added to the arsenal. Climate-threatening nitrogen fertilizers have been up about 17% per year in the decade of GMO’s rise to dominance (2002-2012) and climbing as our denuded soils require more and more inputs for high production. And the pollution to our climate, water and soil from these increases continues to rise, keeping us on a steady degenerative decline, environmentally, economically and culturally.

Lining corporate coffers

"The great economic promise of genetically engineered crops has flowed, primarily, to bankers, suppliers and the biotechnology industry," said Kastel. "Rather than improving the bottom line it enabled farmers to grow larger and automate crop production with fewer people involved."

Those economic flows have benefitted the agrichemical industry greatly. Over the past 15 years, the combined market capitalizations of Monsanto and Syngenta have grown more than sixfold. And these companies are profiting on both ends. "For Monsanto and the other chemical companies, genetically engineering crops is just another way to significantly increase profits," said Kimbrell. "They sell the seeds and the poisons sprayed on those seeds. Great for their bottom line, terrible for the rest of us and the planet." If the mergers of Monsanto and Bayer on one side, and Syngenta and ChemChina, a Chinese state-owned agrichemical company, on the other, were to go through, the two newly-created behemoths would each have combined values to in excess of $100 billion—more than the GDP of over a hundred nations, including Puerto Rico, Kenya and Ukraine.

Meanwhile, bees, who pollinate most of the food we eat (and all of our cotton), are dying in worrisome numbers, in part due to the increased use of neonicotinoids, a dangerous class of pesticides produced by Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical, and commonly used on GE corn, soybean, canola and cereal, as well as many fruits and vegetables. But because bees do their work, or ecosystem services, for free, the estimated $15 billion in value that they give to society each year is not included in economic calculations.

Is it too late?

Even as crop yields have shown no improvement versus conventional methods, U.S. growers have increased their use of herbicides as they have converted key crops—including cotton, corn and soybean—to modified varieties. Meanwhile, American farmers have been overtaken by their counterparts in France, Europe's biggest agricultural producer, in the overall reduction of pesticides; i.e., both herbicides and insecticides.

Is it too late for the U.S. and Canada to get off this ruinous track of industrialized agriculture? For advocates of sustainable agriculture, regenerative agriculture and agroecology—which seek to place farming within the context of natural ecosystems as opposed to objects of chemical-based production—the answer is a resounding yes.

"Research has shown that agroecologically based methods—such as organic fertilizers, crop rotation, and cover crops—can succeed in meeting our food needs while avoiding the harmful impacts of industrial agriculture," argues the Union for Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "As farmers incorporate these practices into their work, many benefits emerge: Less pollution. Healthier, more fertile soil that is less vulnerable to drought and flooding. A lighter impact on surrounding ecosystems, resulting in greater biodiversity. Reduced global warming impact. Less antibiotic and pesticide resistance."

In fact, a 2015 global study conducted by researchers at Washington State University and published in the peer-reviewed Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences found that, despite lower yields, the profit margins for organic agriculture were significantly greater than conventional agriculture. Part of that increased profit margin may in fact come from not having to pay a premium for Monsanto's seeds and pesticides, a system that hasn't panned out as planned.

"Why would a farmer want to pay a premium for Roundup Ready soybeans if the Roundup is no longer working?" Gerritsen says. "What has been happening, widespread, is that farmers are going back to non-GE soybeans and growing them as they did before the Roundup Ready soybeans came in 20 years ago. Then, the best among them have figured out that there is a growing market worldwide for a non-GMO soybeans." He notes that some U.S. farmers raising conventionally grown, non-GMO soybeans have found competitive markets in Asia, where they receive a premium for their produce. An added benefit for these farmers is that they can save their seeds instead of having to buy them each season from Monsanto, which actually leases its seeds, as they have been regulated as intellectual property as opposed to being a part of the wealth of the commons, which seeds have been for thousands of years.

But moving from industrial agriculture to organic farming isn't easy, especially when the transition period to get organic certification exposes growers to financial risk. The study's author's say that the impetus for change must come from policymakers, who should "develop government policies that support conventional farmers converting to organic and other sustainable systems, especially during the transition period," a 36-month withdrawal period from the time a farmer last used an unapproved material, like a pesticide.

But considering the powerful Big Ag lobby, getting policymakers to help farmers move to organic is a daunting task. Gerritsen acknowledges that "it's hard to out-gun the tremendous resources of Monsanto and what basically amounts to a calculated propaganda effort to misrepresent reality, to gain position and dominance." He said that for farmers, "it's a deck that has been stacked against them. Sadly, this is nothing new to agriculture. The history of agriculture's one where farmers who were spread out and independent by nature and by geography, have a hard time competing with the concentrated power structures within agriculture. This has gone on for 150 years. Only now, the accelerated rates of concentration is no more stark than in the seed industry. Just a small handful of companies now control the vast majority of world seed resources. Monsanto is chief among them." If regulators approve the $66 billion Bayer-Monsanto merger, the resulting corporation would have control of nearly a third of world's seed market and nearly a fourth of the pesticide market.

"In all probability one story, albeit a major one, is probably not enough to finally debunk Monsanto and friends’ Big Lie about GE crop technology," Kimbrell said about The Times' analysis. "You will probably continue to see the common sense-defying claims for a while yet. But if as the Ancients said the truth is “like a lion—just let it loose." then maybe we can finally go past the already failed but still dangerous GE experiment and move to an ecological agriculture that really will reduce and eventually eliminate pesticides and provide a secure sustainable food future for us all."

Whether or not the U.S. and Canada will move towards a more sustainable agricultural model remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: The 20-year-old experiment with genetically engineered crops has proven to be a false promise, suggesting that the creation of  completely new organisms is better left in the hands of Mother Nature, not scientists in laboratories.

"When you begin to genetically engineer organisms by mixing plant and animal genes, you now have the ability to alter ecosystems, which can have unintended consequences," Robert Colangelo, founding farmer and CEO of Green Sense Farms, America's largest network of commercial and sustainable indoor vertical farms, told AlterNet. "Mankind does not have a good track record when it tries to alter nature."

http://www.alternet.org/food/genetically-engineered-foods-have-enriched-few-mega-corporations-while-hurting-environmental

[william r sanford72]

Iowa company's '100% pure' honey laced with weed-killer, lawsuit says

Two national advocacy groups are suing a Sioux City cooperative they say is falsely advertising its honey as pure, despite tests that show it contains traces of glyphosate, used in Roundup, the most widely used farm herbicide in the world.

The Organic Consumers Association and Beyond Pesticides claim that Sioux Honey Association, the 95-year-old cooperative that makes Sue Bee Honey, is misleading consumers by labeling its honey as pure and natural.

The advocacy groups say their lawsuit is more than a labeling dispute — it's an attempt to push retailers and, ultimately, federal agencies to adopt better standards and practices that would protect bees, honey and consumers from contamination from herbicides that are widely applied by farmers.

The lawsuit points to U.S. Food and Drug Administration documents that indicate Sue Bee Honey contains traces of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. It also highlights a gap in government oversight over the herbicide, which experts say is inadvertently getting into honey.

While the herbicide residue "may be due to the application of glyphosate on crops by neighboring farms and unrelated to beekeeping activities," the advocacy groups say "labeling and advertising of Sue Bee products as 'Pure,' '100% Pure,' 'Natural,' and 'All-Natural' is false, misleading and deceptive."

The advocacy groups say their lawsuit is more than a labeling dispute — it's an attempt to push retailers and, ultimately, federal agencies to adopt better standards and practices that would protect bees, honey and consumers from contamination from herbicides that are widely applied by farmers.

The lawsuit points to U.S. Food and Drug Administration documents that indicate Sue Bee Honey contains traces of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. It also highlights a gap in government oversight over the herbicide, which experts say is inadvertently getting into honey.

While the herbicide residue "may be due to the application of glyphosate on crops by neighboring farms and unrelated to beekeeping activities," the advocacy groups say "labeling and advertising of Sue Bee products as 'Pure,' '100% Pure,' 'Natural,' and 'All-Natural' is false, misleading and deceptive."

Sioux Honey Association, with 300 members nationally, didn't respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit and testing.

The EPA hasn't set maximum levels for glyphosate in honey that would effectively establish consumer safety levels. That leaves beekeepers caught between consumers, farming and the government, said Darren Cox, president of the American Honey Producers Association.

By comparison, the European Union has set maximum residue limits for glyphosate in honey at 50 parts per billion.
Cox wants the federal government to set tolerances, which could restrict how farmers apply the popular herbicide.

"We can’t wave a magic wand and make that happen," he said.

Monsanto, the St. Louis-based maker of Roundup, is downplaying the study findings, saying that even the highest levels of glyphosate found in the honey samples are still well within the "acceptable daily intake" set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"You could consume more than 25 gallons of honey every day for the rest of your life and still not exceed the EPA’s exposure limits," Monsanto said in a statement.
Regardless, Andrew Joseph, the state apiarist and a beekeeper, said any trace of herbicide in honey is cause for concern. Honey purity is a source of pride for beekeepers.

"There’s no beekeeper that’s in any way happy about this," said Joseph, who keeps about 130 hives. "All of us who are aware of this study are fairly frustrated, and we’d like more answers."

Is it safe for people?

The FDA study also showed that honey sold in Iowa contains glyphosates, with one sample reaching as high as 653 parts per billion.

John Vargo, research and development coordinator at the State Hygienic Laboratory, who co-authored the study, pulled honey jars from the shelves of Iowa City area grocery stores last spring to replicate testing that FDA chemist Narong Chamkasem developed.

The testing is able to detect glyphosate more accurately at lower levels than existing assessments.

Vargo tested nine honeys at the University of Iowa lab and found eight samples had glyphosate levels at more than 10 parts per billion. Four samples had levels higher than the 50 parts per billion limit established in Europe. One sample was 13 times higher than that limit.

Whether those levels are harmful is up for debate.

An email between FDA officials, used in the lawsuit to connect the FDA samples to Sue Bee Honey, states that recent EPA evaluations have "confirmed that glyphosate is almost non-toxic to humans and animals."

"While the presence of glyphosate in honey is technically a violation, it is not a safety issue," wrote Chris Sack, an FDA residue expert, to Chamkasem and others.

But a prominent global agency reached a different finding on glyphosate last year. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, labeled the chemical as "probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The European Food Safety Authority and other global groups have disagreed. And the EPA released a finding in September that said "the strongest support is for 'not likely to be carcinogenic to humans' at the doses relevant to human health risk assessment."

Nowhere is safe from contamination

Vargo said he couldn't determine if the honey he bought in Iowa came from state beekeepers. He declined to name the specific brands he purchased.

The lawsuit said a Sue Bee Honey sample tested in the study — and purchased in Atlanta — showed glyphosate levels at 41 parts per billion.

The Sioux Honey Association, formed by five beekeepers in western Iowa in 1921, has bottling plants in Sioux City, Ia.; Anaheim, Calif.; and Elizabethtown, N.C., that process about 40 million pounds of honey annually.

The cooperative lists three beekepers in Iowa as members.
Altogether, Iowa has about 4,500 beekeepers who manage about 45,000 hives, said Joseph, the state apiarist.

Beekeepers have few options when it comes to avoiding areas where glyphosate is used, especially in Iowa, where about 25 million acres were planted to row crops this year, primarily corn and soybeans.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/c3ea5ecacf62399681462f072e0fbc58decfa36f/c=532-0-3715-2393&r=x408&c=540x405/local/-/media/DesMoines/2015/03/24/B9316727928Z.1_20150324182711_000_GFOAALFFF.1-0.jpg

The majority of Iowa and U.S. farmers grow genetically modified corn and soybeans that can be sprayed with glyphosate or other herbicides, killing the weeds without harming the crops.

Joseph said an important part of beekeeping is finding hive locations that will be "good, productive and safe areas for our bees."

"I don’t think there’s anywhere that would be safe" from possible contamination, he said. "I don’t think there’s any place for beekeepers to hide."

Cox, the American Honey Producers Association president, said beekeepers can't "mitigate the exposure" insects encounter as they forage, typically in about a 3-mile radius around their hives.

"I don’t know how you would fix that," he said. "Bees need agriculture, and agriculture needs bees."

Pesticides are everywhere

Nationally, bees pollinate dozens of fruits, nuts and vegetables in $25 billion of agricultural production, federal data show.

But Iowa's dominant crops don't rely on bees for pollination. Corn is pollinated by the wind, and soybeans self-pollinate.

Still, bees forage soybean and cornfields for pollen and nectar, said Matthew O'Neal, an Iowa State University entomologist. And research shows soybean fields visited by bees can push yields 6 percent to 18 percent higher.

"The boost isn't trivial," O'Neal said. "There’s a reason for soybean farmers to think about encouraging bees on their farms" by planting areas with prairies that provide strong forage for pollinators.

He said the presence of glyphosate in honey is "alarming to people, but it shouldn’t be surprising," given the herbicide's prevalence.

Varga said other foods, even water, can have small traces of chemicals such as glyphosate.

For example, EPA set glyphosate levels in drinking water at 700 parts per billion.

"Pretty much any product that you test, if you have equipment that’s sensitive enough, you’ll likely find low level detects of pesticides," Varga said.
Most of the time, though, the amount present isn't a high enough level to be considered a health risk.

The FDA said it tested soybeans, corn, milk and eggs for glyphosate this year as part of a special assignment. Preliminary results showed no pesticide residue violations.

Honey was not part of that assessment, the agency said. The FDA chemist conducted that research independently.

Cox said he's concerned the honey industry is being unfairly singled out. Joseph, the state apiarist, agreed.

"I could have had more glyphosate in morning coffee" than most consumers would find in a year of eating honey, he said.

'EPA has sat silent'

Cox said the honey industry has lobbied EPA for greater protections for bees from pesticides, including herbicides, insecticides and fungicides.

"We’ve asked EPA to put caution labels on other products that were causing harm to our pollinators and to our bees, and we’ve not been successful in those efforts," he said. "EPA has sat silent."

Researchers have recently linked bee deaths to dust from neonicotinoids, used to treat seeds so plants are healthier. The insects also are threatened by Varroa mites, a parasite that attacks bees, and dwindling forage areas such as pastures and prairies.

Iowa and other states ask beekeepers to register their hives and limit when some pesticides can be sprayed to protect nearby colonies.

Bees can find similar threats in cities, O'Neal said. Glyphosate is used to kill weeds on lawns, and communities that spray insecticides for mosquitoes, especially given concerns about the spread of the Zika virus, can wipe out entire bee operations.
"Those are tragedies that can be avoided," he said.

The canary in the coal mine

Most of the threats bees face impact the insects themselves, not their honey, experts say.

Last winter, for example, about 60 percent of beekeepers nationally reported losses that exceeded the acceptable average. About 28 percent of the U.S. bee colonies were lost over the 2015-16 winter, according to a beekeepers survey.

Joseph, the Iowa apiarist, said bees reflect what's going on in the environment around them.

"People view bees as a canary in a coal mine," Joseph said. "Whatever is good or bad — it’s reflected in the hives."

Cox hopes the federal government takes a stronger look at how glyphosate could be getting into honey — whether it's in water, sprayed on flowering plants or taken into the plant from the soil.

Federal tolerance levels would help reassure consumers that honey is safe, said Joseph and others.

Even though tolerances could be helpful, they also could have negative ramifications, Cox said, especially since beekeepers are unable to control glyphosate's widespread use.

"What do you do with the honey if you’ve exceeded a limit? Do you take your $1 million or $2 million harvest to the landfill, get rid of jobs and close up business?" Cox said.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2016/12/03/iowa-companys-100-pure-honey-laced-weed-killer-lawsuit-says/94223744/

[william r sanford72]

Natural Beekeeping: Dealing with Small Hive Beetle

https://www.milkwood.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/small-hive-beetle-987.jpg

As the weather heats up, the bees get busy. We’re all hoping for a great season. But the hotter weather also brings with it possible bee pests including small hive beetle, especially if you’re beekeeping in temperate Australia.
Here’s some tips for dealing with small hive beetle, naturally.

All about Small Hive Beetle

Small hive beetle was first detected in Australia in 2002 in the Hawkesbury, and since then it’s spread across Australian honeybee populations wherever conditions are hot and humid in Summer.

Life cycle: The beetles fly into the hive and lay their eggs wherever they can in empty comb (or sometimes capped brood) that is unguarded. The beetles are VERY good at hiding in corners and crevices within the hive to prevent being harassed by the bees. The eggs then hatch in the comb and the larvae feed on the hive’s honey, before crawling out of the hive to pupate in the ground nearby.

The new beetles then hatch out of the ground, and fly back into the hive (or fly off to another hive) to repeat their life cycle.

How this creates a problem: As the larvae eat the honey after they’ve hatched inside the hive, they also defecate in it, causing the honey to ferment. On a large scale, this can mean that combs, and sometimes whole boxes of honey, are ‘slimed out’ – the combs ooze fermenting honey that smells like rotten oranges.

This sliming out of the bees honey stores is terrible for hive health, obviously, and can cause the colony to abscond in an emergency swarm, or, at worst, collapse entirely.

How the bees deal with small hive beetle: honeybees can’t actually kill the beetles, but they do their best to herd them into corners into a kind of ‘beetle jail’ if they find them inside their hive.

However, if there’s vast amounts of un-patrolled empty comb in their hive above the brood, the bees can only do so much.

Prevention is Better than Cure

As with any pests or disease, effective hive management and design to prevent beetles making themselves at home in the first place is preferable to treating an infestation.

Here we’ll focus on solutions for anyone using natural beekeeping principles, with a warré hive or similar:

Natural comb | Natural reproduction | Natural food
Minimal intervention | No chemicals

Some of these techniques below will be able to be applied no matter what kind of hive and approach you’re using.

https://www.milkwood.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/small-hive-beetle-992.jpg

Nadiring

Nadiring is the process of adding empty boxes underneath, as opposed to ontop of, your hive. Nadiring allows the colony to build fresh comb downwards as the colony expands, at a rate of it’s choosing, as the queen lays successive generations of brood. Above the brood is a ever-growing dome of pollen and capped honey.
Importantly, this means that the only empty comb in the colony is literally covered in bees for the entire time that it is empty. This is because when bees make comb, they cover it with their bodies – the wax comes from the underside of their abdomen. This comb stays covered by bees while the queen lays in each cell, and throughout the rearing of the brood.

Once the brood hatches, the cells are immediately backfilled with pollen or nectar, and attended by bees until they are finally filled with honey and capped, at which point the bee to comb ratio falls, as the bees move down to attend to comb below. In this way, capped honeycomb is the only comb in the hive that is not constantly patrolled by bees.

And so if all the empty comb in a healthy colony is bee covered comb, there’s literally no un-patrolled empty comb for small hive beetles to lay in. This is a small, but hugely important, point.

Because empty comb is the breeding ground for small hive beetle.

By minimising the amount of un-patrolled empty comb in a hive (which happens in conventional beekeeping when boxes of empty comb are ‘supered’ – added above the brood of a colony, for the bees to fill with honey), we can reduce the bees potential disease loading considerably.

https://www.milkwood.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/small-hive-beetle-993.jpg

Natural reproduction

Queens that are mated naturally with the local drone population bring back to the hive a range of proven, locally resilient and adapted genetics to populate their hive with.

In Australia our feral bee population is massive, and this means that most virgin queens that fly out to mate with local drones will mate with some ‘bush bees’ from tree hollow colonies in the nearest forest.

These bush colonies represent the local bee genetics that are most adapted to whatever the local pests are, including small hive beetle, by the simple fact that they’re un-managed colonies. And so natural selection has produced the most resilient local strain of healthy bees you could hope for.

A note that if you have a hive that swarms, the colony that you are left with in that hive will produce a new, virgin queen, as the swarm takes the old queen with it. This means an opportunity to get some excellent local genetics into your left-behind colony, as the virgin queen mates with local drones and brings those new, resilient genetics back to your hive.

The above attitude is quite different to the conventional practice of queen breeding and ‘requeening’ which involves purchasing an artificially inseminated queen to introduce to a new colony.

This queen will bring with her selected genetic traits that generally focus on maximizing honey yield, but not things like local disease resilience, or many other important factors inherent to bee-centric beekeeping.

https://www.milkwood.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/small-hive-beetle-994.jpg

Populate new hives with swarms

If you’re starting off a hive, populating it with a local swarm is a great way to get a locally adapted colony AND relatively disease and pest-free bees.

When bees swarm, they take nothing with them except their queen and the honey in their bellies. No comb leaves the hive with these bees, and so they leave many potential problems behind, including populations of small hive beetle.

By populating a new hive with a local swarm, you get healthy, clean bees, and a chance to re-set your hive management techniques if need be. Tips for catching a swarm.

https://www.milkwood.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/small-hive-beetle-995.jpg

Minimal intervention

Studies have shown that Small hive beetle can smell a honeybee colony’s distress pheromones from an astounding 10km away. And they come running (or flying, actually) to make the most of that disruption.

Stressed hives are perfect for small hive beetle to invade – the bees are dealing with other issues, the laying / filling of the comb may be out of whack, so the patrolling of the comb may be not ideal, and it’s the perfect opportunity for the beetle to lay where they won’t be annoyed.

Every time a hive is opened from the top, the nest scent is released and, if the bees are stressed or sick, this means a huge release of stress pheromones – up out of the hive and into the air.

By minimising hive openings (2-3 times a season is plenty if you do your research and know what you’re doing), we can minimise the release of nest scent.
Also, if the hive is opened too often, guess what the beetles have a regular opportunity to do? Yep, fly straight in the top, to the most un-patrolled part of the hive. Boom.

Choosing a good day to open your hives is also important. Opening your hives when it’s cold, or windy, or wet, is a fast-track recipe for cranky, stressed bees. If the weather is wrong, wait. Put the bees needs before your own convenience.

An ideal hive opening would be mid-morning on a calm day, with an air temperature of 27ºc or thereabouts.Yes, things aren’t always perfect, but the more thought you can put into your hive openings, the better for the bees, and their hive health.

Waiting for an ideal day minimises the impact of a hive opening on the bees – the foraging bees will all be out in the environment already, and if the temperature is good, the impact on the brood, and the bees stress levels, will all be minimal.

Nadiring also helps with minimal intervention – by using nadiring when the bees need more space – which happens a few times a season in Australia, especially on a  honeyflow – we can add space to the hive via the bottom, without opening it at the top. Another way to minimise intervention.

https://www.milkwood.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/small-hive-beetle-996.jpg

Hive siting

Siting your hive or hives well is very important for colony health, and this in turn will make a big difference to their disease and pest loadings.

A hive that is warm in the morning sun and cool in the afternoon shade, up off the ground and always dry, protected from flying soccerballs, curious cows, and other disasters, and sited somewhere with ample, year-round forage in the hive’s 8km radius, will go a long way towards being a healthy, happy hive. Tips on selecting a site for your hive.

Siting your hive in your chicken run, if you live in a small hive beetle-prone area such as the Sydney basin, is another great idea.

Because part of the beetle’s life cycle is outside the hive, pupating in the ground, having your hive somewhere near your chickens can lead to a great symbiotic relationship – extra wormy and beetle snacks for chickens, and a healthy hive of bees. Tips on siting your beehive in your chicken run.

Small hive beetle management

In some areas that are particularly prone to small hive beetle, your hive may have a few beetle in it, no matter what. This is not a disaster, but does require you to actively manage the issue
if you want healthy bees using natural beekeeping principles.

As said above, the best way to manage small hive beetle is external to the hive, with good beekeeping practice. Sometimes, though, in-hive management is necessary.

Beetles hate sunlight – remember this point, and use it to your advantage.

Beetle base: one of the best ways to manage small hive beetle is with a beetle base on your hive. This is a non-toxic way to catch and kill some or most of the beetles without affecting your bees.

The beetle bases are metal and have slots at the back of the base, with a trap underneath the slots. Into this trap you can put builders lime, or oil if you prefer. The trap slides in from the outside of the hive.

Ok so beetle flies into beehive. As beetle hates sunlight, the first thing it does is quickly crawl to the back of the hive base, where it then hopefully falls through the slots and into your trap. And that’s the end of that beetle. Huzzah.

The trap can be regularly checked and cleaned from outside the hive, which means you don’t need to open the hive to check, or replenish, your trap. When we lived in ‘beetle territory’ we used builders lime in our traps, checking them regularly and stirring the lime with a stick to break it up. We replaced the lime once every few months.

An extension to this same idea, if you’ve noticed beetle numbers building in your hive, to open the top of your hive briefly, just for a minute or two, and puff a few puffs of smoke into the hive. The sudden sunlight and smoke will push the beetles down into the hive, hopefully down to the bottom, and into your trap.

Other beetle traps: there’s other beetle traps too – some slide into the bottom of the hive (there’s a model of this type called ‘Die Ya Bastards’ – true story, you can get it from Tobins beekeeping supplies in Bathurst), and there’s also some traps that hang up in the comb. Obviously any hanging traps need regular hive opening to remove / check the traps, which is not ideal.

Chemical traps: we would not recommend these. Bees are already dealing with a wide range of environmental chemicals, and we would not advocate any toxic chemicals, of any type, inside their hives.

Other than dealing directly with beetles, your best bet for management is to use the prevention techniques above to ensure you don’t make things worse – especially the minimal intervention principle. Do the best with what you’ve got.

Last of all, do all the research you possibly can, and join your local bee club! It’s full of knowledge (yes, some may be on a very different page from you, but still), resources, support, and other people that really love bees.

Resources

Great natural beekeeping + bee biology books + resources of note:
Natural Beekeeping with the Warré Hive – David Heaf
The bee-friendly beekeeper – David Heaf
The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a Superorganism – Jürgen Tautz
Honeybee Democracy –  Thomas D. Seeley
Natural Bee Husbandry – a new journal worth checking out
Natural beekeeping – all our resources, books, how-tos etc
Natural Beekeeping Australia – all Tim Malfroy’s resources

Beetle management:
Beetle trap base for warré hives
Beetle Tra – the base makers, can be got in a range of sizes
Small Hive Beetle – the Bee Aware Biosecurity primer

Thanks to Tim Malfroy for his considerably insights on this topic.
Diagram of Warré hive via Justin Bajer

https://www.milkwood.net/2016/12/05/natural-beekeeping-dealing-with-small-hive-beetle/

[william r sanford72]

Honey bee teenagers speed up the ageing process of their elders
December 6, 2016

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2016/honeybeeteen.jpg
A young honey bee worker emerging from the wax cells in which it developed. Credit: Vincent Dietemann, Agroscope

In honey bee colonies, a single queen is laying eggs from which thousands of worker bees are born. At a young age, workers care for the brood, then build and defend the nest and eventually, towards the end of their lives, leave the safety of the nest to forage for food. This major step in their lives is speeding up ageing because searching the environment for food exposes these foragers to a wide range of stressors, such as pathogens, predators and adverse weather conditions.

Despite her title, the queen is not deciding who does what in the honey bee colony. How work is distributed between nestmates in these societies is not fully understood. Previous research has shown that tasks are allocated based on communication between the queen, brood and individual workers performing these tasks. For example, the presence of foragers in hives reduces the number of younger bees leaving the hives to start foraging. It is also known that the presence of larvae reduces the life expectancy of bees due to the need for adult workers to tend to them and forage to feed them. This was shown by an increase in longevity of workers after experimental removal of larvae. Since their removal also resulted in the removal of young adults that develop from them, the observed effect could not be attributed to the young workers or to the brood until now.

'By experimentally separating the effect of brood and of young adults on their nestmates' destiny, we could tease apart the role of these two actors' says senior author Vincent Dietemann from Agroscope. 'We saw that both the presence of brood and of young workers shortened the life expectancy of their nestmates' adds lead author Michael Eyer from both Agroscope and Institute of Bee Health. The newly discovered role of young workers in honey bee social organisation adds to our knowledge of how demography shapes colony functioning. 'These social regulation mechanisms of food collection allow the fast adaptation of the colony to a changing environment' says co-author Peter Neumann from the Institute of Bee Health.

Understanding insect societies, ageing and significance for beekeeping

These findings are significant for our understanding of social organization in insects, which often inspires technological innovations. They also provide information on general ageing processes beyond social insects. Indeed, honey bees are used as model system to understand ageing in other organisms, including humans. The acquired knowledge has practical implications for beekeepers because colony management can include removal of brood and thus of young workers. This for example can occur before a treatment to control the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. The extension of worker lifespan induced by the removal allows the colony to compensate this absence and continue functioning.

Honey bee duties and pollination – Background

In spring and summer, honey bee colonies are composed of so called 'summer bees'. During the first one to three weeks, they perform tasks such as nursing and cleaning within the nest and later leave its protection to forage for nectar and pollen required for colony growth, before dying. In late summer, falling temperature reduces foraging activity and brood rearing declines. The so-called long-lived 'winter bees' emerge from the last brood reared. Their tasks consist in maintaining the nest at temperatures that ensure the survival of the colony over several winter months and in resuming brood rearing in the next spring, before they start foraging again in spring. Worker life expectancy is thus plastic and varies according to each phase of a colony's life history.

In addition to producing honey, wax, propolis and royal jelly, honey bees contribute to the pollination of a large variety of commercial food crops – a service valued at over 150 billions Euros globally. Moreover, honey bees together with other insects pollinate many wild flowers and are therefore central to the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, of which the economical value is order of magnitudes higher.

More information: Michael Eyer et al. Social regulation of ageing by young workers in the honey bee, Apis mellifera, Experimental Gerontology (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.exger.2016.11.006

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-honey-bee-teenagers-ageing-elders.html

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-honey-bee-teenagers-ageing-elders.html#jCp

[william r sanford72]

Hmmm...
Why is a banned pesticide that harms bees actually being used more?
Scientists fear that neonicotinoid manufacturers are copying tobacco industry tactics in a bid to end the moratorium on this devastating chemical

hTnEW-wEf5M
Professor Goulson’s lecture on Bumblebees, their Ecology and Conservation at the National Honey Show

Halfway through a video of a speech by the biologist Professor Dave Goulson there is an abrupt loss of sound. Goulson, who has devoted his working life to highlighting the catastrophic decline of bees, is giving a talk to hundreds gathered at the National Honey Show in 2015. Strangely, his words are silenced for 20 seconds of the video uploaded by the show to YouTube, precisely when he discusses the impact on bees of the most widely used insecticides in the world – neonicotinoids.

Goulson called it “sinister” last week when made aware of the silence, but now concludes it was probably an innocent error. Bob Maurer, chairman of the show, told me the event has never received any sponsorship from the big chemical companies that manufacture neonicotinoids. He believes an accidental “technical hitch” by the video producer was responsible.

Concern over this coincidence can be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but what cannot be dismissed is the solid scientific evidence that Goulson is helping to produce, showing how neonicotinoids harm bees and other insects.

Scientists this year calculated that these insecticides caused a 10% reduction in the distribution of bee species that forage on oilseed rape. Another study found neonicotinoids cut live sperm in male honeybees by almost 40%. Two studies show a strong correlation between neonicotinoids and declining butterfly populations, while another showed the insecticide accumulating to dangerous levels in nearby wildflowers.

The European Union placed a moratorium on three types of neonicotinoids on flowering crops such as oilseed rape three years ago but these insecticides have not disappeared.

I’ve just about learned how to pronounce neonicotinoids, but what I didn’t realise until Goulson told me is that the insecticide’s use in British farming continues to rise. It is deployed on non-flowering crops such as wheat. We use them in horticulture and daub them on our pets: flea powders for cats and dogs contain imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid. Goulson says the “plausible deniability” he encounters from neonicotinoid makers is “rather similar to what the tobacco industry did for 50 years claiming that smoking didn’t cause any harm”.
Next year an expert review will decide whether to tighten or slacken the EU’s moratorium. Eighteen conservation organisations are calling for a better ban. I’ll be listening to Dave Goulson.

A hatching of hope

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fd0f28e63602494c5d1784efd2877238804fea34/0_99_2000_1200/master/2000.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&
A 24-hour-old bearded vulture. Photograph: Fabian Bimmer/AP

I was momentarily stumped when recently asked to write about 2016’s good animal news. In our tyrannical position as the world’s dominant animal, we are destroying our planet and its life forms.

Look around a little and there are, of course, myriad small good deeds and changes for the better. In the past week alone, Athens, Madrid, Mexico City and Paris have pledged to go diesel-free by 2025; Tesco and Sainsbury’s agreed to ban plastic-stemmed cotton buds to reduce British beach rubbish; and we learned that after failing for four years, the only pair of bearded vultures in Andorra successfully fledged a chick. Here’s to the hatching of more eggs of hope, as my hero Alan Partridge might quip.

Wish and chips

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4935c6a0254a9d95debbaa103cf353c474606e03/7_0_4495_2697/master/4495.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&
A river Otter beaver on chip-making duty. Photograph: Nick Upton/NPL/REX Shutterstock

Beavers returning to the river Otter is another nugget of good news, and why shouldn’t Devon Wildlife Trust cash in? I’ve donated £75 for a chip of Devon beaver-chewed wood. Just don’t order it as a Christmas present: it could take five months to arrive “due to the finite and irregular supply”.
Devon’s chief beaver-chip finder must be cursing the bright spark from marketing who dreamed this up. Or maybe they are just enjoying their stroll alongside the river Otter.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/05/banned-pesticide-kills-bees-neonicotinoid-insecticide

[mischief]

Thank you William for bringing us all these items that quite frankly, I would not have found for myself.

I do however feel sorry for the Sioux City bee assoc, who are being targetted by concerned people with regards to the glysophates found in their honey.
Personally, I would not be suing this assoc for such a minimal level but understand that they are doing so probably more to draw attention the the problems with glysophates and Monsanto in general... and maybe issues with labelling.

(tongue in cheek here, but Americans are also known as ' Sue Happy's') Once that was funny but I dont see it that way any more, its more ...kinda sad.

In this instance, it seems more like a cop out. Take on yet another victim (who does not have infinite resources to defend themselves), rather than the perpertrators who cause the problems in the first place.
Shame on them.

[william r sanford72]

Thank you William for bringing us all these items that quite frankly, I would not have found for myself.

I do however feel sorry for the Sioux City bee assoc, who are being targetted by concerned people with regards to the glysophates found in their honey.
Personally, I would not be suing this assoc for such a minimal level but understand that they are doing so probably more to draw attention the the problems with glysophates and Monsanto in general... and maybe issues with labelling.

(tongue in cheek here, but Americans are also known as ' Sue Happy's') Once that was funny but I dont see it that way any more, its more ...kinda sad.

In this instance, it seems more like a cop out. Take on yet another victim (who does not have infinite resources to defend themselves), rather than the perpertrators who cause the problems in the first place.
Shame on them.

I believe you summed this up perfectly mischief..esp about bringing awareness to the forefront...and the cost of such awareness considering big ag and government seem almost untouchable..
thank you for the insight...

:flower:
William.

[william r sanford72]

Countries urged to prioritize protection of pollinators to ensure food security at UN biodiversity conference

http://static.un.org/News/dh/photos/large/2016/May/05-25-2016Pollinators.jpg
A bee does its business in Kenya's Kerio Valley. Photo: FAO/Dino Martins

6 December 2016 – Bees, butterflies and other pollinators are increasingly under threat from human activities and countries must transform their agricultural practices to ensure global crop production can meet demand and avoid substantial economic losses, the United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity heard today.

“Pollinators affect all of us. The food that we eat like our fruits and vegetables, our coffee and chocolate, all rely on pollinators. However, pollinators are facing many challenges, from intensive agriculture, pesticides, climate change, which are putting a lot of pressure on them,” said Simon Potts Professor at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, who is the co-chair of a major report on pollinators being discussed in Cancun, Mexico, today at the 13th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), also known as COP 13.

“There are many solutions and policies that countries can adopt to protect pollinators, so the trick here in Cancun is for countries to take these ideas and really make them work,” he added.

According to the global assessment on pollinators produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 75 per cent of our food crops and nearly 90 per cent of wild flowering plants depend to some extent on animal pollination, which is the transfer of pollen between the male and female parts of flowers to enable fertilization and reproduction.

In addition, the annual value of global crops that depend on pollinators is estimated to be worth $577 billion.

Without pollinators, crops such as coffee, cacao and apples would drastically suffer, and changes in global crop supplies could increase prices to consumers and reduce profits to producers, resulting in a potential annual net loss of economic welfare of $160 billion to $191 billion globally.

Beyond food, pollinators also contribute directly to medicines, biofuels, fibres like cotton and linen, and construction materials.

“Pollination services are an 'agricultural input' that ensures the production of crops. All farmers, especially family farmers and smallholders around the world, benefit from these services,” said José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the (FAO) in the report's foreword.

“Improving pollinator density and diversity has a direct positive impact on crop yields, consequently promoting food and nutrition security. Hence, enhancing pollinator services is important for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as for helping family farmers' adaptation to climate change.”

The majority of pollinator species are wild, including more than 20,000 species of bees, some species of flies, butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles, birds, bats and other vertebrates. Currently, 16 per cent of vertebrate pollinators, and more than 40 per cent of invertebrate pollinators, are facing global extinction.

The report, which was released earlier this year, offers a number of solutions to halt the decline in pollinators. Some of these include: the promotion of sustainable agriculture, creating greater diversity of pollinator habitats in agricultural and urban landscapes, crop rotation, using indigenous local knowledge and decreasing use of pesticides.

Recognizing that this is a pressing issue, 11 European countries have already announced a 'Coalition of the willing' at COP13, which seeks to implement national pollinator strategies, consistent with IPBES report and share new approaches, innovations and best practices, as well as establish new partnerships to safeguard these valuable creatures.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55734#.WEhOvYWcG00

[william r sanford72]

Honeybee memories: Another piece of the Alzheimer's puzzle?
Researchers show a molecular mechanism that regulates memory specificity over time, and point to how understanding memory in honeybees could help us combat degenerative brain diseases

Date:
December 8, 2016
Source:
Frontiers
Summary:
The honeybee can form complex memories through processes much like those happening in human brains. This study shows that DNA methylation is one molecular mechanism that regulates memory specificity and re-learning, and as such, could control how experiences are integrated over a lifetime.

A breakdown of memory processes in humans can lead to conditions such as Alzheimer's and dementia. By looking at the simpler brain of a honeybee, new research published in Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, moves us a step towards understanding the different processes behind long-term memory formation.

"We show that DNA methylation is one molecular mechanism that regulates memory specificity and re-learning, and through which experiences of the organism could be accumulated and integrated over their lifetime," says Dr Stephanie Biergans, first author of the study and researcher at the University of Queensland, Australia.
"Honeybees have an amazing capacity to learn and remember," says the researcher. "They can count up to four, and orientate themselves by learning patterns and landmarks. They are also social insects that interact, teach and learn, making them successful foragers. Bees remember how to find a food source, how good the source was, and how to return to the hive."

As such, the honeybee can form complex memories through processes much like those happening in human brains. But, the honeybee brain is simpler and they have a smaller genome. This makes them an ideal model for investigating how the different processes needed for long-term memories happen.

Scientists know that when a memory is formed, molecular changes can trigger physical changes to the brain, including new or altered neural connections and activity. These build up over a lifetime to create our long-term memory.

One series of molecular changes that can occur due to experience or environmental changes and that affect memory formation is the differential expression of certain genes, mediated, among others, through processes collectively called epigenetic mechanisms. They regulate gene expression through modifications of the DNA or its associated proteins, without changing the genes themselves.

"We knew that DNA methylation is an epigenetic process that occurs in the brain and is related to memory formation," Biergans explains. "When we block this process in honeybees it affects how they remember."

Biergans taught two groups of honeybees to expect sugar in the presence of a particular smell. One group learned over an extended period, being exposed to the sugar and smell together many times. The other was given the combination only once. Using an inhibitor compound, Biergans halted DNA methylation in some bees in each group. The bees' memory formation in the two groups were tested and compared, with and without, DNA methylation occurring. By changing the smell that accompanied the food, Biergans and colleagues also found that DNA methylation affects how a bee can re-learn.

"When the bees were presented with sugar and a smell many times together, the presence of DNA methylation increased memory specificity -- they were less responsive to a novel odour. On the other hand, when only introduced to the combination once, DNA methylation decreased specificity," she summarises.

For a foraging honeybee, this makes total sense. When a bee gets food from a single flower, it's not worthwhile remembering how it smells. That bee will have a general memory of the site, but will shop around and try other flowers -- there is no specificity to its foraging. But, when each flower with that smell proves over and over to be a good source of nourishment, the bee will stick to those flowers and seek them out.

DNA methylation also occurs in the human brain and the team's findings are key to understanding how we remember. And, how we forget.

"By understanding how changes to the epi-genome accumulate, manifest and influence brain function, we may, in the future, be able to develop treatments for brain diseases that also develop over a lifetime. There is thought to be a genetic predisposition for some conditions, such as Alzheimer's and dementia, but in many cases environmental factors determine whether the disease will manifest," Biergans concludes.

Journal Reference:
Stephanie D. Biergans, Charles Claudianos, Judith Reinhard, C. G. Galizia. DNA Methylation Adjusts the Specificity of Memories Depending on the Learning Context and Promotes Relearning in Honeybees. Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, 2016; 9 DOI: 10.3389/fnmol.2016.00082

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161208125919.htm

[william r sanford72]

Delaware Pollinator Protection Plan, Like Other State Plans, Fails to Eliminate Bee-Toxic Pesticides

(Beyond Pesticides, December 8, 2016) On Monday, the Delaware Department of Agriculture (DDA) released its Managed Pollinator Protection Plan, which allows for the continuation of widespread pesticide use in landscapes across the state. The plan includes voluntary strategies for farmers, beekeepers, landowners and pesticide applicators, but fails to include any recommendations for reducing or eliminating toxic pesticide use. DDA resorts to recommending approaches that include “best management practices,” strategies to increase pollinator forage on public and private lands, and advocating for the use of Driftwatch, an online initiative that focuses on pesticide drift. Driftwatch is a voluntary effort run by the non-profit, Fieldwatch, which, according to its website, was created by Purdue University Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Agricultural Communications departments and Purdue University Cooperative Extension Specialists “to help pesticide applicators and specialty crop growers communicate more effectively to promote awareness and stewardship activities to help prevent and manage drift effects.”

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SF_Japanese_Garden-300x225.jpg

Like other state pollinator protection plans,  there is little mention of pesticides, despite the fact that neonicotinoids (neonics) are highly toxic, persistent and systemic pesticides that have been widely implicated as a leading factor in pollinator decline. According to environmentalists and beekeepers, little meaningful action has been taken to address pesticide impacts on pollinators, and industry groups have been working to weaken and derail pesticide reforms at state and local levels that may protect pollinators.

Delaware’s plan follows the White House release in 2015 of the National Strategy to Promote Pollinator Health, which includes the Pollinator Research Action Plan and the Pollinator-Friendly Best Management Practices for Federal Lands. The Strategy outlines several components, such as a focus on increased pollinator habitat, public education and outreach, and further research into a range of environmental stressors, including systemic neonicotinoid pesticides. The Strategy ultimately contradicts itself by encouraging habitat, but continuing to allow pesticides that contaminate landscapes. This failure to address to one of the underlying causes of pollinator decline, systemic pesticide use, is all too common at the federal and state level.

A major component of Delaware’s plan is the creation and maintenance of habitat and forage for pollinators. It states that, “It is important to consider diversity when choosing plants to ensure adequate forage for the entire growing season.” It continues, “Diversity will also ensure pollinators have access to all of the nutrients they require to be healthy.”

Insecticide and fungicide-coated seeds are among the most popular method in chemical-intensive agriculture and landscaping of controlling target insects or fungal diseases, accounting for the vast majority of seeds for major crops and ornamental plants in the U.S. However, coated seeds result in the poisoning of nectar, pollen, and guttation droplets and indiscriminate poisoning of pollinating and foraging organisms. The sourcing of seeds uncoated with toxic pesticides and the plants needed for pollinator nutrition is absent from DDA’s plan, a problem that is shared by the other state plans.

Without restrictions on the use of neonics, pollinator habitat and forage areas are at risk for pesticide contamination and provide no real safe-haven for bees and other pollinators.

Beyond Pesticides encourages state and federal agencies to adopt organic management practices that are inherently protective of pollinators. Additionally, Beyond Pesticides and its allies have called for suspensions on neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly the most widely used and toxic: imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam. These pesticides are used most commonly in corn and soybean seed treatment, where they remain in plant tissues, including pollen and nectar, for long periods of time.

The Delaware Pollinator Plan promotes the importance of pollinators and the impact their dwindling numbers will have on U.S. agriculture. Delaware growers produce many crops which require insect pollination, including watermelons, cucumbers, strawberries, cantaloupes, apples, blueberries, cranberries, squash, and pumpkins. According to the Pollinator Protection Plan, the production of watermelons and cucumbers “requires between 2500-3000 bee colonies to be brought into the state to maximize pollination of these crops. In addition to the colonies brought in for production, Delaware has approximately 173 registered beekeepers who manage 1500 resident hives.”

However, unless systematic pesticide contamination is addressed in state and federal pollinator plans, bees, both wild and managed, and other pollinator species will continue to be adversely affected. As noted in the text of the Delaware Managed Pollinator Protection Plan, the plan is a working document and DDA plans to “periodically update this document to reflect current working conditions and regulatory requirements.”

In the absence of federal action, some states are limiting the use of toxic, systemic neonic pesticides. In August 2016, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton issued an Executive Order aimed at reversing pollinator decline in the state by limiting the use of toxic, systemic neonicotinoid (neonics) pesticides. Minnesota’s state-level actions are in large part due to a groundswell of local advocacy that has succeeded in protecting pollinators. Sixteen localities in Minnesota, including its largest city Minneapolis and its capital St. Paul, have passed resolutions restricting the use of neonics by its local government. It is crucial that Delaware and other states follow the lead of Minnesota and move to properly protect pollinators.

In light of the shortcomings of state and federal agencies to protect these vital organisms, it is left up to advocates to ensure that we provide safe havens for pollinators by creating pesticide-free habitat and educating others to do the same. You can declare your garden, yard, park or other space as pesticide-free and pollinator friendly. It does not matter how large or small your pledge is, as long as you contribute to the creation of safe pollinator habitat. Sign the pledge today! Need ideas on creating the perfect pollinator habitat? The Bee Protective Habitat Guide can tell you which native plants are right for your region. For more information on what you can do, visit our BEE Protective page.

Sources: Newsworks, Delaware.gov

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2016/12/delaware-pollinator-protection-plan-like-state-plans-fails-eliminate-bee-toxic-pesticides/

[william r sanford72]

Will States Take Action To Ban Neonicotinoids

Published on Dec 6, 2016

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald continue the discussion about the law suit filed by the Center For Food Safety against EPA regarding neonicotinoid-coated seeds and the effectiveness states may or may not have. They will also discuss recent news about GMO’s in Colorado on public land.
www.theorganicview.com.

knadUz5xb2M

[william r sanford72]

Musical intermission brought to you by Sam Chatmon: Bumblebee Blues (1978)

5V6l2hejHUQ


:heart:

[william r sanford72]

Bee Spotlight: The Worker
Throughout a worker bee’s lifespan, it can adopt several roles in the hive that keep the colony functioning smoothly.

http://hobbyfarms.com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/13103710/worker-bees_KMU-600x347.jpg

The honeybee worker is the backbone of the colony. As an individual, she is tiny, brave and armed with a single stinger, but as a collective, honeybee workers are strong, intimidating and a force to be reckoned with. A single worker bee transitions into a new hive role with each life stage, starting with the role of nurse bee and concluding as one of the foragers you see out and about gathering provisions in the field. In addition to these two roles, here are just a few of the amazing things the worker bee is capable of.

Nurse Bee

When a young bee hatches, she chews away the capping of her birth cell and emerges as an active member of the colony. Her first job is to clean out her hatching cell in preparation for the next generation. Most newly hatched bees are entrusted with the role of nurse bee. These bees care for the developing brood (the collective name for eggs and larvae), feeding them the appropriate feed through the various stages of early development and, finally, capping their cells before the cycle begins again.

Mortician Bee

Honeybees are notoriously nitpicky about keeping a clean house. They like to keep their space organized and tidy, but most importantly, they want to remove anything dead, dying or odiferous from the hive right away. This includes deceased members of their own hive as well as any dead or conquered intruders—think foreign bees, robber bees, wasps, ants, hive beetles or other bugs. Mortician bees are enlisted for the job. They carry out the dead as a basis to keep the hive clean. Beekeepers will often see two mortician bees carrying a single dead bee from the hive in mid-flight!

Homemaker Bee

When the foraging bees return to the hive with pollen, nectar or water, they pass it along to the bees that make and store honey in the hive. These homemaker bees add digestive enzymes to the nectar to turn it into the start of honey, and other homemaker bees fan the nectar-enzyme mix with their wings until it reaches 18-percent moisture, and voila: honey!

Other homemaker bees are entrusted with the task of taking pollen baskets from the foragers and packing it into cells designated for pollen. Still others produce wax and build comb, repairing any damages (including the damage we beekeepers cause just by opening the hive), sealing cracks with propolis, and so much more.

Guard Bee

The guard bees are the workers you see at the entrance of a hive. They’re usually a bit older than the homemaker bees, as evidenced by their developed stinger. Their singular role is to protect the hive from intruders, whether that be foreign robbing bees or something larger—like you, the beekeeper! If a hive has several openings, such as a “backdoor” in a feral hive or if the beekeeper leaves a top entrance open, guards will be stationed at each entrance.

Queen’s Attendants

Very few worker bees get the honor of attending the queen. Each queen has a dozen or so attendants who care for her every need: They feed her, groom her and protect her. When the attendants are buzzing around their charge, it is very easy to spot the queen on a comb of brood. She is the one in the center of the worker bees fanned out like a flower around her.

Forager Bees

The foraging worker receives the most accolades of any of the worker bee roles, but the truth of the matter is that the forager is the oldest bee in the hive outside of the queen. Foragers have often participated in several of the roles listed above and are at the end of their life cycles. They work tirelessly to be the breadwinners of the hive, bringing home the nectar, pollen and water that will sustain the hive, feed the brood and see the hive through winter. The easiest way to spot foragers is to watch the entrance to see the bees that return with full pollen baskets. The workers rapidly come and go from the hive as long as the weather is fair. They’re also easily identified by their worn bodies and tattered wings.

By looking at the roles that each worker plays in the hive, it’s obvious that the honeybee colony is a well-tuned, expertly functioning machine, with each cog playing its role beautifully. When each role is filled and the colony remains healthy, the hive can explode in numbers, produce surplus amounts of honey, and fight pests and diseases with ease.


http://www.hobbyfarms.com/bee-spotlight-the-worker/

[william r sanford72]

Report Finds EPA “Sugarcoating” Effects of Hazardous Neonic Seed Coatings

(Beyond Pesticides, December 13, 2016) Net Loss, a new report released by the Center for Food Safety (CFS), indicates the use of neonicotinoid-coated seeds is exactly that, an economic drain for farmers that only results in the indiscriminate poisoning for non-target wildlife, such as pollinators. The report is a follow up to a 2014 report, Heavy Costs: Weighing the Value of Neonicotinoid Insecticides in Agriculture, which concluded that neonic seeds bring greater costs than benefits to farmers. Later that year, a study published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which looks specifically at the economic value of neonic coated soybeans, made similar determinations –insecticide seed coating provide little or no overall benefit in controlling insects or improving yield or quality.

CFS’s new report cites numerous new studies published over the past several years that reinforce the group’s original determination on the realized benefits pesticide-coated seeds provide to farmers. Front and center in the report are preliminary results from the European Union’s suspension on the use of neonics on certain agricultural crops. The report finds that after the 2013 EU moratorium, despite cries from the agrichemical industry of rampant crop failures, yields actually increased. For maize, the EU saw a 5.7% rise, and oilseed rape (canola) witnessed a 14.4% increase in yields. Much like the hype of genetically engineered crops’ value, which a recent New York Times article showed to hold up poorly to scrutiny, it appears the agrichemical industry has again sold American farmers a bill of goods. Indeed, in every cropping system investigated by CFS, crop yields showed negative, negligible or inconsistent differences based on whether or not a crop seed was coated with neonicotinoid insecticides.

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/15-250x250.jpg

While the benefits to farmers are insignificant, the harm neonicotinoids cause to the wider environment is of serious concern. The dust kicked from planting coated seeds can drift off-field and contaminate field margins with high levels of these toxic pesticides. Indeed, the report cites findings that, depending on the crop, only five percent of the active chemical in a seed coating actually enters a crop. The other 95% of the chemical makes its way into the environment, either through seed dust, soil contamination, or water runoff. Just last month, Health Canada announced it would ban applications of the most widely used neonicotinoid, imidacloprid, as a result of dangers to aquatic life near agricultural fields. Neonics have been widely implicated as the most significant factor impacting the decline of pollinators around the globe. Effects range from acute toxicity and death, to chronic impacts such decreased memory and learning, inability for bees workers to find their way back to the hive, decreased queen fertility, and overall increased susceptibility of the colony to viruses, disease, and parasites.

Certain U.S. states are beginning to consider action to restrict the use of coated seeds. The state of Connecticut recently required the development of best management practices to avoid pesticide drift from dust kicked up during seed planting. And in Minnesota, where a recent executive order from Governor Dayton requires proof of a pest emergency before spraying foliar neonicotinoid applications, the Governor and Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) also recommended legislation to give MDA the authority to regulate coated seeds. This was necessary because in the U.S., coated seeds are considered exempt articles under federal pesticide law (the federal fungicide insecticide and rodenticide act, or FIFRA).  As such, they are not subject to the same protocols and regulations governing pesticide use. A recent lawsuit from CFS challenges this loophole in pesticide law, but a decision handed down late last month affirmed the exemption, indicating that, “The Court is most sympathetic to the plight of our bee population and beekeepers. Perhaps the EPA should have done more to protect them…” Thus, as EPA has so far showed its unwillingness to act to help bees and beekeepers, it is up to states and local governments to push for common-sense restrictions on these toxic products. The more local governments act, the more pressure it puts on EPA and the federal government to adequately address this crisis. After over a decade of year-after-year historic declines, it is only a matter of time before the true Net Loss of this crisis is revealed.


http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2016/12/report-finds-epa-sugarcoating-effects-hazardous-neonic-seed-coatings/

[bluestflame]

Wo35x1Af53kjust a few minutes ago , a bee suit , no smoke and only a very rough idea what i was doing , had to crack the seal to see how busy they'd been , how much room they had left , just waiting on video to upload

[william r sanford72]

bluestflame Thank you for sharing the bees/vid.The colony looks strong and healthy.:happythumbsup:

William.

[william r sanford72]

:facepalm:
Monsanto shareholders approve Bayer's $57-billion takeover

http://www.trbimg.com/img-58506206/turbine/la-lraab-1481663019-snap-photo/750/750x422

Associated Press

Monsanto Co. shareholders on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a $57-billion takeover by Bayer, a deal that would combine two of the world's biggest agricultural companies.

But the path toward securing regulatory approval may be rough. Critics say the combination would shrink competition in the agricultural market, drive prices higher for farmers and consumers and escalate damage to the environment. Monsanto and Bayer officials say that growers and ranchers stand to benefit, and that the combined company would be better suited to address issues like climate change.

Preliminary results showed that 99% of the votes cast favored the deal announced in September, St. Louis-based Monsanto said. Shareholders are to receive $128 per share in cash. Monsanto said the deal, which must still receive regulatory approval, is expected to close by the end of 2017.
Monsanto shares declined 7 cents to $104.52.

“This is an important milestone as we work to combine our two complementary companies and deliver on our shared vision for the future of agriculture,” Monsanto Chairman and Chief Executive Hugh Grant said in a statement.

Bayer, the German medicine and farm-chemical maker, and Monsanto — which sells seeds, herbicides and pesticides, among other agricultural products — have faced concern from some government and agriculture industry leaders who worry that if the companies combine, it would hurt farmers by reducing competition at a time when the agriculture economy has slowed.

The National Farmers Union has said the deal would mean three companies would have more than 80% of U.S. corn seed sales and 70% of the global pesticide market.
The vote “underscores NFU's concern that these megadeals are being made to benefit the shareholders of multinational corporations at the expense of family farmers, ranchers, consumers and rural economies,” Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, said in a statement.

Both the farmers union and the Natural Resources Defense Council urged the U.S. Department of Justice to reject the deal.

“Consolidating Monsanto and Bayer would escalate the use of dangerous toxic pesticides and create a bad deal for farmers, bees, consumers and the planet,” Rebecca Riley, senior attorney for the NRDC, said in a statement.

Top officials for both companies say the merger would be a boost for farmers and the environment.

“By bringing together our expertise and our resources to drive this shared vision, we can do even more together to benefit growers around the world and to help address broad global challenges like climate change and food scarcity,” Grant said.

Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer, said the acquisition of Monsanto “is driven by our strong belief that this combination can help address the growing challenges facing farmers and the overall agriculture industry today and in the future. Together, Bayer and Monsanto will be able to offer the new, innovative solutions that our customers need.”
The deal calls for Bayer to pay $57 billion to Monsanto shareholders and assume $9 billion in Monsanto debt.

Bayer sells crop protection chemicals used to kill weeds, insects and plant fungal diseases, and it makes popular pharmaceutical products such as Bayer aspirin, Claritin allergy medicine and Alka Seltzer. Bayer also owns Dr. Scholl's foot products and Coppertone sunscreen.

Monsanto sells seeds for fruits, vegetables, corn, soybeans, cotton and other crops, plus Roundup weed killer. The company is a leading producer of genetically modified seeds engineered to resist drought and herbicides, among other things. Protests against Monsanto by opponents of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are common.

Plans call for the combined company's seeds and North American business to be headquartered at Monsanto's St. Louis base. Executives for both companies have not said whether the Monsanto name would change. 

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-monsanto-bayer-20161213-story.html

[william r sanford72]

Beekeeping Issues, Honey Laundering, New Bee Research
Published on Dec 14, 2016

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk about issues that beekeepers are facing, concerns about honey laundering and new research from the University of Stirling by Dr Penelope Whitehorn about pollination collection.
www.theorganicview.com.

tU_Bh95GsCo

[william r sanford72]

Devastating mites jump nimbly from flowers to honeybees

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2016/devastatingm.jpg
A Varroa mite approaches a honeybee feeding on a flower. Credit: David T. Peck/Provided

Mites that infest honeybees may be blind with tiny brains, but make no mistake: When a bee sidles up next to them, they are surprisingly quick-footed.

A study, published Dec. 12 in PLOS One, describes for the first time – and documents with video footage – how Varroa mites can nimbly jump from flowers onto bees.

The finding is important because Varroa mites are linked with massive honeybee colony deaths, as they infest nursery cells in honeybee nests and feed on developing bees while also transferring deadly viruses.

The mites are known to readily spread through both managed and wild colonies. In managed colonies, Varroa mites are thought to spread by riding on bees when they rob weak colonies or drift between hives. But widely spaced wild colonies also suffer from mite infestations, even though wild bees rarely venture into other hives. It was suspected that mites could attach themselves to bees when they visit flowers, though this means of transmission has been rarely studied.

"No one has ever shown that bees flying naturally and freely, arriving at flowers and then leaving as they wished, presented a large enough opportunity for Varroa mites to make these jumps," said David Peck, the study's first author and a graduate student in the lab of senior author Thomas Seeley, the Horace White Professor in Biology. Michael Smith, a graduate student in Seeley's lab, is a co-author.

To test whether mites could travel from flowers to bees, the researchers took colonies of honeybees to the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York, where there are very few wildflowers, so the bees' foraging could be controlled. They placed mites on feeders of sugar water and on potted flowers and observed the mites detect bees and deftly navigate their way onto the bees' backs.

"A noteworthy result that we didn't originally expect was that once the mites get onto the bees, they show some pretty sophisticated behaviors to avoid getting groomed off," Peck said. They quickly climbed onto the top of a leg or onto the very center of a bee's back, where the bee could not reach. Eventually, when mites reach a hive, they reproduce in nursery cells in honeybee nests and feed on larval bees.

The findings offer evidence of another mode of transmission of mites to bees, which is important for better understanding the disease risks Varroa mites present and for preventing colony deaths.

But the results also raise concern about shipping cut flowers and spreading Varroa mites to areas where they do not exist, such as Australia.

"If a mite could jump from a flower onto a bee that tried to visit one of these flowers at an open-air flower market, the result could be disastrous," Peck said, adding that stricter safeguards for shipping flowers should be considered. These could include spraying flowers, refrigeration or limiting shipments to flowers raised in secure greenhouses.

Next steps for this research will be to better understand mite behaviors on flowers, such as how often and under what circumstances they end up on flowers.

More information: David T. Peck et al. Varroa destructor Mites Can Nimbly Climb from Flowers onto Foraging Honey Bees, PLOS ONE (2016). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0167798

Vid provided in link

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-devastating-mites-nimbly-honeybees.html

[william r sanford72]

What makes heather honey so special?

Thomas Quigley explains what is involved in the production of heather honey, a premium product made from nectar collected from the common purple plant, which has a unique flavour and consistency with a tangy, pungent flavour that makes it a rare.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/remote/media.central.ie/media/images/f/FloweringHeather_large.jpg?width=648&s=ie-435393

Heather honey is made from nectar collected from the tiny purple bell-shaped flower of the common heather plant (Calluna vulgaris), so named because of its domination of many areas of heath and boglands, and also known as ling heather.

Other heather species, such as the bell heather (Erica species), flower earlier and are less common which makes them less viable for honey.

Calluna vulgaris or Ling Heather takes its name from the ancient Greek meaning broom as heather boughs were often tied together and used for sweeping. It is a low growing evergreen native of Europe with a liking for dry acidic soils.

In Ireland Ling heather is found primarily on our hills and boglands. However, open heather moorlands are common in Scotland which accounts for more than 60% of the earth’s heather moorland, with the rest found in Western Europe.

In fact in early September a group of Irish beekeepers joined me in exploring the heather heathland of Lüneburg in northern Germany from where large quantities of heather honey are obtained each year.

The Lüneburg Heath is world famous not only for its honey but also the rare forms of black grouse and sheep that graze on the heather and gorse along with a variety of grasses.

The boglands on which Calluna heather blossom exists, have been kept young and clear of scrub by burning and grazing for thousands of years. Many readers and environmentalists are aghast at this burning, but depending on how fast the heather grows in a given location, managed burning of swathes of bogland takes place only between every seven and 25 years.

Farmers burn bog in rotation so that there are areas of younger plants, for grazing, and areas of larger, older plants to provide better shelter for birds and wildlife. The peat, in which heather grows, has to be very wet – yet the plants themselves have to be very dry and this tends to be in early spring.

After a successful burn, the plants soon sprout fresh young shoots and have an abundance of blossoms producing more nectar and therefore more honey.

Common heather flowers in late August and early September, and where it lives, there is often nothing else much for bees to feed on. The beehives cannot be left in the heather all year round or the bees would starve.

This means that heather honey is produced by a sort of nomadic beekeeping husbandry, where bees spend the summer at home in apiaries in the lowlands, happily producing honey from summer-flowering plants in the relative warmth.

But when the summer flowers approach the end of their season, the beehives go into a natural decline as the queen stops laying.

The beekeeper has to stop this decline because this is the very time at which the heather begins to flower. He does this by introducing a new queen bee at the end of June, which stimulates growth of the hive again and should provide a good strong stock fit for the rigours of collecting the nectar from the heather by August. Then, in mid-August, the fun really begins.

A heather-loving beekeeper literally has to transport his beehives up onto the boglands in the second week of August. Very early in the morning or after dark when all the bees are back at home, cars, vans and trailers are painstakingly loaded with the beehives, bees still in residence, and carefully driven up into the hills.

On arrival, the hives are unloaded and manoeuvred into position amongst the heather, which is just beginning to flower.

Next day, the bees venture out after their long journey to find an unexpected chill in the air and nothing but the tiny purple flowers of the bog to feed on. This cooler weather makes foraging for heather nectar a dangerous business, and bee mortality rates are high up on the hills.

Many bees get too cold to fly when they are out and about, and simply never make it back to the hive. This is why a beekeeper will ensure that only vigorous hives are brought to the boglands.

After three or four weeks, that famous purple haze of the hillsides starts to fade as the heather flowers die. The poor beekeeper then has to load up all the hives and take the bees home again. The traditional advice to those moving bees to the heather is — go early, early in the morning, early in August and come home late, late in the evening, late in September.

This whole process is very laborious, and combining it with extracting or pressing out the honey, it means that heather honey is scarce and expensive. However, a great benefit of bringing bees to the bog is that they will need little or no feeding over the winter.

Ling heather honey has unique qualities and is very jelly like and will not run, so extracting is a problem because the honey will not spin out of the combs in the normal way. It is thixotropic which means that it is normally gel-like and firm, but it will become temporarily liquid if stirred or agitated.

Often beekeepers will not extract the honey from the comb but cut it up to sell as cut-comb heather honey, which commands a premium price.

In judging honey, a common test of the purity of Ling honey is to place the opened honey jar on its side to test how quickly it will flow out. Pure Ling heather honey will stay firmly in place for several minutes. The longer it stays, the purer the honey.

Another sign of purity is the presence of small air bubbles trapped in the gel-like honey (a result of pressing to extract the honey), and while it has a bright appearance, it will not be clear.

Heather honey is dark in colour and can be reddish/orange to dark amber with its own particular flavour unlike that of any other honey, and is a favourite with many people. The taste is tangy, pungent, smoky, and mildly sweet that leaves a long aftertaste.

The unique flavour and consistency of heather honey makes delicious dishesand was also once used in the making of alcoholic beverages like mead and Drambuie has heather honey as one of its contents.

As Heather honey is good for the digestion a sample or two over the Christmas season should help relieve some of the fallout the enjoyably rich diet. Give it a go!

http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/outdoors/what-makes-heather-honey-so-special-435393.html

[william r sanford72]

This Man Figured out How to Train Bees to Make Honey from Cannabis

By The Anti-Media

(CCN) Many are calling him a genius. He is an artisan, locksmith and above all else, he explains, a beekeeper. He has accumulated over 4,300 Facebook followers, and 700 on Instagram, after the 39-year-old Frenchman — who describes himself as an advocate of medical cannabis and of complete cannabis legalization — trained bees to make honey from cannabis.

He goes by the nickname of Nicolas Trainerbees, for obvious reasons. For 20 years, he has worked with bees in a way he claims allows him to “train” them to make honey from virtually anything.

“I have trained bees to do several things, such as collect sugar from fruits, instead of using flowers,” he explains.

Nicholas says he has “been passionate about nature since childhood,” which led him to this profession, mixing his love for plant life with his love for animals – especially insects.

Nicholas calls the cannabis honey produced by the bees “cannahoney” from“a training technique whereby the bees collect the resin and use it in the beehive.”

The final substance, he explains, is the sole work of the bees. “For some time I had known about the health benefits of bee products such as honey, propolis, pollen, wax and royal jelly and also about the benefits of cannabis,” he says. And so he decided to take notice of the requests.

“[E]verything that passes through the body of a bee is improved,” he contends, since their enzymes make the nectar turn into honey.

“So if the bee took the resin from cannabis it would also be very beneficial.”

“The aim arose for me to get the bees to obtain this resin,” he added. The “cannahoney” has “quite a floral” aroma and a color, Nicholas explains. It “is not smoked, it is ingested and it is good for health,” he adds. Nicolas says “the bees accept any strain.”

Do the bees get high off of the cannabis they make the honey from?

“The bees that produce the cannahoney are not affected by cannabinoids because they do not have an endocannabinoid system,” he says. It’s just another form of food for them.


:Vid provided In Link Below

http://wisemindhealthybody.com/the-anti-media/someone-figured-out-how-to-train-bees-to-make-honey-from-cannabis/

[william r sanford72]

USDA NATIONAL HONEY REPORT
November 17, 2016

www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf

[william r sanford72]

Russian Honeybees to the Rescue
With a resistance to the varroa mite, Russian honeybees might offer one solution to the backyard beekeeper’s fight against colony collapse disorder.

America’s honeybees are in serious trouble. We’ve known this for a while, anxiously watching as populations decline across the continent due to a noxious host of plagues, the greatest of which is a multifaceted disaster called colony collapse disorder (CCD), which is composed of a number of factors, from neonicotinoid pesticides to the obliteration of natural habitat to Nosema ceranae, a unicellular parasitic fungus of Asian origin that weakens bees’ resistance to the roiling pesticides they must labor through in their role as pollinators employed by industrial agriculturalists across the country.

Modern large-scale pollination procedures are hard on the honeybee. Hauled by the hundreds of thousands in tractor-trailer rigs to pollinate a range of crops — including cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons; sunflowers; and apples and almonds — honeybees must endure the inherent stresses of this wholly abnormal lifestyle while being increasingly subjected to chemical and biological threats, the latter mostly of foreign origin. Our honeybees (Apis mellifera) aren’t native to the Western Hemisphere either, originally being derived from southern Europe and brought over by the early colonists, and there is even some concern from conservationists about their varying impacts on our some 4,000 native bee species. But the fact is, modernized agricultural practices almost completely dominate the U.S. farming industry, and these bees — whose ancestors were as foreign to America as most of their human keepers’ — are absolutely critical to maintaining our current rates of crop production.

One culprit

Amid the vicious brew of harms that causes CCD, a tiny mite plays a central role in our bees’ accelerating disaster. The aptly named Varroa destructor (commonly the varroa mite) is an external parasitic mite that, like a tiny tick, attaches itself to the bee’s exterior and sucks its blood (bees’ yellowish blood, or hemolymph, doesn’t carry oxygen, a job performed by the tracheal system, and so doesn’t contain the red pigment hemoglobin). This can be enough to kill the affected bees over time, but worse yet is the infection that varroa mites spread through the entire hive. The bite of this mite, which targets only Apis species, inflicts a disease called “varroosis,” resulting in depleted weight gain, underdeveloped body size, deformities of the wings and abdomen, decreased lifespan, and, in the male drones, infertility. A significant mite infestation will lead to the death of an entire honeybee colony, usually during the hungry months of late autumn through early spring.

The varroa mite is currently believed to be the single most destructive parasite of our honeybees, producing the greatest detrimental economic impact on the beekeeping industry, and thus on some of the industrially raised crops mentioned above. Controlling this exotic menace is fraught with difficulties: the inherent dangers of pesticide application, the time-consumptive methods of removing drone pupae from the hive, and the regular replacement of honeycombs to deter absolute infestation.

An even more desperate measure is described in a 2015 report by the Centre for Agricultural and Biosciences International: “This involves moving the parent colony approximately 4 meters from the original colony site. A second hive containing newly drawn combs and the queen is placed on the original site, causing foragers to return to this hive, creating an artificial swarm. Further management procedures are undertaken after nine days and three weeks.”

It looks like a lot of physical work for the average backyard beekeeper to do over and over, but what if other critters might help in taking on these deadly mites for us? Certain species of pseudoscorpion have been known to prey on varroa mites and have been considered for introduction into the U.S., as have microbial agents such as fungal pathogens.

The problem with using non-native organisms to combat a non-native threat to your non-native bees is, obviously, the accelerating influx of exotics whose long-term effects on their new ecosystems, despite careful preliminary lab research, are often hypothetical at best. Perhaps one of the simplest and least ancillary damaging methods might be the application of essential herbal oils. Thyme and spearmint have proven effective against varroa, while lemongrass contains antifungal and antiviral properties. How effective this tactic would be at the scale needed for mass pollination isn’t clear.

Potential new solution

Given the economics of what’s at stake, researchers are reaching even further afield. Enter the Russian honeybee, of the same species as the “Italian” bee we depend on here, but a hybrid native to extreme southwestern Russia, in a chilly region called Pimorsky Krai, bordering China and North Korea. There, this particular Apis mellifera, brought east by Ukrainian settlers in the dying days of Czarism during the 1890s, has coexisted with the varroa mite for more than 100 years. Hoping they might understand this acquired resistance, researchers from the USDA Honey Bee Research Lab in Baton Rouge took the trip to find out for themselves in the 1990s.

They discovered that the Russians were indeed twice as resistant to varroa, as well as being highly resistant to yet another diminutive bug, tracheal mites, which are likewise harmful to Italian bees. In a remarkable example of the speed with which evolution can adapt some species to new environments, during this short window of time, the hearty Russian bees developed a 50 percent rate of resistance to varroa.

Even in those relatively sunny days before the deathly cloud of CCD eclipsed the American beekeeping industry, varroa mites, first detected in 1987 in an apiary in Wisconsin, were already taking a heavy toll. In 1997, an increasingly desperate USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) sent agents to Russia’s Far East to collect 100 queen bees from 16 dispersed beekeepers for transport to the agency’s holding pen at the ARS Honeybee Quarantine Station on Grand Terre Island in the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans.

Lilia De Guzman is a research entomologist with the Lab. She says, “In Russian honeybees, there is a suite of resistance mechanisms (brood and mite removal to name two) that acts as one to substantially suppress mite infestation.” I asked her about the remarkable speed with which the Russian bees developed resistance to varroa mites. De Guzman noted that “development of resistance can be observed in a comparatively short period of time because both bees and mites have short generation times; both are exerting selective pressures on each other.” Total freedom from varroa, even for the adaptive Russian bee, is, according to De Guzman, a doubtful expectation: “No, I don’t think full immunity is achievable. It would be nice to think so, though, just not likely. I don’t think ‘immunity’ is the right word when you are talking about varroa mites; I prefer using resistance or tolerance.” So long as the Russian strain can keep varroa infestation to a manageable level, in other words, it’s the best we can hope for … and a far cry from the devastation varroa has heaped upon the American beekeeping industry thus far.

The testing was thorough. Russian queens were introduced into Italian colonies that had been treated to reduce mite populations below detectable levels. Varroa mites were simultaneously being reared in strictly segregated colonies to provide a source of inoculum mites for the test, and purely Italian colonies were maintained as watchdogs for any potential threats the Russians might be bringing to North American bees. Sticky board traps were inserted at the base of all the hives to assess the degree of varroa removal. The results were clear: non-resistant (purely Italian) colonies had 65 to 75 percent brood infestation, while the mixed Russian/Italian colonies had an average of 48.1 percent. Based on this study, 40 sturdy Russian queen bees were selected as breeders to lead the charge against varroa for America’s struggling Italian bees.

From east to west

Charles Walter runs Walter’s Wholesome Goods out of Morgantown, West Virginia. He relates his experience with Russian bees, and the effect they’ve had on his honey business. A friend urged him to try Russians, and while initially dubious, he gave them a go under controlled conditions. The results were immediately gratifying, he says, with an “explosive growth” of his colonies and an upward spike in their overall health that clearly “outperformed the Italians” he’d raised for years. He was particularly pleased with the relatively quick acceptance of the Russian queens by the Italian workers and drones; together they’re now producing “gobs of honey” for his business.

Sometimes more traditional apiarists stubbornly stick to their traditional bees, Walter said, and this can cause problems such as “swarming,” in which more than half of a colony, led by their imperious queen who has left behind eggs containing her royal successors, succumb to a building dissatisfaction with their surroundings (perhaps including their Italian neighbors serving as a magnet for varroa) and float away as one in a gyrating, humming cloud. Once out of the hive, the secessionists gather thickly on a tree trunk about their leader while the colony’s ace foragers scout out a new home, swiftly scanning the surrounding area for a more suitable area rich in resources and distant from competitors. When a likely new locale is found, a scout will return to perform variations on the famous “waggle dance,” one of the most complex forms of nonhuman communication, to persuade other scouts to follow her back to a potential hive site — the more excited the scout’s dance, the better the locale’s conditions.

Domesticated queens need abundant drawn combs in which to lay their eggs and ample space to expand the brood nest, or they’ll go elsewhere, but aside from assiduous upkeep, the real solution to swarming, Walter says, is for people to simply accept the superiority of Russian bees and make them the dominant domestic bee in the U.S. They are especially excellent for the backyard beekeeper interested in working gentle bees and honey production.

The importation and dissemination of Russian bees, and their increasing acceptance among apiarists, offers a promising means of combating at least one major factor of CCD, and thus helping to ensure the continued cornucopia of an American farmland whose global importance will only grow along with the world’s booming human population. “More and more people are giving Russians a try,” Walter says. “They were suspicious at first, but once they see the results, they’re not going back. Russian bees are the best thing since sliced bread.”

Slathered, of course, in delectable, homegrown Russian honey.  

Sources for Russian Honeybees

Russians are highly resourceful, and so they don’t build a lot of brood early in the springtime until there is plenty of food available and the weather is settled. By the time the bees hit full-stride, approximately 1/3 of the crops needing pollination have come and gone. Hence there are a limited number of breeders for Russian queens because lack of demand in the commercial pollination world.

When you introduce a pure-mated Russian queen into any hive of bees, eventually all the bees in the hive will be Russian. If your hive requeens itself, the new queen will mate with any and all drones in the area, and the offspring will be Russian hybrid bees, which are not nearly as resistant to varroa mites and usually have an unpredictable temperament. Instead, when it’s time to requeen, buy another pure Russian queen, so your hive maintains varroa resistance and gentle behavior.

You can find a Russian queen breeder at Russian Honeybee Breeder.
– Caleb Regan, with help from Kim Flottum, Editor-in-Chief at Bee Culture magazine

There may be snow on the ground and ice on the trees, but your bees are a balmy 96 degrees inside their honeybee hive.

William H. Funk grew up in rural southern Kentucky where he enjoyed working with his farm’s honeybee hives, especially watching tanagers swoop down to catch the smoke-addled bees when the hives were being attended to. He regularly writes about wildlife and other rural issues for a variety of national publications.

http://www.grit.com/animals/bees/russian-honeybees-zm0z17jfzreg?pageid=5#PageContent5

[william r sanford72]

Male bumblebees 'make NO EFFORT to remember where they grew up'
MALE bumblebees leave home and fly away without ever looking back, according to scientists.

http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/128/590x/bumblebee-745592.jpg
Scientists have found that male bumblebees make no effort to remember their home after they leave it

They make no effort to remember where they grew up as they leave for the final time to begin their bachelor life as solitary adults.

But when they leave a newly-discovered flower, they perform a "learning" flight during which they turn back and look at the flower so they can find it again.

However, female worker bumblebees are known to memorise the locations both of their nests and the flowers at which they find nectar and pollen.

Theo Robert, a PhD student at the University of Exeter, discovered this behaviour.

He said: "Out of curiosity I placed a male on a feeder and found that its departure flight looked surprisingly similar to that of bumblebee workers.

"I was intrigued by this observation, and so we recorded more flights of male bees to understand whether they are capable of performing learning flights, but decide to do it only at locations that are important to them."

http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/128/590x/secondary/bumblebee-762823.jpg
Female worker bumblebees memorise the locations of both their nests and flowers

Natalie Hempel de Ibarra, who also worked on the research, said: "Female bees have a rich behavioural repertoire that is widely studied, while the behaviour of males is less studied and is therefore sometimes held to be simpler.

"In fact, male bumblebees have to do more than just mate after they have left their natal nest.

"To avoid breeding with sisters or cousins, it is best for male bumblebees to travel far from their nest, often as much as six miles, and not return.

"After this migration, the males live as solitary foragers, and as a group they are significant pollinators.

"Finding queens to mate with is not easy. Darwin found that to do so the males patrol stable routes. They learn these routes and deposit pheromones on plants along the way to attract females.

"There is still much for us to learn about their lives."

The research was carried out in greenhouses on the University of Exeter's Streatham campus.

The paper - Male bumblebees perform learning flights on leaving a flower but not when leaving their nest - is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/745592/male-bumblebees-fly-away-solitude-scientists-university-of-exeter

[william r sanford72]

Beetle Fossil Nearly Doubles the Age of Known Parasites of Social Insects

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/mesosymbion-compactus.jpg
A new beetle species discovered in 99-million-year-old amber was likely a parasite of termite colonies. (Photo credit: Shûhei Yamamoto, Munetoshi Maruyama, and Joseph Parker)

When ancient insects first evolved eusocial behavior and began forming colonies, it didn’t take long, paleontologically speaking, for parasites of those resource-rich colonies to evolve, as well. A newly discovered ancient species of beetle found preserved in amber dates this apparent parasitic behavior to at least 98.8 million years ago.

In a paper published in Nature Communications this month, researchers from Kyushu University and Columbia University detail a new species of rove beetle, Mesosymbion compactus, found in a Burmese amber specimen housed at the American Museum of Natural History, that exhibits the hallmark traits of previously known parasitic beetles from the family Staphylinidae, subfamily Aleocharinae. These beetles have specialized to live inside the colonies of social insects such as ants or termites and often feed on eggs, larvae, and pupae in brood galleries.

As revealed through advanced imaging of the fossilized specimen, M. compactus, like modern aleocharines, has a teardrop-shaped body resembling a horseshoe crab, a head hidden below the pronotum when viewed from above, mandibles pointing rearward, and short, compact antennae. “Together, the suite of characters presented by Mesosymbion define an ecomorphology that has arisen numerous times in Aleocharinae, and suggests a non-integrated social parasite that was probably treated aggressively by its hosts, potentially targeting colonies as a brood predator,” the authors write. They also posit that M. compactus was a parasite of termites.

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/modern-rove-beetles.jpg
Mesosymbion compactus exhibits a horseshoe crab-like body shape similar to these modern rove beetles in the Aleocharinae subfamily. (Photo credit: Taisuke Kanao)

The M. compactus specimen comes from the very same amber deposit in Burma that provided the earliest known fossils of social termites, estimated to be 99 million years old. Previously, however, the earliest known social parasite was a rove beetle dated to approximately 52 million years ago (discovered by the same researchers), meaning M. compactus signifies a significantly earlier beginning to the evolution of parasitism of social insect colonies, placing it much closer to the rise of social insects themselves.

“Mesosymbion reveals that this adaptive versatility extends deep into the Mesozoic, when eusocial colonies presented novel niches for occupation that few other taxa were equivalently predisposed to fill. The notion of Mesozoic social parasitism by aleocharines implies that ant and termite societies were subject to exploitation during most of their evolution, including a long period when both social insect groups are inferred to have been rare and ecologically insignificant,” the authors write.

Read more: “Evidence for social parasitism of early insect societies by Cretaceous rove beetles,” Nature Communications

https://entomologytoday.org/2016/12/19/beetle-fossil-nearly-doubles-the-age-of-known-parasites-of-social-insects/

[william r sanford72]

The modern honey hunters of Kenya

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/16024/production/_91984109_gettyimages-88074385.jpg
Bees depositing honey in a beehive

At an upmarket cafe in Nairobi, trendy millennials swipe through their smart phones while sipping glasses of "dawa", a hot drink made from locally sourced honey, ginger and lemon.

"I drink this every evening before I go to bed," Immanuel, 26, explains. "It prevents me from getting sick and it calms me down at the end of the day. Honey is like a medicine - it has a lot of healing properties."

Here in the heart of Kenya's "Silicon Savannah", tech-savvy entrepreneurs are beginning to tap into a market that, until recently, was the preserve of smallholder farmers known locally as honey hunters.

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/E9BE/production/_91983895_20160816_114811.jpg
The modern technology being introduced is expected to sanitise the honey extraction method

For them, the introduction of new hives and modern harvesting methods mark an unwelcome shift away from the traditions passed down through the generations.

But entrepreneur Ernest Simeoni says the honey hunters will need to adapt their practices if they are to make the most of the honey industry, now worth more than $12bn (£10bn) globally.

"Honey has become fashionable in Kenya - it's like a craze sweeping across the country. Many young people here are starting to realise there's a lot of money to be made from food."

Technology meets agriculture

Mr Simeoni believes the rise of the middle class in Kenya, coupled with advances in digital technology, have made honey production accessible to a wider pool of people.

"Farming with apps - this is the future," he says, pointing to more than 20 icons on his phone.

One of the most popular is the "Swarm Database", an app that provides real-time information and alerts farmers when their honey is ready to harvest. WhatsApp groups are also helping young Kenyan farmers to share ideas and experiment with new methods of honey production.

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/137DE/production/_91983897_20160816_114713.jpg
Modern honey hunter Ernest Simeoni fetches honey from a barrel in his factory

But, Mr Simeoni explains, there are still a number of obstacles to overcome. He says that methods of honey production in Kenya need to be modernised.

"Crude methods of extracting the honey from cavities in the trees, keeping it in dirty containers and over-heating it in refinery rooms - this has a damaging effect on the quality, driving down our profits."

Grace Asiko from the National Beekeeping Institute, an affiliate of the Ministry of Livestock and Agriculture, agrees that more can be done to tap the honey market.

"It's a goldmine, ready to exploit. What we need are new innovations to capitalise on the different bee species and variety of plants and herbs we have in Kenya."

Adding value

Diversifying the ways in which the honey can be used is also an area of potential growth, she says.

"We need people from the pharmaceutical and nutrition sectors to come over and see what we have. Collective effort with innovators will help us to ascertain how the honey can be used to make more products like the face creams, massage bars we have developed recently."

High up in the Taita Hills of south-east Kenya, nestled among macadamia and pineapple plantations, the picture is very different for Hagai Mwaisaka, a traditional honey hunter.

Hagai is one of nearly two million honey producers in this part of the country.

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/185FE/production/_91983899_20160818_164047.jpg
Traditional honey hunter Hagai Mwaisaka points to the log he uses as a beehive

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/78DA/production/_91983903_20160817_163210.jpg
Honey is big business in this part of Kenya

He points proudly at the log hive - a debarked, hollow tree stump - swaying gently in the breeze in the acacia tree outside his hut.

"This hive was handed down to me by my father and, like him, the honey I produce is a large part of my income. I can say that the bees help me to feed my family."

Honey hunting is the traditional method of climbing trees, tipping the log hive at an angle and allowing the honey to drip through the combs. It is typically done at night without clothes to ensure that bees do not stick to the fabric and sting the skin beneath.

"At night, the bees are cool. They are not so active, so I can harvest the honey without disrupting them," Mr Mwaisaka explains.

From this one log hive, 40,000 busy bees will produce 60kg of honey each year. Mr Mwaisaka will be able to sell this honey for $10/kg - enough to sustain his family.

Modernising honey extraction

But this may all be about to change. The new hives being introduced by businessmen in Nairobi mean that honey hunters will soon be required to change their methods, "smoking out" the bees rather than extracting and combing the honey by hand.

For traditional honey hunters like Mr Mwaisaka, the new methods will have a detrimental effect on the quality of the honey.

"The bees travel very far from our log hives to find the best flowers, so the honey is sweet and golden. But with the new methods, the bees get lazy. They produce a lot less and the taste is bitter."

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/11204/production/_91984107_20160816_114825.jpg
Honey production is the latest money-making venture for businessmen

Unfortunately for Mr Mwaisaka and other farmers in this part of Kenya, there is little that can dampen the spirits of traders and innovators in Nairobi.

Businessman Ernest Simeoni believes the honey industry is the next big money-making venture.

"There is huge potential for the honey industry to grow in Kenya and internationally. We just need to focus on modernising our methods to open up the market. From there, the future looks bright."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37703489

[william r sanford72]

133 new species described by the California Academy of Sciences in 2016
From a fleet of shining beetles to sharks and an alarming bird virus, spanning 5 continents and 3 oceans, these discoveries add to Earth's tree of life

Date:
December 21, 2016

Source:
California Academy of Sciences

Summary:
In 2016, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences added new plant and animal species to our family tree. The new species include one bee fly, 43 ants, 36 beetles, one sand wasp, four spiders, six plants, 23 fishes, one eel, one shark, seven nudibranchs, five fossil urchins (and one fossil sand dollar), one coral, one skate, one African lizard, and an alarming new bird virus.

https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/12/161221091354_1_540x360.jpg
An eye-popping, pink-and-yellow species of groppo is the deepest new fish discovery ever made by human hands. Grammatonotus brianne was discovered in the Philippines at a depth of 487 feet beneath the ocean's surface. The new groppo is one of 133 new species described by the California Academy of Sciences in 2016.

In 2016, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences added 133 new plant and animal species to our family tree, enriching our understanding of Earth's complex web of life and strengthening our ability to make informed conservation decisions. The new species include one bee fly, 43 ants, 36 beetles, one sand wasp, four spiders, six plants, 23 fishes, one eel, one shark, seven nudibranchs, five fossil urchins (and one fossil sand dollar), one coral, one skate, one African lizard, and an alarming new bird virus. More than a dozen Academy scientists -- along with several dozen international collaborators -- described the discoveries.

Proving that our planet contains unexplored places with never-before-recorded plants and animals (with their own set of evolving viruses), the scientists made their finds over five continents and three oceans, ventured into vast deserts, plunged beneath the sea, and scoured thick rainforests and towering mountain ranges. Their results help advance the Academy's mission to explore, explain, and sustain life on Earth.

"Biodiversity scientists estimate that we have discovered less than 10% of the species on our planet," says Dr. Shannon Bennett, Academy Chief of Science. "Academy scientists tirelessly explore the lesser-known regions of Earth -- not only to discover new species, but also to uncover the importance of these species to the health of our natural systems.

Each of these species, known and as-yet-unknown, is a wonder unto itself but may also hold the key to ground-breaking innovations in science, technology, or society. Species live together in rich networks that thrive on complexity whether we can see it or not. Even the tiniest organism," she adds, "can be beautiful and important."
Below are a few highlights among the 133 species described by the Academy in 2016. 

Flashy "twilight zone" groppo -- deepest fish discovered by human hands

One pink-and-yellow fish has earned its spot in deep reef history. Grammatonotus brianne -- an eye-popping species of groppo -- is the deepest new fish discovery ever made by human hands. The discovery was captured on film at 487 feet beneath the ocean's surface.

Academy scientists are currently diving to twilight zone reefs around the world. In these narrow bands of deep reefs, animals live in partial darkness, well beyond recreational diving limits yet above the deep trenches patrolled by submarines and ROVs. Reaching extreme depths requires Academy divers and their collaborators to push the boundaries of both technology and the human body, using closed-circuit "rebreathers" that extend the amount of time they can spend underwater.

The new groppo is one of several new species discoveries made during an Academy expedition (along with research partners from Hawaii's Bishop Museum) to the Philippines in 2014 -- part of an ongoing, multi-year exploration of the Coral Triangle's biological treasures from the shallows to deep mesophotic "twilight zone" reefs 200 to 500 feet beneath the ocean surface.

Deep-diving Academy ichthyologist Dr. Luiz Rocha and Bishop Museum research associate Brian Greene spotted the neon groppo (later named G. brianne for Greene's wife) during a murky, cold dive in the Philippine Verde Island Passage, a region known as the "center of the center" of Earth's marine biodiversity.

"This groppo is the most beautiful fish I've ever seen," says Rocha, a co-leader of the Academy's monumental push to explore, explain, and sustain coral reefs around the world. "But beyond its looks, it's a reminder that we know very little about the mysterious half-lit reefs we call the twilight zone. We need to understand the life inside these largely-unexplored deeper reefs because they may help us understand how the oceans respond to great change."

G. brianne joins 24 new species of fishes -- from camouflaging gobies to lanternsharks of the Indian Ocean -- described by Academy scientists in 2016 alone.
43 new ants (and a crowd of blood-sucking "Draculas")

Dr. Brian Fisher, Academy curator of entomology and real-life "Ant Man," recently added a whopping 43 new species to the tree of life. Fisher is a fierce advocate for the importance of small animals that support all terrestrial communities, and has devoted his life to the study of ants and biodiversity. Since 1996, he has conducted fieldwork in Madagascar -- where only 10% of natural habitat remains -- to explore regional biodiversity and generate data to drive conservation priorities in the country.

"Our work in Madagascar focuses on determining which ants live where as we develop new field guides as tools for diagnosing and understanding conservation problems," Fisher says. "It's not just about generating data -- we are trying to create a culture of interest in the natural world, from the smallest ant to the tallest tree."

Several of this year's finds belong to a group called Stigmatomma -- "Dracula ants" that build tiny, few-chambered colonies (generally no larger than a dime) beneath the soil. In a bizarre but fascinating means of distributing nutrients throughout the colony, ants from this group are known to wound their colonies' babies before drinking their blood -- a substance called "hemolymph" in insects. An elongated jaw with two large pincers also allows the ants to grasp prey mostly comprised of centipedes, but also beetle larvae.

"Because these ants are so rarely collected, finding them is like uncovering buried treasure," says Flavia Esteves, a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy who has joined Fisher in the field since 2010. Most Stigmatomma species spend the entirety of their lives beneath the soil or inside rotten logs. Esteves cuts through Madagascar's clay-like soil with a machete, and then uses a pocket knife -- and finally, forceps -- to carefully expose the ants.

"In an island like Madagascar where human activities are destroying sensitive habitats, understanding specialized species such as Stigmatomma is even more important. We fear that the unique environmental niche they occupy will go unfilled once these ants are gone," says Esteves. "We still have so much to learn from these specialized soil dwellers," adds Fisher.

Fisher recently returned from a nine-month expedition to Mozambique, accompanied by Esteves, as part of a Fulbright Scholar Grant to study ants and climate. His work in Madagascar (including founding the country's first and only biodiversity research center) and Mozambique continue to provide conservation partners with a wealth of new biodiversity data and monitoring aids to inform future land-use planning.

A gray-haired "grandfather" bee fly

All around us, insects flit, hover, and buzz about, but one family -- the bee flies (Bombyliidae sp.) -- may cause passersby to look twice. The nearly 5,000 species that make up this fly group imitate a wide range of relatives, from delicate honey bees to menacing wasps and spiders. "Don't be deceived by stripes or fuzzy adornments," says fly-expert Dr. Michelle Trautwein, Academy curator of entomology: insects from this group are all flies. A new species from Madagascar was recently discovered as part of a collaborative project between the Academy and the Schlinger Foundation to document the country's diversity of insects and their close relatives.

Named Thevenetimyia spinosavus (which translates to "thorny grandfather"), this gray-haired bee fly was discovered by Natalia Maass, who worked with Trautwein for two summers as an undergraduate intern. While examining specimens under the microscope, Maass noticed one quite unlike the rest.

"He was longer and more slender than other bee flies, with big spikes on his thorax and longer, gray bristly hairs," says Trautwein, describing why Natalia granted it its grandparent moniker. What's more, this stubbled bee fly was completely isolated from any other species within the same relative group. Similar species of bee fly are found in Northern Africa and North America -- both a long way from Madagascar -- meaning this "thorny grandfather" is part of a group with an incredibly wide distribution.

No matter where they're found, adult bee flies spend their time pollinating nearby plants. But as larvae, they prey viciously upon the larvae of other species. Adult bee flies will deposit their larvae in an aerial raid: dropping them from above to land in strategic locations where they can hatch, invade a nearby nest, and consume larvae of other insect colonies before growing up to be gentler, flower-visiting -- rather than larvae-poaching -- adults.

"An important piece of this project was being able to support a young woman in science so devoted to learning the language of species anatomy and descriptions," says Trautwein. "Watching Natalia grow and become a graduate student gives me great confidence in the young scientists who will continue to contribute to natural history collections -- our best snapshots of biodiversity in the face of great change."

New bird virus linked to beak-bending disorder

This year, scientists uncovered a fascinating new clue in the global mystery surrounding wild birds with grossly deformed beaks. Dr. Jack Dumbacher, Academy curator of ornithology and mammalogy -- alongside a team of researchers from UCSF and USGS -- identified a new virus that has been linked to Avian Keratin Disorder (AKD), a disease responsible for debilitating beak overgrowth and whose cause has remained elusive despite more than a decade of research.

This new virus -- identified from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest -- is being investigated as a potential cause of AKD and represents a critical step in understanding the emergence of this disease in wild bird populations around the world.

"Take one look at a bird suffering from Avian Keratin Disorder, and you'll understand the importance of stopping its spread," says Dumbacher. "Birds must be able to feed themselves and preen their plumage by carefully spreading waterproofing oils on their feathers. When deformed beaks restrict them from these life-giving activities, birds become cold, hungry, and often die. We're trying to understand the causes, origins, and distribution of this disorder."

After sifting through hundreds of thousands of DNA fragments (and comparing them to known virus groups among birds), scientists identified a new virus suspect belonging to the picornavirus family -- a large and diverse group that includes well-known human offenders like polio, hepatitis A, and the common cold. The team named their discovery Poecivirus after the genus of black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) from which the sequences originated, and in which AKD was first documented.

Though more research is necessary to establish Poecivirus definitively as the main cause of AKD, it remains the strongest lead yet. As part of the new virus description, the team generated a detailed map of Poecivirus' genetic material -- a tool that will enable scientists all over the world to aid in its identification among birds exhibiting clinical signs of AKD.

A fleet of beetles from Africa and China

After more than a dozen combined expeditions to the damp rainforests of Madagascar and cloud-kissed mountains of southwestern China, Dr. Dave Kavanaugh -- Academy emeritus curator of entomology -- is sharing 36 exciting new discoveries. Ground beetles are a wildly diverse group of winged and wingless predators that feast on other insects, and some are known to survive in extreme environments around the world.

Twenty-six of Kavanaugh's recent species discoveries hail from Madagascar's Ranomafana National Park -- an area of lush tropical rainforest stretching nearly 160 square miles across the southwestern portion of the island. During one 5-week expedition, Kavanaugh's daughter Kathryn (for whom he later named a beetle Chlaenius kathrynae) assisted him in the field by searching for species of ground beetles in the leaf litter.

"The first few days of one Madagascar expedition were dry as a bone, making the rainforest insects very hard to find," says Kavanaugh. "And then the rains came. It poured day and night for the next month. We worked through the storms with jungle rot on our feet from the constant damp." The rain led to the successful collection of many new beetle species, including flat-backed, fungi- and log-dwelling Eurydera oracle, named in honor of generous expedition support provided by Oracle.

Several additional new species (including three new genera) are described from the Gaoligong Mountains of China's Yunnan Province, a region where extreme physical geography has caused a jaw-dropping array of species to evolve over millennia. Since 1998, Kavanaugh and his colleagues have trekked mountains packed with endemic species -- those found nowhere else in the world. Scientists view the region as an isolated paleoenvironment, or an area that (due to its location) has remained relatively unchanged for millions of years. In less than two decades, the team has grown the list of the area's known ground beetles from 50 to 550 species.

Kavanaugh collaborates with local Chinese colleagues on the China Natural History Project to document the vast array of ground beetles and other animals and plants still being discovered in this isolated region. "Due to the restricted range and specialization of these insects, they are often some of the first to indicate significant changes to regional climate and biodiversity," says Kavanaugh, "which is why it's so important that we learn all about the life around us. You never know what clues even the smallest insects underfoot may hold to the rhythms of life on this planet."

Armored lizards of Angola

Amid outcroppings of granite in the arid, sloping lowlands of southern Angola, a newly discovered species of lizard wedges itself into particularly tight crevices, head-first. Only threatening spines are left exposed along its body and tail to deter approaching predators. Despite this clever maneuver, there was no escaping discovery by Dr. Edward Stanley, Academy herpetology research associate, who suspected this particular lizard might differ from known species in the area.

Stanley formally described this new species of armored lizard with the aid of CT scans, a type of imaging technology that combines a series of x-rays to reveal information about the lizard's uniquely armored body. Scans revealed that the tiny, bony spikes of Cordylus namakuiyus are actually embedded in the lizard's skin rather than attached to the skeleton itself.

"CT technology allowed us to visualize and measure the armoring structure in this new lizard species," says Stanley. "This is also the first time a 3D digital representation of a newly described species is freely available to download as part of a species description."

The species discovery -- the result of a joint expedition between the Academy and partner institutions in Angola -- represents a strong collaborative step towards exploring the region's extreme natural landscape. "Not much is known about Angolan species of armored lizards," says Stanley, "particularly in remote or inaccessible parts of the country, so we are excited to be exploring this biologically rich area."

Local coral discovery helps double California sanctuary

Just north of San Francisco off California's coastline, countless species thrive in the deep, chilly waters that make up the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary -- one of the most biologically productive regions on the planet. Here, scientists use remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, to explore life beneath the surface. On a 2012 expedition with NOAA, octocoral expert and Academy curator of invertebrate zoology Gary Williams set off aboard the R/V Fulmar to investigate vibrant offshore life down to 1,400 feet deep.

Among the sea stars, sea worms, snails, sponges, and crabs, Williams saw a single, whip-like stalk -- only 15 inches in length -- of a snow-white coral gently swaying in the ocean currents. Unlike the hard coral relatives that compose the famous tropical reefs closer to the ocean's surface, this soft-bodied coral species stands alone at depth and feeds on microscopic plankton floating through the water column.

Even before its formal description, the new species -- now named Swiftia farallonesica after its sanctuary home -- served as a brilliant symbol of the region's ecological importance, and helped strengthen the case for sanctuary expansion. In March 2015, NOAA ensured these sanctuaries would be protected for years to come by more than doubling their size and adding strict industry regulations on commercial fishing as well as a ban on all drilling, mining, and ship discharges. The expansion added 2,700 square miles of protected territory, reaching up to Point Arena in Mendocino County.

"Discovery is always an exciting thing," says Williams. "It's crucial to continue exploring the unknown so we can properly manage and protect these priceless marine ecosystems in our own backyard."

Other new invertebrate species highlights include: five fossil species of ancient urchins and one fossil sand dollar described by invertebrate zoology curator Dr. Rich Mooi, and seven colorful new nudibranchs (sea slugs) described from the world's shallow reefs -- including one from California -- by longtime invertebrate zoology curator Dr. Terry Gosliner.

Story Source:
Materials provided by California Academy of Sciences.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161221091354.htm

[william r sanford72]

Published on Dec 22, 2016

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk about efforts in the city of Chicago to ban neonicotinoids as well as an EPA hosted conference call to discuss the effects of glyphosate.
www.theorganicview.com

rIdX7pUV9Xg

[william r sanford72]

Preserving Pollinators in Kenya

https://foodtank.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Food-Tank-Protecting-Pollinators-Kenya-770x462.jpg

Every December to March, Martin Lele gets up before dawn and treks into the Mau Forest of Eastern Kenya. He and other members of the Ogiek tribe, a community indigenous to the forest, are going to harvest honey from log hives they hang in the trees. With burning piles of moss and dry cedar bark, they smoke out the bees and collect the liquid gold. It has been their way of life for centuries, and unfortunately, it’s threatened.

According to the African Wildlife Foundation, the Mau Forest has been reduced by three-quarters of its natural size by deforestation. For the Ogiek, one of Kenya’s oldest hunter-gatherer communities, destruction of the forest means destruction of their home and way of life.

“It’s been our cultural livelihood since our forefathers. It is our staple food, the honey,” Lele says.

The community is trying to revive the forest by planting new trees and collaborating with the Kenya Forest Service to protect what’s left.

“Since they want to always have the honey, they don’t have any options, they have to take care of the forest, because, without the forest, that means no bees and no honey,” says Samson Kiiru Ngugi, Coordinator of the Slow Food presidium for Ogiek Honey. “It is their identity.”

Food Tank had the opportunity to speak with Martin Lele, Producers Coordinator for the presidium and Chairperson for the Macodev Cooperative in Marioshoni, Kenya, about saving his ancestral land and his love of bee stings.

Food Tank (FT): Can you tell me about the Ogiek community?

Martin Lele(ML): We are a community of hunter-gatherers and beekeepers. With our local groups of beekeepers of the Ogiek community, we came up with a community-based organization called Macodev. It is an umbrella organization, and also it’s a collecting point of all honey harvested by our beekeepers. We started about three years ago, and according to our local groups, we have about 349 members. We use only cultural log hives. They are not modern. We put them in the interior of the natural forest, so our honey is pure organic.

FT: What are the biggest challenges that your organization faces?

ML: It is the market and also a lack of new equipment for refining because if we have customers who want large quantities of honey, we cannot do that at this time.

FT: How much honey does the community produce?

ML: When the harvest is good or when we have a good flowering season, we might even harvest over 50 tons, up to 100 tons.

FT: You coordinate the beekeepers in the community for the Slow Food presidium. Are you a beekeeper as well?

ML: I have my hives as an individual, and also we have the ones of our group. In our community, from eight to ten years old, you are taught how to harvest the honey. Being raised, you are stung by the bees.

FT: The Mau Forest has already been partially destroyed. How does the community work to protect the forest in which they live and work?

ML: There was that issue of destruction of the forest, but our government had a plan of restoring the famous Mau. We came together as a community and had an agreement. We came up with a Community Forest Association as a group, which will monitor how the forest will be saved, collaborating with the Kenya Forest Service. We do not destroy forest because it is our livelihood. We have a very unique way of harvesting honey. We have started even planting trees—but not exotic trees, natural trees—and we have given some seedlings to our groups and given some knowledge of how to restore the forest.

FT: Can anyone still develop in the area of the Mau Forest?

ML: Since we came up with this agreement of the Community Forest Association as a group, making sure that the forest is restored and collaborating with the Kenya Forest Service, we have planned to make sure that only those who are allowed can enter the forest.

FT: How do you use the honey?

ML: First of all, we use our honey as a food, and we can use the honey to make local beer. And also in our marriages, the first thing to take to your in-laws is honey. All our medicine is related to honey-making.

FT: Are you immune to bee stings?

ML: Oh, they’re our friends. They’re our friends. It stings. It stings. It stings. It’s our traditional life. Woah! I love it. I can’t stay two weeks without being stung by a bee.

https://foodtank.com/news/2016/12/preserving-pollinators-kenya/

[william r sanford72]

Long-ignored, high-flying arthropods could make up largest land migrations

Each year, 3.5 trillion aphids, moths, flies and their kin fly over southern United Kingdom

https://www.sciencenews.org/sites/default/files/2016/12/main/articles/122216_SM_insect-migration_main_free.jpg
OVERLOOKED OVERHEAD  Adding up ladybugs (seven-spotted species shown) and other high-flying insects and their kin that travel overhead each year reveals what could be the biggest migration of land animals on the planet.

Forget honking Vs of geese or gathering herds of wildebeests. The biggest yearly mass movements of land animals may be the largely overlooked flights of aphids, moths, beetles, flies, spiders and their kin.

About 3.5 trillion arthropods fly or windsurf over the southern United Kingdom annually, researchers say after analyzing a decade of data from special entomological radar and net sweeps. The larger species in the study tended to flow in a consistent direction, suggesting that more species may have specialized biology for seasonal migrations than scientists realized, says study coauthor Jason Chapman, now at the University of Exeter in Penryn, England.

The creatures detected in the study may be little, but they add up to roughly 3,200 metric tons of animal weight, Chapman and colleagues report in the Dec. 23 Science. That’s 7.7 times the tonnage of U.K. songbirds migrating to Africa and equivalent to about 20,000 (flying) reindeer.

These are “huge flows of biomass and nutrients,” Chapman says. “One of the things we hope to achieve in this work is to convince people who are studying terrestrial ecosystems that they cannot ignore what’s happening in the skies above them.”

Not just windblown

Most migrants were tiny and so traveled with the wind, causing the bulge in dark dots, which represent mass migrations, to the northeast on compass rim (left circle). Yet insects of medium size or larger could buck the trend, flying northwest in spring (middle and right circles) and south in fall. Arrows indicate average migration direction.
https://www.sciencenews.org/sites/default/files/2016/12/main/articles/122216_SM_insect-migration_inline_730.png

Biologist Martin Wikelski of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany, who wasn’t part of the study, calls these migrants “aerial plankton.” It’s a reference to the much-studied tiny sea creatures whose movements and blooms power oceanic food webs. Understanding insect migrations and abundances is crucial for figuring out food webs on land, including those that link insects and birds. That’s “particularly important nowadays as we are starting to lose many of our songbirds,” he says.

The word migration applied to arthropod movements doesn’t mean one animal’s roundtrip, Chapman says. Instead, the term describes leaving the home range and undertaking a sustained journey, maybe cued by seasons changing or food dwindling. A return trip, if there is one, could be the job of a future generation.

The migrants he studied, traveling at least 150 meters aboveground, aren’t just accidentally blowing in the wind, he says. Many of the tiniest — aphids and such that weigh less than 10 milligrams — take specific measures to start their journey, such as trekking to the top of a plant to catch a gust. Juvenile spiders stand on tiptoe reeling out silk until a breeze tugs a strand, and them, into the air. “They only do this when wind conditions will enable them to be caught and taken up; otherwise, it’s a terrible waste of silk,” Chapman says. Some caterpillars also spin silk to travel, and mites, with neither wings nor silk, can surf themselves into a good breeze.

The basic idea that a lot of arthropods migrate overhead is “absolutely not” a surprise to behavioral and evolutionary biologist Hugh Dingle of the University of California, Davis. He says so not dismissively, but joyously: “Now we have really good data.”

This smallest class of migrants, sampled with nets suspended from a big balloon, makes up more than 99 percent of the individual arthropods and about 80 percent of the total mass. They didn’t show an overall trend in flight direction. But radar techniques refined at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, England, showed distinct seasonal patterns in direction for medium-sized and larger insects.

“That’s the big surprise for us,” Chapman says. “We assumed that those flows would just be determined by the wind.” But medium-sized and large insects such as lacewings and moths overall tended to head northward from May through June regardless of typical wind direction. And in August and September, they tended southward. “Lots of insects we didn’t think capable of this are clearly doing it,” he says.

Managing such a feat takes specialized biology for directed, seasonal migrations.

Many of these arthropods must have some form of built-in compass plus a preferred direction and the genetics that change that preference as they or their offspring make the return migration. Entomologists have known some migratory details of monarch butterflies in North America and a handful of other such insects, many of them pest moths. But speculating about specialized migrants, Chapman says, “there must be thousands of these.”


https://www.sciencenews.org/article/long-ignored-high-flying-arthropods-could-make-largest-land-migrations

[william r sanford72]

New species of ant-like desert bees found

New York, Dec 24 (IANS) Studying a diverse group of solitary, desert bees, researchers have reported identification of nine new species of the genus Perdita, including two ant-like males. These solitary bees are not major pollinators of agricultural crops, but fill an important role in natural ecosystems of the American Southwest, including the sizzling sand dunes of California's Death Valley. In a study published in the journal Zootaxa, the researchers described curious ant-like males of two of the species, which are completely different in appearance from their mates.

It's unclear why these males have this unique form, but it could indicate they spend a lot of time in the nest," said entomologist Zach Portman from Utah State University in the US. "We may find more information as we learn more about their nesting biology," Portman noted. Portman tracked the tiny elusive bees by watching for their buzzing shadows in the blinding, midday sunlight the diminutive insects tend to favour. "Their activity during the hottest part of the day may be a way of avoiding predators," Portman said. "They appear to be important pollinators of desert plants commonly known as 'Crinklemats'" Portman explained. Crinklemats, flowering plants of the genus Tiquilia, grow low to the ground and feature ridged, hairy leaves and small, trumpet-shaped blue blossoms. "Like the bees, Tiquilia flowers are very small," Portman said. "The bees must squeeze into the long, narrow corollas and dunk their heads into the flowers to extract the pollen," he added.

The scientists reported that the female bees use pollen collected from the flowers to build up a supply to nourish their young. Once they have completed a pollen provision, the bees lay their eggs on the stash and leave their offspring to fend for themselves. Though declines in bee populations have heightened awareness of the importance of pollinating insects to the world's food supply, numerous bee species remain undescribed or poorly understood, the researchers pointed out.

Read more at: http://www.sify.com/news/new-species-of-ant-like-desert-bees-found-news-others-qmyrucegafbed.html

[bluestflame]

added another "super " to allow for expansion , lets call this one an " experiment

utretLwzTEI

[william r sanford72]

Nice bluestflame...the girls did seem a bit excited.Seems the Colony has plenty of brood/workers..that means a healthy happy queen=healthy happy hive.Expansion....
thank you again for the latest vid/update.keep us posted.

:flower:
William

[bluestflame]

i'll get busy now building standardised boxes/supers

[william r sanford72]

I remember running outta decent box/supers and hive bodys and duct taping old worn out crumbling hives and supers together just so the bees would have room...it was one of those years where I was gettn several swarm removal calls everyday for a month...built up my hives fast that year and realized that the bees didn't care how there homes looked as long as they were dry..and had room to build brood and store food..blessed bee the duct tape..

William.

[william r sanford72]

tho will add Langstroth made it much simpler for keepers...

Langstroth hive

In modern beekeeping, a Langstroth hive is any vertically modular bee hive that accepts frames that are locally referred to as "Langstroth" frames. The actual dimensions of so-called Langstroth frames differ by region or manufacturer. These modern Langstroth hives have little in common with Rev. L. L. Langstroth's bee hive that was originally patented in 1852 and manufactured until approximately 1920.
Historically, a "Langstroth hive" is the hive that was designed by Rev. L. L. Langstroth in 1852. The historical Langstroth hive had a portico entrance, integrated floor and non-removable brood box, a single removable honey box (using the same frame size as the brood box) that sat inside an outer box that extended from the brood box, and a hinged roof. L. L. Langstroth's famous book on beekeeping went through several editions until about 1900, but in all of them the hive that is illustrated is the same as the original design. The original Langstroth frame dimensions are no longer in use.

Similar designs is the standard beehive used in many parts of the world for beekeeping. The advantage of this hive is that the bees build honeycomb into frames, which can be moved with ease. The frames are designed to prevent bees from attaching honeycombs where they would either connect adjacent frames, or connect frames to the walls of the hive. The movable frames allow the beekeeper to manage the bees in a way which was formerly impossible.

Other inventors, notably François Huber in 1789, had designed hives with frames (the so-called leafe or book hive),[1] but Langstroth's hive was a practical movable frame hive, which overcame the tendency of the bees to fill empty spaces with comb and to cement smaller spaces together with propolis. In contrast to August von Berlepsch's frame-movable side-opened hive (May 1852, Germany), Langstroth's hive was top-opened, as was the Bevan top-bar hive (1848, UK). These combined adaptations led to the Langstroth hive design being preferred by beekeepers over all others, and his hive is used throughout the world.

History

In 1851, the Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth (1810–1895), a native of Philadelphia, noted that when his bees had less than 9 mm (3/8 inch) of space available in which to move around, they would neither build comb into that space nor cement it closed with propolis. This measurement is called "bee space". During the summer of 1851, Langstroth applied the concept to keeping the lid free on a top-bar hive, but in autumn of the same year, he realized that the "bee space" could be applied to a newly designed frame which would prevent the bees from attaching honeycomb to the inside of the hive box. This attachment of comb to the hive wall was a difficulty with frameless designs, such as Dzierżon's frameless movable-comb hive (1835). US Patent 9300 was issued to Langstroth on October 25, 1852, and remained valid despite numerous attempts to challenge it based on its alleged use of prior art. However Langstroth was in contact with Dzierzon who used successfully the 5⁄16 inch (7.9 mm) groove to move bars in his hives much earlier. The presently so-called "bee space" had been incorporated by Berlepsch following Dzierzon’s discoveries, from the years 1835-1848, into Berlepsh's frame arrangement (Bienen-Zeitung, May 1852). Langstroth made many other discoveries in beekeeping and contributed greatly to the industrialization of modern beekeeping.

Rev. Langstroth subsequently published a book called A Practical Treatise on the Hive and Honey-Bee,[2] nowadays commonly known as The Hive and the Honey Bee or, under the title with which it was re-issued in 2004, as Langstroth's Hive and the Honey-Bee: The Classic Beekeeper's Manual. In this book, Langstroth described the proper dimensions and use of the modern beehive as we know it today. Prior to discovery of the dimensions of "bee space", bees were mostly hived in skeps (conical straw baskets) or gums (hollowed-out logs which approximated the natural dwellings of bees), or in box hives (a thin-walled wooden box with no internal structure).

In Europe

Dr. Jan Dzierżon, a Polish apiarist and Roman Catholic priest, had in the year 1835 determined the correct spacing for the top-bars in beehives. The distance between combs had been described as 1
 
1⁄2 inches (38 mm) from the center of one top-bar to the center of the next one. In this case, the distance between combs is 1⁄2 inch (13 mm); that is, twice the minimum "bee space" of 1⁄4 inch (6.4 mm).[3] This setup had been established for the brood chamber, as for honey storage the comb distance can be different.
Later, in 1848, Dzierżon introduced grooves into his hives' side walls, to replace the strips of wood that the top-bars had earlier been hung from.[4] The grooves were 8 × 8 mm — a dimension intermediate between 1/4 and 3/8 inch (6.35 – 9.53 mm), the lower and upper limits of "bee space" as understood now. 3/8 inch (9.53 mm) is the usual size meant when "bee space" is referred to.

In Europe, both Dzierżon and fellow apiarist Baron August von Berlepsch had been focused on side-opened hives. Land resources for beekeeping was limited, and traditionally multiple bee hives had been kept in a single beehouse. The so-called "bee space" had been incorporated by Berlepsch into his frame arrangement (Bienen-Zeitung, May 1852) following Dzierżon's discovery that grooves added to inner walls remained free of propolis (1848). Thus, the correct distance between frame side-bar and hive wall was already understood by some European beekeepers prior to 1851.

In America

L.L. Langstroth's patent of 5 October 1852 adopted 3⁄8 inch (9.5 mm) between the side bars of a frame and hive wall, and also reserved rights to use the distance 1⁄2 inch (13 mm) between top-bars and inner cover, the latter of which represents a gap larger than optimal.

The term "bee space" was coined later than Langstroth's 1852 patent. Occasionally incorrect definitions are ascribed to "bee space". Term easily confused with "bee space" include: inter-comb space, 1⁄2 inch (13 mm); the distance from frame to hive wall, 1/4 to 3/8 inch (6.35 to 9.53 mm); and even the distance from frame to hive bottom, which can be as little as 1/4 inch but ranges to as much as 3/4 inch (6.35 to 19.05 mm).

L.L. Langstroth may have been aware of Dzierżon's discoveries prior to submitting his patent application. In the summer of 1851, he was introduced to Dzierżon's work by Samuel Wagner, who had translated it from the German language original. Wagner later founded the American Bee Journal.[5] Moreover, Samuel Wagner visited Jan Dzierżon in his apiaries in Silesia (now Poland). Wagner also subscribed to Bienen-Zeitung, the journal in which Dzierżon published his apiarian works. Wagner's translation of Theorie und Praxis, ... was never published; instead, Langstroth published his A Practical Treatise on the Hive and Honey-Bee.

Langstroth expressed great respect for Jan Dzierżon:

"No words can express the absorbing interest with which I devoured this work. I recognized at once its author as the Great Master of modern apiculture."[6]

Langstroth constructed his hives so that the frames, in which the bees were to make their combs, could easily be separated from all adjacent parts of the hive — the walls of the hive, the floor of the hive, the cover of the hive, and other frames within the hive. To extract a frame from such a hive will not require any comb to be cut. Usually the most trouble a beekeeper encounters in removing a frame from such a hive results from the bees using propolis to bond frames to the brackets they rest upon. Being able to remove and replace combs so easily makes it possible — and practical — for beekeepers to inspect all of their hives on a regular basis. Such inspections, to check for signs of disease and/or parasites, imminent swarming, an aging queen, and other conditions requiring intervention, are essential to successful bee husbandry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langstroth_hive

[william r sanford72]

The Artful Activist Collective Fight Climate Change and Toxic Politics

https://upload-assets.vice.com/files/2016/12/29/1483025168Dumms_OldKingCoal.jpg
Gary and Laura Dumm, ‘Old King Coal’. Images courtesy the artists and The Artful Activist

If ever there were a time for a major activism rebirth, it will be the arrival of a highly controversial president in the White House. Artists will surely become more like activists, and maybe the opposite will become true as well. In the collective The Artful Activist, contributors are already blurring the lines between activist and artist with various works serving as vehicles of protest.

The Artful Activist, founded by Melanie Oliva, promotes artists who have something to say politically, as well as grassroots activists and galleries who are willing to host collaborations. The idea is that each will be inspired by the other, allowing them to connect and be a part of each other’s events.

https://upload-assets.vice.com/files/2016/12/29/1483025136JohnSabraw_NewBlueRiverChroma.jpg
‘New Blue River Chroma’, a toxic sludge painting by John Sabraw

The collective’s origins can be traced back to 2014, when Oliva moved to South Florida, where she was struck by what she saw as an epicenter for both climate change and climate deniers. She soon came across John Sabraw’s Toxic Art, in which the artist—in collaboration with fellow professor Guy Riefler—used toxic sludge to make paint pigment for his works, raising awareness about coal mining pollution. Riefler also sold the paint commercially, with profits directed toward cleanup efforts in the very streams polluted by the runoff.

“Months later, I learned more about the rapid decline of pollinators and responded by creating Inspiration Pollination,” Oliva tells The Creators Project. “The Facebook group uses art to connect the public with pollinators’ plight, encouraging artists and makers to incorporate them into their next project, almost like free advertising.”

https://upload-assets.vice.com/files/2016/12/29/1483025094AkiraBeard_AmericanHomage.jpg
Akira Beard, ‘American Homage’

Various other experiences fed into what eventually coalesced into The Artful Activist. A vital one was a collaborative article for RedFlag.org—part of an effort to stop the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission-approved black bear hunt in Biscayne Park. This led to the Imagine Our Florida, a document designed to aid other activists in helping their own communities. And the FOR EVERGLADES group show, where Oliva met photographer JohnBob Carlos and Miccosukee tribe member Betty Osceola, also showed her how art and activism could be intertwined.

https://upload-assets.vice.com/files/2016/12/29/1483025041DebbiBecker_HomelessS2_Imagine.jpg
Debbi Becker, ‘Homeless’

Carlos tells The Creators Project that he is contributing his photographs to help create a voice for Florida’s threatened natural areas. Much of his activism is focused on counteracting the destruction of miles of the Everglades, as well as protecting this area and the rest of Florida’s wildlife.

“It has pushed me to walk 80 miles twice in protection of the Florida Everglades, clean water, stop fracking, and destruction of natural environments,” Carlos says. “This plight as an activist is driven mostly by the need to protect our natural lands for our future generations.”

https://upload-assets.vice.com/files/2016/12/29/1483024960JohnBob_Carlos_AncientLight.jpg
John Bob Carlos, ‘Ancient Light’

Without funds to build an app, as originally planned, Oliva created a “secret community” online for about 20 visual artists, writers, musicians, gallerists and activists. Contributors can organize and collaborate in any number of ways. An artist could incorporate an important message into their artwork, literature, or music. Artwork could also be used to help promote a petition, while artists could work with organizers to invent creative ways of protesting.

“With each of these experiences, I connected with amazing artists, scientists, activists, and gallerists, including National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)’s Artist-In-Residence, Jenny Kendler, who gave me some great advice,” Oliva says.

The first project The Artful Activist posted was Sabraw’s toxic art. The first opportunity for collaboration was the Call to Artists for the Nasty Women art exhibition. The collective’s contributors have also been making memes out of contributors’ inspirational quotes, as well as connecting with groups who have similar ambitions, like Keef Ward’s Art With Teeth.

https://upload-assets.vice.com/files/2016/12/29/1483024925MelanieOliva_ScottDickerson_NashvilleAfterImage1.jpg
Melanie Oliva and Scott Dickerson, ‘Nashville After Image’

Cleveland-based artists Laura and Gary Dumm, who have addressed consumerism and corporatism in their work since 2012, are currently creating art with an environmental focus for The Artful Activist. Their new series, Here There Be Monsters; Dragons Be Here, blends Gary’s background in underground comics alongside Harvey Pekar and Laura’s pop art to create psychedelic collages with political messaging.

“Using iconic movie monsters (who were often the by-products of corporate greed and human egotism manipulating nature to spawn our own annihilation) [we] present the consequences of pollution, climate change, genetic engineering, for profit destruction of animal habitats, and species’ extinctions,” Laura Dumm tells The Creators Project. “We are rapidly approaching a disastrous tipping point, and action needs to be taken yesterday.”

https://upload-assets.vice.com/files/2016/12/29/1483024881KraynakBros_Manatee_Spread2.jpg
Kraynak Brothers, ‘Manatee Spread’ from ‘Animal Crackers’ book

Contributor Scott Kraynak is offering up selections from a book he wrote with his brother Jeff titled Animal Crackers. Designed to look like a children’s book, it is meant to be both confrontational and educational.

“You'll probably notice the anger behind the work,” says Kraynak. “This stems from not only hearing and reading about what is happening to the Earth, but also from being a Park Ranger and seeing nature treated like **** firsthand on a daily basis.”

“It is vital to take an activist stance because I feel that bringing the ruckus is sometimes the only way to draw people's attention away from their phones,” he adds. “To realize that there are some seriously horrible things happening right now that can permanently destroy our planet.”

While several artists are working in an environmental activism vein, Oliva is inviting artists and activists of all stripes to contribute. Debbi Becker is tackling homelessness with her art, while Virginia Erdie’s phallus-shaped sculpture Warhead depicts “masculine” territorial wars that devastate the planet, with the penis shrouded in bullet casings and painted in camouflage.

As The Artful Activist continues to evolve, Oliva would like artists and activists to explore issues like racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and any other humanitarian or social issues that need attention. She will be posting artwork and activism opportunities for Standing Rock, Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood, The Women's March on Washington, and any others that will, as she says, “push the needle forward in creating positive change.”

“This group of brilliant people could be a source of inspiration for others, and further promote a culture of solidarity and outspokenness,” says Oliva. “We not only produce content but can keep each other informed as to what’s happening in the artist activist communities in cities across the US.”

More Art in link:
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_uk/blog/artful-activist-collective-fight-climate-change-toxic-politics

[william r sanford72]

Was 2016 A Good Year For Bees?

Published on Dec 30, 2016

As people around the world reflect upon the events of 2016 and prepare to bring in the new year, we’d like to take this opportunity to do the same. In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk to bee health advocate and environmental author, Graham White about several key happenings that occurred during 2016...
www.theorganicview.com.

tpE0jWRxMoQ

[william r sanford72]

A French beekeeper makes mead in the Paris catacombs

http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/story_main/public/story/images/Hydromeldeparis%20credits%20Brice%20Agneli_web.jpg?itok=vh8IdSSo
Audric de Campeau pours a glass of mead in the Paris catacombs with his dog, Filou.

Deep below Paris is a web of crypts and tunnels, former quarries that were excavated to build some of Paris’s most famous buildings hundreds of years ago. They’re collectively known as the catacombs.

And somewhere in that network — the exact location will remain a secret — is where Audric de Campeau’s mead is aging.
“We are 20 meters under Paris,” says de Campeau, below the metro, “and absolutely nothing comes to trouble us and my barrels. So it's the perfect place to grow mead.”

Mead, sometimes known as honey wine, is a mix of water and honey that, like wine, must be fermented in a cool, quiet place that is humid and perfectly still. Down in the catacombs, the humidity hovers around 90 percent and the walls and ceiling are damp to the touch.

Mead is the perfect combination of de Campeau’s two passions: Beekeeping and winemaking — which he began experimenting with as a teenager.

“My parents had a house in Champagne,” he explains. “They're not winemakers, but it was a dream as I was thinking, maybe, if I do one or two bottles would be fun.”

His tiny vineyard grew over the years. De Campeau went on to study philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris but returned to Champagne every weekend to tend his vines and growing garden.

“Then, naturally, I thought about bees. So I asked my parents [for permission] to install my first bee hive,” he says, which posed a problem, “because my father was absolutely allergic to bee venom.”

http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/story/images/Miel-de-Paris3-Credits-Brice-Agneli_web.jpg?itok=5YKvdmIH
Audric de Campeau and his beagle Filou on the roof of the Ecole Militaire in Paris.

While this might have given others pause, de Campeau persisted, installing his first hive in the woods far from the house. They multiplied while de Campeau, still living in Paris, began dreaming about raising bees in the city.

Beekeeping has something of a tradition in Paris. A beekeeping school has operated in the Luxembourg Gardens for more than 100 years.

But de Campeau, who you can probably tell by now has a bit of a taste for the dramatic, set his sights on a building in his neighborhood, Les Invalides, the site of Napoleon’s tomb.

Today, he has hives on many of the best-known monuments in Paris, including the Musee D’Orsay and the Paris mint.

“I grow my bees 20-25 meters above Paris and I grow my mead 20-25 meters under Paris,” de Campeau likes to say (or about six to eight stories).

The bees hibernate this time of year. If you disturb the hives, the cold could kill them. But de Campeau shared a video from the roof of a massive 18th century building, the military college.

A60Ul9YSMHw

The honey, which he sells, has become his regular day-job. He’s also experimenting with making honey-based candies and nougat, another sweet French specialty.

“I have other ideas,” de Campeau adds, unsurprisingly. While his next batch of mead slowly ages below the ground, he should have no trouble keeping busy.

http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Musee%20d%27Orsay%201%20Credits%20Pierre%20Torset.jpg?itok=JeDRPmPU
Audric de Campeau with his hives on the roof of the Musee d'Orsay, a museum in a converted train station in Paris.


Audio interview in link:
http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-30/french-beekeeper-makes-mead-paris-catacombs

[Stephanie]

34768

An old English saying perfect for you!
Thank you for all you do,and for such an informative thread.
🐝🐝Happy New Year 2017.🐝🐝

[william r sanford72]

Scientists Loved and Loathed by an Agrochemical Giant
With corporate funding of research, “There’s no scientist who comes out of this unscathed.”

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/29/business/00SYNGENTA1/00SYNGENTA1-superJumbo.jpg

EXETER, England — The bee findings were not what Syngenta expected to hear.

The pesticide giant had commissioned James Cresswell, an expert in flowers and bees at the University of Exeter in England, to study why many of the world’s bee colonies were dying. Companies like Syngenta have long blamed a tiny bug called a varroa mite, rather than their own pesticides, for the bee decline.

Dr. Cresswell has also been skeptical of concerns raised about those pesticides, and even the extent of bee deaths. But his initial research in 2012 undercut concerns about varroa mites as well. So the company, based in Switzerland, began pressing him to consider new data and a different approach.

Looking back at his interactions with the company, Dr. Cresswell said in a recent interview that “Syngenta clearly has got an agenda.” In an email, he summed up that agenda: “It’s the varroa, stupid.”

For Dr. Cresswell, a Birkenstock-wearing 54-year-old, the foray into corporate-backed research threw him into personal crisis. Some of his colleagues ostracized him. He found his principles tested. Even his wife and children had their doubts.

“They couldn’t believe I took the money,” he said of his family. “They imagined there was going to be an awful lot of pressure and thought I sold out.”

The corporate use of academia has been documented in fields like soft drinks and pharmaceuticals. But it is rare for an academic to provide an insider’s view of the relationships being forged with corporations, and the expectations that accompany them.

A review of Syngenta’s strategy shows that Dr. Cresswell’s experience fits in with practices used by American competitors like Monsanto and across the agrochemical industry.

Scientists deliver outcomes favorable to companies, while university research departments court corporate support. Universities and regulators sacrifice full autonomy by signing confidentiality agreements. And academics sometimes double as paid consultants.

In Britain, Syngenta has built a network of academics and regulators, even recruiting the leading government scientist on the bee issue. In the United States, Syngenta pays academics like James W. Simpkins of West Virginia University, whose work has helped validate the safety of its products. Not only has Dr. Simpkins’s research been funded by
Syngenta, he is also a $250-an-hour consultant for the company. And he partnered with a Syngenta executive in a consulting venture, emails obtained by The New York Times show.

Dr. Simpkins did not comment. A spokesman for West Virginia University said his consulting work “was based on his 42 years of experience with reproductive neuroendocrinology.”

Scientists who cross agrochemical companies can find themselves at odds with the industry for years. One such scientist is Angelika Hilbeck, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The industry has long since challenged her research, and she has been outspoken in challenging them back.

Going back to the 1990s, her research has found that genetically modified corn — designed to kill bugs that eat the plant — could harm beneficial insects as well. Back then, Syngenta had not yet been formed, but she said one of its predecessor companies, Ciba-Geigy, tried to stifle her research by citing a confidentiality agreement signed by her then employer, a Swiss government research center called Agroscope.

Confidentiality agreements have become routine. The United States Department of Agriculture turned over 43 confidentiality agreements reached with Syngenta, Bayer and Monsanto since the beginning of 2010 following a Freedom of Information Act request. Agroscope turned over an additional five with Swiss agrochemical companies.

Many of the agreements highlight how regulators are often more like collaborators than watchdogs, exploring joint research and patent deals that they agree to keep secret.

One agreement between the U.S.D.A. and Syngenta, which came with a five-year nondisclosure term, covered everything from “research and development activities” to “manufacturing processes” and “financial and marketing information related to crop protection and seed technologies.” In another agreement, a government scientist was barred even from disclosing sensitive information she heard at a symposium run by Monsanto.

The Agriculture Department, in a statement, said that without such agreements and partnerships, “many technological solutions would not make it to the public,” adding that research findings were released “objectively without inappropriate influence from internal or external partners.”

Luke Gibbs, a spokesman for Syngenta, which is now being acquired by the China National Chemical Corporation, said in a statement, “We are proud of the collaborations and partnerships we have built.”

“All researchers we partner with are free to express their views publicly in regard to our products and approaches,” he said. “Syngenta does not pressure academics to draw conclusions and allows unfettered and independent submission of any papers generated from commissioned research.”

A look at the experiences of the three scientists — Dr. Cresswell, Dr. Simpkins and Dr. Hilbeck — reveals the ways agrochemical companies shape scientific thought.

A Reluctant Partner

For James Cresswell, taking money from Syngenta was not an easy decision.

Dr. Cresswell has been a researcher at the University of Exeter in England’s southwest for a quarter-century, mostly exploring the esoterica of flower reproduction in papers with titles like “Conifer ovulate cones accumulate pollen principally by simple impaction.” He was not used to making headlines.

But about a half-decade ago, he became interested in the debate over neonicotinoids, a nicotine-derived class of pesticide, and their effects on bee health. Many studies linked the chemicals to a mysterious collapse of bee colonies that was in the news. Other studies, many backed by industry, pointed to the varroa mite, and some saw both factors at play.

Dr. Cresswell’s initial research led him to believe that concerns about the pesticides were overblown. In 2012, Syngenta offered to fund further research.

While many academics resisted efforts by The Times to examine their communications with Syngenta, Dr. Cresswell did not challenge a records request submitted to his university. And he spoke with candor.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/29/business/00SYNGENTA2/00SYNGENTA2-superJumbo.jpg
James Cresswell in his laboratory at the University of Exeter in England, shown with a wind tunnel used in new research on bees.

“The last thing I wanted to do was get in bed with Syngenta,” Dr. Cresswell said. “I’m no fan of intensive agriculture.”

But turning away research funding is difficult. The British government ranks universities on how useful their work is to industry and society, tying government grants to their assessments.

“I was pressured enormously by my university to take that money,” he said. “It’s like being a traveling salesman and having the best possible sales market and telling your boss, ‘I’m not going to sell there.’ You can’t really do that.”

The issue soon came up at Dr. Cresswell’s dinner table.

“Me and my mum were like, ‘Oh, you’re taking money,’” his daughter Fay, now a 21-year-old university student, recalled of the conversation that took place. “We didn’t have an argument, but it did get quite heated. We just said, ‘Don’t.’”

Duncan Sandes, a spokesman for Exeter, declined to discuss specific research grants. He said in a statement that up to 15 percent of university research in Britain was funded by industry. “Industry sponsors are fundamentally aware that they will receive independent analysis that has been critically evaluated in an honest and dispassionate manner,” Mr. Sandes said.

Dr. Cresswell and Syngenta agreed on a list of eight potential causes of bee deaths to be studied. They discussed how to structure grant payments. They reviewed research assistant candidates. Dr. Cresswell sought permission from Syngenta to pursue new insights he gained, asking at one point, “Please can you confirm that you are happy with the direction our current work is taking?”

But he also pushed back at times. An email from Syngenta to the university said that Dr. Cresswell “will have final editorial control,” but Dr. Cresswell, in another email, expressed concern that a proposed confidentiality clause “grants Syngenta the right to suppress the results,” adding, “I am not happy to work under a gagging clause.” He says the term of the clause was reduced to only a few months.

Neonicotinoids are now subject to a moratorium in the European Union. A recent study by Britain’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology attributed a population loss of at least 20 percent of many kinds of wild bees to the pesticides.

Syngenta and its competitors argue that the real culprit is a disease called varroosis, which is spread by varroa mites. The Bayer Bee Care Center in Germany includes menacing sculptures of the little pest.

But Dr. Cresswell’s initial research for Syngenta did not support the varroosis claims. “We are finding it pretty unlikely that varoosis is responsible for honey bee declines,” he wrote to Syngenta in 2012.

An executive wrote back, suggesting that Dr. Cresswell look more narrowly at “loss data” of beehives rather than at broader bee stock trends, “As this may give a different answer!”

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/29/business/00SYNGENTA3/00SYNGENTA3-superJumbo.jpg
Bees in James Cresswell’s lab at the University of Exeter. Dr. Cresswell says pressure from Syngenta, which funded some of his earlier research, threw him into a personal crisis.

For the next several weeks, the company repeatedly asked Dr. Cresswell to refocus his examination to look at varroa. In another email, the executive told Dr. Cresswell, “it would also be good to also look at varroa as a potential uptick factor” in specific countries where it could have exacerbated bee losses.

In the same email, part of a chain with the subject line “Varoosis report,” he also asked Dr. Cresswell to look at changes in Europe, rather than worldwide. Dr. Cresswell agreed and said, “I have some other angles to look at the varoosis issue further.”

That said, Syngenta was a client and Dr. Cresswell was providing a service. Looking back, Dr. Cresswell said that while he still thought concerns about the pesticides were overblown, aspects of his project were inevitably influenced by the nature of the relationship.

“You can write it up as, Syngenta had an effect on me,” he said. “I can’t actually deny that they didn’t. It wasn’t conniving on my part, but absolutely they influenced what I ended up doing on the project.”

For Dr. Cresswell, the affiliation with Syngenta became a burden. Environmentalists saw him as an adversary, and his industry connection came to define him in newspaper articles. When he was called to testify before Parliament, Dave Goulson, a biology professor at the University of Sussex, sat next to him. Dr. Goulson likened taking money from agrochemical companies to taking money from the tobacco industry, which long denied that cigarettes were addictive.

Some people thrive on controversy. Dr. Cresswell does not.

“It hurt me more than I was willing to admit at the time,” he said. “Everything happened so fast.”

By changing parameters, varroa mites did become a significant factor. “We’re coming to the view that varoosis is potent regarding colony loss at widespread scale,” Dr. Cresswell wrote in January 2013. A later email included scoring that bore that out.

Mr. Gibbs of Syngenta said, “We discussed and defined the direction of the research in partnership with the researcher with the aim of ensuring that it was focused and relevant.”

He added, “We did not undermine Dr. Cresswell’s independence, dictate his approach to assessing the eight factors agreed upon with him, or restrict any of the conclusions he subsequently drew.”

That said, Syngenta was a client and Dr. Cresswell was providing a service. Looking back, Dr. Cresswell said that while he still thought concerns about the pesticides were overblown, aspects of his project were inevitably influenced by the nature of the relationship.

“You can write it up as, Syngenta had an effect on me,” he said. “I can’t actually deny that they didn’t. It wasn’t conniving on my part, but absolutely they influenced what I ended up doing on the project.”

For Dr. Cresswell, the affiliation with Syngenta became a burden. Environmentalists saw him as an adversary, and his industry connection came to define him in newspaper articles.

When he was called to testify before Parliament, Dave Goulson, a biology professor at the University of Sussex, sat next to him. Dr. Goulson likened taking money from agrochemical companies to taking money from the tobacco industry, which long denied that cigarettes were addictive.

Some people thrive on controversy. Dr. Cresswell does not.

“It hurt me more than I was willing to admit at the time,” he said. “Everything happened so fast.”

He had a breakdown. He said that he began to feel “I was virtually incompetent,” adding that he would put his head on his desk and think his work was a mess. He ended up leaving his job for several months. While he presented his research publicly, it was never published.

In an interview, Dr. Goulson said, “I’ve known James for a very long time and always thought he was a good guy.

“You can’t win,” Dr. Goulson added. “If you are funded by industry, people are suspicious of your research. If you’re not funded, you’re accused of being a tree-hugging greenie activist. There’s no scientist who comes out of this unscathed.”

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/29/business/00SYNGENTA4/00SYNGENTA4-superJumbo.jpg
Syngenta’s manufacturing center in Huddersfield, England, on a recent evening. The plant produces herbicides and insecticides that are exported worldwide.

Today, Dr. Cresswell has returned to less controversial areas of bee research. He said he respects scientists he met from Syngenta, but views collaboration with industry as a Faustian bargain.

He called Syngenta “a kind of devil.”

“What I didn’t realize is that supping with them would actually have a broader impact on how the world sees me as a scientist,” he said. “That was my misjudgment.”

A Tangled Relationship

If some scientists struggle to reconcile themselves with taking corporate money, others embrace complex business relationships.

James W. Simpkins, a professor at West Virginia University and the director of its Center for Basic and Translational Stroke Research, is one of the many outside academics that Syngenta turns to for research.

He has focused on the Syngenta product atrazine — the second most popular weed killer in America, widely used on lawns and crops — often co-authoring research with Syngenta scientists.

Atrazine, banned in the European Union, has also been controversial in America. Most notably, Syngenta embarked on a campaign to discredit Tyrone B. Hayes, a professor it once funded at the University of California, Berkeley, until Dr. Hayes found that atrazine changes the sex of frogs.

Dr. Simpkins has had a different relationship with the company. In 2003, he appeared before American regulators on Syngenta’s behalf, saying that “we can identify no biologically plausible mechanism by which atrazine leads to an increase in prostate cancer.”

Dr. Simpkins was also lead author of a 2011 study finding no support that atrazine causes breast cancer. And last year, he was part of a small team of Syngenta-backed scientists that fought California’s move to require atrazine be sold with a warning label. He also recently edited a series of papers on atrazine for Syngenta, garnering praise from a senior researcher at the company, Charles Breckenridge, who wrote in an email that the “papers tell a simple, yet compelling story.”

The depth of the financial intertwining of Dr. Simpkins and Syngenta was laid out in nearly 2,000 pages of email traffic, obtained by The Times following a Freedom of Information Act request. Not only does Dr. Simpkins receive research grants, but the company also pays him $250-an-hour as a consultant for his work on expert panels, studies and manuscripts, records show. Syngenta even asked Dr. Simpkins to contribute to Dr. Breckenridge’s annual performance review.

Asking outsiders to contribute to corporate reviews is not unusual. However, Dr. Simpkins is also described in the emails as a partner in a venture set up by Dr. Breckenridge called Quality Scientific Solutions to consult on pesticides and other issues.

West Virginia University’s website says that “Research conducted at W.V.U. is data-driven, objective and independent” and “not influenced by any political agenda, business priority” or “funding source.” And John A. Bolt, a spokesman for the university, said all of Dr. Simpkins’s Syngenta-related research had been conducted before Dr. Simpkins arrived at West Virginia in 2012.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/29/business/00SYNGENTA5/00SYNGENTA5-master675.jpg
Angelika Hilbeck, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in a lab at the North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. The agrochemical industry has long challenged her research, and she has been outspoken in fighting back

But a review of Dr. Simpkins’s published work shows that he co-authored favorable atrazine studies with Syngenta scientists in 2014 and 2015, and listed his university affiliation.

Mr. Bolt said Dr. Simpkins only “served as an expert adviser” in the studies.

In 2014, Syngenta made a $30,000 donation to the university’s foundation. Mr. Bolt said that donation was made “in general support of the research activities of Dr. James W. Simpkins.” None of the money, Mr. Bolt said, was “used to support research related to Syngenta.”

Dr. Simpkins’s collaborations with Dr. Breckenridge appear to be expansive. In an email to Dr. Simpkins last year, Dr. Breckenridge sent him a study on the Mediterranean Diet and suggested they use a multilevel marketing company to help them sell a product of their own.

“If we could come up with a better Snake Oil,” he wrote to Dr. Simpkins, “we would have access to a massive marketing force.”

A Critic and a Target

Some scientists labor outside the industry. It can be a difficult path.

Angelika Hilbeck worked for Agroscope, a Swiss agricultural research center, in the 1990s, when she began to examine genetically modified corn. The corn was designed to kill insect larvae that fed on it, but Dr. Hilbeck found it was also toxic to an insect called the lacewing, a useful bug that eats other pests.

Ciba-Geigy, a predecessor of Syngenta, had a confidentiality agreement with Agroscope, and insisted she keep the research secret, she said. Confidentiality agreements are not unusual for Agroscope. In one such agreement obtained by The Times, the agency agreed to return or destroy corporate documents it received as part of a research project.

Dr. Hilbeck said she refused to back down and eventually published her work. Her contract at Agroscope was not renewed. An Agroscope spokeswoman said the episode took place too long ago to comment on.

Dr. Hilbeck continued as a university researcher and was succeeded at Agroscope by Jörg Romeis, a scientist who had worked at Bayer and has since co-authored research with employees from Syngenta, DuPont and other companies. He has spent much of his career attempting to debunk Dr. Hilbeck’s work. He followed her lacewing studies by co-authoring his own, finding that genetically modified crops were not harmful to the lacewing.

Next, after Dr. Hilbeck co-authored a paper outlining a model for assessing the unintended risks of such crops, Dr. Romeis was lead author of an alternative approach with a Syngenta scientist among his co-authors.

Then, in 2009, Dr. Hilbeck co-authored a paper looking at risks to ladybug larvae from modified crops. Dr. Romeis followed by co-authoring a study that found “no adverse effects” to ladybird larvae. In subsequent publications, he referred to work by Dr. Hilbeck and others as “bad science” and a “myth.”

“They were my little stalkers,” Dr. Hilbeck said. “Whatever I did, they did.”

In an interview, Dr. Romeis, who now leads Agroscope’s biosafety research group, said, “Her work does not affect our mission in any way,” adding that the idea of researching the effects of genetically modified crops was “not patented by her.”

Refereeing a scientific dispute is difficult. But Dr. Romeis and his collaborators do seem preoccupied with Dr. Hilbeck’s work, judging from a review of email traffic between Agroscope and the U.S.D.A. obtained by The Times following a Freedom of Information Act request.

In 2014, as Dr. Romeis was developing a paper assailing Dr. Hilbeck’s work, one U.S.D.A. scientist, Steven E. Naranjo, joked in a message to Dr. Romeis: “Joerg, its generous of you to see that Hilbeck gets published once in a while :)”

Dr. Hilbeck is used to looking over her shoulder. “We shouldn’t be running into all kinds of obstacles and face all this comprehensive mobbing just doing what we’re supposed to do,” she said. “It’s totally corrupted this field.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/business/scientists-loved-and-loathed-by-syngenta-an-agrochemical-giant.html

[william r sanford72]

34768

An old English saying perfect for you!
Thank you for all you do,and for such an informative thread.
🐝🐝Happy New Year 2017.🐝🐝

Thank You........:blushing:

[Cidersomerset]

http://previews.123rf.com/images/arcady31/arcady311210/arcady31121000051/15651489-Bee-happy-illustration-Stock-Vector.jpghttps://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/68/1e/82/681e82a4f854b973dab52c4b58b408e2.jpghttps://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/0f/27/64/0f27646566b28e0c5821990769644253.jpg


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/59/7b/ba/597bbadc5fcb839c7376b64607a2db60.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/60/e2/01/60e201ab1d3a6479653993ea2185dd97.jpg



A2skW43HNpE

[william r sanford72]

Sampling the Slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro to Tackle one of Biology’s Biggest Questions

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/the-extremo-files/files/2016/12/8503348006_189f9e8660_z.jpg
Quantifying plant and animal diversity on Africa’s tallest mountain

Take a look outside your window. How many species do you see?

This question of how geography influences biodiversity has bedeviled biologists for centuries. But according to a new study led by Marcell Peters from the University of Wurzburg, the number of distinct species you’re seeing – or, more accurately, the number you would see in the nearest natural environment – depends most strongly on temperature.

Several hypotheses have percolated through the scientific literature over the years:

1) The temperature hypothesis, in which the greater rate of biological processes, interactions, and evolution associated with higher temperatures is the main determinant of diversity.
2) The water availability hypothesis, proposing that water supply underlies primary productivity and enables more diversity at higher trophic levels.
3) The productivity hypothesis, linking maximal diversity with a greater abundance of life’s required nutrients.
4) The area and geometric constraints hypotheses, which link diversity and the availability of distinct niches to more space or geographic gradients.
5) The plant diversity hypothesis, connecting animal diversity to the number of consumable plant species.

All of these different possibilites have remained in the discussion for so long because diversity studies typically examine a single type of organism. So while vascular plants are subject to the water availability hypothesis, arthropod distributions are best described by the plant diversity hypothesis.

But by looking beyond the species concept and considering ecological function, Peters and his colleagues arguably developed a more relevant approach. For example, while bees generally do best in warm environments, syrphid flies thrive at cooler temperatures, Looking at each type of insect individually suggests a tight thermal constraint on viability, but if both are considered together as flower pollinators, this function becomes more resilient and relevant across a wider range of conditions.

The team of scientists – which includes more than two-dozen participants – also got a nice backpacking trip out of the deal. The fieldwork happened on Mt. Kilimanjaro: as a tropical mountain with a dry base, its temperature and primary productivity are not well correlated, allowing the researchers to evaluate these variables independently. They counted the number of species in eight categories of plants and 16 types of animals, up and down the mountain, covering 3.7 kilometers of relief.

The elevation-based distributions are fascinating, prompting a barrage of questions. Several types of animals, like amphibians, birds, and bats showed rapid diversity decreases as the researchers ascended. Others, like gastropods, spiders, and wasps, seemed to have a preferred high-diversity niche part way up the mountain.

But when all the data were assembled, the number of observed species decreased with elevation, providing “strong support for temperature as the major predictor of plant and animal species richness,” as Peters writes. A statistical analysis of six environmental variables revealed temperature as the clear winner. Net primary productivity and precipitation were statistically significant variables for roughly half as many plant and animal categories, but the directionality of the effect (positive or negative) was split. On the other hand, four plant and eight animal groups showed significantly increased diversity with increasing temperatures; only millipede diversity decreased.

While the numbers were convincing, Peters and his colleagues are quick to point out that ecosystems operate in complex ways, and many of the parameters hypothesized to play an important role actually interact with each other. Higher temperature, for example, can influence plant diversity, and precipitation levels bolster primary production levels. By building models to disentangle the direct and indirect levers of these “master variables”, the team proved that temperature alone – not its effects on other environmental parameters – was indeed the key factor.

This impressive effort to compile several distinct datasets in one analytical pipeline helps to streamline the list of diversity-generating hypotheses; seeing how future studies build on this result will be intriguing. For example, while higher temperature led to more diversity on Kilimanjaro, that relationship cannot be extrapolated to ever-higher temperatures: there is clearly an optimal diversity-promoting temperature that is still to be determined. And it may differ for distinct biomes, based on local evolutionary pressures and the interplay of secondary factors like precipitation or nutrient availability.

Understanding how plants and animals are distributed across the planet is a fundamental issue for biologists; now, extended field campaigns and statistical tools are rising to the challenge.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/the-extremo-files/2016/12/30/441/#.WGf-8YWcG00

[Cidersomerset]

Save the Bees

p2Ne-TYHZXA

Published on 24 Oct 2016
Recorded live at the Newsroom, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 2016.

[william r sanford72]

And a Happy New Year to you Cidersomerset.......

wPnhaGWBnys



William.

[william r sanford72]

How an Invasive Bee Managed to Thrive in Australia

The Asian honeybee should have been crippled by low genetic diversity, but thanks to natural selection it thrived.

http://www.the-scientist.com/January2017/notebook2.jpg

In the famous case of Darwin’s finches, natural selection acts decisively, elevating a trait in the population, weeding it out, or simply ignoring it. But in actuality, natural selection can sometimes exert a more complicated influence. An unusual pattern of genetic selection turns out to be responsible for the rampant spread of the invasive Asian honeybee (Apis cerana) from Papua New Guinea into Australia, a pattern that Rosalyn Gloag of the University of Sydney and her colleagues have managed to decode.

The first Asian honeybees reached Australian shores in 2007, probably on the mast of a ship or stowed away in a shipping container. The bees made landfall in Cairns, a city on the continent’s northeastern coast, and spread rapidly from there. Bruce White, a retired government apiculture and biosecurity specialist, says that Australian officials who responded to the invasion were ill equipped to contain the bees and did not realize how quickly colonies could disperse. Concerned beekeepers alerted authorities to A. cerana hives that appeared in their yards, but the eradication effort proved futile.

Up until now, the success of A. cerena in Australia has posed something of a biological puzzle. Under the normal rules of evolution, the invasive bees should have been hamstrung by what’s known as the founder effect—reduced genetic diversity when a population takes root from just a small number of individuals. Based on a preliminary study of neutral genetic markers by Gloag and her colleagues, A. cerana appears to have arrived in Cairns only once, with just one or a few colonies, meaning that no secondary arrivals infused the population with fresh genes to counteract the founder effect.   

Low genetic diversity can have various ramifications, but in particular it should have tampered with sex determination in the bees. In A. cerana, diploid progeny develop as females while haploids develop as males. A single gene, ­­csd, governs this system, with an important caveat: a larva that is diploid and homozygous at csd is inviable. In a large, diverse population with many csd alleles, the odds of getting two of the same allele are so low that csd homozygosity rarely causes problems. But in populations with only a few csd alleles, homozygotes are more common and can drag down the colony’s reproductive output. Theoretically, this system should render bees highly susceptible to the founder effect, a prediction that has been borne out in other social insects with similar sex determination mechanisms.

To uncover how A. cerana circumvented the problem, the University of Sydney team sequenced the csd genes of bees every year after the invasion, using samples preserved by government eradication efforts. They also sampled A. cerana populations in the insect’s native range in China. They found a stock of 22 different csd alleles among native bees, but only seven csd alleles among the invasive colonies. Only three of those alleles were common during the first few years after the invasion—a massive curtailing of genetic diversity that should have doomed the Asian honeybees in Australia.

In small populations, rare alleles are likely to disappear by random chance. In this case, csd alleles that were rare in the founding population, rather than disappearing, increased in frequency over the next several years, Gloag and her colleagues reported in Nature Ecology and Evolution (doi:10.1038/s41559-016-0011, 2016). The frequency of all seven alleles in the gene pool converged toward equilibrium.

The researchers were observing a phenomenon called negative frequency-dependent selection, which occurs when alleles become less and less advantageous the more common they are in a population. In the early invading population, individuals that carried rare csd alleles would almost always produce viable offspring, since the odds of a diploid larvae ending up with two identical rare alleles is close to zero. On the other hand, individuals with common alleles would frequently produce inviable homozygotes. As the bees proliferated in their new home, rare alleles spread through the population, pushing the gene pool toward an ideal equilibrium where every csd allele is equally common.

It’s an unusual case in which evolution has favored diversity over any one particular gene. Most evolutionary trends are typically studied over enormous time scales, so Gloag did not expect to see negative frequency-dependent selection unfold over the course of just one decade. “What surprised us is how quickly the effects of that selection are felt,” Gloag says. “Evolution can act fast—much faster than we often give it credit for.”

Salvaging the seven csd alleles was the Asian honeybee’s ticket to survival in Australia. By 2011, officials had shifted from an eradication program to a focus on containing and monitoring the invasive bees, says Gloag. “They were no longer under the illusion that they were going to get rid of them.”

Asian honeybees are harmless invaders on their own, but they are known to carry parasitic mites, Varroa destructor and Varroa jacobsoni, that wreak havoc on European honeybee populations. V. destructor was constrained to Asian honeybees until it jumped hosts to the European variety and spread across the globe with disastrous impact—and scientists believe V. jacobsoni may be poised to jump hosts too.

For now, Australia is one of the few places still free of V. destructor. “We’re pretty much the only holdout,” Gloag says, “but we’ve seen the damage it’s done to pollination services in other parts of the world, and we’re very worried.”

In the face of a looming ecological threat, Gloag finds a positive message in her team’s discovery: If the invasive bees could recover from what seemed like terminal genetic loss, then perhaps endangered species that have sustained similar losses could demonstrate similar resilience. Australia’s bee problem illustrates how species bounce back. “You can have healthy populations that have been through extreme bottlenecks,” she says. “Nature finds a way.”

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/47721/title/How-an-Invasive-Bee-Managed-to-Thrive-in-Australia/

[william r sanford72]

Century-old bee research has current scientists buzzing

http://myjournalcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_300pxrobertson_chas.jpg

Nestled in the cornfields of central Illinois, Carlinville is best known for its majestic courthouse. But its place for research studies on bees creates a buzz, so to speak.

A recent study of bee populations in the area revealed their numbers have declined dramatically since groundbreaking studies by Carlinville entomologist Charles Robertson from 1887-1916. The recent study, conducted by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, brought both Carlinville and Robertson’s studies to the forefront.

Robertson, who taught biology and Greek at Blackburn College from 1880-86 and again from 1897-1909, conducted all of his research within 10 miles of Carlinville, often traveling in a one-horse buggy over dirt paths. He painstakingly documented the relationship of plants and their pollinators, including bees, butterflies, beetles and flies.

Robertson also identified hundreds of previously unknown insect species and currently has over 20 species named for him.

A lifelong resident of Carlinville, Robertson held a collection of 30,000 mounted insects at his death in 1935.

Scientists around the globe still reference Robertson’s studies, which have given the seat of Macoupin County a unique place in entomological research.

“Carlinville is one of the most referenced communities in the world in the bee literature,” said John Marlin of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center at the University of Illinois’ Prairie Research Institute, where Robertson’s collections are housed. “It is clear that Robertson’s foundation provides an invaluable resource for modern comparative studies on bee species and their interactions with the environment.”

Two subsequent studies of bees in the Carlinville area have followed Robertson’s footsteps. Marlin examined bee populations in the area from 1970-72 and published his results in a 2001 edition of the journal Ecology and Society.

He also participated in the latest study with Washington University scientists Tiffany Knight and Laura Burkle in 2009-2010. That effort found that bee populations had declined by over half since Robertson’s time, with some species entirely lost. Peak bee activity was also significantly reduced.

Losses of habitat and biodiversity, as well as global warming, were cited as reasons for decline in the new study, which was published in Science magazine.

http://myjournalcourier.com/features/local-features/104170/century-old-bee-research-has-current-scientists-buzzing

[william r sanford72]

Research buzz
Professor, students identify bacterium that may kill honey bees

http://www.uwstout.edu/news/articles/images/burritt-jim_beestudy_CS.jpg

A University of Wisconsin-Stout biology professor and his students may have made an important discovery in the effort to determine why honey bee hives are dying out during the winters in the Upper Midwest.

Biology Professor Jim Burritt and his students have published research about a new strain of the bacterium called Serratia marcescens strain sicaria. With evidence of its killing power, they chose the name sicaria, which means assassin, and Ss1 for short.

“Our results indicate that Ss1 may contribute to the wintertime failure of honey bee colonies. We believe this is important because most beekeepers in our area lose over half of their hives each winter. In Dunn County, the percentage of winter hive failure rates has been as high as 80 percent recently,” said Burritt, himself a longtime beekeeper.

The bacterium came to light under a microscope at UW-Stout as researchers looked for a different organism in blood drawn from sick bees in Dunn County. They saw something unexpected.

http://www.uwstout.edu/news/articles/images/beecultureplate_CS.jpg

“It was clear we were looking at something different. As we did more testing on the organism, we began to realize we may be working with a new threat to honey bees. We then collaborated with experts in bacterial genetics and biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who used mass spectrometry and three independent, whole-genome methods to confirm this organism had not been previously described in the literature,” Burritt said.

With evidence of a possible new disease in bees, UW-Stout then recruited beekeepers in eight west-central Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota counties and received support from the Wisconsin and Minnesota beekeeping associations to provide samples from 91 hives for testing.

Burritt and his students tested 3,219 honey bees and 1,259 Varroa destructor mites, found in the hives, between December 2014 and September 2016. Ss1 was found in bees and mites from every participating county.

Of the hives sampled for bees, 48 percent tested positive for the new bacterium, including one package of bees shipped from another region of the country. Of the hives sampled for mites, 76 percent tested positive. Of the hives that died during the winter, 73 percent had the bacterium.

The UW-Stout discovery is a positive step toward a possible solution. “Though our study does not provide information on how winterkill can be stopped, we believe it will create a clearer picture of the diseases and challenges that honey bees face. This view will be important in eventually developing strategies to help bees survive the long months of winter,” Burritt said.

http://www.uwstout.edu/news/articles/images/hildebrand-jacob_bees_CS_1.jpg

“The well-being of honey bees and other pollinators is crucial to our ecosystem, a wholesome environment and our economy,” he added.

Along with finding the new strain of bacterium, also groundbreaking within the study is confirmation that Varroa destructor mites carry the Ss1 bacterium, Burritt said.

Previously, mites were known only for transmitting viruses to honey bees.

The eight-legged Varroa mites are about the size of a poppy seed, Burritt said. “With the help of the students, we developed a method to efficiently obtain culture information from many individual mites,” he said.

Students play key roles

The research, with student co-authors Anna Winfield, of Bloomer, and Jake Hildebrand, of Menomonie, was published Dec. 21 in PLOS One, a peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication for science and medicine research. The study, “Sepsis and Hemocyte Loss in Honey Bees,” can be found online.

Winfield developed two screening tests to identify Ss1 based on its biochemical properties. She graduated with honors in May 2016 in applied science and is a microbiology graduate student at UW-La Crosse.

Hildebrand, a senior, led the testing of bee blood, hemolymph, for infection and identified proteins in the blood that are important to their immune system.

Five other UW-Stout students are recognized in the published research. They are Morgan Ingold, of Waterford; Matheus de Jesus, of Brazil; Viviane Oshima, of Brazil; Brooke Sommerfeldt, of Park Falls; and Amber Thums, of Butternut. Professor Steve Nold provided help with bioinformatics.

“The honey bee studies at UW-Stout have required the research ideas, interest and hands of a lot of students, and we had plenty of each,” Burritt said.

The research also found that the Ss1 bacterium has 65 genes not found in other strains of the Serratia genus, suggesting Ss1 has been successful borrowing genetic information from other bacteria.

In 2014 Burritt and his students published another study in PLOS One describing their new technique of hemocyte profiling of the blood cells of honey bees. The latest research builds on the previous effort by using the new profiling method; bees infected by Ss1 were found to have fewer of the blood cells that defend against bacterial infections, suggesting Ss1 may weaken bees’ immune systems.

The honey bee project at UW-Stout, led by Burritt, is in its sixth year and has involved hundreds of UW-Stout students doing research in microbiology classes, courses within the applied science major and in locations beyond the classroom.

http://www.uwstout.edu/news/articles/Professor-students-identify-bacterium-that-may-kill-honey-bees.cfm

[Cidersomerset]

Just saw this article on David Ickes site and one of the items was about Bees
if this has already been posted / apologies....


http://www.wakingtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/WT-Logo-Color-Orange-Red-Fade-1.png

By WakingTimes January 3, 2017


Major Shifts in Consciousness Observed Throughout the Animal Kingdom


Read More......

gSCr5OxXN1A

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/01/03/major-shifts-consciousness-observed-throughout-animal-kingdom/

[william r sanford72]

Environmental Predictions for 2017: Office of Pesticide Programs

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Chlorpyrifos

The pesticide program will face an early test of its emphasis and direction, as the program is under a court order to make a final decision about the future of the organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos by March 31, 2017, just a few months into the new Trump Administration. Chlorpyrifos is a widely used organophosphate insecticide and has been the target of activist group attention and controversy over many years. Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a petition to revoke the tolerances and cancel the registrations for chlorpyrifos in 2007. When these groups concluded that EPA in their view had not acted sufficiently timely on their petition, they sought a writ of mandamus from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that would order EPA to act on that petition. After making an initial determination that EPA had a rational basis for delay, the Ninth Circuit ultimately agreed to grant the writ on August 10, 2015. The Court has stated unequivocally that it will not grant any further extension of the March 31, 2017, deadline for final action on the petition.

At the time PANNA and NRDC began the court case, EPA had issued a preliminary decision indicating that it intended to deny the petition, but EPA later reversed course and, in the process, issued several controversial documents upon which it relies in support of its current proposal to revoke the food use tolerances for the pesticide. 80 Fed. Reg. 69079 (Nov. 6, 2015). 

EPA’s determinations concerning chlorpyrifos have been controversial, and some of these reach far beyond chlorpyrifos in their potential impact. For example, EPA has issued and relied upon a new determination regarding the interpretation of epidemiological data and how such data are used in making Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) safety factor decisions. EPA has utilized epidemiological data for chlorpyrifos to select risk endpoints for chlorpyrifos and for all organophosphate pesticides. This FQPA safety factor determination has been the subject of much concern and comment, with industry pointing out numerous scientific, legal, and procedural flaws in the scientific predicate for the determination and the procedure by which it was adopted.

The Trump Administration is not expected to support the chlorpyrifos tolerance revocations as proposed by the Obama Administration. It is unclear at this time, however, how the Trump Administration might change course on the controversial EPA determinations underlying the proposed revocations. The record developed will be the subject of continued legal challenge. Coming so early in the new President’s term will also mean that new OCSPP leadership will not yet be in place. This will increase the difficulty of making a final decision before the court deadline, particularly any decision to reverse course. Adding to the challenge, the court has expressed significant frustration with the pace of EPA’s decision-making; any effort to ask for more time in light of the Administration change would almost certainly meet a chilly reception.

Endangered Species

Another key issue that will beset the program continually in 2017 is implementation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), an issue that has dogged the program for years. The problems of “how much is enough” and how to conduct an assessment have long been concerns. As the issue of endangered species protection has expanded to include legal challenges to new active ingredient registrations under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the issues have become even more heated.

In recent years, NGO groups filed challenges in both federal district court and federal appellate court to EPA’s registration of new pesticide products with new active ingredients.

These challenges are of concern for many reasons, but perhaps most importantly because they were filed to object to a new pesticide active ingredient. New active ingredients typically have been seen as less likely to have an adverse environmental impact, and less likely to jeopardize endangered or threatened species, than the incumbent products they replace. In some cases, EPA has relied on this reasoning explicitly as the rationale for its claim of ESA compliance. If the pending challenges result in long delays or require an administrative record that creates evidentiary impediments to the new pesticide approval process, this could become the “train wreck” some have predicted for years. If so, that could force Congress to create a more workable process for how ESA and FIFRA should interact.

Some of the legal challenges to new active ingredients should be decided soon. If these decisions impose new evidentiary burdens, it is possible that ESA litigation could threaten to undermine the entire current pesticide regulatory system. EPA and the Services (the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service) have made recent efforts to improve and more closely coordinate ESA review procedures, and have issued the first biological evaluations under the “improved” assessment approach. This new approach may still be unsustainable and impractical and involve too great a commitment of time and resources, however. With a Republican President and Congress, there may be renewed interest in making legislative changes to create a more practical approach to evaluating impacts on endangered species as part of the pesticide registration process.

Pollinators

Under the Obama Administration, OPP actions regarding the pollinator issue were discharged through directives and announcements that EPA has made in recent years, starting in 2013 when EPA required significant label changes to lessen any impact on pollinators from insecticide use. Then, in June 2014, the White House issued a “Presidential Memorandum -- Creating a Federal Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators.” The strategy is directed to all federal agencies and designed to “expand Federal efforts and take new steps to reverse pollinator losses and help restore populations to healthy levels.”

In May 2015, the White House released its “National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators” that led EPA also in May 2015 to publish a “Proposal to Mitigate Exposure to Bees from Acutely Toxic Pesticide Products.” The proposal was designed to target pesticide use by those who use contracted pollinator services, and included a list of 76 pesticides (not only insecticides) to which the new labeling requirements would apply. EPA received comments from many grower groups and state pesticide officials critical of various elements of the proposal, and is still in the process of reviewing comments. EPA was expected to respond to these comments sometime in early 2016, but EPA has yet to release a revised proposal. EPA has stated in various communications that it still expects to respond to the comments submitted with a revised proposal before the end of the Obama Administration. The Trump Administration is expected to review, revise, and/or repeal what will likely be known as the “Obama strategy.”

In May 2015, the White House released its “National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators” that led EPA also in May 2015 to publish a “Proposal to Mitigate Exposure to Bees from Acutely Toxic Pesticide Products.” The proposal was designed to target pesticide use by those who use contracted pollinator services, and included a list of 76 pesticides (not only insecticides) to which the new labeling requirements would apply. EPA received comments from many grower groups and state pesticide officials critical of various elements of the proposal, and is still in the process of reviewing comments. EPA was expected to respond to these comments sometime in early 2016, but EPA has yet to release a revised proposal. EPA has stated in various communications that it still expects to respond to the comments submitted with a revised proposal before the end of the Obama Administration. The Trump Administration is expected to review, revise, and/or repeal what will likely be known as the “Obama strategy"

WPS and Certification and Training

In March 2014, EPA issued a proposed rule to update the WPS that generated a large volume of public comments about various elements of its planned revisions.

EPA issued the final rule in September 2015 and it was subsequently published in the Federal Register on November 2, 2015. Although changes to the WPS have been discussed for years, in some cases since the first regulations were issued over 20 years ago, elements of these changes that EPA proposed, as well as preamble language discussing those changes, were controversial. In its most simple form, critics of increasing the stringency of the current regulations ask why significant changes were needed after 20 years of greater protection offered by the existing regulatory requirements. Others, not surprisingly, cite reported (and unreported) incidents as proof for the need nonetheless to improve the extent and effectiveness of the current regulations. EPA’s final rule represented EPA’s attempt to balance these views, although many in the industry and in the states believe EPA’s rule was a great over-reach. One of the most controversial elements in the final rule allows for third party representatives of farmworkers to ask growers to examine records.

Issues about the need for and possible intrusiveness of the requirement have remained controversial, and now with a Republican Administration and Congress it is expected that EPA will revise the rule, or else face a legislative directive to eliminate or change the third-party inspection provisions.

The final rule is scheduled to be published on January 4, 2017, with an effective date of March 6, 2017. The proposed rule generated significant controversy and concern from grower groups, registrants, and states who would implement the new requirements.  Although EPA has discussed updating these requirements for many years with stakeholder groups, consensus on the types of changes and improvements needed and feasible remains the subject of considerable contention.  The proposed rule generated significant controversy and concern from grower groups, registrants, and states who would implement the new requirements.

Although EPA has discussed updating these requirements for many years with stakeholder groups, consensus on the types of changes and improvements needed and feasible remains the subject of considerable contention.

Reauthorization of the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act (PRIA)

The Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2003 (PRIA) established a fee schedule for pesticide registration- and amendment-related applications, and specified decision time periods in which EPA must make a regulatory decision. PRIA has been reauthorized twice, and currently is scheduled to expire at the end of this federal fiscal year, on September 30, 2017. As was the case for PRIA and its prior reauthorizations, a coalition of registrants, labor, and environmental advocates are working with Congress to pass what will be “PRIA 4” by the end of the fiscal year.

With each reauthorization of PRIA, there have been increases in the number of fee categories based on the ongoing experience with this pay-for-service program, and increases in the fees themselves (typically five percent). There also have been provisions addressing the federal annual maintenance fees, and money set aside to fund specific projects. Similar changes in PRIA 4 reasonably may be expected.

While PRIA reauthorization is unlikely to be high on Congress’ or the new Administration’s list of priorities, we understand that the House and Senate Agriculture and Appropriate Committees recognize that all stakeholders are counting on Congress to pass this legislation, to allow the pesticide program to continue to function and secure certainty for the regulated community.

http://www.natlawreview.com/article/environmental-predictions-2017-office-pesticide-programs

[Cidersomerset]

Death and Extinction of the Bees

By David on 5 January 2017 GMT

https://www.davidicke.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/get-attachment-41.jpg

Death and Extinction of the Bees

By Joachim Hagopian
Global Research, January 04, 2017


Scientists have recently reported that mass extinctions of marine animals may soon be
occurring at alarmingly rapid rates than previously projected due to pollution, rising water
temperatures and loss of habitat. Many land species also face a similar fate for the same
reasons. But perhaps the biggest foreboding danger of all facing humans is the loss of
the global honeybee population. The consequence of a dying bee population impacts man
at the highest levels on our food chain, posing an enormously grave threat to human
survival. Since no other single animal species plays a more significant role in producing
the fruits and vegetables that we humans commonly take for granted yet require near
daily to stay alive, the greatest modern scientist Albert Einstein once prophetically remarked,
“Mankind will not survive the honeybees’ disappearance for more than five years.”


http://www.globalresearch.ca/death-and-extinction-of-the-bees/5375684

[mischief]

Hi WIlliam,
You are amazing!
Thank you for all the information you so tirelessly provide!

I thought you would like to know that I finally got my courage up to get bees to look after.
I have had a hive to house them in for some time now and did hope to attract a swarm. When that didnt happen, I wound up buying a nuc.
On Sunday,the seller and his wife brought them up for me.

I was going to collect them, but when they learned that these were my first ever, they drove an hour and a half to help me install them in their new home.( I did pay them extra, unasked for, in appreciation for this).
I think they were pleased to find that even though I was a complete newbee, I had been studying up and did have a realistic idea of what I was geting into.
I dont think they had seen a chest hive before or one with an observation window in it and I was able to explain the hows and whys of it.
When I mentioned that I had been studying up for the last 18 months(it has actually been more like 3 years), the relieved look on ther faces was almost comical.
It was good to see that these bees were not just a money maker and that they really did care about where they were going to and that they would be looked after properly.( and that I passed muster!)

They were installed in the morning and by mid afternoon it started to rain and continued to do so for a couple of days, so I was getting a bit worried.
Since then its been clear skys and I have enjoyed sitting next to the hive watching them do their orientation flights and then flying off to collect nectar and pollen.

With the observation window, I can see how they are doing without having to open up the hive.
it also has a mesh screen floor with slide out trays all squared up so I can do mite counts. I discovered that I could tell which frames they are working on by the level of debris on the tray- so far no mites.

One thing I saw through this window that I had heard about but never seen before, was that the young bees produce wax flakes on their abdomen. One bee walked over the glass and I could clearly see these wax flakes between the segments of her abdomen!

[william r sanford72]

Hi WIlliam,
You are amazing!
Thank you for all the information you so tirelessly provide!

I thought you would like to know that I finally got my courage up to get bees to look after.
I have had a hive to house them in for some time now and did hope to attract a swarm. When that didnt happen, I wound up buying a nuc.
On Sunday,the seller and his wife brought them up for me.

I was going to collect them, but when they learned that these were my first ever, they drove an hour and a half to help me install them in their new home.( I did pay them extra, unasked for, in appreciation for this).
I think they were pleased to find that even though I was a complete newbee, I had been studying up and did have a realistic idea of what I was geting into.
I dont think they had seen a chest hive before or one with an observation window in it and I was able to explain the hows and whys of it.
When I mentioned that I had been studying up for the last 18 months(it has actually been more like 3 years), the relieved look on ther faces was almost comical.
It was good to see that these bees were not just a money maker and that they really did care about where they were going to and that they would be looked after properly.( and that I passed muster!)

They were installed in the morning and by mid afternoon it started to rain and continued to do so for a couple of days, so I was getting a bit worried.
Since then its been clear skys and I have enjoyed sitting next to the hive watching them do their orientation flights and then flying off to collect nectar and pollen.

With the observation window, I can see how they are doing without having to open up the hive.
it also has a mesh screen floor with slide out trays all squared up so I can do mite counts. I discovered that I could tell which frames they are working on by the level of debris on the tray- so far no mites.

One thing I saw through this window that I had heard about but never seen before, was that the young bees produce wax flakes on their abdomen. One bee walked over the glass and I could clearly see these wax flakes between the segments of her abdomen!

Wow! Thank You for the kind words and courage to try keeping/Protecting the Bees and....how serious you took the task of learning about them first....also to the beekeeping couple so willing to help and guide you.This is an example of how caring and awareness added to knowledge leads to wisdom for some.Very Cool..:sun:...Question... chest hive??..are you referring to a Ukrainian style of beekeeping or Treasure Chest type of hive for Australias native stingless bees or inspired and customized for the honeybee? If you have mentioned this before in previous thread/post I'm sorry for the lapse of memory.Observation hive added sounds pretty neat As watching them work undisturbed is inspiring and educational all in one..just my op.

:heart:
William.

[william r sanford72]

While researching more on the chest hive I bumped into The Bee Barrel from 2015....

Bee Barrels, A Whole New Hive Using Modern Technology

Meet Cody Adams, a beekeeper with a dream of a different kind of bee hive.  He is the inventor of the “Bee Barrel” hive system.

The Bee Barrel is not what you expect a bee hive to look like.  As a matter of fact, it won’t even work the same way you expect a typical bee hive to work.

It’s design is definitely based on the classic six sided cell in a wax comb.  The way it connects together almost seems like something right out of a science fiction show.

http://techdissected.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/mainbeebox2-500x332.jpg

Cody was struck with a idea back in about 2003 while mowing his lawn.  He saw his log pile, one of them had fallen and fallen to the ground on it’s side.  Being a beekeeper, naturally, he thought that it could easily become a location that bees would make a home in.  His imagination took off from there and after a few years and more bad news about CCD and other bee problems, the Bee Barrel began to take shape.

At first this looks like it could be a horizontal hive.  However, paying closer attention to the way it is set up, it is more like a conventional hive than we first expect.  However, with this hive, the frames themselves make up the body of the hive.  There are no boxes to place frames in.  The frames ARE the box!

http://techdissected.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beeboxun1-500x332.jpg

Talking with Cody on the phone about his new hive, the Bee Barrel, you find yourself getting more excited as the excitement in his voice increases telling you about it.  He started with a wood based model to see how the bees would take to the general shape and layout of the hive.  Would they take to it or would they abandon it?  In the Spring of 2014, he started two of the hives with a package of Carnolean and a package of Italian bees.  Within three days the queens were laying eggs in the cells and the hives took off from there.

Taking notes from the void spaces that honey bees occupy in trees and logs on wall thicknesses and general dimensions, Cody started his design for the rings that make up the Bee Barrel.  He is a self described naturalist and believes that the bees have a lot to tell us about what and how bees need to thrive. He believes, and I personally agree, that beekeeping is most successful when we allow the bees to let us know what they need rather than to force bees into conditions and environments that do not necessarily have the bees best interests in mind.

It is his basic principle when he started his project that the work must be beneficial to the bees first, then to the beekeepers and finally, the work must be beneficial to science itself.  In that last idea, I get that he means that the work must make good use and intent of science, and not to leave the name and works of scientific pursuits in a negative way.  I may be wrong, but it is an admirable goal even at that standpoint.

Each frame has a circular center filled with about a ten and one half inch diameter of foundation.  In the original design, they started with a fourteen inch diameter center and it’s possible that may return in a different version of the hive in the future.  The outer dimensions of each ring are sixteen and one quarter inch in diameter.  The rings will sit easily just over the top of a five gallon pail.  There’s a reason for that which we will get to in just a bit.

http://techdissected.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beebarrelring-332x500.jpg

The rings themselves stack into each other to create a weatherproof connection to each other in the “barrel”.  Openings in the tops and bottoms of the rings allow bees to move up and down into the rings when the “barrels” are stacked on top of each other.  The idea of each Bee Barrel is to create some kind of stacking layers of barrels similar to the way that boxes are stacked on top of each other in a conventional Langstroth hive.  Essentially, the brood would be in a bottom barrel and the honey would be “supered” in the “Bee Barrels” stacked above.

http://techdissected.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beebarrelbottomholes-500x281.jpg
Holes in the bottom allow bees from the lower barrel to come up into the top barrel.

The Bee Barrel has a front ring which comes with an optional gate or closure which can be kept fully open, fully closed or partially open.  This entrance ring is on each barrel in the front ring.  That means each level or stacked barrel has it’s own entrance in addition to the holes in the bottoms and tops of the rings to allow for upward and downward traffic.  In the heat of summer with multiple stacks of barrels (supers?) going higher up, each barrel having it’s own entrance might be a good idea to aid in traffic going directly to honey combs and improved airflow through the hive.

http://techdissected.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beebarrelentrance-500x281.jpg

The multiple rings in the Bee Barrel are held together by two rods which keep the rings snug and tight together. this keeps each barrel as one big unit and easy to handle and carry.  Eventually, the rings will be made of a poly product which will make each Bee Barrel perhaps about ten pounds or so lighter than a conventional Langstroth single level hive.  The idea of using poly materials to make a bee hive isn’t unique to the Bee Barrel but the ability to make a bee hive that is lighter to handle, weather resistant, has built in insulation qualities and is environmentally friendly is something Cody and his helpers think is certainly something worth pursuing.  In mass production, this can make parts considerably more affordable to make and pass the savings on to beekeepers as well.

http://techdissected.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beebarrelrod-500x281.jpg

Another aspect of making the parts with polypropylene or similar materials is that they can last without warping or any considerable damage to them for at least eight to nine years.  I have seen some poly coolers and bee equipment last for decades, so longevity really shouldn’t be an issue.

One thing I personally can see is the ease of making easy nucs and splits with a hive system like this.  One of the questions I asked Cody was how the use of propolis was affected.  On his main web site and in the video on his Kickstarter page, he refers to the points that the bees seemingly only sparingly make use of propolis in between the rings and there is virtually no cross-comb or burr comb between the rings.

As many new inventions and startups face, there are some challenges they face going forward.  Cody remains optimistic though these issues will be smoothed out.  One of the things he is looking at is condensation.  Poly materials when faced with humidity and airborne moisture tend to “sweat” and collect condensation.  This is an issue he has already been putting a lot of thought into.  Honey harvesting is another area that his group is working to address.

Do you remember earlier when I mentioned that the rings fit on the top of a five gallon pail?  This is how the Bee Barrel is extracted, at least, for now.  The caps are scratched or cut as they normally would be in regular frames then placed face down on the five gallon pail to drip drain into the pail.  The warmer the honey, the faster it will drain.  He was excited to mention that along with the Bee Barrel hive, he is also designing a new type of forced pressure extraction system that will work specifically with the  Bee Barrel rings.  One of the things he thinks will be most appealing about the system, though he couldn’t mention any specifics yet, is that he expects it to have a smaller physical footprint and cost less than a conventional extractor.

http://techdissected.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/beebarrelback-500x281.jpg
The back board of the Bee Barrel is where the connection rods screw into and has a feeder built in.

This is an exciting foray into bee hive technology.  The design totally eliminates tops, bottoms and frames in the conventional sense.  The goal is to get things together so that the Bee Barrels can be sold to the public at an affordable price.  That is one of the main reasons for the Kickstarter project Cody started recently, to get funding to start putting together the designs, tools and materials to make the poly parts and make them all work together.

Another interesting development for Bee Barrels is that because the poly rings will be molded, spaces can be made right into the ring to allow for implementing technology such as sensors, transmitters, perhaps even some type of fan or other devices made to improve airflow and other issues. It is a very adaptable model and the potential to expand and improve can literally be built in.

It’s been years in the making and there’s no immediate date that everything will be ready and available for the public. A lot of work still needs to be done and a lot of testing and development remains to be done. Having said that, it’s very exciting to see beekeepers out there making new things happen. There will be early adopters who take a bold step to support Cody and company’s efforts and I, for one, hope there will be plenty of beekeepers willing and ready to be one of those early adopters.  There are so many projects that get started but never see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I plan to keep following the Bee Barrel project and hopefully, get to do a review on it someday soon. We are ready here to do a thorough and objective trial run and let folks know how well it performs. There are plans already taking effect to add more content to his website and give the public an opportunity to follow the progress of Bee Barrels.

http://techdissected.com/alternative-tech/bee-barrels-a-whole-new-hive-using-modern-technology/

[william r sanford72]

Campaigners call for pesticide restrictions to be extended to wheat

Friday 06 January 2017

Current EU restrictions on neonicotinoid pesticides must be extended to wheat to protect bees and other wildlife, campaigners at the Oxford Farming Conference said on Thursday.

http://www.farming.co.uk/images/Bee_Clover.jpg

Launching a new report on the controversial pesticides, Friends of the Earth said that restrictions introduced by the EU Commission in December 2013, which are up for reevaluation this year, should be extended in light of evidence of the threat they pose to wildlife. Three neonicotinoids were restricted after the EU food safety watchdog EFSA concluded that they pose a “high acute risk” to honeybees; the restriction is based on crops attractive to bees, but Friends of the Earth highlighted that new evidence released since 2013 has shown the pesticides present a risk to other forms of wildlife.

One restricted neonic (clothianidin) is widely used on wheat. In 2014 it was used on over 700,000 ha of the crop in the UK - an area greater than the total oilseed rape area, though OSR is covered by restrictions.

Friends of the Earth pointed to research showing that neonicotinoids from treated seeds can remain in the soil, or be taken up in wildflowers next to treated crops, which can be attractive to bees, and that bees and other insects can be exposed to dust drifting from treated crops after they are sown.

Campaigners said new studies have shown birds could be harmed by eating treated seeds, treatments could affect earthworms’ mortality, reproduction and behaviour and that neonicotinoids entering water can harm to aquatic invertebrates, such as freshwater shrimp, which could have a knock on impact on fish including salmon. Studies have also shown these chemicals are harming natural predators: the insects which farmers rely upon for pest control.
 
Friends of the Earth is one of 18 wildlife and environment groups calling on Defra secretary Andrea Leadsom to extend the ban and offer assurances that farmers will be supported to help wildlife - and cut pesticide use - in a post-Brexit farming policy.
 
Speaking at the Oxford Farming Conference on Wednesday, Dr Colin Ruscoe, President of the British Crop Production Council, urged the Defra leadership to plough in the opposite direction after Brexit. Dr Ruscoe said Brexit provides an opportunity to abandon the ‘hazard-based’ assessments the EU uses for chemical regulations, which are rooted in the precautionary principle, in favour of a fully risk-based approach to product registration, taking cues form the United States’ EPA system.

Though he acknowledged that future regulations should ensure that trade with the EU and other global regions can continue, he said, “We can get real benefits from ‘Brexit’ for UK food production by maximising science-based, proportionate decision-making” and, alluding to highly controversial regulatory cases from the past year such as glyphosate and neonicotinoids, demanded an end to “Political interference in the regulatory process.”

However, on Thursday Friends of the Earth nature campaigner Sandra Bell said, “There is increasing scientific evidence that the use of neonicotinoids on wheat poses a threat to our bees, birds and butterflies – current restrictions on these pesticides must be extended to cover this crop. We can’t afford to gamble with nature in this way if we are to carry on producing British food and safeguarding the health of our countryside.
 
“The UK government must back a complete ban on neonicotinoid pesticides – and commit to helping farmers to grow food without harming the environment as a central part of its post-Brexit farming policy.“

http://farming.co.uk/news/article/13181

[william r sanford72]

Will Neonicotinoids Be Banned in 2017?

Published on Jan 6, 2017

It’s a brand new year that awaits the changing of the guard as a new administration takes the helm. This year is already filled with eagerness in anticipation of a number of possibilities regarding the environment, both good and bad. Although, some of key focal points are energy and climate change, it will be very interesting to see if any progress is made to protect our pollinators. Meanwhile, industry hasn’t wasted a single minute and has begun its routine of spewing out rhetoric in hopes of maintaining huge profits while beekeepers struggle to keep their bees alive.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the impact of neonicotinoids on pollinators is being carefully monitored and reviewed. In a recent paper, the lethal impact proves to be the cause for the decline in birds. Tune in to this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald discuss these issues.

www.theorganicview.com.

60UYK2QbVH8

[mischief]

Hi William,
I dont remember what thew Ukraninan hive is like, I'll check it out. I dont think it is like the Aussie one either-never actually heard about those.
It is a chest hive because you open it's lid like a chest. It is not like the 'conventional' Langstroth hive or Warre hives. These boxes stacked on top of each other.

In my one, the frames sit in a box that has a cover and a weather proof lid that is hinged.
The bees make use of the frames horizontally not vertically. There is no heavy lifting involved, I only have to lift out each frame to check it for disease or to harvest honey, not a whole box load of frames.

I love the concept of the bee barrel. I am going to have to check this out further.
At some point I am going to build my own hive. This has alot of really good points.

[william r sanford72]

Hi William,
I dont remember what thew Ukraninan hive is like, I'll check it out. I dont think it is like the Aussie one either-never actually heard about those.
It is a chest hive because you open it's lid like a chest. It is not like the 'conventional' Langstroth hive or Warre hives. These boxes stacked on top of each other.

In my one, the frames sit in a box that has a cover and a weather proof lid that is hinged.
The bees make use of the frames horizontally not vertically. There is no heavy lifting involved, I only have to lift out each frame to check it for disease or to harvest honey, not a whole box load of frames.

I love the concept of the bee barrel. I am going to have to check this out further.
At some point I am going to build my own hive. This has alot of really good points.

Sounds great esp the none heavy lifting and stacking.Some of the images and articles I came across yesterday referd to a treasure chest type of hive with hinges.The look of em and concept was pretty neat.Thank you for answering my question and Peaking my Curiosity...always something new to learn.

:heart:

[william r sanford72]

Unusual Thermal Images Of A Winter Cluster

http://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1CameraFinal.png

Thermal cameras have become an important part of my colony management and a tool for my scientific research.

Wyatt Mangum

In Bee Culture (March 2016), I showed how to use a thermal camera to observe colonies in the Winter. Some of those images (called heat signatures) from the Winter of 2014/15 did not fit into the expected behavior of bees forming winter clusters in top-bar hives. This article examines the unusual heat signatures of Hive 11, a three-foot long top-bar hive.

In Figure 1, the upper panel shows Hive 11 as it appears in the apiary with its metal cover removed. The lower panel shows its typical heat signature for mid January at 24˚F. The oval white pattern represents the warmest temperature corresponding to the central part of a Winter cluster. The other surrounding colors represent progressively cooler temperatures, a band of red, a wider band of yellow, a thin band of green, fading into the coolest background color of blue.  

http://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1Mangum-300x289.png
Figure 1.

A convenient feature of a top-bar hive is that the combs can be numbered and used to indicate places in the hive from the entrance end of the hive. In Figure 1, I numbered the first 10 top-bar combs from the entrance end. Unlike a standard frame hive, the top-bar combs have a unique order from the entrance end of the hive.  The number zero marks a narrow wooden cleat, which helps me gain access to Comb 1. From the heat signature of Hive 11, I would expect to encounter the Winter cluster on the back side of Comb 1, where the white color begins. The bees are not directly adjacent to the entrances. They have an empty comb barrier, which is typical, although large clusters may lack one. I expect the cluster would end somewhere near the back side of Comb 4, where the white color ends. 

On January 20, 2016, a complicated heat signature appeared on Hive 11, comprising three main unusual features. First, a heart-shaped pattern shown in Figure 2 (upper panel) replaced the oval pattern of Figure 1 (lower panel). Second, the lobes of the heart pattern had different temperatures. The lobe temperatures, simplified as warmer and cooler, changed left and right positions, during the day. The warmer left lobe (morning) became the cooler left lobe (afternoon). Likewise, the cooler right lobe (morning) became the warmer lobe (afternoon). Third, the vertical position of the right lobe seemed to have risen over the day changing the tilt of the heart pattern.  

http://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2Mangum-300x296.png
Figure 2.

Now let’s look at Figure 2 in detail, starting from the left. In the morning, the left lobe appears to dominate with a brighter area of white, indicating a warmer temperature. The warmest place of the left lobe yielded a surface temperature of 10.8˚F marked near the left black diamond. The left lobe tilted up with a white core beginning near the back side of Comb 2, and continuing until near the front side of Comb 4.  

In the middle of the heat signature, under Comb 4 appeared a cooler region (shown in red), which separated the lobes. That cool dividing region persisted over the day. What caused it to appear?  That location in the middle should have been the warmest part of the heat signature.
Overall the right lobe in the morning was cooler with its warmest surface temperature only 1.9˚F taken near the right black diamond.  The right lobe was smaller and lower on the hive.  Its white core began near the back side of Comb 4, continued as shown, until near the back side of Comb 6.  

In the afternoon, the approximate ambient temperature increased from 0˚F to 22˚F, well below when clusters would show activity (at least on the cluster surface). The day remained clear with little wind in the apiary. The sun could slightly warm the Figure 2 side of the hive, shining evenly on it until noon. Other hives in the apiaries had the same sun exposure, but they did not show the heart-shaped heat signature. 

By the afternoon, the warmth of the lobes appeared to reverse. The lower panel of Figure 2 shows the left lobe seemed to have diminished considerably, much less of the warmest white color, compared to the right lobe of white warmth. However in the afternoon, the camera used a different temperature color scale to account for the new higher temperatures in the 30s˚F. In the region of the left lobe from the morning, the black diamond had been reassigned from morning-white to afternoon-red. So the left lobe was there, even with a warm core (faint afternoon white) between Combs 3 and 4. The warmest place of the left lobe yielded a temperature of 30.1˚F marked near the left black cross.  The new warmer lobe on the right dominated, high up on the hive (bright afternoon white), on Combs 5 and 6 marked by the right black cross, which was the warmest location on the right. The warmest place of the right lobe yielded a temperature of 35.4˚F marked near the right black cross. (I “plotted” the black diamonds from the morning on the lower afternoon panel to indicate the approximate shift in the warmest regions.) 

The next morning on the 21st, Figure 3 (upper panel) showed the heart-shaped heat signature had not returned, only an oval, somewhat similar to the one on January 17, 2016 (see Figure 1), but this one was more compact.  The next morning on the 22nd, the heart pattern seemed to be returning with the left lobe the warmest at 22˚F, like Figure 2. (I could not return for an afternoon reading.)  

http://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3Mangum-234x300.png
Figure 3.

In the two previous figures (Figures 2 and 3), the other side of Hive 11 showed only a red amorphous heat signature (no pattern). On February 12, 2016 that abruptly changed. Now both sides of Hive 11 showed novel heat signatures (see Figure 4). The upper panels show the heat signatures of the sides of the hive. The panels below show close-ups of the corresponding heat signatures above. The close ups show the white core regions appearing as a horizontal “rod” on the left and a “triangle” on the right.

Even more striking, these heat signatures showed a sudden transition from the warmest white core to the blue coldest region directly above. The intermediate colors (red, yellow and green) were squeezed into very narrow bands.  That represented a rapid temperature reduction from warm to cold, or white to blue. Given that heat rises, a more gradual gradient from warm (lower) up to cold (higher) should have occurred as in the other images (for example see Figure 1, lower panel). What happened to cause such a severe change to cold? I marked “Cold” on Figure 4 where the region seems too cold given the closeness of the cluster heat. I wondered if this cold above the cluster was a cold air current flowing over the cluster. If so, I would I expect to see it more often, but I only observed Hive 11 for a couple of days with this pattern, although I could not check the hive often.  Another mystery.

http://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4Mangum-300x203.png
Figure 4.

I definitely wanted to inspect Hive 11 come Spring. I can inspect my top-bar hives in frigid Winter cold, even at night, even when it is raining or snowing. I only do that in dire conditions or when I need to collect data at a specific time. I considered conducting a limited inspection, just going into the ends of the Winter cluster and seeing its closeness to the hive walls. However when studying bees, patience is of prime importance, particularly when seeing something new. A Winter hive inspection could easily destroy the unusual heat signatures, although the disruption would be fairly minimal. Nevertheless, I waited. When I finally inspected Hive 11, guess what? Normal. Nothing out of the ordinary, at least by early Spring, long after the unusual heat signatures had ceased.  

Hive 11 showed the thermal camera might become more than a diagnostic tool indicating the survival status of a colony as shown in Bee Culture (March 2016). The temperature changes in the heart-shaped pattern might be revealing something about changes in the winter cluster, but I need more temperature data than from one hive. Similar heart-shaped patterns appeared on other hives, but I could not collect much data from them, given their distances. (However, overall the heart-shaped pattern seems rare.) This Winter (2016/17), I am using a larger sample of top-bar hives, closer to home, and in various designs.  Some hives have removable glass sides allowing direct thermal photography of the cluster, avoiding any heat distortion through the wooden sides.  Hive 11 is at my home apiary where I can observe it daily.

This Winter my thermal work should keep me busy in my apiaries, hopefully to explain these heat signatures and perhaps observe new ones.

http://www.beeculture.com/unusual-thermal-images-winter-cluster/

[william r sanford72]

The Thing About Urban Beekeeping
Beekeeping in the city is just like beekeeping in the country—except when it's not.

http://hobbyfarms.com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/03160221/bee-urban_800-600x347.jpg

Beekeepers across the world face many of the same universal issues, including how to care for their bees in extreme weather, how much honey to harvest—if any—and how to deal with varroa mites. In most ways, beekeepers are united under similar needs and goals. While individual beekeepers may bicker about how to tackle a certain issue, you can be certain they’re all in the same beekeeping boat.

Until it comes to where you keep your bees, that is.

Given the additional hurdles to clear, city dwellers are unique among beekeepers. While similar to their country counterparts, urban apiarists must also tackle the following issues.

City Regulations

Wannabe urban beekeepers must first determine if beekeeping is legal within their municipality. If it is, there are other regulations you must follow, including how many hives are allowed and restrictions on hive location. The wisest course of action is to know those rules very well before bringing home any buzzing compadres.

Neighbors

Whether curious and well-meaning or nosy and nit-picky, relationships with neighbors are waters that every urban beekeeper must navigate. Just about any exchange can be sweetened with honey, but it’s best to have everything in order before you bring bees home. It’s also helpful to be well-versed on the ins and outs of beekeeping and honeybee behavior, so you’re able to quell any fears and discuss any concerns your neighbors may have.

Uncontrollable Bee Diets

Bees that forage in the city are subject to whatever is in or near those city limits. Remember that honeybees forage in a 3 mile radius around their hive—and up to 6 miles in dire conditions—and urbanites with small plots of land are never truly equipped to plant enough forage for bees to consume exclusively. Just check out the mystery of the red honey from the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Limited Space

This one goes without saying, right? You’re a city dweller, so your bathroom likely doubles as storage for your kitchen gadget and your craft room. Well, you and your honeybees have something in common: Apis mellifera doesn’t need a lot of space. They even live vertically, just like you do, plus their housing is rather compact.

Vandalism

Unfortunately, urban apiaries are more likely to be vandalized, damaged or stolen. This isn’t to say honeybees are explicitly safe in rural areas, but this should factor in as you consider spacing and location for your hives.

Despite the hurdles, keeping bees in the city has its perks. For one, forage can be really unusual and varied, giving your bees quite a range of plants to visit and giving you a most unusual honey varietal. You’re also likely to have really amazing beekeeping clubs, and as such, you’ll be able to get to know many beekeepers who run the gamut of experience and opinion. (The latter being something we beekeepers have no shortage of.) It’ll also be quite easy to source beekeeping equipment, nucs, and packages for sale in the spring. If you can be creative and make it work for you, urban beekeeping has no less thrills than the country kind—and maybe even more.

http://www.hobbyfarms.com/the-thing-about-urban-beekeeping-2/

[william r sanford72]

Health of Honeybees over profits?

Almond industry puts bee health front and center

California almond industry boosts discussions about honeybees; growers encouraged to plant more cover crops to aid in bee forage opportunities

http://www.westernfarmpress.com/sites/westernfarmpress.com/files/styles/article_featured_standard/public/Bees-next-to-road.jpg?itok=5NgVsXh2

Perhaps more important to the sustained growth of almond production in California isn’t the water, though that is a vital component, but the tiny creatures imported to California for several weeks each year to make sure those trees produce a crop.

Almonds need bees for pollination; lots of bees. Without bees, the almond tree is just another shade tree.

As each year the bearing acreage of almonds increases – now over 1 million – the industry could be faced with a dilemma as the number of bee colonies in the United States may be insufficient to pollinate those trees. At the recommended two honeybee colonies per acre, growers are already pushing the limit of the nation’s supply of almost 2.6 million colonies, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures.

Not all the nation’s honeybees are brought into California for almond pollination. Some beekeepers choose to keep colonies out of the pollination period for a variety of reasons.

Perhaps more important to the sustained growth of almond production in California isn’t the water, though that is a vital component, but the tiny creatures imported to California for several weeks each year to make sure those trees produce a crop.

Almonds need bees for pollination; lots of bees. Without bees, the almond tree is just another shade tree.

As each year the bearing acreage of almonds increases – now over 1 million – the industry could be faced with a dilemma as the number of bee colonies in the United States may be insufficient to pollinate those trees. At the recommended two honeybee colonies per acre, growers are already pushing the limit of the nation’s supply of almost 2.6 million colonies, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures.

Not all the nation’s honeybees are brought into California for almond pollination. Some beekeepers choose to keep colonies out of the pollination period for a variety of reasons.

National honeybee numbers continue to be stressed by a variety of factors that researchers continue to study and the Almond Board of California (ABC) would like to rectify as the marketing order charges ahead with plans to market 25 percent more nuts by 2020.

The most recent USDA count of honeybee colonies in the U.S., released last spring, shows the number of colonies were down 8 percent to 2.59 million as of Jan., 2016.

Looming on the horizon is the projected 25 percent increase in total almond production by 2020 – upwards of 2.6 billion pounds of nuts could be harvested by then as trees planted in the past several years come into production.

That announcement at the Almond Conference in Sacramento, Calif. in early December led several beekeepers and brokers to ask out loud: “Where will the bees come from?”

One bee broker said he was significantly short of available bees last year and suspects he will be similarly short of colonies again this year.

Read More:
http://www.westernfarmpress.com/bees/almond-industry-puts-bee-health-front-and-center

[william r sanford72]

Neonicotinoid pesticide affects foraging and social interaction in bumblebees
January 9, 2017

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/neonicotinoi.jpg
Neonicotinoid Pesticide Affects Foraging and Social Interaction in Bumblebees. Credit: Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB)

In a plastic, lasercut box blacked out with paint and lit with red light, worker bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) go about their daily activities: interacting with fellow adults, extracting food from honey pots, feeding larvae, and occasionally venturing out to forage for nectar. While this nest is far from normal, the bees that live here have adapted to their new space remarkably well. Still, all is not well within the nest, and not because of its strange form. Some bees have abandoned their daily patterns and are spending more time alone, on the periphery. Others are spending less time caring for the utterly dependent larvae that will become the next generation of bumblebees.

Within the nest, the chaotic center of bumblebee life, social behavior and interactions are crucial for bee population health and the production of young. When social behavior and the care of young changes, population numbers become more susceptible to decline. James Crall, a postdoc with the Planetary Health Alliance at Harvard University, graduate student Callin Switzer and colleagues have linked these changes in social behavior with sublethal exposure to the neonicotinoid pesticide, imidacloprid.

For their study, Crall developed an 'automated behavioral tracking system' that allows a computer connected to cameras within the nest to recognize individual bees and create data points that indicate position and proximity to others. "Bumblebee nests are not the organized, beautiful geometry of the honeybee," said Crall. Instead, "they're more a hodge-podge of food and larvae in a pile in the middle of the nest space." This automated tracking system allowed Crall to see into "messy, complex, realistic, individual scenes" and could be adapted for use in natural environments.

While it might seem like the hardest part of this experiment would be development of a tracking system, Crall said the process of tagging each bee was both an art and a science, a "race against time" to glue on tags before the bees woke up, and "by far the hardest and slowest part of the experiment." Tagging a colony of bees could consume entire days, while bee movement within nests was only recorded for a few hours. After tagging, bees were observed before and after exposure to imidacloprid. Crall then evaluated millions of data points to assess behavioral changes among treated bees. He found that bees exposed to the pesticide reduced the frequency of brood care and tended to gravitate towards the perimeter of the nest, becoming less social.

Outside the nest, this neonicotinoid also has significant effects on pollination and foraging behavior. Callin Switzer, a PhD student at Harvard University, worked to study the effects of imidacloprid on pollination behavior. Specifically, Switzer focused on buzz pollination, the ability of bumblebees to forage on and pollinate certain types of plants, using vibrations. Before exposing bees to imidacloprid, Switzer recorded the sound of bees foraging on tomato blossoms. These same bees were then exposed to the neonicotinoid and allowed to resume foraging. However, bees exposed to imidacloprid, at doses similar to those encountered in a single day, were less likely to resume foraging than unexposed bees.

Imagine it's summer, and in a field by the side of the road, rows on rows of tomato plants wait to be pollinated and produce their delicious fruit. These plants reproduce more following buzz pollination, a service eastern bumble bees are uniquely equipped to provide. However, these tomato plants are covered in imidacloprid, and when bumblebees forage here, they are exposed to sublethal levels of this pesticide. As the season progresses and exposure to imidacloprid increases, bees are still present, but they begin to forage less, don't care for their young as often, and social interactions change. Outside the nest, a decrease in foraging by affected bumblebees could contribute to lessened crop production and colony food supplies. Within the nest, altered social networks and a decrease in caring for young could lead to population declines in future generations. As the single most important native pollinator species in North America, continued use of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid could have far-reaching effects on the survival of the common eastern bumblebee and the plants they pollinate.

Explore further: Pesticide poisoning stops bees from finding flowers, new research shows

More information: Callin M. Switzer et al. The neonicotinoid pesticide, imidacloprid, affects Bombus impatiens (bumblebee) sonication behavior when consumed at doses below the LD50, Ecotoxicology (2016). DOI: 10.1007/s10646-016-1669-z


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2017-01-neonicotinoid-pesticide-affects-foraging-social.html#jCp

[william r sanford72]

Why Are So Many Bee Trucks Tipping Over?

Maybe the bees are trying to tell us something.

N
early a year ago, I became aware of The Tipping Bee Truck Catastrophe, an ostensibly common occurrence the name itself describes. Spotting article after article about tipped-over bee-carrying trucks at a somewhat alarming rate, I gleaned that American truck drivers were being irresponsible as hell with our Precious Bees, either driving too quickly or turning too sharply, flinging themselves and their cargo onto their side, and releasing, according to my careful calculations, no fewer than 100 million bees in the past few years. Hi Seamless, America would like a billion EpiPens, thanks.

Typically, semi-trucks that transport bees share a similar purpose and straightforward trajectory: Stop by a honey or bee purveyor, load up to millions of honey bees by the hive in the truck, and transport them (often across state lines and often in the Western US) to pollinate farms of anything from Hass avocado trees to almond groves to donut peach trees. Because you shouldn’t stop driving your bee truck in the middle of the day when it’s hot out, lest you want to simulate hell-like conditions in your cargo and send the bees into delirium, a smart transporter will start this procedure early in the morning, according to Modern Farmer.

http://modernfarmer.com/2013/05/bee-convoy-shipping-interstate-apiaries/

The first incident I noted was one in Delaware in 2014, when a truck tipped over on an on-ramp to I-95, unleashing an estimated 16 to 20 million bees near the small city of Newark. According to USA Today, the state police had a specific “bee swarm removal procedure” to enact, though a local sergeant was quoted saying that he believed “this [was] the first time [they had] actually activated the plan.” Though lucky to have not died upon tipping over, the three men in the truck were each stung by an estimated 50 to 100 bees, which almost definitely felt like dying, but very slowly. A witness “saw one of the younger men ‘running in traffic, ripping his shirt off and smacking himself,’ as cars swerved to avoid him,” according to the article.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/20/bees-delaware-highway-ramp/9357161/

It kept happening. In 2015, 13 million honey bees broke free from a turned-over truck in Washington state, and as many as “gillions and gillions” found a new home off I-35 in Oklahoma, according to local reports. During the Bad Year, Wyoming, North Carolina, and Missouri all witnessed bee truck tips. There has unfortunately not been any follow-up regarding the number of consequential bee stings suffered.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/04/17/truck-carrying-millions-of-bees-tips-over-on-highway/?utm_term=.183e13432890

http://kfor.com/2015/09/29/overturned-semi-truck-dumps-honeybees-along-i-35/#ooid=M2dXl0dzodwLHC_Yzw9pyyCtTvMszZne

http://www.9news.com/news/local/semi-carrying-bees-rolls-over/179230327

http://www.wbtv.com/story/32166734/truck-carrying-bees-tractor-trailers-crash-on-i-85-cause-major-delays

I called Andy Sievers, a trucking safety expert, to find out why semi-trucks in general may tip over. Basically, it has to do with centrifugal force, and the higher the truck’s center of gravity, the more likely it will tip. It’s why so many semi-trucks — and the above bee-carrying trucks — tip over while getting on or off exit ramps.

“You’re turning the wheels and the cargo wants to go straight,” Sievers said. However, he also said that because bee-carrying trucks aren’t particularly tall, they shouldn’t have an exceptionally high tipping risk. Instead, he blamed the portrayal of the “trend” on everyone’s favorite ne’er do well: the media. “I think the reason those stories are published is because they’re about bees,” he said. “Paper rolls trucks also tip over and nobody really cares.”

I also spoke to the president of the American Honey Producers Association, Darren Cox, who, when asked if he was aware of The Tipping Bee Truck Catastrophe, said yes. He did not elaborate. I interrogated further into why he thought the trucks kept tipping over, he echoed Siever’s sentiments, saying “certainly if a load of bees gets in a wreck, it will get in all the news in comparison to lumber or anything else.” I was disappointed. Maybe this trend was not so much a trend, but more of an affirmation of our propensity for drama and the absurd.

However, in a spilled bee truck article from the Seattle Times in 2015, a professor of entomology at Washington State University throws out a speculation that could undermine all speculations. The unintentional agitator, who goes by the name Walter Sheppard, “[said] a couple of trucks carrying honeybees crash each year, but it doesn’t make as much of a buzz [ed. note: eyeroll] unless it’s near a city or major roadway.” So maybe the media disproportionately covers semi-truck accidents when bees are involved — but maybe mainstream media also disproportionately covers accidents with a closer proximity to larger cities. Maybe there are hundreds of bee trucks tipping over in tiny American towns and we don’t ever hear about it.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/rolled-semi-spills-load-of-bees-at-the-i-5-and-i-405-interchange/

All of this is to say that I have little more insight, except that you definitely shouldn’t trust anyone! Except for maybe bees, considering they continue to provide us avocados and almonds and blueberries and all the foods that we’ve pushed to the edge of extinction, including the bees themselves, because we’re reckless as hell. Maybe this is how the bees have reportedly recovered from their apocalyptic-sounding colony collapse — by escaping the trucks for a better life. Maybe we deserve to tip over our bee trucks and free the fuzzy insects from the claws of consumerism.

https://theawl.com/why-are-so-many-bee-trucks-tipping-over-9f4e17950d91#.exzsz8jtp

[william r sanford72]

Bombus affinis,...Sings the body electric.

Bumble Bee Species Is First In Continental U.S. To Be On Endangered List

The rusty patched bumble bee’s population and range have decreased about 90 percent in the last two decades.

http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/5875115917000085019293b4.jpeg?cache=pnghdghjod
A rusty patched bumble bee in a 2015 photo provided by Clay Bolt and the Xerces Society. U.S. officials classified the bee as endangered on Tuesday.

For the first time ever, federal officials have added a North American bumble bee to the endangered species list.

The rusty patched bumble bee, or Bombus affinis, has dwindled rapidly in recent decades, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said on Tuesday.

Historically, the pollinator spanned 28 states in the upper Midwest and Northeast, plus Washington D.C. and two Canadian provinces. Yet due to a handful of factors ― including the destruction of its native grassland habitat, disease, increased pesticide use, global climate change and intensive farming (which leads to a loss of crop diversity and flowering plants)

― the bee has only been spotted in 13 states and one Canadian province since 2000.

In terms of population and range, that’s a decrease of around 90 percent in the last two decades, the Natural Resources Defense Council says.

http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/crop_129_176_599_358,scalefit_630_noupscale/587512d4120000c301ad6b98.jpeg

“We are very pleased to see one of North America’s most imperiled species receive the protection it needs,” said Sarina Jepsen, the director of endangered species at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, in a statement. The Xerces Society petitioned the federal government to list the bee as endangered.

“Now that the Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the rusty patched bumble bee as endangered, it stands a chance of surviving the many threats it faces – from the use of neonicotinoid pesticides to diseases,” Jepsen said.

Officials estimate the economic value of native pollinators like the bumble bee at close to $3 billion per year. Crops like blueberries, cranberries and clover rely heavily on bumble bees, the USFWS says, and tomatoes are almost exclusively pollinated by them.

“Today’s endangered species listing is the best — and probably last — hope for the recovery of the rusty patched bumble bee,” said Rebecca Riley, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, in an email. “Bumble bees are dying off, vanishing from our farms, gardens, and parks, where they were once found in great numbers.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rusty-patched-bumble-bee-endangered_us_587500cbe4b099cdb0ff7fef

[Cidersomerset]

'BEE....BEE.... SEE'....News...


‘Rusty Patched’ bumble bee added to endangered species list – & more may join it

2VQd3OMHk6M

Published on 11 Jan 2017

The US has added a bee to the list of endangered species. The rusty patched
bumble bee has nearly disappeared from the continental US in the past two
decades, and three other kinds of bumble bees may soon follow suit.
RT America’s Brigida Santos joins Anya Parampil to discuss.

[william r sanford72]

News Releases from Headquarters›Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP)
EPA Releases the First of Four Preliminary Risk Assessments for Insecticides Potentially Harmful to Bees

WASHINGTON-- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a preliminary pollinator risk assessment for the neonicotinoid insecticide, imidacloprid, which shows a threat to some pollinators. EPA's assessment, prepared in collaboration with California's Department of Pesticide Regulation, indicates that imidacloprid potentially poses risk to hives when the pesticide comes in contact with certain crops that attract pollinators.

"Delivering on the President's National Pollinator Strategy means EPA is committed not only to protecting bees and reversing bee loss, but for the first time assessing the health of the colony for the neonicotinoid pesticides," said Jim Jones Assistant Administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. "Using science as our guide, this preliminary assessment reflects our collaboration with the State of California and Canada to assess the results of the most recent testing required by EPA."

The preliminary risk assessment identified a residue level for imidacloprid of 25 ppb, which sets a threshold above which effects on pollinator hives are likely to be seen, and at that level and below which effects are unlikely. These effects include decreases in pollinators as well as less honey produced. .

For example, data show that citrus and cotton may have residues of the pesticide in pollen and nectar above the threshold level. Other crops such as corn and leafy vegetables either do not produce nectar or have residues below the EPA identified level. Additional data is being generated on these and other crops to help EPA evaluate whether imidacloprid poses a risk to hives.

The imidacloprid assessment is the first of four preliminary pollinator risk assessments for the neonicotinoid insecticides. Preliminary pollinator risk assessments for three other neonicotinoids, clothianidin, thiamethoxam, and dinotefuran, are scheduled to be released for public comment in December 2016.

A preliminary risk assessment of all ecological effects for imidacloprid, including a revised pollinator assessment and impacts on other species such as aquatic and terrestrial animals and plants will also be released in December 2016.

A preliminary risk assessment of all ecological effects for imidacloprid, including a revised pollinator assessment and impacts on other species such as aquatic and terrestrial animals and plants will also be released in December 2016.

In addition to working with California, EPA coordinated efforts with Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency. Canada's Imidacloprid pollinator-only assessment - also released today - reaches the same preliminary conclusions as EPA's report.

The 60-day public comment period will begin upon publication in the Federal Register. After the comment period ends, EPA may revise the pollinator assessment based on comments received and, if necessary, take action to reduce risks from the insecticide.

In 2015, EPA proposed to prohibit the use of pesticides that are toxic to bees, including the neonicotinoids, when crops are in bloom and bees are under contract for pollination services. The Agency temporarily halted the approval of new outdoor neonicotinoid pesticide uses until new bee data is submitted and pollinator risk assessments are complete.

EPA encourages stakeholders and interested members of the public to visit the imidacloprid docket and sign up for email alerts to be automatically notified when the agency opens the public comment period for the pollinator-only risk assessment. The risk assessment and other supporting documents are available in the docket: http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketBrowser;rpp=25;so=DESC;sb=postedDate;po=0;dct=SR;D=EPA-HQ-OPP-2008-0844

EPA is also planning to hold a webinar on the imidacloprid assessment in early February. The times and details will be posted at: http://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/how-we-assess-risks-pollinators

https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-releases-first-four-preliminary-risk-assessments-insecticides-potentially-harmful

[william r sanford72]

Same Day: EPA Acknowledges Proven Dangers of Bee-killing Pesticides But Refuses to Restrict Them

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today acknowledged for the first time that three of the nation’s most-used neonicotinoid pesticides pose significant risks to commercial honeybees. But in a second decision that represents a deep bow to the pesticide industry, the agency refused to restrict the use of any leading bee-killing pesticides despite broad evidence of their well-established role in alarming declines of pollinators.

The new analyses released today indicate that honeybees can be harmed by the widely-used pesticides clothianidin, thiamethoxam and dinetofuran. The agency also released today an updated assessment for a fourth leading neonicotinoid — imidacloprid — showing that in addition to harms to pollinators identified last year, the pesticide can also harm aquatic insects.

Yet on the same day the EPA revealed the dangers these pesticides pose to pollinators, it  reversed course and backed away from a proposed rule to place limited restrictions on use of the bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides when commercial honeybees are present in a field. Instead, the agency announced voluntary guidelines that impose no mandatory use restrictions.

“It’s outrageous that on the same day the EPA acknowledged these dangerous pesticides are killing bees it also reversed course on mandating restrictions on their use,” said Lori Ann Burd, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Environmental Health program. “This is like a doctor diagnosing your illness but then deciding to withhold the medicine you need to cure it.”

Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides known to have both acute and chronic effects on honeybees, birds, butterflies and other pollinator species, and they are a major factor in overall pollinator declines. These systemic insecticides cause entire plants, including their pollen and nectar, to become toxic to pollinators. These chemicals are also slow to break down, and they build up in soil, where they pose an especially grave threat to thousands of species of ground-nesting native bees. In November the largest and most comprehensive ever global assessment of pollinators found that 40 percent of pollinating insects are threatened with extinction, naming neonicotinoids as a significant driver of wild pollinator declines.

“The new policy does virtually nothing to protect America’s thousands of declining native bee species or to curb the escalating use of these harmful neonicotinoid pesticides across hundreds of millions of acres in the United States,” said Burd. “It’s shocked that the EPA’s response to the crisis of declining pollinators and the abundant science linking that decline to neonicotinoid insecticides is to meekly offer a policy encouraging industry to consider restricting pesticide use in limited situations where plants are blooming while commercial honeybees have been brought in to work the fields. This is a rejection of science that should be deeply troubling to all Americans as we move into a Trump administration.”

Neonicotinoids have already been banned by the European Union, and in 2016 they were banned on all U.S. national wildlife refuges due to their harmful impacts on wildlife, including threatened and endangered species. Canada has also proposed a ban on a neonicotinoid because of its unacceptable threats.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2017/images/wild_bee_Ano_Lobb.jpg

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2017/pesticides-01-12-2017.php

[william r sanford72]

This Is Where the Key to Healthy Honeybees May Be Found

The relationship between honeybees and humans spans millennia, from the advent of agriculture to the current globalization of food markets. Today, pollination via commercial hives supports a multibillion-dollar agriculture industry.

But honeybee health in the U.S. and Europe has never been more precarious.

Misuse of pesticides, diverse hive pests, parasites, disease, and climate change are among the threats they face in these locations. (See “What We Know—and Don’t Know—About Honeybees and Colony Collapse Disorder”)

Yet not all honeybee populations are showing signs of stress. Hives in East Africa—where honeybees are critical pollinators for coffee, cacao, and cashews—seem more resilient than their American and European counterparts, even when faced with similar pathogens.

The buzzing question is, Why?

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/files/2017/01/Honeybee_Stack_1-600x450.jpg

A Critical Element 

Rural farmers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia rely on wild pollinator populations or use traditional beekeeping methods that date back centuries, but this alone doesn’t explain disparities in bee health. In fact, the critical element in this investigation is one that remains little studied: genetics. (Find out how scientists and breeders are trying to create a hardier honeybee.)

The underlying genetic basis of disease resistance in East African bees may provide crucial insights into global pathogen outbreaks. In addition, genetic methods offer rare insight into the most difficult bee pathogens to study: viruses. Often spread by mites and other nest parasites, viral infections may amplify the effects of other pathogens or environmental disturbances like pesticides and climate change.

To further explore honeybee health in the region, we teamed up with local and international collaborators and set off for Kenya in the summer of 2015 to take the first step: collecting a diverse set of bees and bee viruses.

Our seven-part story from the field begins below.

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/files/2017/01/tree.jpg
Lake Naivasha contains some of the largest flower farms in the world, which depend heavily on pollination provided by honeybees and other species. It’s unknown if the region’s high-intensity agriculture and low plant diversity has an impact on the health of bee colonies. Photo by Jeff Kerby

All Along the Roadside

We’re driving toward Lake Naivasha, our first planned collection site, and as we descend from the outskirts of Nairobi and into the Great Rift Valley, it finally begins to feel like our field work is starting. The crowded roadside markets and cement buildings disappear and make way for sprawling brush landscapes dotted with sparse houses and farms. Our driver, Frederick, tells us he doesn’t often make it out to Lake Naivasha but enjoys the area when he does.

It’s easy to see why. As we drive around searching for a place to stay for the night we see several giraffes to our left and the waters of Lake Naivasha to our right. The sun is beginning to set behind the same clouds that brought rain showers earlier in the afternoon. It’s like something out of a movie.

Besides being picturesque, the area surrounding Lake Naivasha also looks like an excellent place to make our first collections and begin investigating the relationship between land use and bee health. Lining the main highway of Naivasha are several industrial flower farms, all requiring the pollination services bees provide. In fact, Kenya is the third largest exporter of flowers in the world, and nearly half of all farms in the country are located on the shores of Naivasha.

Because the floral industry is so valuable to the region, many of the farms have tight restrictions on who and what is allowed on their property. We try to get permission to sample directly from the farms, but many of the owners are understandably wary of our gear and equipment.

So we settle for collecting bees from wildflowers growing alongside nearby roadways. Since a honeybee can forage up to several kilometers away from its colony, we don’t expect our results to be any different than if we had collected them directly from a farm.

Ultimately, we manage to collect bees from three separate locations. We even collect foragers entering and exiting a colony on the grounds of our hotel. While it may not be the most exotic location, at least we can say we’ve successfully collected honeybees from Kenya.

Afterward, we drive about 20 kilometers back toward Nairobi and park near some open land. Seymon, a technician from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, thinks it looks like a good area to sample from—and he’s right. We come upon some flower bushes near a creek bed that prove to be a great area for collections. In the afternoon,
we finish with a stop on the north side of Lake Naivasha, sampling some bees from more flower bushes a few hundred meters off the road.

Next up, we head about 180 miles west to Kisii County, where we meet a local beekeeper and find ourselves humbled by the bee collecting abilities of a novice.

Come back to follow the story.

Zach Fuller is a National Geographic Young Explorer and a biology Ph.D. student at Penn State University.

Jeff Kerby is a photographer, an ecologist at Dartmouth College, and a National Geographic Expeditions Council grantee.

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2017/01/13/this-is-where-the-key-to-healthy-honeybees-may-be-found/

[william r sanford72]

Bit of a Ramble tho still worth a listen in my OP...

Can Science Save our Bees - The Role of Apimondia

Published on Jan 14, 2017

A lecture given at the 2016 National Honey Show entitled "Can Science Save our Bees - The Role of Apimondia" by Phil McCabe. The National Honey Show gratefully acknowledge the C.B Bennis Trust for their support and the sponsorship by E H Thorne.

Fm8weu1BYxE

[william r sanford72]

Rusty Patched Bumble Bee Is Endangered & Brain Cell Death In Bats

Published on Jan 16, 2017

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk about the recent news about the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee as the first bee in the continental United States to be listed as endangered. Also, discussed is new research that proving how imidacloprid cripples the echo location ability in bats and causes brain cell death.
www.theorganicview.com.

vU0OKOqJl-0

[william r sanford72]

Integrating Beekeeping with Permaculture

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Integrating-Beekeeping-with-Permaculture-feat.jpg

Insects and wildlife are an important part of a permaculture design. Without them your design will not be complete, the forces will not be in balance like the Jedi without Darth Wader.

Bees particularly have outputs we all can enjoy, even some vegans are bending the rules for honey and I am sure cavemen were enjoying the honey during palaeontologic times, you know what I mean bullet proof coffee lovers. Oh did I mention that most bees also have a light sabre.

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Integrating-Beekeeping-with-Permaculture-01.jpg

A bee colony consists of a queen or two, female workers and male drones. This is a very narrow view of a complete system though. It is nowhere near a complete definition of a colony. There are also 8000 type of yeast, mould, fungi, and bacteria as well as 170 other insects and parasites that lives with the greater bee colony. Some of the relationships in the hive are symbiotic too, most of them opportunistic though. Who doesn’t like honey? :-D

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Integrating-Beekeeping-with-Permaculture-02.jpg

My topbar hive is also home to an ant colony. I didn’t see the queen yet but they certainly know the heated part of the hive and move their eggs there in winter. Luckily, they are between the bars and the roof and not inside the hive. I saw some small hive beetles and some cockroaches too. The bees deal with all these given that their immune system and defences are strong.

A bee colony is a complete system which sustains the holistic hive with its temperature and humidity control, disease and spoilage control, reproduction, social nature of the works in the hive like tending the youngs, feeding the queen, male drones and larvae, cleaning and defending the hive, producing the wax, maintaining the comb system, meticulous recording of pollen and nectar flow times of flowers and trees, stacking the food where they need most, communicating the foraging resources etc. etc.

When this system fiddled by mankind, things go wrong. First Father Langstroth invented the movable frames which changed the thermodynamics of the combs. Then the foundation comb mankind given to bees dictated the comb cell size. Mankind told them to take up rectangular boxes as nests without enough thickness on the walls; they couldn’t survive harsh winters or hot summers. We now have HDPE plastic combs with taps for them that mankind not aware the implications for bees yet down the line in 100 years. The comb is the data storage for bees. Same type of pollens stored in same cells given that the combs are not changed and the bees figure out the flowering times based on what resources they have depleted.

Mankind is effectively ruining the bees big time and made them rely on chemicals, foundation comb, artificial food, HFCS syrup and single type pollen for food that comes with monoculture, transportation from places to places for pollination services and if this is not enough, the neo-nicotinoid based chemicals used in agriculture causing colony collapse disorder (CCD) where entire colony disappears into thin air leaving the brood and honey resources behind which they usually protect with their lives.

Agricultural chemicals and even the weed killer glyphosate used in the cities by the councils and municipalities comes into the hive with pollen and nectar. These start building up in the comb’s wax. After a while it becomes unbearable for the bees to stay in that death box and they either die or leave and die.

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Integrating-Beekeeping-with-Permaculture-03.jpg

We basically let them lost their sustainability.

If we follow the 3 principles of permaculture, Earth care, people care and fair share;

1- We need to care for the bees as they were existing even before the apes walking upright. They are one of the oldest creatures of this planet.

2- We need to care for people who cares for the bees doing right things for the benefit of the bees. Bees are the ones actually caring for people though. If you try to buy honey from a natural beekeeper, you are supporting the bees. If you buy from supermarket, god knows where the money goes.

3- We should be grateful that bees are sharing their bounty with us. If we build designs in our living areas integrating the bees and provide them places they can live in peace that would be best. This could either be a little box for native bees, some sort of insect hotel or a nicely insulated hive where we can be partners in life.

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Integrating-Beekeeping-with-Permaculture-04.jpg

Any hive type; be it Langstroth, Topbar, Warre, Perone, Flow or other variations can be used towards a more holistic and natural approach given that you let the bees to be bees naturally. What matters is your relationship with the bees not the equipment you use.

Starting with the brood chamber; that would be the first box on vertical hives and first 10 bars on horizontal hives. This part should be declared as the sacred part of the hive and should not be handled by the beekeeper under any circumstances. This is the uterus of the hive where they grow babies, stack their winter resources and gather together to go through the winter, warming the brood and the queen.

I have a Langstroth and a horizontal topbar hive. Langstroth has 2 boxes dedicated to bees without frames. I’ve put some cross sticks in it and the bees built their nest based on their specifications. I never open these two boxes. My topbar hive also has a brood chamber consists of about 15 bars. I never touch to these parts. This setup allows a better wintering for the bees as they move between the combs easily because the combs are built in a somewhat circular shape.

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Integrating-Beekeeping-with-Permaculture-05.jpg

Second is the food resources for winter. Bees eat honey and pollen not sugary water or soy protein. We have to make sure that there is enough honey left for their wintering in the hive. After the harvest, I remove the top box which is a Flow, put the roof back on with good insulation and give back about 2 litres of honey to bees. Reduce the entrance so that mice cannot get in and leave them till the beginning of spring. Whatever honey remained that we didn’t consume goes back to bees in the beginning of spring because this is the time bees start foraging but there is not enough around and also cold snaps happen here and there causes colony deaths.

Third is the humidity and temperature of the hive should be protected at all costs. A natural beekeeper should only open the hive once or twice a year to add an extra super on top or to harvest. For that reason, I like the horizontal topbar hives as they allow me to harvest excess honey without releasing the humidity and temperature which the bees worked hard for it.

I never harvest pollen, propolis, royal jelly or wax from the hive. Harvested pollen is not really digestible by human. Propolis has got good properties but harvesting requires extra equipment. Royal jelly is another industry on its own right. You won’t be producing honey if you are producing royal jelly and it requires special queen cups and lots of labour to extract. All these products requires interference with the colony’s inner workings which is not good for the bees.

I removed some pollen in its comb for medicinal purposes, it works with the hay fever at certain times as it is half digested by bacteria there. I have also used a small piece of discarded larvae in its comb to make a yogurt starter.

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Integrating-Beekeeping-with-Permaculture-07.jpg

Don’t forget that we also need to support the foraging resources around and do more guerrilla gardening. Especially target plants that are flowering in different times. If we can distribute the resources to 6 months during spring and summer, bees will have more opportunity to be alive and well.

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Integrating-Beekeeping-with-Permaculture-08.jpg


Images and Vid in link:
http://permaculturenews.org/2017/01/18/integrating-beekeeping-permaculture/

[william r sanford72]

Pitching in: USU biologists study development of division of labor among bees
Washington State's solitary alkali bees provide insights about social bees

LOGAN, UTAH, USA - Social bees are celebrated for their cooperative industry, but how did their innovative division of labor evolve? A starting point for examining this question may be study of their solitary cousins, say Utah State University biologists.

Karen Kapheim and Makenna Johnson tested a variation of the reproductive ground plan hypothesis, a long-examined theory in studies of evolution of social bees, in solitary, ground-nesting bees of south central Washington state. They published findings in the Jan. 18, 2017, issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B [DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.2406]. The researchers' work was funded by the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, the USDA-ARS Alfalfa Pollinator Research Initiative and USU.

"This variation of the reproductive ground plan hypothesis suggests division of labor - the ways social bees cooperate to complete all tasks necessary to keep the colony running - evolved from ancestral gene networks that function to align a female's dietary preferences with the nutrients she needs during different phases of her reproductive cycle," says Kapheim, assistant professor in USU's Department of Biology and the USU Ecology Center. "A major limitation in evaluating this hypothesis is that we know almost nothing about the nutritional needs and preferences of solitary bees, which are most similar to social bees' closest ancestor. Yet, solitary bees have no division of labor."

She and Johnson, an undergraduate researcher and recent USU graduate, studied alkali bees (Nomia melanderi) of Washington's Touchet Valley, an area of robust alfalfa production. As critical alfalfa pollinators, alkali bees are carefully protected in natural and artificially prepared alkaline "bee beds" kept on private farms.

"Some of these beds have been maintained by farmers for five to six generations," Kapheim says. "The Touchet Valley bees are among the last remaining populations of the pollinators, which have succumbed to pesticides in many other areas."

So prized are the bees that the State of Washington posts speed limit signs of 20 miles per hour near bee beds to protect the precious pollinators.

"You feel bad when you're driving through these areas and you hear what might be a 'bee hit,'" says Johnson, a 2016 recipient of a USU College of Science Undergraduate Research Mini-Grant.

The researchers captured bees using traps over nesting holes in the beds for lab study. In the lab, they harnessed individual bees and offered varied sucrose treatments to test each insect's proboscis extension response. They noted the size of a female bee's Dufour's gland, located in the abdomen and playing a number of roles in bee reproduction, was a significant predictor of sucrose response.

Their results suggest, as predicted by the hypothesis, female solitary bees adjust their dietary preferences, when they become reproductively active.

"The Dufour's gland as a predictor of sucrose response in alkali bees was something of a surprise, since this gland, also found in reproductive social bee females, but absent in social drones, is not the reproductive organ typically studied in social bees," Johnson says. "Rather, the ovaries are usually the focus in reproductive studies of honey bees, the research model for social bees."

She and Kapheim think there could be a link between Dufour's gland development, sucrose response and development of division of labor in other species of social bees.
Kapheim says the research findings suggest independent origins of social behavior evolve via convergent processes, but through lineage-specific pathways.

"Additional research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which division of labor, Dufour's gland development and sucrose response in social bees is related to alkali bees," she says.

Vid in link:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-01/usu-piu011317.php

[bluestflame]

isa harvest , split the brood and half the honey cells into two boxes , a queen cell on each brood split, active queen and some workers and bit of old comb honey and some new sections of wax into a third

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/attachment.php?attachmentid=34825&d=1484753188

as you can see with the first two photos i didn't have time to set frames in before the bees set up camp and they were running out of room anyway so i had to tear the top of the combs off as i took the lid off no alternative , i transferred the brood combs halls the honey combs into seperate boxes strapped to frames two brood cells had queen cells so one went in each box , the three boxes ended up within a couple of metres of each other each has a good supply of bees they can sort the rest out over the next couple of weeks


http://projectavalon.net/forum4/attachment.php?attachmentid=34823&d=1484752888

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/attachment.php?attachmentid=34824&d=1484752912

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/attachment.php?attachmentid=34822&d=1484752817

lost a few bees in the process, though couldn't really put it off , hopefully now i've framed the hive it'll be a more stream line process next time learning heaps along the way

for instance next time i'll know that wearing holey shoes thinking no way the bees will go there , then seeing heaps of bees crawling along the ground and UP me boots

[Cidersomerset]

Another species of bee added to the endangered list, almost wiped out by Monsanto

By David on 18 January 2017 GMT

https://www.davidicke.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Untitled-283-1.jpg

==================================================
==================================================

NATURAL NEWS......

Another species of bee added to the endangered list, almost wiped out by Monsanto

Tuesday, January 17, 2017 by: JD Heyes
Tags: bee death, bees, Endangered species, Monsanto, pesticides

http://naturalnews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/91/2017/01/bee-e1484634628367.png

‘In case you thought that reporting on the rapidly diminishing number of bee colonies
around the country was being over-hyped, this should tell you that prior warnings were
spot-on, and indeed, prophetic.

For the first time ever, a rare bee species is being placed on the endangered species list,
giving them special legal protections enshrined in U.S. code that, hopefully, will save them
from extinction and billions of people from starvation.

As reported by Agence France Presse (AFP), U.S. officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service
said in recent days that the decision was made following major declines in the rusty patched
bumblebee population.’

Read more: Another species of bee added to the endangered list, almost wiped out by Monsanto

http://naturalnews.com/2017-01-17-bees-are-officially-on-the-endangered-list-almost-wiped-out-from-monsanto.html

[bluestflame]

there's a lot of research into the theraputic effects of bee venom , thinking this could be another reason for thier deliberate demise ?

http://www.beewelltherapy.com/

[william r sanford72]

The Biology of Honey Bee Nutrition and What it Means to the Beekeeper

Published on Jan 17, 2017

A lecture given at the 2016 National Honey Show entitled "The Biology of Honey Bee Nutrition and What it Means to the Beekeeper" by David Tarpy. The National Honey Show gratefully acknowledge the C.B Bennis Trust for their support and the sponsorship by BBKA.

DqOqd6gFY8w

[william r sanford72]

bluestflame...Your comb honey pictures were great and they looked very tasty..:highfive:

[william r sanford72]

In reference to The David Tarpy lecture above....
here is a link to a pdf for The Fat bee Skinny bee book/manual he mentions published by the Australian Gov in 2005.For those interested.

http://www.utahcountybeekeepers.org/Other%20Files/Information%20Articles/Fat%20Bees%20Skinny%20Bees.pdf

[Cidersomerset]

Is Geoengineering The Cause Of High Levels Of Aluminum In Bumblebees?

By David on 20 January 2017 GMT

https://www.davidicke.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Untitled-373-1.jpg


http://www.naturalblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/NBlogo1.jpg


Is Geoengineering the Cause of High Levels of Aluminum in Bumblebees?

 Posted on January 19, 2017


http://www.naturalblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/bees-276190_960_720.jpg
By Kristan T. Harris

Recent University Study Shows High Levels of Aluminum in Bumblebees Maybe the Cause of Decline in Population

‘A recent study published on the journal Public Library of Science One, links aluminum as a contributing factor to
the decline of bumblebees. There has been much debate on what is causing the rapid loss of the insect species,
from pesticides to pollution…

…So where is the aluminum coming from? One cause could be from geoengineering experiments. A short time ago,
military whistle-bower Kristen Meghan came forward and exposed aluminum barium as an ingredient in weather
modification. Air, soil and water all tested positive for Aluminum Barium, Strontium Oxide and Sulfates.’

Read more: Is Geoengineering The Cause Of High Levels Of Aluminum In Bumblebees?

http://www.naturalblaze.com/2017/01/geoengineering-cause-high-levels-of-aluminum-bumblebees.html

[william r sanford72]

Why Has The Environmental Protection Agency Been Approving Neurotoxins Poisoning Bees?

http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/587ffa7c1200002f00ad8654.jpg

The recent decision of the EPA to back away from modest restrictions governing the use in the United States of the bee killer neonicotinoid insecticides is, I suspect, simply a reaction to the coming of the Donald Trump administration to power. Rather than wait for the new Trump administrator, Scott Pruitt, to nullify a bee-protective policy, the Obama EPA blessed business as usual against honeybees.

EPA executives probably hope that killing more honeybees is a small price to pay to a tsunami of “deregulation” certain to be put in force by the Trump business people about to take over this vulnerable agency.

Jeff Merkley, Senator for Oregon, like other angry Democratic Senators, grilled Pruitt, but did not get very far. Pruitt, a seasoned politician from Oklahoma, was diplomatic, repeatedly seeking cover in his mantra, “rule of law.” Nevertheless, Merkley saw through Pruitt’s polished figure. “Scott Pruitt,” Merkley said, “has spent his career to protect fossil fuel polluters rather than the public interest. As Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt was caught red-handed taking arguments virtually word-for-word from fossil fuel lobbyists and putting them on his official letterhead as the position of the State of Oklahoma. Under Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency would become the ‘Polluter Protection Agency.”’

Unfortunately, Senator Merkley is slightly out of date. EPA has been a polluter protection agency for some time.

If this sounds unfair, look at honeybees. EPA has been hard to honeybees and wildlife not because most of its scientists are corrupt but because the industry, including factory farmers, have purchased their way into the White House and Congress. The result of this massive corruption has been an EPA of deception.

I witnessed this deception quite often. I worked for this industry-captured EPA for 25 years.

I remember reading the policy memoranda of the 1970s on the approval of pesticide-killers in the Jimmy Carter administration. I was heart-broken. As early as 1976, the EPA “registered,” meaning approved, neurotoxins like parathion. This parathion belongs to the same family of nerve gases that the Germans used in their genocidal murder of Jews.

Of course, EPA scientists did not connect the dots and, if they did, they remained silent. They failed to convince their political appointees that using parathion was not merely extremely dangerous to honeybees and humans but it was also morally reprehensible and violated international law.

In addition, the companies that had cooked the parathion had also invented a way to extend its lethal powers from hours to days. They put the nerve poison into microcapsules the size of dust particles, making them invisible to honeybees and people.

used to talk to a few ecologists who were, like me, outraged by such naked example of mass poisoning. They showed me pictures of piles of dead bees. They had travelled to different states where beekeepers suffered the most damage to their hives. They would then report their findings to senior officials who ignored them.

The microencapsulated formulations of parathion lasted for decades, causing enormous damage to honeybees and other wildlife. Birds, for example, would usually die feeding in fields where farmers had applied one pound of parathion per acre.

The neonicotinoid insecticides now causing havoc to honeybees in the United States and the world are also neurotoxins made in Germany. However, both Germany and other countries in the European Union, save United Kingdom, maintain a ban on these poisons.

The other unspoken threat of these neonicotinoids and their parathion antecedents is what they do to honey. EPA scientists used to receive letters from state officials worrying that honey itself was contaminated by the nerve gases of the farmers. Once again, EPA did not interfere to stop such a deadly chain of events affecting both the natural world and human health.

In 2014, I wrote “Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA.” Chapter 5 documents the history of the extensive use of the microencapsulated parathion in the

United States. It also highlights the irresponsible policies of the EPA that are still pushing honeybees to the verge of extinction.

Once again, I must stress that the people responsible for these terrible EPA policies that allow neurotoxins in the environment are the owners of chemical and agribusiness companies. These executives send their lobbyists to Washington, DC and the lobbyists have their way in the White House and Congress. It’s this corruption that subverts the EPA.

The second consequence of this corruption is that, in a real sense, giant industrialized farmers no longer farm. They are hooked on powerful weapons, misleadingly called pesticides. Under the guise of fighting or preventing an insect infestation they are fighting a chemical war against honeybees and the natural world.

Finally, all these bad policies are certain to become worse under the Trump administration. More honeybees will die. People will eat more poisoned honey.

Trump appointed people to run the government who will harm both the natural world and human health. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush did the same thing. They made government an industry laboratory. The rhetoric justifying this crude onslaught on nature and humans has always been about profits. That’s what farmers have been saying for decades. We will produce more food with the use of our “tools,” meaning neurotoxins like neonicotinoids.

This casual use of neurotoxins is dangerous. The thought that the spraying of neurotoxins has already become routine is frightening. People must eat organic food, telling the government, the politicians, and the industry enough is enough.

The plight of the honeybees – and the EPA ― says it all

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-has-the-environmental-protection-agency-been-approving_us_587ff848e4b09d73ca33733f

[william r sanford72]

10 Unexpected Bee Facts

Honeybees are a critical part of our food system, and they are also downright miraculous insects.  Even the most well known facts about honeybees are somewhat unexpected, but the more you delve into their unusual lives, the more surprised you will be.  

Bees Don’t Hibernate

Instead of migrating like so many animals or hibernating through the freezing winter months, bees stay awake and are, in fact, quite busy during winter.  They are not flying back and forth from flower to hive, but they are maintaining their hive and keeping their queen healthy.  

Once the temperatures start to dip below 50 degrees F, honeybees gather in a “winter cluster” in the hive, beating their wings rapidly to keep the hive temperature between 40 and 95 degrees.  They use all of the honey they’ve gathered over the summer to keep themselves well fed, and on warm winter days you will see them buzzing around, stretching their wings and tossing debris out the hive opening.

They’re Fast Flyers

The average speed of a honeybee in flight is 15 miles per hour, but a hurried worker bee has been known to fly up to 20mph.  This enables them to travel up to seven miles for nectar and return to the hive in a timely manner.

The Queen Lives the Longest

While most worker bees only live for a few weeks, and drones (the male workers inside the hive) survive for a few months, the queen bee of a hive can live for up to five years.  As long as she is healthy and producing eggs for her colony, a queen will be well cared for by her hive and can keep producing for several years.  

The average queen bee will lay 200 eggs a day, replenishing her workers and drones and giving the hive new life as it grows.  

Honey Never Expires

Honey is inarguably a pretty miraculous food.  It may be the only food that never truly expires or goes bad.  The eternal life of honey is thanks to its chemical make up, which is very low in moisture but is “hygroscopic," meaning it wicks moisture for the air around it.  

The oldest jar of honey ever found was over 5500 years old, and was found in what is now Tbilisi, Georgia.  Scientists say that this ancient honey is still edible, and would most likely taste very similar to today’s honey, but it’s uncertain if any of them have actually tried it.

A Bee Sting Can Be A Good Thing

The painful, itching spot where a bee stings can also be good for your health.  Bee venom treatments are not uncommon today, and are used to treat symptoms of various ailments including arthritis and MS.  Bee venom contains certain compounds that help to block inflammation, which can lead to blessed relief for many patients.

Of course, bee venom therapy should only be conducted with great care.  Most people react to a bee sting with a red welt in the area and some irritation and itching, but some will have severe swelling and pain, and those allergic to bees can go into anaphylactic shock.

Bees Can Recognize People

Your little buzzing friend may well know exactly who you are.  Honeybees are capable of recognizing individual human faces and can remember a person’s features from one sighting to another.  Research has indicated that bees can recognize a face that provides them with sugar water, versus one that does not. 

Only “Worker Bees” Sting

Female bees who are not the designated hive queen, known as “worker bees," are the only ones equipped with a stinger.  Larger male bees, known as drones, rarely leave the hive and when they do they are relatively defenseless without a sharp stinger.  

Unlike other insects which will usually bite their victims, honeybees only sting if they feel threatened and once they have stung, they will not survive.  Other kinds of bees and wasps can sting and sting again, but the honeybee leaves behind its stinger.  This self-amputating strategy is fatal to the bee.

They Travel Far And Wide For Honey

Bees are some of the hardest workers in the world.  To produce one pound of honey, a worker bee must visit two million flowers.  This typically means flying over 55,000 miles for a single pound of honey - but the average individual bee only produces 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.  That means that the whole hive, between 20,000 and 60,000 honeybees, must work full time to produce 60-100 pounds of honey in a year.  This amount of honey allows them to survive the winter with honey left over in the spring.  

The “Waggle Dance”

To show the rest of the hive the way to a nectar-rich patch of flowers, a worker be will do a little dance for the hive which is known as the “waggle dance”.  This complex system of giving directions can also tell the rest of the bees the way to a water source or help them plan the location for a new hive.  This completely unique “language” or method of communicating involves indicates the direction of the sun and includes a rapid vibrating of the bee’s abdomen.  

They Pollinate More Than You Think

It’s true that other insects and animals can pollinate our crops.  In China, apple farmers spend hours hand pollinating their trees with delicate paint bushes.  Wasps, beetles, butterflies, hummingbirds, and even bats do their share of pollinating.  But that is only a small share of the pollinating needs of our world.

Scientists estimate that the humble honeybee is responsible for up to 90% of the pollination of all fruit, vegetable, and seed crops on Earth.  With bees dying off at an alarming rate thanks to a combination of modern factors, the survival of the human food system becomes ever more endangered.  Without the honey bee, it is hard to believe we would have any viable crops.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/10-unexpected-bee-facts-zbcz1701

[william r sanford72]

Pollen spray could replace honeybees

A cherry researcher talks about spray pollination, withholding water from cherry trees before harvest and hand and mechanical pruning.

http://eor-cpwebvarnish.newscyclecloud.com/storyimage/CP/20170119/ARTICLE/170119847/AR/0/AR-170119847.jpg&MaxW=600

WENATCHEE, Wash. — Spray pollination may someday replace bees in orchards, withholding irrigation before cherry harvest doesn’t do much and adding hand pruning to mechanical pruning every other year boosts yields.

That’s what Matthew Whiting, Washington State University plant physiologist, told growers at the Northcentral Washington Stone Fruit Day in Wenatchee on Jan. 17.
Precision spray pollination would negate problems such as not having enough honeybees, distribution of pollen-borne viruses and insufficient pollen distribution, Whiting said.

Pure pollen can be kept alive in a liquid state for two hours without loss of germinability, he said.

“We are pursuing this further. We are using an electrostatic sprayer for 12 to 14 gallons per acre. Electrostatic because the (flower) stigma has a negative charge,” he said.

For years, growers have debated whether withholding irrigation a week or two before harvest yields better cherries. Whiting said two years of studies led him to conclude “it’s a much ado about nothing.”

While recognizing there are many variables — including soil depth and type, genotype of the cultivar and rootstock and types of irrigation systems — Whiting set up trials withholding water from seven to 17 days before harvest and found no effect on bud density, bloom, firmness, cracking, size or quality.

Soil moisture dropped but trees showed no significant stress, he said.

The only potential benefit was a 2 percent increase in soluble solids, mostly sugar, which could be tasted but only with Lapins and not Chelans, he said. In one case, soluble solids increased 10 to 13 percent and firmness dropped about 6 percent, he said.

Mechanical pruning of planar or fruiting-wall style orchards saves labor and can save 20 percent or more in annual production costs and improve worker safety and efficiency, Whiting said.

Powered by tractors, mechanical pruners hedge the sides of trees and top them. There are more ragged cuts and only half as much wood is removed so a good plan is to remove more wood by following mechanical pruning with hand pruning every other year, he said.

Mechanical pruning is 23 to 29 percent faster than hand pruning. Mechanical combined with hand pruning is 66 percent more efficient than hand pruning alone, he said.
Fruit weight is slightly smaller with mechanical pruning but yield is greater because more wood and more buds are left, he said.

Hand pruning cherry trees costs an estimated $741 per acre versus $168 for mechanical only and $590 for a combination, he said.

http://www.capitalpress.com/Orchards/20170119/pollen-spray-could-replace-honeybees

[william r sanford72]

Dr Jonathan Lundgren Discusses True Reality Facing Bees

Published on Jan 23, 2017

Are neonicotinoids a genuine problem impacting honeybees? What is the true reality facing all pollinators? In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, former USDA scientist, Dr Jonathan Lundgren, founder of Blue Dasher Farm, talks to host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald about what the reality is for honeybees regarding the impact of neonicotinoids.

www.theorganicview.com

2yOcXnlY60s

[william r sanford72]

How the Bees You Know are Killing the Bees You Don’t
Commercially managed bumblebees and honey bees may be contributing to wild pollinator decline.

https://www.insidescience.org/sites/default/files/images/articles/top-images/bees1.jpg
The western bumblebee (Bombus occidentalis) is one of several North American bumblebee species that has suffered sharp declines in recent years. The cause of their decline is thought to be disease spread by commercial bumblebees used to pollinate crops. 

(Inside Science) -- Sam Droege slides a drawer from a tall white cabinet, releasing an odor of mothballs. Row after row of small bodies stand skewered on pins, fragile limbs frozen, furry backs­ as bright as sunflowers. They are all examples of Bombus affinis, most collected from meadows where this bumblebee species no longer flies. The surrounding drawers hold nearly 2,000 more.

"Affinis was a dirtball species. It was super common. That's why there's drawers and drawers of them," said Droege, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey whose job sometimes involves identifying bees here at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

Earlier this month, the insects in the open drawer, more commonly called rusty patched bumblebees, were listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that they have declined by more than 90 percent over the last decade. According to Rich Hatfield, a senior conservation biologist at the Xerces Society who helped assess the species for the IUCN, the leading suspect in their disappearance is disease spread by other bees -- commercial bumblebees raised by humans to pollinate crops.

Most people have heard that pollinators are in trouble, and with them agricultural products worth more than $200 billion annually. But public and policy concern largely revolves around western honey bees, a domesticated species whose population has actually risen worldwide over the past few decades, despite recent challenges faced by beekeepers. Their success stands in stark contrast to the more than 20,000 other distinct species of bees worldwide, many of which are thought to be declining or facing extinction.

Bees are the most important pollinators on earth, pollinating more plants than any other group of animals, said Hatfield. In appearance, they range from glimmering green gemstones the size of a gumball to brownish specks that could crawl through a cocktail straw. And while losing one bee species probably won't shatter ecosystems, losing enough of them will, said Droege. Diverse wild bee communities help buffer ecosystems, ensuring that something is left to pollinate plants even under the stress of climate change and other environmental challenges. They also help pollinate crops, sometimes more efficiently than the commercial bees farmers increasingly rely on.

Humans raise a small number of bee species commercially, and these managed bees are crucial for modern food production. But they don't always live in harmony with the natural world. Managed bees can spread diseases, compete with wild bees for food, invade new habitats and upset the balance of plant species.

https://www.insidescience.org/sites/default/files/images/articles/inline-images/Bees_2.jpg
Sam Droege examines a drawer full of rusty patched bumblebees, a species newly listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Bees as livestock

Humans first domesticated honey bees, a group that includes several similar species, around 9,000 years ago. Honey bees are native to Asia, Europe and Africa, but humans have carried them around the globe, allowing them to establish feral populations. In most cases, the invasions happened so long ago that native bees have either adapted or gone extinct.

“We basically have no idea what the native bee fauna looked like prior to the introduction of honey bees,” said Dave Goulson, an entomologist at the University of Sussex in England. “It may have absolutely devastated the bee fauna of the Americas.”

Fewer than 50 years ago, people also began raising other types of bees for crop pollination, including several species of bumblebees. Bumblebees are capable of shaking pollen loose from plants such as eggplants and tomatoes -- crops honey bees can't pollinate. While honey bees still dominate the beekeeping world, farmers now use bumblebees routinely, most often in greenhouses.

From a typical bumblebee colony of a few hundred, only the young queens survive the winter, hibernating until they can start their own colonies in spring. Farmers usually buy new colonies from breeders each year. Honey bees, in contrast, live in colonies of up to 60,000 bees, and these colonies can persist indefinitely.

Recently, problems such as varroa mites, inhospitable farmland and colony collapse disorder have made it harder for beekeepers to maintain colonies and meet the rising demand for bees in agriculture. In the United States, beekeepers now lose about 40 percent of their colonies each year, four times the fraction they consider acceptable. They can replace lost colonies by splitting surviving colonies in two, but this technique can become unsustainable.

Nevertheless, the total number of managed honey bees worldwide has risen by 45 percent over the last half century. Honey bees are in no danger of extinction, said Hatfield -- and our reliance on them may come at a cost.

How bee disease spreads

Managed bees may transmit new diseases to wild bees, or they may allow existing diseases to multiply and "spill back" into wild populations. Commercial beekeeping often involves maintaining bees at high densities, making it easy for diseases to pass from bee to bee. And companies routinely feed bumblebees with pollen gathered by honey bees, helping diseases to spread between species, said Peter Graystock, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Riverside. Some companies have started irradiating the pollen to kill pathogens, but others still feed it to bees as is.

https://www.insidescience.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline_-_360/public/images/articles/inline-images/Bees_3.jpg?itok=RTVVPlrT

In a 2013 study, Graystock and his colleagues tested imported bumblebee colonies that had supposedly been screened for disease, and found that more than three-fourths of them contained disease-causing microbes. When the researchers experimentally fed pollen and waste from the infected bee shipments to healthy bumble and honey bees, many of the new bees got sick.

However, flowers are probably the hotspots of disease transmission to wild bees, said Graystock. With colleagues, he recently demonstrated in a lab that two commercial bee species, buff-tailed bumblebees and western honey bees, can rapidly spread five kinds of pathogens between flowers. Some of the pathogens could only infect one of the two bee species, but they often hitched a ride on the other one.

“Imagine flowers as a dinner plate that you're eating from, but everybody else is also eating from that dinner plate as well,” said Graystock. “They could accumulate quite a lot of different microbes.”

Evidence from the field supports the idea that wild bees can catch diseases from managed bees. In Canada, Ireland and England, researchers have found elevated disease rates in wild bees living near greenhouses that use commercial bumblebees.

The lack of data on most wild bee species makes it hard to judge the threat facing their populations. Some ailments, such as the varroa mites that infest managed honey bees, appear to be harmless to other kinds of insects, including wild bumblebees. But other diseases, such as deformed wing virus and the dysentery-causing fungus Nosema veranae, are known to harm multiple species that aren't closely related. Researchers usually have no idea whether a given wild pollinator can catch a particular disease, or how sick it would get if it did.

Still, circumstantial evidence suggests that the impacts on wild pollinators can be devastating. In North America, a species called Franklin’s bumblebee is thought to have recently gone extinct, and four other once-common species have suffered estimated declines of more than 70 percent.

Wiped out by plagues

While no one knows for sure what’s killing wild American bumblebees, the dominant hypothesis is one or more diseases introduced by commercial bumblebees imported from Europe, said Sheila Colla, a conservation biologist at York University in Toronto. The timing matches up with the rise of commercial bumblebees for pollinating greenhouse crops. At least two of the declining species have high rates of a fungal disease called Nosema bombi, and the strain they carry is genetically similar to the one found in bees from Europe, suggesting it may have been recently introduced. And many researchers think that the wild bees have vanished too quickly, and over too wide an area, for the culprit to be anything except disease. For example, the rusty patched bumblebees that just received endangered species protections have disappeared from around three-fourths of their historic range, according to a study by Colla and her colleagues.

"You can't really chalk it up to something like pesticide use, because that wouldn't explain why it disappeared in the Smoky Mountains," she said.

https://www.insidescience.org/sites/default/files/images/articles/inline-images/Bees_7.jpg
The light gray of this map shows the rusty patched bumblebee's historic range, while the red and yellow marks show where the bees have been found in recent years.

In the United States, it's now illegal to import any kind of bumblebee from overseas. But non-native bumblebees are still pouring into Argentina, even though two species have already turned invasive there. The second invasive species, known as the buff-tailed bumblebee, was first introduced to Argentina in 2006 to pollinate crops. Since then, feral buff-tailed bumblebees have spread across the region, wiping out native Patagonian bumblebees as they go.

Patagonian bumblebees are the largest bumblebees in the world, and the only ones native to the southern part of South America. They used to be a familiar sight in Chilean and Argentinian gardens, where their deep buzz and fluffy orange bulk made them hard to miss.

“They look like little bears,” said Marina Arbetman, a molecular ecologist at the National University of Río Negro and the National University of Comahue in Bariloche, Argentina.

Patagonian bumblebees have vanished so fast that they are almost certainly suffering from a disease epidemic, said Arbetman. She has an idea what that disease might be: Apicystis bombi, a parasite that attacks bees’ fat stores. The parasite was absent in the region until buff-tailed bumblebees invaded, but now it is found in native Patagonian bumblebees and feral buff-tailed bumblebees, as well as another bumblebee species that invaded earlier. Genetically, the parasites look similar to A. bombi parasites from Europe, suggesting that, like N. bombi in North America, they too rode in recently on commercial bees.

The loss of Patagonian bumblebees could have ecosystem-wide impacts, said Arbetman's adviser Carolina Morales, an ecologist at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council and the National University of Comahue. Patagonian bumblebees have longer tongues than the invasive species, enabling them to pollinate native plants with long, tube-shaped flowers. Invasive buff-tailed bumblebees can’t reach into long flowers normally, so they tear holes in them instead, stealing nectar without ever touching the pollen. One native plant appears to already be suffering reproductive costs, producing less fruit in landscapes taken over by the invasive bees, according to unpublished research by Morales and her colleagues.

Now, a few Patagonian bumblebees are hanging on across their former range, but sightings in most areas are rare. Arbetman spotted one last fall, but before then, she hadn't seen any in two years. "And you know I'm looking at every flower," she said.

https://www.insidescience.org/sites/default/files/images/articles/inline-images/Bees_8_final.jpg
An endangered Patagonian bumblebee clings to a flower in Argentina in 2015.

Fighting over flowers

Competition for food is another source of conflict between managed and wild bees. Wildflowers are growing scarcer around the world, and wild bee populations are often limited by how much pollen and nectar they can find. Commercial beekeepers need places to keep their bees when they’re not on pollination jobs, and in the United States they sometimes use public land.

Resource competition between managed and wild bees is controversial, and in some cases, it appears not to be a problem. But in the majority of experimental studies where scientists have tested specifically for competition, they have found it, said Victoria Wojcik, research director for an international nonprofit called the Pollinator Partnership in San Francisco. Most such studies have focused on bumblebees, so there aren't enough data to make recommendations on preserving other types of bees. But if land managers have sensitive bumblebee habitat, they may want to think twice before allowing commercial honey bee hives on their land, said Wojcik. "There could be food-based competition, and the bumblebee loses in that situation," she said.

Bumblebees may be losing out to feral honey bees in a remote nature reserve in California, even though there are no managed hives around. The site had hardly any feral honey bees in the late 1990s, probably because of a mite infestation that swept through honey bee populations shortly beforehand. But since then, honey bees have recovered, and the native bumblebees have drastically declined. Diane Thomson, an ecologist and conservation biologist at the Claremont Colleges in California, monitored their populations over 15 years.

"I've been able to show, from looking at what plants they're using, that bumblebees appear to be getting squeezed off of certain floral resources that are important for them as the number of honey bees has gone up," she said.

These findings reinforce an earlier experiment Thomson conducted at the same site. In that study, she brought in honey and bumblebee colonies and placed them at various distances from each other. Bumblebees placed near honey bee hives had less reproductive success, producing fewer and smaller fertile bees capable of starting a new generation.

Now, Thomson's experimental hives are long gone, but native bumblebees are still being outcompeted. Their disappearance is especially striking because it happened in a protected area, far from pesticides, development and human disturbance.

“My site is really buffered from some of the potentially very harmful causes of bee declines in other places,” said Thomson. “And yet, we're still seeing a decline in these native bumblebee populations.”

What can be done to save the bees

People can reduce the risks to wild bees by not importing managed bees from other countries, by reducing the use of non-native species, and by thoroughly screening for diseases, policies that some countries already employ to varying degrees. Another simple strategy is to put screens on greenhouse vents before releasing bumblebees inside, a practice that Japan mandated after suffering its own bumblebee invasion, said UC Riverside's Graystock. But the most powerful way to help wild and managed bees coexist may be something beekeepers are already pushing for: creating more habitat where pollinators can find food.

Farmland used to have lots of rich pollinator habitat, with diverse plant species flowering at different times. Wild bees took care of most crop pollination, while honey bees were primarily used for honey, said Zac Browning, a fourth-generation commercial beekeeper based in Jamestown, North Dakota, who owns around 27,000 honey bee colonies. Browning said he has seen agriculture move toward giant, pesticide-soaked fields planted with a single type of crop -- a landscape hostile to wild and managed bees alike. Now, he said, farmland is "probably, in many ways, the most dangerous place to be, if you're a bee."

Since bees often can't survive in modern farmland, farmers now pay beekeepers to bring in bees just when their crop is flowering. The new system puts stress on both commercial and wild bees, forcing them to compete for scarce resources. This stress probably makes them more vulnerable to disease, said Graystock.

Modern crop pollination may also threaten food security. A growing body of research shows the crucial role wild insects still play in agriculture, ensuring stable production from year to year and boosting yields regardless of whether honey bees are present. And the more a crop relies on a single kind of bee, the more vulnerable it is to diseases and other crises that might strike that bee's population.

Project Apis, an agricultural nonprofit focused on honey bee health, is working to increase pollinator habitat on farmland by providing seeds for farmers to plant in unused patches of land. Its seed mixes include plants for native species as well as for honey bees, said Danielle Downey, the project's executive director.

"It would be great if there were not so much demand for every scrap of habitat that's left," she said.

Hatfield agrees. He works for the Xerces Society, a nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon that focuses on protecting wild insects and other invertebrates. "Our take-home message always comes back to 'if you want to do something, the right thing to do is to plant habitat,'" he said. "Habitat is going to support our native bees, and it's also going to support the honey bees."

Policy makers are also starting to realize that bee-friendly landscapes are important. The U.S. farm bill has offered incentives for landowners to restore pollinator habitat since 2008, and several states are starting to plant pollinator habitat along highways. And while the federal Pollinator Health Action Plan released last year has been criticized for focusing too much on honey bees, it does list habitat for all pollinators as a top objective.

Unknown populations

Patagonian bumblebees and rusty patched bumblebees are flashy species that were once very common, so people noticed when they vanished. But they are the exception. For the vast majority of wild bee species, no one knows whether they are in danger, because no one has data on their populations. Often, we don’t even know they exist. According to one estimate, Earth holds another 20,000 bee species waiting to be discovered, on top of the 20,000 already described, said Sam Droege.

Droege has spent years trying to fill the knowledge gaps, amidst changing political landscapes that shuffled him between programs and agencies. He designed a nationwide monitoring program for U.S. bees, but the funding dried up before it could bear fruit. Now, he runs the USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab in Beltsville, Maryland, which catalogs local bees, creates identification guides, and helps land managers across the country conduct their own, small-scale surveys. But despite his efforts, there is still no comprehensive monitoring effort for U.S. bees.

"There's no program," he said. "There are no real statistics other than 'can't find it anymore.'"

Back at the museum, Droege picks up a tiny black bee by the pin and holds it in the circle of light at the base of his microscope. He turns the bee until light glances sideways off of minute pits and hairs, shadows revealing their arrangement. It is a female Pseudopanurgus, a poorly described genus, and Droege can’t tell whether this bee represents any named species. He has no idea whether she came from a thriving population, or one on the brink of extinction.

https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-bees-you-know-are-killing-bees-you-don%E2%80%99t

[william r sanford72]

Scientists are making genetically modified cyborg dragonflies
They could be used for guided pollination... or for surveillance.

https://s.aolcdn.com/dims5/amp:020fff7139ea197878137031e14b3de5e0ef2c90/q:100/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fo.aolcdn.com%2Fhss%2Fstorage%2Fmidas%2F50d20a934163ecce64fb8baec783fe55%2F20486014 2%2Fdragonfleye.jpg

A biomedical solutions company called Draper is developing a technology that can turn a dragonfly into a living drone. They call it the DragonflEye project, and the technology's main component is a tiny backpack equipped with solar panels to harvest energy. It also has integrated guidance and navigation system composed of optogenetic tools that Draper made with the help of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at Janelia Farm. The idea is to use those tools to send commands from the backpack to the "steering" neurons that control the insect's flight inside the dragonfly's nerve cord. It's a totally different approach to hijacking an insect's muscles.

To be able to control those steering neurons, the HHMI researchers found a way to make them sensitive to light by incorporating genes naturally found in eyes. With those genes in place, the tools or the "optrodes" in the backpack will be able to guide the insects using pulses of light. In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, the program's lead researcher, Jesse J. Wheeler, said his team already created the first-generation version of the system, though it sounds like they haven't been able to test it yet. He said:

"In the first year of the project, we focused on developing core enabling technologies like the backpack, optrode, and synthetic biology toolkit for the dragonfly. As we begin our second year, we are preparing to equip dragonflies with our first-generation backpacks in a motion capture room that can monitor their precise flight movements as data is captured from navigation system. This will allow us to develop precise onboard tracking algorithms for autonomous navigation."

If the technique ends up viable for practical use, it could turn dragonflies into tiny surveillance systems or pollination machines. Since the key to the technology is the backpack, though, Draper believes it could also be used with honeybees and other insects of the same size.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/26/genetically-modified-cyborg-dragonflies/

[william r sanford72]

Honey in the UAE: where it comes from, how to use it, and the benefits

http://www.thenational.ae/storyimage/AB/20170128/ARTICLE/170129237/AR/0/&NCS_modified=20170129094933&MaxW=640&imageVersion=default&AR-170129237.jpg
Bandar Al Shimouri works at the Yemeni Honey World in Dubai’s Global Village, which stocks honey for different types of clients ranging from students to athletes to married couples. Antonie Robertson / The National

As noted in religious texts, ancient manuscripts and even stone-age carvings, honey has been regarded as a miracle cure throughout history.

It has been an essential ingredient for many civilisations, including from the Sumerians to the Greek, Roman and Chinese empires – where myths of honey concoctions granting immortality were born. In ancient Egypt, honey was sought for its beautifying properties and used by one of the country’s most famous leaders, Queen Cleopatra.

Thousands of years later, demand for honey – as a curative, natural sweetener, beauty aid and antibacterial agent – continues to rise. There is a production boom in eastern Kazakhstan, for example, and rising demand for honey produced in Qatar, which has an ongoing "honey bee project" launched by the government to support farmers and promote production.

In the UAE, the country’s first Honey Festival, organised by Dubai Municipality, will take place at Hatta Heritage Village from Wednesday to Saturday. Beekeepers will be showcasing different varieties of natural honey products made in UAE and wider region. The festival will include events such as tent shopping, lectures and scientific sessions focusing on the qualities and uses of honey.

In the West, there is a big push for Manuka honey, which claims to be a more powerful healing agent than the regular variety – perhaps even against antibiotic-resistant superbugs. As evidence of its popularity, Kourtney Kardashian was hired last year as global skincare ambassador for the Manuka Doctor honey brand.

All this is happening as global honey bee populations continue to decline, a phenomenon attributed to a variety of factors.

There are hundreds of types of honey, and its production remains one of the world’s biggest industries.

Certain types are marketed with bold claims that they can cure a wide range of ailments, from depression to flu – even cancer.

In a country particularly renowned for its honey, Yemenis insist this is all true – and more. "It can even help your marriage," says Ayman Alnahmy, a Yemeni honey salesman with a long family history in the trade.

"This special mix for married people helps them become, well, more amorous, and I have had couples come back and tell me they are now expecting a child after many years of trying," says Alnahmy, the 30-year-old manager at Global Village’s Yemeni Honey World stall.

This married-couples concoction also contains almonds and pistachio, black cumin, ginseng, special herbs and royal jelly, which is secreted by worker bees to feed the queen. It costs Dh400 a kilogram and is one of the more attention-grabbing varieties on display.

Stepping into the Yemeni section of Global Village in Dubai is an overwhelming experience, as sellers accost visitors with samples of honey and their reputed health benefits. There are varieties for athletes, children and diabetics. Even students have a special "genius honey", which promises to increase memory.

The "bee’s poison" (venom) is also marketed as an ointment for joints and to ease headaches and cramps. There are also honey soaps, creams and hair products.

Other honey-based products claim to help achieve "whitening of the skin", wrinkle reduction and pigment correction, while there are special mixes that can make women "more plump" or thinner. The colour and flavour of honey varieties differ depending on the plants visited by the honey bees as a source of nectar. But even honey derived from the same flowers in the same location can vary in taste, depending on temperature and rainfall.

Lighter-coloured tends to be milder tasting, while dark honey is stronger.

Some honey types are highly prized and viewed as "sacred", including those coming from the Al Sidr tree, as it is mentioned in the Quran as one of the plants found in paradise.

http://www.thenational.ae/assets/otherimages/al29ja-honey-sidr.jpg


Vid in link:
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-life/food/honey-in-the-uae-where-it-comes-from-how-to-use-it-and-the-benefits

[william r sanford72]

New Research to Help Honey Bees

http://precision.agwired.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/10/NAGC.png?x86990

The National Agricultural Genotyping Center (NAGC) has conducted research and developed a testing panel that will offer beekeepers more effective methods to identify and address disease in bee colonies. “Bee Care” launches next month, thanks in part to the support of the National Corn Growers Association and the North Dakota Department of Agriculture.

“American agriculture relies upon healthy pollinators. Recent problems like Colony Collapse Disorder are very complex and have a multitude of possible causes. Unfortunately, some groups are quick to blame row crop farmers and immediately attack crop protection products,” said Pete Snyder, president and CEO of the NAGC.

The program through NAGC is just one part of what Corn Growers are doing to ensure a strong bee population, says Carson Klosterman, a member of NCGA’s Stewardship Action Team. “We are also actively engaged in the Honey Bee Health Coalition (HBHC) which has the goal of reversing recent declines in honey bee health and ensuring the long-term health of honey bees and other pollinators.”

http://precision.agwired.com/2017/01/30/new-research-to-help-honey-bees/

[william r sanford72]

Research Finds White Mountain National Forest Home to Nearly 140 Species of Bees

The White Mountain National Forest is home to nearly 140 species of native bees, including two species of native bumble bees that are in decline in the Northeast, according to researchers with the University of New Hampshire who recently completed the first assessment of the state’s native bee population in the national forest.

Sandra Rehan, assistant professor of biological sciences at UNH, and Erika Tucker, USDA research fellow, have identified a broad diversity of species of wild bees in the national forest, including 10 new bee records for the state and three new records for New England.

http://www.technology.org/texorgwp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/bombusterricola.jpg

“Bumble bees are in decline and species are at risk of extinction,” said Rehan, who oversees the UNH Bee Lab. “Bees are important pollinators and the loss of species and populations is of great concern for sustainable agriculture, functional ecosystems, and indicate a larger problem in the environment.”

In the national forest, scientists found a relatively high abundance of the yellow-banded bumble bee (Bombus terricola), a species listed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife as a species of greatest conservation need. They also found one specimen of the golden northern bumble bee (Bombus fervidus). Both of these bumble bees are declining in population in the Northeast and are categorized as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

However, researchers did not find the rusty patch bumble bee (Bombus affinis) or the American bumble bee (Bombus pensylvanicus) in their survey. The rusty patch bumble bee is the first bee species in the continental United States listed as an endangered species and is thought to be locally extinct.

“Bee declines are not only a global and national problem, but very much a reality across New England and here in New Hampshire. This study provides critical information on the habitat and status of species of greatest conservation need. Few biodiversity studies of this kind exist yet are essential for documenting species habitat requirements to preserve remaining pollinator populations,” Rehan said.

Bees are important pollinators of food crops and natural ecosystems. The value of pollination to agriculture is estimated at more than $200 billion a year worldwide. There is little information on wild bees, their habitat requirements and status. Rehan’s lab now has three years of repeated surveys to determine the turnover in bee communities across land use and climate gradients in New Hampshire. The aim of the research is to establish the diversity and status of bees in the state and to provide essential information on the requirements of these species to provide conservation recommendations.

Previously, Rehan and her colleagues completed the first assessment of the state’s native bee population, providing wildlife experts with the first comprehensive list of the Granite State’s more than 100 native bees that includes nearly 20 species that had not been documented in the state before now.

This research is presented in the article “High Elevation Refugia for Bombus terricola Conservation and Wild Bees of the White Mountain National Forest” in the Journal of Insect Science. This material is based upon work supported by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station, through joint funding of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under award number 1004515, and the state of New Hampshire. This study also was made possible through permitting and support of the National Forest Service, NH Fish and Wildlife, and the Appalachian Mountain Club.

http://www.technology.org/2017/01/31/research-finds-white-mountain-national-forest-home-nearly-140-species-bees/

Research Paper:
https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/17/1/4/2960099/High-Elevation-Refugia-for-Bombus-terricola

[Unicorn]

A few days ago a found a stranded bee in the patio. These days are quite cold here for any little insect out of its colony. First I thought it was dead, but then I realised it was striving to keep itself alive. I put it over one of the plants, and I spilled a few drops of natural honey there. Immediately, it went to the honey like crazy and began sipping and sipping... it was exciting! It remained there for a couple of hours. Got tidy up... and went! What a shame I didn't think about taking a photo. I felt like a child... :-)

[william r sanford72]

Microchips Suggest That a Virus Is Controlling the Minds of Infected Honeybees
Honeybees outfitted with tiny microchips reveal possible bizarre effects of a covert, yet deadly, virus.

Detective work involving honeybees outfitted with ultra-small microchips reveals that a virus once thought to be relatively benign is causing honeybees to live fast and die young.

The pathogen, a covert form of deformed wing virus that is described in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, may even be exerting a form of mind control over worker honeybees.

"It's possible that the virus has evolutionary interests in manipulating workers to move out of the hive and then maybe transmit the virus to other patches in the environment or cause them to drift to other hives," author Tom Wenseleers of the University of Leuven told Seeker.

He added that the theory may seem far-fetched, "but is in fact not that unlikely, given that the virus has been found to concentrate in specific centers of the brain that are involved in higher cognitive processes."

He, lead author Kristof Benaets and their team tracked the movements of honeybees using the microchips — known as RFID tags — that weigh less than .0002 ounces. The little devices, affixed in this case to the backs of bees, are most commonly used to tag items in stores to prevent theft. The new study is among the first to tap the devices for investigating the impact of pollinator viruses.

The researchers found that adult worker honeybees with deformed wing virus often show no outward physical symptoms of the illness, which can otherwise cause crippled wings when victims are infected in the larval stage.

Still, the infected adult workers show bizarre behavior. They start foraging at much earlier ages, reduce their activity levels earlier than other adult workers and then die younger than honeybees without the virus.

Aside from the possible mind control abilities of the virus, the initial fast living of the sick honeybees could be because the pollinators detect that they are ill and react by leaving the hive early in order to avoid infecting their nest mates, Wenseleers explained.

https://assets.rbl.ms/9565299/980x.jpg

Honeybees, like other insects, have an immune system and can fight off viral diseases, but their ability to do so has been suppressed in recent years. Other research has shown that certain pesticides can weaken honeybee immune systems, as well as diminish bee sperm.

Yet another problem, according to Wenseleers, is "the free trade in bee queens, which are shipped around the world." If these bees are infected with deformed wing virus, they can easily pass it on to their daughter workers.

Deformed wing virus in all of its forms — both obvious and covert — is part of the so-called "Beepocalypse," also known as Colony Collapse Disorder, which has been years in the making. Starting around the year 2006, beekeepers reported tremendous losses, with hives reduced up to 90 percent in some instances.

Solving the longstanding problem is proving to be very challenging. To prevent the deformed wing virus from spreading, Wenseleers hopes that beekeepers will "rely more on locally acquired bee stocks, to avoid diseases from spreading."

Since parasitic Varroa mites are also known to transmit the virus to honeybees, efforts to control these pests are ongoing. Wenseleers said that "some beekeepers think that the best course of action may in fact be a very simple one: just let nature take its course and let the bees themselves develop Varroa resistance."

On the other hand, he added, the agrochemical company giant Monsanto has been trying to develop a method called RNA Interference (RNAi) to combat bee and other animal diseases, including deformed wing virus. RNA is a molecule in the cells of plants and animals that helps to make proteins.

Wenseleers explained that the method relies on mixing synthetic RNA in a sugary syrup fed to bees. The synthetic compound "is designed to bind to specific genes of the pathogen or parasite, thereby preventing it from replicating." The technique still needs refinement, possibly because the synthetic RNA is not stable enough over long periods of time.

"With further development, though, this revolutionary new method could well have a lot of promise to treat viral diseases, including in crops, livestock or humans," Wenseleers said.

Vid in Link:
http://www.seeker.com/microchips-suggest-that-a-virus-is-controlling-the-minds-of-infected-h-2229301674.html

Link to Study:
Proceedings of the Royal Society B,

Covert deformed wing virus infections have long-term deleterious effects on honeybee foraging and survival
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1848/20162149

[william r sanford72]

A few days ago a found a stranded bee in the patio. These days are quite cold here for any little insect out of its colony. First I thought it was dead, but then I realised it was striving to keep itself alive. I put it over one of the plants, and I spilled a few drops of natural honey there. Immediately, it went to the honey like crazy and began sipping and sipping... it was exciting! It remained there for a couple of hours. Got tidy up... and went! What a shame I didn't think about taking a photo. I felt like a child... :-)

know how you feel Unicorn..sometimes its that feeling and energy that often times keeps me inspired and helps counter the cold Vulcan like Vibe of Sci/Reasearch.Also...Always gratefull to the bees...They still teaching me.

William.

[william r sanford72]

:facepalm:
Royal beekeeper fined for giving bees banned drug

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/12336/production/_93905547__93644720_mcgregor.png
A court was told that Murray McGregor owned the largest bee firm in Scotland

A Royal beekeeper who gave a banned drug to his honey bees in a landmark legal case has been fined £2,500.

Apiarist Murray McGregor, the owner of Denrosa Apiaries in Blairgowrie, is the first person in the UK to be convicted of the charges.

The 61-year-old previously admitted administering "unauthorised veterinary medicinal products".

McGregor has produced honey for both the Balmoral Estate and Prince Charles' Duchy Estate.

Perth Sheriff Court was told that McGregor's colonies of bees had become infected with European Foulbrood
McGregor was told he would be given officially approved antibiotics to treat the disease.

But the court was told that he did not wait for the authorities and instead bought unlicensed Terramycin from the United States over the internet.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-38829175

[william r sanford72]

Importance of Pollinator Diversity

Published on Feb 1, 2017

A lecture given by Brigit Strawbridge at the 2016 National Honey Show entitled "Importance of Pollinator Diversity" The National Honey Show gratefully acknowledge the C. B. Dennis Trust for their support and the sponsorship by Mr R Blaxland.

K4EXaTUiPug

[william r sanford72]

www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf

[william r sanford72]

Polli-Nation Pollinator of the Month: Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

(Beyond Pesticides, February 3, 2017) The Ruby Throated Hummingbird is the pollinator of the month for February. Hummingbirds are nature’s most nimble of birds. They are so quick and agile that most of the time all you’ll see is a flash of red and green before realizing you just encountered a Ruby Throated Hummingbird. This month’s pollinator is the most abundant species of hummingbird on the eastern half of North America. They are named after the coloration of ruby red feathers around their throat.

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ruby-throated-hummingbird-300x200.jpg

Range

The Ruby Throated Hummingbird is the most populous hummingbird found east of the Mississippi. They enjoy mild habitats such as pine and deciduous forests, and can also be found zipping around urban and suburban gardens and orchards.  Ruby Throated Hummingbirds “winter,” meaning they migrate to warmer parts of the globe during the colder winter months. They typically spend that time in parts of Central America and southern Mexico, but have been known to travel as far south as Costa Rica and the West Indies, according to Animal Diversity Web. They will often migrate without stopping, traveling distances as great as 1,600 km in one trip.  According to the Encyclopedia of Life, the hummingbird’s mating grounds are typically east of the 100th meridian in the United States and parts of southern Canada. Their ability to inhabit such a diverse range of habitats make them an important pollinator to many ecosystems across eastern North America.

Diet and Pollination

Nectar from flowering plants comprises the majority of the Ruby Throated Hummingbird’s diet, but fat and protein are supplied by small insects, including mosquitoes, spiders, gnats, fruit flies, and small species of bees. They have also been observed eating tree sap, and their northern limit is probably determined by the availability of sap provided by the drilling of sapsuckers.

According to the Encyclopedia of Life, Ruby Throated Hummingbirds have adapted to be able to see the UV spectrum of light in addition to the visible light spectrum, which helps them locate and differentiate between a variety flowers. Their favorites include:  Red Buckeye, Jewel Weed, Trumpet Creeper, Red Morning Glory, Coral Honeysuckle and the Cardinal Flower, just to name a few.

Physiology

Most hummingbirds are small statured compared to their other avian counterparts, and the Ruby Throated Hummingbird is no exception. Ranging in length from 7 to 9 cm and weighing only a few grams, the bird can easily fit in the palm of your hand.  Their incredible flying abilities are attributed to their lightweight and stream line bodies. Spectacular as those abilities are, however, they can be taxing on the bird and require a lot of energy. Because of this, the Ruby Throated Hummingbird will consume twice their body weight in food each day.

Ruby Throated Hummingbird’s coloration is striking, featuring beautiful shades of green, white and red. Males can be distinguished from females by their tail feathers, as males have a forked feather configuration while females boast a square feather configuration with white tips. Males additionally have the characteristic red, ruby throat while females will have a duller, grayish-red colored throat. Females are larger than their male counterparts.

Ruby Throated Hummingbirds are migratory birds, returning to their breeding grounds in eastern North America each spring. Males generally return to the breeding grounds ahead of females to stake out their territory for mating. Once a female enters a male’s territory, the male bird will court the female with a dive display meant to impress the female. As part of this display, the male will do a variety of loops and acrobatic flying maneuvers, beating its wings up to 200 times per second. After successful breeding, the female constructs a nest for her eggs out of bud scales and lichen, held together with spider’s silk and lined with plant down. There the female will lay one to three eggs, which are incubated for 10-14 days before they hatch, a cycle that is repeated two or three times per breeding season. The average lifespan of the Ruby Throated Hummingbird is about nine years.

Ecological Role

Ruby Throated Hummingbirds live on a diet of nectar from a variety of flowering plants and, as previously stated, consume up to twice their bodyweight in nectar each day. This requires constant foraging for sources of nectar and the birds spend most of their day flying flower to flower in search of this food source. They are equipped with a long, skinny modified beak that allows them to access nectar, as well as a long tongue that can further be extended into the flower.

While foraging for nectar the hummingbird simultaneously contaminates itself with pollen particles from the flower. The pollen sticks to the birds’ feathers and beak, allowing the bird to transport it to the next flower it visits. Once that pollen comes in to contact with a new flower, the plant is inadvertently cross-pollinated, allowing the plant to reproduce. The abundance of Ruby Throated Hummingbirds make them an integral pollinator to ecosystems across the eastern United States and parts of Canada. Partners for flight, an organization that tracks land birds for conservation purposes, estimates the Ruby Throated Hummingbird population in North America and Canada is as great as 34 million.

Threats to Existence

The Ruby Throated Hummingbird is currently a thriving species, labeled as a species with “Least Concern” by the International Union for Conservation. This simply means their existence is not currently at risk. The United States Geological Service Patuxent Wildlife research center, which has been tracking land bird species since the 1960’s, has found that Ruby Throated Hummingbird populations have been on the rise since their studies began. Even though the species is not currently at risk, however, conservation efforts to protect the birds’ future success should not be ignored. Destruction of natural habitat is a primary risk that can affect the hummingbird’s ability to prepare for migration, as well as diminish the bird’s breeding grounds and disrupt its reproductive success. The bird’s exposure to systemic pesticides that move through a plant’s vascular and is expressed in nectar is of particular concern.

How to Protect the Species

There are steps that can be taken to protect Ruby Throated Hummingbirds, one of the most popular being to install a hummingbird feeder in your yard or garden. Simple actions, like placing hummingbird feeders away from windows to prevent collisions, or situating feeders in places where cats and other neighborhood predators will have a difficult time reaching the birds, are important ways to help hummingbirds thrive. Routine cleaning of hummingbird feeders is also important, as rancid feeders can be detrimental to hummingbird health. Supplying your hummingbird feeder with the right nectar solution is also important. You can find a trusted nectar recipe recommended by the Smithsonian

National Zoo by clicking here!  Be sure to use organic sugar in the mix. It will ensure that the nectar solution is free of pesticides and additives.
Planting the aforementioned flowers preferred by the Ruby Throated Hummingbird is another way to preserve hummingbird populations, as they require nectar for survival. Make sure that the plants are not treated with systemic, including neonicotinoid, and other pesticides. Maintaining biodiversity in your garden will nurture the pollinators, including the hummingbirds.

What is Polli-NATION?

When it comes to pollination, bees tend to get all of the buzz. While they are crucial to pollinating many crops, bees are not the only pollinators working hard to provide the ecosystem services critical to the food system. In fact, one out of every three bites of food is made possible by pollinators. In order to raise awareness for the unsung pollinator heroes, Beyond Pesticides created the Polli-NATION Campaign, which highlights the important work of a relatively unknown pollinator each month, including butterflies, wasps, flies, beetles, birds, bats, and more. The campaign raises public awareness about these pollinators, their contribution to plant health and productivity and the preservation of natural resources, and the threats they face in their daily lives, including toxic pesticides and habitat loss. Learn what you can do in your community to help ensure their survival of all the pollinators.

Sources: Animal Diversity Web, Encyclopedia of Life, The Birder’s Handbook.

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2017/02/polli-nation-pollinator-month-ruby-throated-hummingbird/

[william r sanford72]

Honeybees welcome friendly migrants to hives but repel raiders

https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/03163159/gettyimages-471432421.jpg

By Amitha Kalaichandran
Honeybees may have a unique system for accepting migrants. “Drifting” bees that wander into a neighbouring hive may be allowed to stay – if the guard bees see fit.

Honeybee drift is common in apiaries, where hives are placed closer together. A bee that drifts essentially migrates from its own hive to another, something thought to be unintentional.

Morgane Nouvian and her team at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, reviewed 161 papers on defensive behaviour in honeybees to get a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon.

.They reported that 10 to 15 per cent of honeybees take on nest-guarding roles when they are 2 to 3 weeks old. Their main role involves detecting and dealing with predators, but they are also the first point of contact when drifting honeybees arrive.

In an inspection that can last half a minute, the guards check out chemical cues on the newcomer – typically hydrocarbons – that depend on hive-specific genetic factors and comb wax. If this profile matches or nearly matches that of their own hive, the guards will let the drifter in.

Around 30 per cent of drifting bees are allowed to stay, experiments show.

The guards also have to identify marauding bees that aim to steal honey. “We know now that these robber bees are detected by their flight patterns and speed,” says Nouvian. “Guards can detect an incoming robber and sting it before it even reaches the nest.”

Guided by resources

There are other factors that influence whether a newcomer is allowed in, the main one being the availability of resources both inside and outside the hive.

“It’s interesting that when there are enough resources, for instance nectar near the hive, and fewer empty combs, guards allow in more non-nestmates,” Nouvian says. There may not even be guards at the nest entrance in these circumstances, Nouvian adds.

These “open borders” can shut down quickly in situations of food scarcity. Guards not only reject newcomer bees in these cases, but may even kill them. Nouvian adds that combs with no stored honey may make guards more aggressive.

Experiments by Francis Ratnieks at the University of Sussex, UK, show that once accepted into a new hive, migrant bees eventually blend in chemically, too. He “fostered” young non-nestmate worker honeybees by placing them straight into the hive, bypassing the guards. The young bees took on the comb wax of the new hive and were just as likely to be accepted by the guards later on as the native bees were.

“This shows that the chemicals on their body surface by which they are recognised as nestmates are acquired from the colony they are in,” Ratnieks says.

Other work by Ratnieks shows that guard bees are extremely good at detecting predators like wasps.

“In experiments in which we introduce either a wasp or a non-nestmate honeybee to the hive entrance, we found the guards never mix up wasps with honeybees,” he says. “They are quite obviously detected as ‘different’ to the guards, which is important as wasps prey on larvae and worker bees in the hive.”

LfmR8jrY0Q4


Journal reference: Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.143016

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2120274-honeybees-welcome-friendly-migrants-to-hives-but-repel-raiders/

[Unicorn]

Extremelly interesting and informative! Thanks, William

[william r sanford72]

Article from last year...
Bees and Cannabis

http://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2Cannabis-1050x701.jpg

by Sharon Schmidt

Very little research appears in the literature about how honey bees interact with cannabis plants containing levels of THC appropriate for recreational or medical use. In fact, only one scholarly article about the interaction between cannabis plants and bees can be found. So what are the biologic and physiological relationships between cannabis and Apis mellifera?

When I became a beekeeper I located some of my bee hives on a property that has beautiful land resources. The property owners grow organic plants and flowers during the summer and have a clean and continuously running stream a few yards away from the hives. The hives are situated facing south-east and the area has a big thicket of tall, mature plants on the north side of the hives to protect against winter winds. Pigs in a neighboring field stir up and then loll around in puddles of muck during Spring and Summer and sometimes the bees seem attracted to the puddles. The community gardens, visible from the property interest the bees a great deal. The setting is idyllic and the bees proved to be good pollinators.

I had no warning that my bees would eventually be in the middle of a cannabis grow. However on the day that Oregon law changed to allow citizens to grow cannabis, an odor that some described as “heavenly” and others referred to as “skunk-like” emanated from the fields.

http://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2Cannabis-1050x701.jpg

When I told people that my bees now had access to cannabis, the reaction was always the same; they asked whether the bees were “buzzed” (intoxicated) and whether their honey would make people “high” (also intoxicated). I was fascinated by this question! Would we (quite unintentionally) produce psychoactive honey? This began a line of inquiry on my part to determine whether bees are interested in cannabis, what they might glean from it nutritionally and the effects of cannabis on bees and bee products.

I had an opportunity to check on the hives on at least a weekly basis and hoped to make some observation of what the bees might be harvesting. I was disappointed though. Observation of the bees revealed that there was apparently no interaction in spite of the abundance of plants and close proximity of cannabis plants to the hives.

Why not? One hypothesis was that the bees were not attracted to the aroma of cannabis plants. Bees have an exquisite olfactory sense that they use to detect pheromones of other bees and to find nectar. They are also attracted to colors and these two appeals to the senses are like neon billboards for finding food and mating opportunities. Cannabis does not have these attributes.

Thus, there are reasons that bees would not find cannabis attractive. There is also an absence of specific information suggesting attractiveness of cannabis (to bees) in the literature. However an apparently contradictory piece of video footage turned up on social media. The video showed seemingly excited honey bees buzzing around and alighting upon a cannabis plant from which they appeared to be feeding (Nicolas Trainerbees, 2015).

Many viewers seeing that footage probably believe that the bees derived some chemical excitement from their contact with the plant. However this is very unlikely because bees have no neuroreceptors that would allow them to apprehend the psychoactive elements present in cannabis.

In their 2001 article, “Cannabinoid receptors are absent in insects” (Mcpartland, J, DiMarzo, V, De Petrocellis, L, Mercer, A, Glass, M), the authors revealed that insects do not produce arachidonic acid which is a precursor of necessary ligands. It is thought that the CB (cannabinoid) receptor was lost in insects over the course of evolution. The authors also noted that the CB receptor appears to be the only known neuroreceptor that is present in mammals and absent in insects. Because of its documented absence, we can reliably say that bees are unable to experience cannabis in the same way humans do.

The next often asked question fielded by this writer is whether honey made by bees having access to cannabis plants contains THC and whether it exerts a psychoactive effect on those consuming it.

The cannabis plant is mostly wind pollinated and therefore has not evolved to attract bees. It does not produce a smell that would attract bees, nor is it colorful and finally, and most importantly, it is unable to provide a reward in the form of floral nectar. As those familiar with Apis mellifera know, it is nectar and not pollen that is required by bees to make honey. But the male plant does provide pollen in some circumstances.

http://www.beeculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1Cannabis.jpg

The existing scholarly article on the topic (Dalio, J.S., 2012) notes that cannabis pollen seems to be a food of last resort for bees. The author notes that bees (in India where the observations occurred) turned to cannabis plants as a source of protein but only visited male plants during times of dehiscence when the male plant’s reproductive organs released pollen and that bees were only interested in that pollen during a pollen dearth.

So how can we account for the reports of persons who say they have seen bees congregating and apparently foraging on female plants or of the images available on the social media site? Seeking answers, this writer approached Norman Carreck (Science Director and Senior Director of Journal of the Apiculture Research) who suggested that the possible source of the female plant’s attractiveness to bees could be “extra floral nectaries” documented as an attribute of the cannabis plant by John Free (1970) in his book, Insect Pollination of Crops (personal communication with Mr. Carreck, January 20, 2016). Extra floral nectaries include glands residing outside the calyx producing both water and sugars.

There are no formal reports of extra floral nectaries in cannabis plants other than the one previously referenced by John Free (1970). However if cannabis plants are shown to have these, they could serve a defensive purpose by attracting ants which then serve as guards protecting the plant from herbivores – or they might serve to attract bees. However, cannabis is known to have glandular trichomes (plant hairs that secrete fluid), which could also be a plant feature interesting to bees (personal communication with Dr. Marjorie Weber, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Population Biology, UC Davis, January 21, 2016).

In cannabis plants, bulbous type trichomes are the smallest at 15-30 microns and are barely visible. Capitate-sessile trichomes measure from 25-100 microns across and capitate-stalked trichomes measure from 150-500 microns and are the most abundant. The latter contain the majority of the psychoactive cannabinoids (THC, THCV, CBN) and the effects of use are at least partly mediated by how much degradation is allowed prior to harvest. It appears that trichomes have evolved for the purpose of making a plant less tasty to animals and insects (Anonymous, 2016) making the idea that bees are feeding from trichomes less plausible and more likely that they might be collecting resin from them.

In another discussion with noted entomologist, Dr. Dewey Caron, more ideas were advanced. First, that another naturally occurring source of interest for bees called “honeydew” is often the object of their interest. Honeydew is simply the waste product of scale or other sucking insects which cannabis is likely to host. These tiny insects probably concentrate their feeding (and excretion) at the tender surfaces of new plant growth and produce tasty waste products that bees might feed on. Second, is the possibility that bees might be collecting resins for purposes of making propolis (a sticky bee product used by them to sanitize, reinforce and weatherproof the hive) and third, that bees demonstrating activity on cannabis plants might even be seeking moisture from irrigation (personal communication with Dr. Caron January 21, 2016).

Presently, it seems that some aspects of the relationship between bees and cannabis are not yet verified. Judging from statements occurring in public discourse, misinformation about bees, cannabis and honey based upon legend and lore exists among some of the public.

Much may yet be discovered, but some hypotheses are more likely true than others: First, it appears that bees cannot experience altered neurophysiology as a result of exposure to cannabis given that they have no neuroreceptors for the chemical it contains. Second, the literature suggests that they do not prefer cannabis pollen but will resort to visiting male plants and collecting pollen from them mostly during a floral dearth. Third, if bees congregate and appear to be feeding upon female plants it is not to collect floral nectar because cannabis does not produce flowers containing nectar; there is no known reason for the plant to produce nectar to attract pollinators due to the fact that it has evolved as a wind pollinated plant. However the plant may produce water and sugars if extra floral nectaries are proved to be present in this plant which could account for observations and anecdotes about bees congregating there.

Fourth, it is possible that an extra floral plant exudate might be used by Apis mellifera to make honey and one can speculate about the presence of the precursors of psychoactive chemicals. It seems unlikely though unless the bees are actually foraging on trichomes. Trichomes have evolved to protect the plant from the predatory interests of animals and insects so the idea of bees foraging from them seems unlikely. The common use of the term “sugar” to describe the frosty looking trichomes which have become opaque may further cloud the issue, bringing some to equate trichomes with sweetness. In fact, people who advocate juicing cannabis reference the need to mix it with other vegetable juice to cut the bitter taste. Generally bees do not seem to seek out bitter fluids.

Fifth, even if the resulting honey did contain such alkaloids, bee products would not be psychoactive without heat being applied for the purpose of converting alkaloids from an inactive to an active state (decarboxylation). Thus persons reporting a high after eating raw honey made by bees having access to cannabis are much more likely to be reporting a psychological phenomenon rather than a physiological one.

Finally, bees have an affinity for honeydew (waste products of scale and other insects that inhabit and forage in cannabis plants) therefore any interest bees demonstrate toward this plant could be based on the presence of honeydew, or even due to bees’ interest in collecting moisture or resin.

A final possibility is that bees might be trained to collect whatever substances are available from the plant as a result of experiencing a conditioning paradigm. Under such circumstances they might learn to associate the plant odor with a reward (sugar water) which could account for the enthusiasm they appear to be showing in the referenced video.

Future observation will likely yield more information about cannabis and about how Apis mellifera interacts with this plant.

Insofar as is known, no one has examined the composition of contents of the gut of bees appearing to forage on cannabis or even the composition of their propolis. No micro observation of their interaction with the plant is readily available either. Given the novelty of legal cannabis farming in some of the American states it seems likely that there will finally be more interest and opportunity for systematic observation and research allowing anecdotal reports and scientific data to be accurately reconciled.


References

Anonymous. (www.cannabis.com, Publisher). (January 25, 2016) retrieved from http://cannabis.com/faqs/growing/curing-what-are-trichomes-trichome-101.html
Dalio, J.S. Cannabis sativa- an important subsistence pollen source for apis mellifera. IOSR J. of Pharmacy and Biological Sciences (IOSRJPBS) ISSN: 2278-3008 Volume 1, Issue 4 (July-August 2012), PP 01-03

Free, J. (1070. Insect pollination of crops. London, New York: Academic Press.

Mcpartland, J, DiMarzo, V, De Petrocellis, L, Mercer, A, Glass, M. Cannabinoid receptors are absent in insects. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 2001 Aug 6, Vol 463(4), pp423-429.
Nicolas Trainerbees (Publisher). (November 10, 2015) Retrieved from (no title) https://www.facebook.com/nicolas.trainerbees/videos/10153622273364836/?theater


http://www.beeculture.com/bees-and-cannabis/

[william r sanford72]

Chile is trying to save its bee population damaged by fires

ooOdQoaTqxQ

Chile’s worst wildfires in its modern history, which are ravaging wide swaths of the country’s central-south regions, have claimed another silent but essential victim of human life: Bees.

For the past few weeks, bees and other pollinators have faced increasing risks to their survival, threatening foods such as apples, blueberries and coffee.

It is estimated at least 9,000 hives have been destroyed around the country, local media reported.

Roberto Maass, from Coronel del Maule in the Maule Region, was one of the beekeepers who lost all his hives due to forest fires.

“I was going to harvest myself. There must have been about 500 kilos of honey, plus all the wax, plus all the bees,” Maas said.

Pollinators like bees are crucial for the production of fruits, nuts and vegetables and they represent billions of dollars in value each year to the agricultural economy of countries.
Maas said that bees are the most important pollinators.

“Bees are important for pollination. That is, not only mine but the whole neighbourhood and the farmers because they used to go to their harvesting fields (to pollinate) and their production of whatever would increase,” Maas said.

For the insects that managed to survive the forest tragedy, the forecast is not very encouraging.

They have no food, so affected beekeepers are looking for donations of sugar, which is used to prepare a syrup to feed them and help them survive.

Beekeepers are looking for donations of sugar to feed them.

A beekeeper, Johnny Caro, from the Pumanque, O’Higgins Region, stands next to his wife on the side of the highway, waiting for sugar donations.

To date, 1,100 hives have been lost in different communes of O’Higgins alone, according to local media reports.

“There is nothing for the bees and bees don’t eat bale,” said Caro.

Alejandro Berrios, who delivers fodder for animals, said he has also helped purchase sugar for the survival of the bees.

“Fodder and a bit of food. In reality, we had not seen the issue with the bees. Yesterday we were talking with the man (Jhonny), and we made a contribution of sugar and those things,” Berrios said.

Caro explained how he feeds the bees with donated sugar.

“A drawer without bees, of course, and this is located here (shows how food is placed in a container to feed bees). The sugar dissolves in water, as I said, a kilo for half a liter of water and you bind it carefully and cool it,” Caro said.

“That amount (of sugar) the hives are going to eat it all, for sure, but they keep it as a reserve inside the cells of the hive, and it serves them for a month. (Reporter asks: How many kilos of sugar would need per month) About 6 kilos per month,” said Mauricio Venegas, official from the Agriculture Farmers Service, SAG.

A campaign was launched last week, with representatives of the companies and institutions involved in the bee industry.

Gathering food for bees, helping beekeepers, contributing to the recovery of ecosystems and highlighting the importance of this noble activity to healthy and sustainable agriculture, are the main objectives of the campaign, local media reported.

The campaign – aiming to gather as much sugar as possible for bees from donations from community members – is set to last nine months.

“We already have 20 tonnes (of sugar) contributed by companies, now it depends on the community,” said Marcelo Arellano, group member of the campaign to collect sugar for bees.

Preliminary total costs associated with massive ongoing forest fires throughout Chile have reached $333 million dollars, Chilean finance minister Rodrigo Valdes told reporters on Friday.

The estimate excludes several categories of losses, including losses to forestry plantations which have already reached well into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

http://www.ntd.tv/2017/02/04/chile-trying-save-bee-population-damaged-fires/

[william r sanford72]

Bees give up searching for food when humans degrade their land
February 8, 2017

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/beesgiveupse.jpg

A new study into honey bees has revealed the significant effect human impact has on a bee's metabolism, and ultimately its survival.

Researchers from The University of Western Australia in collaboration with Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Curtin University and CSIRO have completed a world-first study on insect metabolism in free flying insects, focusing on the honey bee. The study funded by an Australian Research Council linkage award has revealed the significant effect human impact on the environment had on bees, which are crucial for the planet, pollinating one-third of everything we eat.

Landscapes that have been degraded mean a reduction in the availability of resources which affects the metabolic rate of the honey bee and puts more strain on its body's ability to function.

Emeritus Professor Don Bradshaw from UWA's School of Biological Sciences said the researchers wanted to find out how honey bees' metabolism was impacted by human made changes to the environment such as clearing of land.

To do this they used a unique method to measure the energy expenditure of bees, originally developed by Professor Bradshaw and used in his research on honey possums. Through this method they were able to measure the metabolic rate of bees when they are in their natural environment, and compare pristine environments rich in resources to degraded environments.

"Before conducting the experiment we thought the bees would have a much higher metabolism in degraded areas because they would need to travel further in search of food," Professor Bradshaw said.

"Surprisingly we found the opposite. The metabolic rate of bees in natural woodland was actually significantly higher than in a degraded environment," Professor Bradshaw said.

"Rather than travel in search of food in degraded areas, the bees foraged less and depended on stored resources inside the hive."

"We were also able to measure their intake of nectar which showed that the bees in the degraded landscape were feeding less."   The research has important implications for understanding environmental impacts on bees which will help preserve bee populations in the future and may offer insight into the way other insects' metabolism works and how it affects their behaviour. This is the first time the metabolic rate and feeding rate of a free-flying insect has been measured in its natural environment and paves the way for future research on pollinators other than bees.

"Bees are vital for human beings, the environment and agriculture," Professor Bradshaw said.

"They pollinate one sixth of flowering plants world-wide and help to produce a third of what we eat, but unfortunately over the past few decades there has been a dramatic decline in global bee populations.

"Continual research in this area is vital in understanding their behaviour, how we as humans can impact their survival, and what we can do in the future to protect them."

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Explore further: South Central Texas residents bewildered by recent bee behavior
More information: Sean Tomlinson et al. Landscape context alters cost of living in honeybee metabolism and feeding, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.2676
Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-bees-food-humans-degrade.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2017-02-bees-food-humans-degrade.html

[william r sanford72]

The Neonicotinoid View: Is Dumbing Up The Data Effective?

http://www.theorganicview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/68418798.jpg

Data Overload?

Sometimes, when information derived from scientific research is abundantly available, we take for granted that some of the finer points of the data found in that research actually represents what we think it should. That is why interpretation of that data is key. This begs the question, what exactly is data and why is it essential for research?

According to Merriam-Webster, data, is defined as:

factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation <the data is plentiful and easily available — H. A. Gleason, Jr.>
information output by a sensing device or organ that includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful.

The word data is derived from the Latin word datum, and is defined as:

plural data: something given or admitted especially as a basis for reasoning or inference
plural datums mathematics : something used as a basis for calculating or measuring <measuring the distance between datum points> < … make things more efficient for those of us whose work requires a time datum. — Robert Steinbrunn> 

Scientific research that is independently conducted, peer reviewed and published is critical for this reason because the research is conducted without bias. There are no motives behind the outcome.  However, that is not the case with paid research that has been conducted to support a particular view. Such is the case with research conducted by the agro-chemical industry which manipulates data to support a particular outcome. This isn’t helping protect the honey bees much less any of our pollinators. Meanwhile, commercial migratory beekeepers are barely keeping their operations functioning, often without any profit and at the bare minimum capacity. This will not last much longer.

http://www.theorganicview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/data.png

Isn’t it time for industry to begin working with beekeepers to sincerely protect honey bees instead of working against them to protect their profits? Apparently, this may be wishful thinking, at best. What appears to be the constant in the equation regarding the cause of the global decline of our honey bees, are the rhetorical responses that it must be either the fault of the beekeeper or that of the most convenient culprit, the Varroa mite (which subsequently, has not been found in Australia, regardless of widespread bee losses).

What the future holds remains to be seen. Only one of two outcomes are indeed possible. Either our precious pollinators will finally be protected from neonicotinoid pesticides or we will not have enough honey bees to pollinate the crops we are accustomed to.  China is experiencing this already as documented in the 2013 film, More Than Honey.

After 4 Years Of Research, Was Dumbing Up The Data Effective?

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk to Dr. Robert S. Schick from Duke University who was the lead researcher on a review of what is referred to as the Pilling’s study which was conducted by Syngenta. The research consisted of a four-year field study which investigated the long-term effects of repeated exposure of honey bee colonies to flowering crops that were treated with thiamethoxam. We’re going to take a closer look at this study according to what the data is proposing to tell us.  To listen to the interview, press play on the video below.

hYehFVVFFTA

Highlights From The Interview

JS: Could you explain what were the findings? Why did Syngenta conclude that the research Pilling and his colleagues concluded were acceptable?
RS:  I won’t speak for them but essentially what they did, in the paper and the paper is published in PLOS One was to say well, we’re basically not going to do a formal statistical analysis and the reason they chose not to was for the simple reason was that the study lacked a lot of replicates. So, they didn’t have a lot of different fields where bees were exposed and not exposed in different places. They only had a very small set of them.

And that, so that without getting into too many sort of quantitative details, that means there is a lack of statistical power, to make inferences on differences, whether they are there or not. So, they said because of that (lack of power) we are going to sort of forgo a statistical analysis and essentially plot the data, which they did, in their paper and then said if you had a low powered study, then the kind of result you would find is something that is very strong like very obvious, big effect! In their words, they said when they look at the data, we don’t see it.

So, that’s fine. So, basically we don’t see an effect and there’s not enough replicates in the data themselves to test for an effect formally, so we’ll leave it at that. That’s essentially the guts of it. 

RS: Where we felt they went wrong was that they essentially just grasped the data. I won’t speak to them about whether they were doing this deliberately or not but they said here’s what the data looked like for bees that are exposed to the treatment and what they looked like for a control and just looking at them, we don’t see much of difference and so, therefore we’re going to say there’s no real difference…and most commonly accepted analysis in the scientific literature these days, certainly in ecology, that’s not sufficient to say whether or not something going on. You can’t usually hope to send a paper to a journal and say well, we did an analysis of these data and we really didn’t see a difference and so therefore there is nothing going on here.

http://www.theorganicview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Its-just-not-modern-scientific-practice-to-just-plot-something-and-say-well-theres-definitely-no-difference.jpg

For The rest of it..

Read and View:
http://www.theorganicview.com/bees/the-neonicotinoid-view-is-dumbing-up-the-data-effective/

[william r sanford72]

Despite few taste genes, honey bees seek out essential nutrients based on floral resources

Date:
February 9, 2017

Source:
Tufts University

Summary:
Despite having few taste genes, honey bees are fine-tuned to know what minerals the colony may lack and proactively seek out nutrients in conjunction with the season when their floral diet varies.

https://images.sciencedaily.com/2017/02/170209092809_1_540x360.jpg

This key finding from a new study led by Tufts University scientists sheds light on limited research on the micronutrient requirements of honey bees, and provides potentially useful insight in support of increased health of the bee population, which has declined rapidly in recent years for a variety of complex reasons.

The research, published in Ecological Entomology, suggests that beekeepers should provide opportunities for their bees to access specific nutrients, possibly through a natural mineral lick, to support their balanced health because the bees will search for the minerals when they need them. It is also an opportunity for the general public to support the bee population by planting a diverse range of flowers that bloom throughout the year.

"Currently, there are micronutrient supplements for managed bee hives on the market but there is little research backing up which minerals the bees actually need," said Rachael
Bonoan, the lead study author and a Ph.D. candidate in biology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts.

"The fact that honey bees switch their mineral preferences based on what is available in their floral diet is really exciting. This means that somehow, honey bees know which nutrients the colony needs. This insight helps us support honey bees and other pollinators by providing access to diverse nutrient sources all year long."

The findings show that honey bees forage for essential minerals that aid their physiological health, even though they have relatively few taste genes. In the fall, when floral resources dwindle, the study showed that bees seek out specific nutrients -- calcium, magnesium, and potassium, all commonly found in pollen -- by foraging in compound-rich or "dirty" water. When flowers and pollen are abundant in the summer, the bees prefer deionized water and sodium, ultimately suggesting that bees are foraging for minerals in water based on what is lacking in their floral diet.

Bonoan and her research team studied eight honey bee hives that were located about 100 yards from the research area. The bees were trained to come to the research site because researchers placed jars of sugar water at staged intervals until the worker bees became accustomed to the ready food supply.

Researchers set up water vials with different minerals such as sodium, magnesium or phosphorus and catalogued the number of bees that visited each vial. At the end of the day, they also measured how much the bees drank from each vessel to determine which minerals were most in demand.

The researchers also tracked the hive each bee belonged to by dusting worker bees with different colored powders as they left the hives. The team noted which colored bees were drinking from which mineral-laden water source, and later measured the amount of brood to determine whether there is a connection between bee health and specific minerals.

The study results related to hive health were inconclusive. While stronger colonies do tend to visit more minerals than weaker colonies, it was difficult to determine which came first, being a stronger colony or accessing mineral resources. Additional data is necessary to assess colony fitness.

Story Source:
Materials provided by Tufts University.

Journal Reference:
Philip T. Starks et al. Seasonality of salt foraging in honey bees (Apis mellifera). Ecological Entomology, 2016; DOI: 10.1111/een.12375

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170209092809.htm

[william r sanford72]

To bee, or not to bee: Will bumblebees become extinct?

https://cdn.rt.com/files/2017.02/original/589b1e45c3618805338b457e.jpg

Widely used pesticides and insecticides, climate change, and introduced species are factors for bumblebees as well as other species of bees being endangered, Mark Floegel, beekeeper & Greenpeace research director, told RT America’s Anya Parampil.

For the first time bumblebees are on the endangered species list. Beekeepers have been complaining about bees dying en-mass. Why is this happening?  Why is the bumblebee so important and how significant is it for human survival?

Mark Floegel explains: “Bumblebees like all bees are pollinators. We need bees and other pollinators like butterflies and birds to get germplasm – allowing plants to have sex with each other, so male and female plants can cross pollinate... About a third of the fruits we eat in the US are pollinated by honeybees - the bees that are taken around by beekeepers who do that. But there are many other pollinators, as well, including bumblebees.”   

The researcher explains honey bees “give us honey and bees that some beekeepers bring around to pollinate crops – like oranges, almonds, blueberries.” Bumblebees are wild; he told RT America’s Anya Parampil. 

“There are 20, 000 species of bees, but they are all endangered by very similar things. One is climate change. We’re moving bees out of their range; we’re making their seasons very irregular,” Floegel said.

Another danger comes from introduced species “that have come into this country, the way that other species that come into this country the way other invasive species have come into this country” and they are attacking the American bees.

Widely used pesticides and insecticides are making things worse.  For instance, neonicotinoid – is an insecticide, so it does kill insects, including bees.

“It is a pernicious insecticide, which we’re trying to get EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to ban for the health of bees and therefore for the help of our crops,” Floegel said.
Commenting on whether this recently reported die-off is irreversible, the researcher suggested: “we need to increase good, healthy food for bees.”

“In fact, the bees that live in my neighborhood, that live in my backyard – all my neighbors contribute to helping out by planting bee-friendly plants in their yards. So my bees have plenty of good, healthy food because they don’t use pesticides. I pay them back by giving them honey,” he said.

1VthV2V31Y4


https://www.rt.com/op-edge/376742-bumblebees-endangered-species-us-bees/

[mischief]

A few days ago a found a stranded bee in the patio. These days are quite cold here for any little insect out of its colony. First I thought it was dead, but then I realised it was striving to keep itself alive. I put it over one of the plants, and I spilled a few drops of natural honey there. Immediately, it went to the honey like crazy and began sipping and sipping... it was exciting! It remained there for a couple of hours. Got tidy up... and went! What a shame I didn't think about taking a photo. I felt like a child... :-)

Hi Unicorn,
Good on you for saving her. If left out side she would have died.

It would be a better idea to make up a sugar syrup and give that to the bees next time, unless you are feeding bees with their own honey.
This is because honey can have the American Foul Brood virus in it and you could unwittingly infect her hive.
In New Zealand, by law, we have to burn any infected hive to make sure they dont go out to infect other bees they meet while out foraging.

Please, please dont feed them any more with honey.

[Cidersomerset]

http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.20.5/orb/4/img/bbc-blocks-dark.png

The mystery of the whoop whooping bee

Scientists think they have found the explanation behind sounds generated by bees

Science & Environment

Short vid on link....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/headlines/38967016

[Cidersomerset]

The Bees That Give You Almonds | The Daily 360 | The New York Times

zzRIhmvNxMM

Published on 16 Feb 2017
A mesmerizing look inside the beehives and pollination operation of a third-generation
commercial beekeeper as he ships his bees across California for almond season.

[william r sanford72]

Bayer, Syngenta clash with EU over bees amid M&A charm offensive

http://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/business-mirror/uploads/2017/02/16185355/agri02-021717-696x464.jpg

Bayer AG and Syngenta AG, two of the agrichemical giants trying to win the European Commission’s blessing for deals reshaping the global industry, clashed with the European Union (EU) over bans on insecticides that regulators blame for killing honeybees.

The EU action not only damages farmers, the agricultural industry and the environment, but throws companies into legal uncertainty, Bayer said on the first day of hearings at the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg. BASF SE is also lining up to attack 2013 bans of previously approved pesticides, based on new studies the EU said showed “unacceptable” risks to Europe’s bee population.

“The commission is asking you to give it unlimited powers to withdraw existing approvals as and when it pleases,” Kristina Nordlander, a lawyer representing Bayer, told a five-judge panel on Wednesday. The EU decision was a “disproportionate and intolerable interference” with its rights, according to Bayer.

Bee deaths reached alarming levels over a decade ago, when scientists identified Colony Collapse Disorder, a syndrome without a known cause, in which disoriented bees fail to find their way back to their hives and die. Bee welfare has triggered a wave of protests from environmental campaigners at EU level.

The legal fight comes as EU competition watchdogs are poring over the potential threat to innovation as they weigh a trio of megadeals in the industry that have also triggered protests from Green groups.

Trio of deals

Officials have opened in-depth probes into China National Chemical Corp.’s agreement to buy Syngenta and DuPont Co.’s $74-billion tie-up with Dow Chemical Co. Bayer’s agreement to buy Monsanto Co. is also certain to fall under the EU’s remit once it’s formally notified to the Brussels authority.

The EU restrictions forced farmers to revert to older, “potentially more harmful chemicals that are sprayed on the fields”, but the commission made no assessment of what would happen after its decision, Nordlander said. “Most insecticides on the market will harm bees” but are considered safe by the commission, while neonicotinoids are “the most modern technology to minimize exposure to bees”.

The EU from December 2013 imposed limits on the use of three so-called neonicotinoids—clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam—saying they were “harmful” to Europe’s honeybee population, when used to treat bee-attractive plants and cereals. Studies at the time suggested exposure to neonicotinoids at sublethal doses can harm bee health and bee colonies, the European Food Safety Authority said in a report that formed the basis of the EU decision. More study is needed to fill in data gaps, the authority said at the time.

The commission said its findings showed that neonicotinoids, or neonics, are “systemic”, causing the entire plant to become toxic to bees and with this “very disturbing scientific information, it was not possible to postpone the decision by several years”, said Petr Ondrusek, a lawyer for the Brussels-based commission.

Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer, the world’s biggest maker of neonics, has previously warned that the increased presence of varroa, which predates the introduction of its chemicals, is the biggest factor behind the increased losses.

“There is no evidence” despite “over 20 years of intense study that neonicotinoids have any link to colony honeybee losses,” Nordlander said.
Syngenta, which will plead in court on Thursday, is arguing that the EU imposed the restrictions after “an unreasonable mandate given to EFSA, a rushed procedure that failed to allow proper input from stakeholders, failed to take relevant science into account and without any impact assessment”.

The commission “responded to a‘weight of noise’ instead of the ‘weight of evidence’, which clearly shows that in reality neonicotinoids pose a minimal threat to bee health compared with a lack of food, diseases and cold weather—a view shared by respected regulators around the world,” Basel, Switzerland-based
Syngenta, said in a statement.

Ludwigshafen, Germany-based BASF will face the EU judges on Friday to challenge a separate EU ban in 2013 of its insecticide fipronil.

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/bayer-syngenta-clash-with-eu-over-bees-amid-ma-charm-offensive/

[william r sanford72]

Honey bee genetics sheds light on bee origins

https://scienmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/133503_web-1.jpg

Where do honey bees come from? A new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis and UC Berkeley clears some of the fog around honey bee origins.

The work could be useful in breeding bees resistant to disease or pesticides.

UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Julie Cridland is working with Santiago Ramirez, assistant professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis, and Neil Tsutsui, professor of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley, to understand the population structure of honey bees (Apis mellifera) in California. Pollination by honey bees is essential to major California crops, such as almonds. Across the U.S., the value of "pollination services" from bees has been estimated as high as $14 billion.

"We're trying to understand how California honey bee populations have changed over time, which of course has implications for agriculture," Ramirez said.

To understand California bees, the researchers realized that they first needed to better understand honey bee populations in their native range in the Old World.

"We kind of fell into this project a little bit by accident," Cridland said. "Initially we were looking at the data as a preliminary to other analyses, and we noticed some patterns that weren't previously in the literature."

The new study combines two large existing databases to provide the most comprehensive sampling yet of honey bees in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

Unrelated Bee Lineages in Close Proximity

Previously, researchers had assumed an origin for honey bees in north-east Africa or the Middle East. But the situation turns out to be more complicated than that, Cridland said.

"You might think that bees that are geographically close are also genetically related, but we found a number of divergent lineages across north-east Africa and the Middle East," she said.

There are two major lineages of honey bees in Europe – C, "Central European," including Italy and Austria and M, including Western European populations from Spain to Norway – which give rise to most of the honey bees used in apiculture worldwide. But although C and M lineage bees exist side by side in Europe and can easily hybridize, they are genetically distinct and arrived in different parts of the world at different times.

M lineage bees were the first to be brought to north America, in 1622. The more docile C lineage bees came later, and today many California bees are from the C lineage, but there is still a huge amount of genetic diversity, Ramirez said.

"You can't understand the relationships among bee populations in California without understanding the populations they come from," Cridland said.

In the Middle East, the O lineage hails from Turkey and Jordan, and Y from Saudia Arabia and Yemen. The main African lineage is designated A.

At this point, the researchers cannot identify a single point of origin for honey bees, but the new work does clear up some confusion from earlier studies, they said. In some cases, diverged lineages that happen to be close to each other have mixed again. Previous, more limited studies have sampled those secondarily mixed populations, giving confusing results.

"We're not making any strong claim about knowing the precise origin," Cridland said. "What we're trying to do is talk about a scientific problem, disentangling these relationships between lineages, the genetic relationships from the geography."
###
The study is published online in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.

https://scienmag.com/honey-bee-genetics-sheds-light-on-bee-origins/

[Cidersomerset]

Britain’s Urban Butterfly Population Down 69% In two Decades – Study

By David on 18 February 2017 GMT Planetary change


‘Butterflies are disappearing more rapidly from British towns and cities than from the countryside,
according to a new study taken over the last 20 years. The research blames a multitude of factors
for the decline, including climate change.The study, published in the May 2017 issue of journal
Ecological Indicators, found that the number of urban butterflies fell by 69 percent over a 20 year
period beginning in 1995, compared to a 45 percent decline in rural areas.The study compared
trends for 28 species in urban and countryside environments and found that 25 of those species
had declined by more in city environments.In particular, the research found that the Small Copper
and Small Heath species suffered the biggest city declines.’

Read more: Britain’s Urban Butterfly Population Down 69% In two Decades – Study

http://rinf.com/alt-news/newswire/britains-urban-butterfly-population-down-69-in-2-decades-study/

[william r sanford72]

Honeybee Buzz Literally Makes Flowers Explode With Pollen

The fuzzy pollinators vibrate in the key of the Beatles song "Hey Jude" to make flowers give up their goods.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2017/02/16/01-bees-honey-waq.ngsversion.1487274016380.adapt.1190.1.jpg

By Liz Langley
PUBLISHED February 18, 2017

Like many people, reader Todd Barczak is increasingly interested in where his food comes from. So he came to us with this question: "Are honeybees the only bees that make honey?"

Weird Animal Question of the Week buzzed off to find out.

Hoarding the Gold

All of the 20,000 known bee species make honey, but only honeybees make a surfeit of the sweet stuff, says Juliana Rangel, an entomologist at Texas A&M University.

There are seven species of honeybees, which include Asian, African, and European honeybees, the latter of which we mostly see in the U.S. (Related: "Obama Unveils Plan to Reverse Alarming Decline of Honeybees.")

Honeybees make extra because "they live in places where there are seasons," Rangel says, storing and living on honey in winter when there’s no nectar to eat.

What Is Honey, Anyway?

Bee barf.

So says Denise Ellsworth, an entomologist at Ohio State University who describes how bees suck nectar from plants, which then goes into a "honey stomach," an organ for storing food before it's digested.

The nectar mixes with an enzyme, and "the bees regurgitate that when they get back to the colony," condensing the nectar into honey. (Read more about the decline of the honeybee.)

Plan B

Pollen easily gets stuck to bees' fuzzy bodies and carried from flower to flower, Ellsworth says, but bumblebees and some other wild bees do something honeybees don’t do: buzz pollination. (Related: "First Bumblebee Declared Endangered in the U.S.")

Bumblebees "can unhinge their wings from their wing muscles and vibrate their bodies," Ellsworth says, making that buzzing sound you hear when they’re on a flower in the tone of middle C.

"It’s the 'hey' in 'Hey Jude,' and it causes the flower to explosively release pollen."

To pollinate some plants, such as blueberries and cranberries, bees "wrap their legs around the flower" and buzz that note, causing release of pollen "like salt from a shaker," Ellsworth says.

That’s a level of intimacy you’ll think about over your next blueberry smoothie.

Beeing Positive

But bees aren’t just persuasive. They’re energy efficient.

"Bees have a positive electrostatic charge to their bodies," says Ellsworth, "like when you scrape your feet across a carpet."

Flowers have a negative charge, so before a bee lands on one, it uses its body hairs to feel the strength of a flower's charge. A flower that has just been visited by another pollinator "loses a little bit of that negative charge," allowing the would-be pollinator to save time and move on.

A Bouquet of Flowers

All this work provides a whopping portion of what we eat: Honeybees, along with native pollinators like butterflies, pollinate a third of the food consumed worldwide, says Rangel.

Pollinators' global value is estimated at $200 billion per year; in the U.S., it's about $15 billion annually.

For all the delicious fruits and crops they give us, honeybees themselves have few genes for taste. But the insects do seek out nutrients such as salt, according to a recent study in the journal Ecological Entomology.

In autumn, when there are fewer plants available, bees visit puddles, bird baths, and compost piles to satisfy their nutrient needs, lead author Rachael Bonoan, a Tufts doctoral candidate, says by email. (Related: "For the First Time Bees Declared Endangered in the U.S.")

Little is known about minerals content in pollen and nectar, except that they contain "trace amounts," says Bonoan.

Therefore it’s important that bees have a variety of flowers, "so they have the best chance of finding what they need."

Short Vid in Link:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/honeybees-honey-insects-pollen-agriculture/

[william r sanford72]

Walking With the Butterflies in Taiwan’s Maolin Valley

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/crow-butterflies.jpg
Crow butterflies of the genus Euploea overwinter in the Maolin Valley in Taiwan

By Laura Kraft

This post is the seventh in the “Travel Bug” series by Laura Kraft, a recent graduate from the University of Georgia, who is chronicling her travels in Asia from an entomological perspective. See earlier posts from the series.

Late January in the Northern Hemisphere means cooler temperatures, but it was nothing new to me to be sweating in the sunny weather while hiking in the verdant valleys of Maolin, Taiwan. I have been traveling through Southeast Asia since November and had been looking forward to cooler temperatures in Taiwan. I turned a corner to a particularly sunny section of the trail and stopped fast. All of the sudden, there were dozens of brown and purple butterflies just waking up, flitting quickly through the sunny patch en route to flowering plants with nectar.

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/maolin-valley.jpg
The Purple Butterfly Ecological Park overlooks the Maolin Valley in Taiwan.

Whereas I had traveled north for relief from hot temperatures, these butterflies had migrated south from northern areas of Taiwan to the warm, sunny valleys of southern Taiwan to avoid chilly temperatures. I came to Maolin to see the overwintering site of four species of crow butterfly in the genus Euploea (E. tulliolus koxinga, E. mulciber barsine, E. eunice hobsoni, and E. sylvester swinhoei). The only other butterfly in the world that overwinters in a valley like the crow butterfly is the monarch butterfly, which migrates to southern California and Mexico.

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/crow-butterfly.jpg
Crow butterflies in the genus Euploea migrate south to the warm, sunny valleys near Maolin, Taiwan, to overwinter

The crow butterflies have been traveling to these valleys for a long time, well before the earliest memories of the local indigenous Taiwanese who live in the valley with them. Two local tribes in particular revere the butterflies that visit every winter: the Rukai tribe and the Paiwan tribe, both located in the nearby Sandimen Township. A visit to these tribes reveals butterfly motifs on everything from their traditional clothing to buildings to signs on shops. While Taiwan’s numerous exotic butterflies used to be sold to collectors, they are valued more today as a tourist attraction, bringing visitors from December to March to the mountains north of Kaohsiung City.

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/butterfly-ribbons.jpg
Ribbons featuring a butterfly motif often adorn the traditional clothing of the indigenous tribes of Sandimen Township in Taiwan.

Besides an interest in tourism, there has also been an increase in interest for the conservation of these migrating butterflies, led greatly in part by Chan Chia-Lung (詹家龍) of the Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan.

I was able to interview Pin-Chu Lai, a volunteer who worked under Chan in 2011. She is now a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Together with a group of 25 other students, Pin-Chu traveled to Maolin in January 2011 to tag butterflies, using a marker to write the location and date where they were caught on their wing. They also noted butterflies that had already been marked and where they came from to better understand the migratory patterns of these butterflies.

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/butterfly-conservation-society-volunteers.jpg
Two volunteers working under direction of Chan Chia-Lung at the Butterfly Conservation Society of Taiwan mark a butterfly to help track its migration across the island nation.

When they migrate in late November to southern Taiwan, the butterflies cross a few highways, which in some years are shut down to protect the hundreds of butterflies passing over per minute. Recently, mesh bridges over the highway have been put up during migration periods to try and force the migrating butterflies up and over the moving traffic on the highway. Data collected by the volunteers can help determine where more of these bridges may be needed and where more conservation efforts should be focused.

Pin-Chu first heard about the volunteering opportunity from a friend in the entomology department at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, where she was studying at the time. Chan recruits from entomology students in Taiwan because they are best at delicately handling the butterflies to mark them for the study. Before volunteering, Pin-Chu had never visited the butterfly migration site. She was overwhelmed when they hiked in to the field site the first day, and she looked up to see approximately 50 butterflies flying overhead. Before that, she had respected butterflies but had no special attachment to them. After visiting Maolin, her perspective changed: “After seeing hundreds of them in front of me in person, that [changed] me a little bit in my mind.” Hopefully, as more tourists visit the site they will be inspired with a similar reaction and interest in conservation of these butterflies and their overwintering valleys and migration routes.

https://entomologytoday.org/2017/02/24/walking-with-the-butterflies-in-taiwans-maolin-valley/

[william r sanford72]

Ball-rolling bees reveal complex learning

https://images.sciencedaily.com/2017/02/170223142100_1_540x360.jpg
Bee holding a mini-ball

Bumblebees can be trained to score goals using a mini-ball, revealing unprecedented learning abilities, according to scientists at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

Their study, published in the journal Science, suggests that species whose lifestyle demands advanced learning abilities could learn entirely new behaviours if there is ecological pressure.

Project supervisor and co-author Professor Lars Chittka from QMUL's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, said: "Our study puts the final nail in the coffin of the idea that small brains constrain insects to have limited behavioural flexibility and only simple learning abilities."

Previous research has shown that bumblebees could solve a range of cognitive tasks, but these have so far resembled tasks similar to the bees' natural foraging routines, such as pulling strings to obtain food.

This study examines bees' behavioral flexibility to carry out tasks that are not naturally encountered by the insects.

"We wanted to explore the cognitive limits of bumblebees by testing whether they could use a non-natural object in a task likely never encountered before by any individual in the evolutionary history of bees," said Dr Clint Perry, joint lead author and also from QMUL's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

The experiment required the bees to move a ball to a specified location to obtain a reward of food. The insects were first trained to know the correct location of the ball on a platform. Subsequently, to obtain their reward, the bees had to move a displaced ball to the specified location.

To learn the technique, the bees were trained under one of three conditions: some observed a previously trained bee move the furthest ball to the centre to gain reward, others received a "ghost" demonstration, where a magnet hidden underneath the platform was used to move the ball, and a third group received no demonstration, where they found the ball already at the centre of the platform with reward.

The bees that observed the technique from a live or model demonstrator learned the task more efficiently than those observing a "ghost" demonstration or without demonstration.

Joint lead author Dr Olli J. Loukola, said: "The bees solved the task in a different way than what was demonstrated, suggesting that observer bees did not simply copy what they saw, but improved on it. This shows an impressive amount of cognitive flexibility, especially for an insect."

During the demonstrations, the researchers placed three yellow balls at varying distances from the centre. The "demonstrator" bees always moved the furthest ball to the centre, and always from the same spatial location, since they had been trained under conditions where the closer balls were immobile. Untrained bees were given three opportunities to watch a skilled bee perform the task in this manner.

In later tests, when these untrained bees were tested without the presence of a skilled demonstrator, bees moved the closest ball instead of the furthest ball, which they had seen the demonstrator moving. In another experiment, the bees also used a differently coloured ball than previously encountered.
Dr Loukola added: "It may be that bumblebees, along with many other animals, have the cognitive capabilities to solve such complex tasks, but will only do so if environmental pressures are applied to necessitate such behaviours."


6AgWUiDzuXA


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170223142100.htm?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=gplus

[Cidersomerset]

Trained Bumble Bees Are Like Tiny Soccer Players | Mach | NBC News

0TnA_L9eumQ

Published on 24 Feb 2017
An experiment at Queen Mary University of London trained bumble bees to
roll mini-balls into different goals. Their learning capabilities suggest they
can adapt to new environments and fight against decreasing bee populations.

[william r sanford72]

Musical interlude...All Them Witches - "Internet" from sleeping through the war.

uenNZR0OLMU


:bigsmile:

[william r sanford72]

Parasite genome joins battle to save honey bees

https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/honeybees.jpg

The genome of a parasitic mite that infects honey bee colonies and causes wide-spread destruction has been sequenced by scientists at the University of Liverpool and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU).

Although there are many potential causes for the decline in honey bee colonies, pathogens and parasites of the honey bee, particularly mites, are considered major threats to honey bee health and colonies.

The researchers sequenced the genome of the bee mite Tropilaelaps mercedesae to assess the interaction between the parasite and host as well as provide a resource for the ongoing battle to save honey bee populations.

The results provide resources for developing gene-based control strategies, determining the weak points for conventional control methods, and identifying new targets for biological control.

Global spread

T. mercedesae is a honey bee parasite prevalent in most Asian countries, and has a similar impact on bee colonies that the globally-present bee mite Varroa destructor has. More, T. mercedesae and V. destructor typically co-exist in Asian bee colonies and with the global trade of honey bees T. mercedesae is likely to become established world-wide.

The study revealed that there were specific features in the T. mercedesae mite genome that had been shaped by their interaction with honey bees, and that current mechanisms to control mites are unlikely to be useful for T. mercedesae.

Dr Alistair Darby, from the University’s Centre for Genomic Research, where the sequencing was done, said: “The genome sequence data and research findings provide useful resources for understanding mite biology and identifying potential gene-based mite control strategies.”

Control strategies

Of particular interest, the team found that the mite does not rely on sensing stimulatory chemicals to affect their behaviour, meaning that control methods targeted to gustatory, olfactory, and ionotropic receptors are not effective.

The researchers also found that T. mercedesae is enriched with detoxifying enzymes and pumps for the toxic xenobiotics, which means the mite can quickly acquire miticide resistance.

Relevant to this, the researchers investigated the bacteria that infect the bee mite, of which little is known. The scientists discovered that the symbiote Rickettsiella grylli-like bacteria is commonly present in T. mercedesae, and suggest that manipulating this bacteria could help in the development of novel control strategies.

The extent of honey bee colony destruction remains a complex problem, but one that has an extensive impact on crop productivity since honey bees are needed for pollination of a variety of plants. The findings, genome, transcriptome, and proteome data from this T. mercedesae study add an important new resource in the battle to save bee colonies.

The paper ‘Draft genome of the honey bee ectoparasitic mite, Tropilaelaps mercedesae, is shaped by the parasitic life history’ is published in GigaScience.

https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2017/02/27/honey-bee-parasite-genome-sequenced/

[william r sanford72]

Stingless bees have their nests protected by soldiers

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/stinglessbee.jpg
Guardian bees of the species Scaptotrigona depilis at the entrance to their hive

Although stingless bees do not have a sting to fend off enemies, they are nonetheless able to defend their hives against attacks. Only four years ago it was discovered that a Brazilian bee species, the Jatai bee, has a soldier caste. The slightly larger fighters guard the entrance to the nest and grip intruders with their powerful mandibles in the event of an attack. Working in collaboration with Brazilian researchers at the University of Sao Paulo and Embrapa in Belém, biologists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) managed to identify four further species which produce a special soldier caste to defend their nests. "This is therefore not a solitary case, as it seems there is an astounding variety of social organization among other stingless honey bees," said Dr. Christoph Grüter of Mainz University. The scientists had examined a total of 28 different species from entirely different habitats in Brazil.

There are more than 500 species of stingless honey bees worldwide, 400 of them in Brazil alone. They form highly social societies with a queen and collect pollen in the same way as European honeybees. Many of the stingless bee species, however, are helplessly exposed to attacks by robbers. These robber bees, which also belong to the stingless bees, have given up foraging for pollen or nectar themselves. Instead, they invade the nests of other bees and steal their honey and pollen, even wax and brood food. In 2012, however, Dr. Christoph Grüter and his colleagues discovered for the first time that parasitic robbers encounter difficulties when they assault a Jatai bee (Tetragonisca angustula) colony. The nest entrance is protected by guard bees which are larger than the hive's other worker bees.

"Meanwhile we have established that the hive guards of a number of species out of the total of 28 we examined are larger than other worker bees. These soldiers are between 10 to 30 percent larger than the pollen foragers of the same colony," explained Grüter, adding that larger guards are better fighters. Evolutionary biologists found large guard bees mainly in species that are subject to frequent attacks. The authors postulate that attacks by robbers are the driving force behind the evolution of a special caste among the worker bees and therefore represent the factor that has resulted in this more marked division of labor. "We were able to clearly link the activity of robber bees to the evolution of these soldiers," clarified Grüter. Analyses showed that such a differentiation among worker bees has occurred at least five times in the last 25 million years hand in hand with the appearance of parasitic robber bees.

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/1-stinglessbee.jpg
Soldier bees of the species Tetragonisca angustula defending the entrance to their hive .

Based on their findings, the team of researchers from Mainz and Brazil were able to publish a further new discovery. To date, it has been assumed that the division of labor among bees is determined primarily by age. Young bees take care of cleaning the nest and feeding the larvae. As they get older they move closer to the nest exit, from where they depart on foraging expeditions in search of food. It is a different matter with soldier bees. They are larger than their nest comrades from the moment they hatch, which means the division of labor in a hive is not dictated solely by the age of the insects but also by their morphology.

Explore further: South Central Texas residents bewildered by recent bee behavior

More information: Christoph Grüter et al, Repeated evolution of soldier sub-castes suggests parasitism drives social complexity in stingless bees, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-016-0012-y

Journal reference: Nature Communications
Provided by: Universitaet Mainz

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-stingless-bees-soldiers.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2017-02-stingless-bees-soldiers.html

[william r sanford72]

:bigsmile:Caterpillar drums with its anus to send food and weather alerts

https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/27134246/09-darcuataearly.jpg
Birch caterpillars follow drummer’s call

By Karl Gruber

Species: birch caterpillar (Drepana arcuate)

Habitat: Deciduous woodland with birch or alder in North America

Bees buzz, cicadas sing, but caterpillars are the real musical maestros of the insect world. It turns out they use different parts of their body to get the attention of other caterpillars.

The tiny birch caterpillar makes special vibrations, inaudible to human ears, using their mouths, body and anal parts. These appear to send out information about food and shelter to other caterpillars nearby.

Within a couple of hours, a small group of some 2-6 individuals forms around the drummer – a behaviour that may provide safety from predators or bad weather.

“These tiny caterpillars produce a complex diversity of signals – they shake their bodies, drum and scrape their mouthparts, and drag specialised anal ‘oars’ against the leaf surface to create bizarre signals,” says evolutionary biologist Jayne Yack at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, who led the new study.

“I’ve been studying insect sounds for more than 30 years, and I’ve never seen one insect species produce such a diversity of signal types.”
The study is the first to provide evidence for the use of vibratory signals for complex acoustic communication in caterpillars, Yack says.

uDk8xYvUS34

But why does this tiny caterpillar need such a complex repertoire of signals? This is still not clear, says Yack. “But probably they are using different signals to gauge distance or different food quality, or to help others localise the source,” she adds.

In fact, the vibrations continue even after the group has formed. “They keep communicating with each other,” says Yack. “Maybe they are saying things like ‘hey, we need to fix this big hole in the shelter’ or ‘Hey guys, I’m over here! I found a really good feeding spot!’ or perhaps ‘Move over! this is MY spot!’

Conflict resolution

Until recently caterpillars were thought to rely primarily on chemical signals such as pheromones to communicate – unlike insects such as wasps, bees and ants, which use both vibratory and chemical signals to communicate information about food or safety.

In an earlier study, Yack’s team discovered the vibratory signals in the late stages of these caterpillars. They found that the signals were used to solve territorial disputes – the anal scraping, for example, was thought to have evolved as a way to avoid one-to one confrontations.

The latest study reveals a whole new facet of this behaviour. Yack’s team recorded the vibrations made by the early stages of these caterpillars, as they formed their groups.
Analysis of the sounds showed that they produce four different types of vibratory signals associated with feeding and silk-making, which is used to build shelters. They used their mandibles and anal parts to scrape the surface of the leaf, shook their body to make a buzzing sound, and drummed with their mandibles.

The big difference between the vibrational signals sent by these young caterpillars compared with their older counterparts lies in the intentions, says Yack. These younger caterpillars only use their vibrations to tell other caterpillars about food and shelter, rather than to fight over a piece of leaf.

The finding could have implications for pest control, as many pests spent a significant part of their lives as caterpillars, and they likely have similar types of communication.

So, cracking the communication code could help researchers develop novel alternatives to pesticides. “Perhaps by jamming their signals or by monitoring the abundance of pest species on plants,” Yack says.

However, not everyone agrees that the caterpillars are using the vibrations to communicate. Tomer Czaczkes, from the University of Regensburg in Germany, says there might be another explanation.

“For me the smoking gun is missing: without playing back the vibrations to caterpillars, and seeing them approach the vibrations, we don’t actually know it’s the vibrations that are important. Maybe the caterpillars are releasing chemicals while doing this scraping behaviour?” he says.

Journal reference: Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, DOI: 10.1007/s00265-017-2280-x

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2122825-caterpillar-drums-with-its-anus-to-send-food-and-weather-alerts/

[william r sanford72]

Common Fungicide Damages Muscles that Bees Use to Fly

(Beyond Pesticides, February 27, 2017) Myclobutanil, a systemic fungicide commonly used in agriculture and home gardens, can cause significant damage to the muscles that honey bees use to fly and keep warm during the winter. The results of a study, published this month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by a group of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, underscore the importance of wide-scale education and movement away from the regular use of toxic pesticides.

After nearly a decade of unsustainable losses, honey bees and other pollinators continue to suffer declines resulting from the use of toxic pesticides, particularly systemic insecticides called neonicotinoids.

Although a substantial body of science implicates neonicotinoids as the most serious chemical threat to pollinators currently, the effects of fungicides and other pesticides on these important animals should not be dismissed as inconsequential. In fact, a 2016 study published by researchers at the University of Maryland found that bee colonies may die off as the number of different pesticide exposures increase.

In this recent study, researchers discovered complex interactions between myclobutanil, natural compounds found in flowers, and honey bees’ detoxification system, known as cytochrome 450 enzymes. When foraging on flowers sprayed with myclobutanil, honey bees also consume small amounts of a flavonol called quercetin. In order to metabolize quercetin, bees use their cytochrome 450 enzymes. However, researchers find that myclobutanil inhibits the cytochrome 450 system, which in turn inhibits the ability to metabolize quercetin. Exposure to unmetabolized quercetin leads to a decrease in production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in bees’ thorax, meaning that bees produced less energy for the muscles they use to fly.

Needless to say, it is precisely this type of complex interaction that environmental groups harshly criticize government regulators for not considering in risk assessments used to register toxic pesticides. These type of interrelated processes in turn effect the complex behavior of honey bees. Weaker flight muscles can interfere with pollinators’ ability to make it to or from sources of food and forage. It may even be a clue to colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon that has occurred with a subset of honey bee declines that is characterized by a dead hive absent of large numbers of dead bees.

In addition to flying, honey bees cluster in a ball over winter and use their wings to generate heat within the hive. It is not difficult to see how weaker wing muscles could affect the ability of honey bee colonies to maintain a warm enough internal hive temperature.

Although the effects of fungicides on pollinators have not been studied extensively, the research raises serious concerns for another chemical tool integral to conventional chemical-intensive agricultural and garden practices. A series of studies published in 2015 discovered what lead researcher Mia Park, PhD characterized as “deleterious properties of a class of pesticides that was, until recently, considered benign to bees.”

Myclobutanil is mainly used to control diseases like powdery mildew, which can affect a plant’s ability to flower and fruit. However, there are a wide variety of non and least-toxic alternative means to control the disease. Essential oils, particularly rosemary and thyme, are effective, as is neem oil. Potassium-based soaps like MPEDE are registered to control powdery mildew and permitted for use in certified organic production. And for home gardeners, spraying baking soda and water on plants in the early morning has been successfully used to prevent mildew. Fungus thrives in wet, high humidity environments with low air circulation, and in the majority of cases eliminating those conditions will alleviate the effects of the disease.

By thinking holistically, and considering and respecting the complex interactions between humans and our environment, we can transition to a point where a toxic pesticide like myclobutanil is not necessary. Organic gardening and agriculture, which nurtures soil health and biodiversity, and a systems plan to prevent potential pest problems, provides a path forward. By acknowledging the complexity of ecological interactions, and limiting pesticide use to only situations when all other options have been exhausted, we can stop disrupting biological systems and the dramatic declines in pollinator populations and other wildlife that continue to define food production in the modern industrial age.

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2017/02/study-finds-common-fungicide-interferes-with-muscles-bees-use-to-fly/

[william r sanford72]

usda.... NATIONAL HONEY REPORT February 27, 2017

www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf

[william r sanford72]

Polli-Nation Pollinator of the Month: Fig Wasp

(Beyond Pesticides, March 1, 2017) The Fig wasp is the pollinator of the month for March. A highly evolved pollinator crucial to the life cycle of the fig tree, the fig wasp is part of the chalcidoid family. Within this classification, it is a member of the agaonidae sub family, which consists of both mutualistic pollinating, and parasitic, non-pollinating, fig wasps.

Fig wasps have a mutually beneficially relationship with fig trees, as both the tree and the wasp rely on each other for reproduction. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, there are about 900 species of pollinating fig wasps that are responsible for pollinating 900 different fig tree species. The relationship between fig trees and fig wasps is so evolved that each type of fig wasp pollinates only one specific type of fig tree, creating a beautiful and interdependent evolutionary partnership.

Range

The range of the fig wasp is dependent on the range of fig trees, which, according to the Encyclopedia of Life, are mainly found in the tropical and subtropical areas of the southern hemisphere. The most widely known fig tree, the common fig tree, or Ficus carica, is native to southwest Asia and the Mediterranean, and range anywhere from Afghanistan to Portugal. The strong demand and high commercial value of the fig fruit has led to the naturalization of the common fig tree in additional parts of the world that have the requisite mild and semi-arid climate required for the species to grow. California, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington all commercially produce the common fig tree.

Western consumers predominately eat figs from the common fig tree. This is due largely to the fact that this variety does not require pollination to the same extent as other fig species, making them easy to grow at home or in climates without naturally occurring fig wasp populations. However, there are two species of fig wasps that have been introduced in North America, which are typically used to pollinate the commercially valuable Smyrna fig.

Diet, Pollination, and Life Cycle

The fig wasp exclusively coexists with fig trees, which makes the fig fruit their primary source of nutrition. In order to understand the diet and method of pollination of the fig wasp it is important to understand their life cycle, which is heavily intertwined with the fig fruit. Fig wasps can be separated into two different groups, pollinating and non-pollinating, each of which plays an important role in the life cycle of a fig. Pollinating wasps provide a mutually beneficial service to the trees in the form of pollination, while non-pollinating wasps use the plant as a source of food, and often act as a parasites to either the fig plant or the pollinating wasps.

The first stage in the fig wasp’s life cycle occurs when a female fig wasp first enters an unripe fig fruit through a small opening known as the ostiole, and travels to the synconium, or inner part of the fig fruit, which contains both male and female flowers. Once inside, she will lay her eggs in the shorter flower structures. The longer flower structures remain unfertilized and eventually develop into the seeds you see inside of a fig. While laying her eggs, the female fig wasp inadvertently pollinates the female flowers found inside the fig fruit by transferring traces of pollen particles from the fig fruit in which she originally hatched. Once their eggs are laid, female fig wasps die within the fig.

As the fig fruit and the eggs mature, male wasps hatch and emerge from their eggs, known as galls, traveling within the fruit towards the synconium in search of females to fertilize. After doing his part to fertilize the female, a male fig wasp will begin digging escape tunnels for the females once they hatch, though he will never get to benefit from them himself, as males die within the fig fruit during this process. Because they never leave the fruit in which they were born, male fig wasps do not have wings.

As all of this is happening, the male flowers are maturing and creating pollen for the new batch of female fig wasps to transfer to the next fig fruit. Once the female hatches she makes her way through one of the escape tunnels dug by the males, picking up pollen from the male flowers in the process. With pollen now in tow via her body, the female emerges in search of a new fruit to lay her eggs in, pollinating another fig in the process and starting the cycle all over again. It is through this process that the highly specialized and enclosed flowers within the figs are pollinated, further demonstrating the interdependence between the life cycle of the fig wasp and the fig tree.

Physiology

Physical differences from one species to the next due to coevolution with their host fig tree species. Despite this highly evolved individuality, fig wasps do share some general some characteristics across the species.

Female fig wasps are larger in size than male fig wasps and, as mentioned above, females have wings while males do not, as they do not leave the fig within their life cycle. However, because one of their primary roles is to create tunnels for female wasps to exit the fig, male fig wasps have strong, specialized mandibles built to chew through the fig’s tough outer flesh. Females, on the other hand, are equipped with wings to travel to another fig tree or fig fruit to lay eggs.

According to the Encyclopedia of Life the female fig wasp’s body has evolved over time to fit into the ostiole of the fig.  There are special appendages on her head that help her body inch through the tight opening on the fig.  Additionally, some species of female fig wasps have evolved to have an extremely long ovipositor, the body part responsible for laying eggs.  This allows the female to lay her eggs from the outside of the fig without entering and trapping herself within the fruit.  Fig wasps have very short life spans, living only between 1-2 days once hatched from their eggs.

Ecological Role

Fig wasps may seem like a menial pollinator given that they only pollinate one type of plant, but that is far from the case!  The fig wasp is an integral species, as the fig tree has been identified as a keystone species in tropical rainforests where they help maintain the population and diversity of a variety of species. The Encyclopedia of Life defines a keystone species as “a species within the ecosystem that exerts a major influence on the composition and dynamics of the ecosystem of which it lives.” This means that the fig tree is a species that has a disproportionately large effect on its environment, relative to its abundance within the ecosystem.

Many species rely on the fig fruit and its leaves as their main source of nutrients.  The Encyclopedia of Life lists the fig as a key resource for many fruit eating animals including fruit bats, several species of monkeys, and a plethora of birds.  Insects like caterpillars, moths and beetles all feed on the leaves of the fig tree. In fact, over 1,200 different species of birds and mammals have been recorded to eat fig fruits.

Threats to Existence and How to Protect Species

Currently, the fig wasp and the fig tree are not in immediate danger, however some scientists are concerned that climate change and global warming could have a negative impact on fig wasp populations. In a study done in Singapore in 2013, researchers studying fig wasps discovered that fig wasp survivability drastically reduced in climates that were warmer than their desired habitats. More extreme climates could threaten the productivity of fig wasps, possibly causing a decline in fig tree populations. Fig wasps are considered by researches to be resilient insects, having lived through planetary temperature changes over the past 60-80 million years. They hypothesize that as climate change continues to intensify, the insects will alter their behavior in order to adapt to warmer climates. However, if the changes in temperature take place too quickly for these adaptations to occur, it could conceivably threaten the existence of the fig wasp.

Tropical rainforest deforestation also poses a threat to fig wasps. As human development and agricultural activity continues to expand, forests around the world are being cleared at alarming rates, especially in developing countries where most of the world’s tropical rainforests are located. Fig trees and their companion pollinators are incredibly important to rainforest ecosystems, as they provide a popular source of food and attract seed dispersing animals.

There are a few things that can be done within your community to protect and foster fig wasps and fig tree populations. For starters, if you live in an area with an appropriate climate, consider planting a fig tree in your yard, garden, or community! The next vital step in protecting fig wasps and fig trees is to avoid the use of pesticides in your community.

You should be aware of the chemicals used in your gardening solutions and avoid buying products that that contain neonicotinoids, a class of chemicals linked to pollinator declines. Neonicotinoids are systemic by nature, and if sprayed near a fig tree could be transported through the roots into the flower of the plant, threatening the fig wasps who live inside. For more information on the impact pesticides have on non-target organisms, read Beyond Pesticides’ report on Bees, Birds, and Beneficials, which can be found here.

Switching to organic approaches to prevent and control pests around your home and garden is the best way to protect the health of pollinator populations in your community. For more information on how you can get involved in pollinator conservation throughout the nation, see Beyond Pesticides BEE Protective webpage.

What is Polli-NATION?
When it comes to pollination, bees tend to get all of the buzz. While they are crucial to pollinating many crops, bees are not the only pollinators working hard to provide the ecosystem services critical to the food system. In fact, one out of every three bites of food is made possible by pollinators. In order to raise awareness for the unsung pollinator heroes, Beyond Pesticides created the Polli-NATION Campaign, which highlights the important work of a relatively unknown pollinator each month, including butterflies, wasps, flies, beetles, birds, bats, and more. The campaign raises public awareness about these pollinators, their contribution to plant health and productivity and the preservation of natural resources, and the threats they face in their daily lives, including toxic pesticides and habitat loss. Learn what you can do in your community to help ensure their survival of all the pollinators.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Life, Encyclopedia Britannica

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2017/03/polli-nation-pollinator-month-fig-wasp/

[william r sanford72]

Scientists reveal core genes involved in immunity of honey bees

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/12-scientistsre.jpg
The image shows honey bees affected by deformed wing virus after a mite infestation.

A core set of genes involved in the responses of honey bees to multiple diseases caused by viruses and parasites has been identified by an international team of researchers. The findings provide a better-defined starting point for future studies of honey-bee health, and may help scientists and beekeepers breed honey bees that are more resilient to stress.

"In the past decade, honey-bee populations have experienced severe and persistent losses across the Northern Hemisphere, mainly due to the effects of pathogens, such as fungi and viruses," said Vincent Doublet, postdoctoral research fellow, University of Exeter. "The genes that we identified offer new possibilities for the generation of honey-bee stocks that are resistant to these pathogens."

According to the researchers, recent advances in DNA sequencing have prompted numerous investigations of the genes involved in honey-bee responses to pathogens. Yet, until now, this vast quantity of data has been too cumbersome and idiosyncratic to reveal overarching patterns in honey-bee immunity.

"While many studies have used genomic approaches to understand how bees respond to viruses and parasites, it has been difficult to compare across these studies to find the core genes and pathways that help the bee fight off stressors," said Distinguished Professor of Entomology Christina Grozinger, Penn State. "Our team created a new bioinformatics tool that has enabled us to integrate information from 19 different genomic datasets to identify the key genes involved in honey bees' response to diseases."

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/13-scientistsre.jpg
The team's findings may help scientists and beekeepers to breed honey bees that are more resilient to stress.

Specifically, the team of 28 researchers, representing eight countries, created a new statistical technique, called directed rank-product analysis. The technique allowed them to identify the genes that were expressed similarly across the 19 datasets, rather than just the genes that were expressed more than others within a dataset.

The scientists found that these similarly expressed genes included those that encode proteins responsible for the response to tissue damage by pathogens, and those that encode enzymes involved in the metabolism of carbohydrates from food, among many others. A decrease in carbohydrate metabolism, they suggested, may illustrate the cost of the infection on the organism. The researchers report their findings in today's (Mar. 2) issue of BMC Genomics.

"Honey bees were thought to respond to different disease organisms in entirely different ways, but we have learned that they mostly rely on a core set of genes that they turn on or off in response to any major pathogenic challenge," said Robert Paxton, professor of zoology, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research. "We can now explore the physiological mechanisms by which pathogens overcome their honey-bee hosts, and how honey bees can fight back against those pathogens."

The implications of the findings are not limited to honey bees. The team found that the core genes are part of conserved pathways—meaning they have been maintained throughout the course of evolution among insects and therefore are shared by other insects. According to Doublet, this means that the genes provide important knowledge for understanding pathogen interactions with other insects, such as bumble bees, and for using pathogens to control insect pests, such as aphids and certain moths.

"This analysis provides unprecedented insight into the mechanisms that underpin the interactions between insects and their pathogens," said Doublet. "With this analysis, we generated a list of genes that will likely be an important source for future functional studies, for breeding more resilient honey-bee stocks and for controlling emerging bee diseases."

Explore further: Honey bees use multiple genetic pathways to fight infections

Journal reference: BMC Genomics

Provided by: Pennsylvania State University

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-scientists-reveal-core-genes-involved.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2017-03-scientists-reveal-core-genes-involved.html

[william r sanford72]

Musical Interlude #2...Tinariwen - "Imidiwàn n-àkall-in".

aDWrV-p5QgQ



:flower:

[william r sanford72]

Why Honeybees Don’t Have A Chance In The Midst Of Pesticides

Glyphosate has been touching the environment and public health in vast quantities for decades.

http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_720_noupscale/58c1ef5f1d000017007cd97f.jpg

I keep writing about honeybees because in my long experience at the US Environmental Protection Agency, nothing affected me more than my discovery that the plight of the honeybees has been a result of industry malfeasance and corruption managed by the EPA. Suddenly, I could read the hidden script of modern archaeology excavating the complex codes of federal regulation, risk assessment, and environmental protection. Honeybees became the mirror of self-delusion and destruction.

It all started innocently. A few ecologists monitoring pesticides and their impact on honeybees raised the alarm as early as 1976. They wrote detailed memoranda on the hazardous and often lethal effects of neurotoxic farm insecticides on honeybees. They recommended a moratorium on such pesticides that crippled the abilities of honeybees to search for nectar and pollen and, at the same time, pollinate some of our crops.

However, by mid-1970s, America’s political class had had it with EPA, which in 1972 dared ban the king of farm sprays, DDT. So politicians tied the EPA to the profits of the industry. My colleagues’ recommendations went nowhere. EPA kept approving “bad actors,” deleterious pesticides, with far-reaching consequences not merely for honeybees but for all life.

This was astonishing to me. By the time I joined EPA, in 1979, the agency was imploding from industry corruption. With utter contempt for public and environmental health, the industry declared war on science and even the environmental laws it had drafted for the government. The agribusiness industry became the alternative model of government and society. It expected no resistance or change. EPA was simply its lapdog. But unexpected things happened.

In 1976, an outstanding pathologist from the US Food and Drug Administration, Adrian Gross, uncovered a massive lab fraud. Companies paid a large laboratory known as Industrial Bio-Test, near Chicago, to test their products for federal approval. IBT did just that, using fraud and deceit to make the products shine.

Gross reported the fraud he discovered and EPA, FDA, and the entire federal government and the industry panicked. Companies went to their paid lobbyists who went to the paid-for Congressmen and Senators who went to the White House that ordered EPA to minimize and ignore the lab crime and its potential deleterious effects on public and environmental health.

It took seven years, from 1976 to 1983, to shut down IBT. And none of the major pesticides that gained license through the flawless data generating IBT machine lost their “registration” with the EPA. In other words, the fraud and crime of approving pesticides with fake data was never punished. The owners of IBT pesticides did not go to prison.

This period of wild industry corruption gave birth to glyphosate, a weed killer that achieved global significance, being the biggest selling pesticide ever. From 1974, when it came to market, to 2014, more than 1.6 billion kilograms of glyphosate drenched America. This is a Monsanto product.

I don’t know if glyphosate was tested by IBT. But other researchers say glyphosate came out of the house of IBT. Whatever the truth, the result is probably the same: a cloud of suspicion and outright agribusiness fraud has tainted glyphosate.

This history and Monsanto’s fight for global dominance give glyphosate the attention of champions. It is the “active” ingredient of the popular roundup weed killer and the driver of Roundup Ready, genetically engineered crops designed to tolerate glyphosate. Monsanto claims the best, almost harmless virtues, for its precious glyphosate products. Most international organizations, governments, agricultural universities, and the agribusiness industry like Monsanto. Glyphosate continues to be the powerhouse of weed killers and GMOs – worldwide.

Glyphosate does huge damage because, for several decades, it has been touching the environment and public health in vast quantities. According to Don Huber, expert in chemical and biological warfare and professor emeritus of microbiology at Purdue University, glyphosate makes it difficult for crops to absorb micronutrients necessary for their health and nutrition. This means that honeybees suffer from collecting nectar and pollen from crops and wild flowers deficient in micronutrients. Their suffering comes from losing the beneficial microorganisms named lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. This is because glyphosate acts as a powerful antibiotic against these bacteria. Without these bacteria honeybees cannot digest nectar and honey and become disoriented in their foraging.

Add neonicotinoid sprays to the broad deleterious mantle of glyphosate covering the agricultural regions of the Earth, and the honeybees are cooked. Neonicotinoids are straightforward nerve poisons. They, too, disorient honeybees and kill them outright. But in the logic of Huber, glyphosate is just as dreadful to honeybees. In its presence, honeybees “are starving to death even with plenty of honey and bee bread in the hive.” In addition, glyphosate disrupts the hormones of honeybees, which means honeybees “never learn to forage efficiently.” “Put glyphosate and Neonics [neonicotinoids] together in the environment, as we have, and the bees don’t have a chance!” Huber wrote me. In addition, Huber is certain that the two microorganisms that glyphosate kills, lactobacillus and bifidobacterium, do more than help honeybees digest their food. They give honeybees “immunity to mites, foul brood, viruses and stress”: “so with very low drift of glyphosate,” Huber says, “you see all of these [illnesses] present because glyphosate gives bees a bad case of ‘AIDS.’”

Honeybees fly right into the path of glyphosate and neonicotinoids.

Anthony Samsel, a research scientist and consultant on public health, reminded me that glyphosate “causes Alzheimer disease in the honeybee, Apis mellifera. It destroys memory in the creature, so that it forgets its way home. This is probably also true of the Monarch butterfly!”
The only light at the end of this barbarous tunnel is from the United Nations that in late January 2017 denounced the deception, aggression, and detrimental consequences behind the myth that keep pesticides as the pillars of modern farming.

Huber is right. We must “remove” glyphosate. I would add neonicotinoids and most pesticides deserve the same fate: ban them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-honeybees-dont-have-a-chance-in-the-midst-of-pesticides_us_58c1ec02e4b0c3276fb7831c

[william r sanford72]

Native Bees Heading for Extinction

(Beyond Pesticides, March 13, 2017) Nearly 1 in 4 species of native bee is imperiled and at increasing risk of extinction. This, according to a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), released earlier this month. The report is the first comprehensive review of the more than 4,000 native bee species in North America and Hawaii, and finds that more than half the species assessed are declining. With native bee decline increasing, advocates say it is imperative that action be taken to reduce toxic pesticide use and restore native habitats lost to chemical-intensive agriculture, urbanization, and climate change.

The new analysis, Pollinators in Peril: A systematic status review of North American and Hawaiian native bees, reveals that more than 700 species are in trouble from a range of serious threats, including severe habitat loss and escalating  pesticide use. Key findings include: (1) among native bee species with sufficient data to assess (1,437), more than half (749) are declining; (2) nearly 1 in 4 (347 native bee species) is imperiled and at increasing risk of extinction; (3) many of the bee species lacking sufficient data are also likely declining or at risk of extinction, highlighting the urgent need for additional research; and, (4) the declines are caused primarily by habitat loss, heavy pesticide use, climate change and urbanization.

These findings come as a growing body of research has revealed that more than 40 percent of insect pollinators are highly threatened globally, including many of the native bees critical to crop and wildflower pollination across the U.S. Many studies link pesticide use to these declines. Pesticides, like the neonicotinoid insecticides, have been shown to impair bee foraging and learning behavior, reproduction, and suppress bee immune systems making them more susceptible to disease and parasites. See ‘What the Science Shows.’
“The evidence is overwhelming that hundreds of the native bees we depend on for ecosystem stability, as well as pollination services worth billions of dollars, are spiraling toward extinction,” said Kelsey Kopec, a native pollinator researcher and author of the study. “It’s a quiet but staggering crisis unfolding right under our noses that illuminates the unacceptably high cost of our careless addiction to pesticides and monoculture farming.”

Honey bee decline has been much discussed in recent years. Last winter (2015/2016), beekeepers lost 44 percent of their honey bee colonies. But, until now, much less has been revealed about the 4,337 native bee species in North America and Hawaii. These mostly solitary, ground-nesting bees play a crucial ecological role by pollinating wild plants, and provide more than $3 billion in fruit-pollination services each year in the U.S. To assess current populationstopped trends and threats as comprehensibly as possible for the 4,337 described species of North American and Hawaiian bees, the CBD report reviewed the current conservation status of 316 species as established by state, federal, or independent research.

The report highlights five imperiled native bees that offer a snapshot of the threats driving declines in many native bee species:

Yellow carpet solitary bee: This dark, olive-green bee, whose fate is intertwined with its floral host and California’s dwindling vernal pools, is severely threatened with extinction.
Sunflower leafcutting bee: This spectacularly large bee used to be seen patrolling sunflower stands throughout the Great Plains; it is now in steep decline and rarely seen.

Wild sweet potato bee: Known for its unique three-lobed snout, this bee, once commonly seen foraging across much of the East, is now dangerously imperiled.

Gulf Coast solitary bee: Completely dependent on the disappearing coastal plain honeycombhead plant and the barrier-island sand dunes where it nests, this bee is now found only within a shrinking portion of its range along the Gulf Coast.

Macropis cuckoo bee: This nest invader, which takes over the nests of other bee species to lay its eggs, was once common across much of central and eastern North America but is now considered that region’s most endangered bee.

Earlier this year, the Rusty Patched Bumblebee became the first bumblebee federally designated as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The Rusty Patched Bumblebee was once widespread throughout the U.S. and parts of Canada, but declined dramatically over the last couple decades. Now their populations are estimated to be less than 10% of what they once were. But, the Trump administration in February reversed the final decision, pending further review, for this listing. In response, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit charging the administration violated the notice and comment requirements of public rulemaking for the delay on the bumblebee listing. 

With the decline of both native and managed bees, Beyond Pesticides is working to promote the widespread transition of conventional farmland to organic production. Organic law requires farmers to foster soil health, and create a strategy to prevent pest populations before they become a problem. Because of these factors, many certified organic farms do not need to use toxic pesticides because their required organic systems plan practices increase soil and plant health and pest and disease resiliency through an increased diversity of pest predators.

With one in three bites of food reliant on bees, other insects, and birds for pollination, the decline in pollinators due to pesticides, and other human-made causes, demands immediate action. For more on this and what you can do to protect pollinators, visit Beyond Pesticides’ BEE Protective webpage.

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

Source: CBD press release and report

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2017/03/native-bees-heading-extinction/

[william r sanford72]

At mealtime, honey bees prefer country blossoms to city blooms

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/atmealtimeho.jpg

Hungry honey bees appear to favor flowers in agricultural areas over those in neighboring urban areas.

The discovery has implications for urban beekeepers and challenges assumptions that farmland and honey bees are incompatible, said authors of a new study from The Ohio State University.

The team positioned honey bee colonies in an apiary in a central Ohio cemetery smack in the middle of where urban residential development transitions into farmland. They left the colonies to forage for nectar and pollen wherever they preferred.

The bees, studied from late summer to early fall, overwhelmingly went for the agricultural offerings instead of the assorted flowering plants in and around the urban neighborhoods nearby, said lead author Douglas Sponsler, who was a graduate student in entomology at Ohio State when the research was conducted in 2014. The study appears in the Journal of Urban Ecology.

Throughout the study, the honey bees' haul always favored plants from the agricultural area, and hit a high of 96 percent of the pollen collected at one point.

"Honey bees didn't seem to care that much what the floral diversity was. What they wanted was large patches of their favorite stuff," said Sponsler, who now works at Penn State University.

Goldenrod was particularly popular, the researchers found. The bees' agricultural foraging preference was especially pronounced at the end of the season, as the colonies prepared to overwinter.

While farm fields themselves aren't attractive to the bees, the countryside features wide swaths of unmowed wild plants (also known as weeds) along roadsides and in field margins, Sponsler said.

Senior author Reed Johnson, an assistant professor of entomology at Ohio State, said the discoveries made in this study help explain the ongoing hardships of urban beekeepers, who are growing in number in Ohio and elsewhere.

"When the bees have a choice, they go to the farmland. We've had trouble keeping our urban colonies alive, so this makes a lot of sense to us," Johnson said.

"There's this popular perception that urban places are better for bees because of the diversity of plants. This is showing that, at least in Ohio, the agricultural areas are actually superior and that's despite the pesticide use that's out there," he said.

"Apparently, farmland isn't desolate at all - at least not for honey bees."

Uncovering where the bees had been and what exactly captured their attention was a two-part process.

First, researchers videotaped then analyzed the tell-tale dance patterns of bees returning to the three study colonies. Translated by scientists, these dance moves explain what direction the foraging bee has been in relation to the hive and how far in that direction.

"These things can be pretty easily decoded by the human observer, thankfully. You can map the locations that are being referred to in the dance," Sponsler said.

The second part of the analysis - pollen identification - confirmed the dance-derived findings. When the honeybees came back to the cemetery, they flew through a screen that allowed their bodies in, but scraped the pollen off their hind legs and into a collection chamber.

Sponsler and his colleagues then sorted through the bees' collection, separating the grains of pollen by color and shape and then cross-referencing to determine what exactly the bees were foraging.

They examined pollen from five sampling dates. Agricultural foraging outweighed urban foraging in every sample and hit a high of 96 percent on the Sept. 19 collection date and a low of 62 percent of the honey bees' haul on Sept. 4.

For urban beekeepers and others interested in a thriving honey bee population, it could be prudent to think about supplementing the bees' diets at summer's end, the researchers said.

Honey bee populations could also become more stable in urban areas with more careful landscaping choices in and around cities, the researchers said.

"The focus is how can we make urban spaces better for bees so we can attract them back into the city?" Johnson said.

He suggested that planting certain trees could serve the honey bee population well. Linden trees, for instance, are "phenomenal" nectar producers, Johnson said.

Sponsler said there's plenty of room to improve urban plant diversity and keep honey bees satiated there as well as in the country.

"There's no reason why our urban landscapes cannot be full of flowers. It's just that we've inherited a certain preference toward things that look like golf courses rather than things that look like prairies."

Explore further: Berks' bees and pollen variation subject of student's independent study

More information: Douglas B. Sponsler et al, Spatial and taxonomic patterns of honey bee foraging: A choice test between urban and agricultural landscapes, Journal of Urban Ecology (2017). DOI: 10.1093/jue/juw008

Provided by: The Ohio State University

https://phys.org/news/2017-03-mealtime-honey-bees-country-blossoms.html

[william r sanford72]

Overuse Of Antibiotics, Big Threat For Bees & Humans

http://images.sciencetimes.com/data/thumbs/full/10227/600/0/0/0/trays-included-one-labeled-with-antibiotics-sit-after-being-used-in-experiments-at-the-new-laboratories-inside-the-francis-crick-institute-in-london-u-k-on-thursday-sept-1-2016.jpg

A study conducted has found out that overuse of antibiotics is bad for humans and bees alike. Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have done an experiment using honey bees and common antibiotics.

Most of the honeybees that were treated with common antibiotics did not last of a week. Meanwhile, the honeybees that were not treated did last for the whole week. The health implication found will also likely be found in human beings, reported Phys.org. It has made the overuse of antibiotics proven to be bad.

The common antibiotics have cleared out beneficial gut bacteria in the bees. Overuse of antibiotics has made way for the dangerous pathogens to go in. Those pathogens are also found in humans so this occurrence might also happen with human beings. The research team has also found out that the healthy bacteria like the gut microbes decreased fast.

Moreover, the increased level of Serratia, a pathogenic bacterium that afflicts humans and other animals, was found in the gut of the treated bees.

That has dramatically decreased the immortality rate of the bees. They do not have as much as the defense like when they have not taken the common antibiotic tetracycline. This discovery is one of the newest findings how overuse of antibiotics has caused people and other living things more harm than good, according to Science Daily.

Additionally, the study will also have a great impact for beekeepers and the agriculture industry. The loss of thousands of bees decades ago that affected pollinating of crops might have been because of the overuse of antibiotics, explained the UT Austin team, led by professor Nancy Moran and postdoctoral researcher Kasie Raymann.

"Our study suggests that perturbing the gut microbiome of honeybees is a factor, perhaps one of many, that could make them more susceptible to declining and to the colony collapsing," Moran said. "Antibiotics may have been an underappreciated factor in colony collapse," she added.

fhaVvW_YKps


http://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/10377/20170315/overuse-of-antibiotics-bad-for-bees-and-humans.htm

[william r sanford72]

Canadian mathematicians create Sims-like program to save bees
Pollinators are in trouble, but soon there may be an easier way to study them.

http://www.metronews.ca/content/dam/thestar/uploads/2017/3/16/istock-157639571.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo.jpg

Our honeybees are in trouble. For years, they’ve been plagued with Colony Collapse Disorder, a strange syndrome where masses of bees mysteriously die far from the hive, leaving honey – and defenceless baby bees – behind. Why? It’s a complicated combination of pesticides, parasites and other factors. For the future of our food supply and our economy, we must figure out how to protect pollinators. But studying them is time-consuming and expensive. Thanks to a creative pair of Canadian mathematicians, that may be about to change.

What is Bee++?

It’s a computer program created at the University of Western Ontario by mathematician Matt Betti and master’s student Josh LeClair. It simulates the lifecycle of honeybees, taking into account all sorts of factors the user can customize.  

Think of it as The Sims, for bees. It’s free to download from http://www.beeplusplus.ca and written in the common and easy-to-learn programming language C++ (hence the name). The code is open-source. Anyone can tinker or make improvements.

How it works

Using a grid that represents the bees’ habitat, you plant the crops of your choice, place your hive, choose the variables you want, then start the simulation. As time ticks by, watch and see what happens to the bees and look at graphical outputs of data like deaths and pesticide concentration.

Choose your challenges
You can mess around with many factors that affect bees. Here are a few:

-       Pathogens: You can program viruses and parasites to attack your bees. The dreaded varroa mite is Bee Enemy #1.
-       Pesticides: A group of insecticides called neonicotinoids are especially bad for bees.
-       Weather: Input real weather data from any government website
-       Food:  Choose the types of plants in the environment and where to put them. The program doesn’t just measure how the bees get nutrition from plants, it also measures how plants respond to pollinators.

Model Beehaviour

You can change the characteristics of your digital bees in many ways: What age do they fly from the hive? How much pesticide does it take to kill them? How much do they reproduce?

Just like in real life, different bees have different jobs (some are queens, others nurses or foragers), and their roles change throughout their lives.

The bees tend to buzz around sources of food, but a few will always be “scouts,” flying around every which-way looking for new sources of tasty bee treats.

As bees drink nectar contaminated with pesticides, toxins build up in their bodies, affecting their ability to navigate and find food. And they have a tiny “digital liver,” so the effect changes over time as the pesticide is digested.

Future buzz

After years of work, Bee++ was introduced to the research community this week in the journal Insects.

The program could be a boon to bee biologists. But Betti has even bigger hopes for it. "‘I’m naively ambitious,” he said. He wants Environment Canada and the provincial natural resources ministries to one day use Bee++ to help predict how their policies will affect bees.

Bee++ was designed using real research data. The next step is to test it against bee colonies in the real world and see how well it can predict how they’ll do.  

http://www.metronews.ca/views/science-says/2017/03/16/canadian-mathematicians-sims-like-program-to-help-save-bees.html

[william r sanford72]

Will This Campaign To Save The Bees Do More Harm Than Good?

Published on Mar 17, 2017

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk about a new campaign to save the bees that has been launched by one of America’s largest producers of cereal. However, after taking a bee’s eye view, there are some serious questions about the potential consequences of these efforts.
www.theorganicview.com.

7HPKXexB_3g

[william r sanford72]

'Bee hotels' made from recycled TVs helping to attract native bees back to suburbs

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/8366456-3x2-700x467.jpg

A Queensland woman has tuned in to a novel way of encouraging natives bees back into suburban areas.

Using retro televisions, Louise Cosgrove, from Jimboomba on the Gold Coast Hinterland, is building 'hotels' for Australian native bees.

Native bees are smaller than the well-known European honey bee. They are also stingless and do not produce honey.

Ms Cosgrove came up with the creative idea after her son-in-law left 100 recycled analog televisions at her home.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/8366436-3x2-700x467.jpg

"These particular TVs are very, very suitable because they have such great ventilation.

"They've got all the correct nesting materials … I want to do it right."

Ms Cosgrove spends hours foraging around her rural property to find wood and other natural materials to fill the televisions with.

Her son-in-law had already recycled the inner-tubes of most of the televisions, leaving Louise with plenty of room to arrange the wood, bamboo and bark in.

The hollows provide a place where the solitary native bees lay their eggs and raise their young.

Giving bees a helping hand

There are more than 2,000 species of native bees in Australia.

Bee Aware Brisbane's Dr Tobias Smith said native bees were often forgotten because most attention was paid to the European honey bee.

But urban sprawl has destroyed the habitats of native bees and they need protection.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/8366450-3x2-700x467.jpg

"Native bees and other native pollinators do pollination in our ecosystems, so without them we wouldn't get the renewal in ecosystems, we wouldn't get plants making new seeds," Dr Smith said.

"By encouraging them back into the landscape, by making urban environments friendly to native bees, we're going to boost their populations and a little bit of that might leak out to agricultural areas and wild areas.

There are a number of ways residents can encourage more bees to come to their backyard.

Planting more flowers and avoiding use pesticides are the simplest ways.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/8366454-3x2-700x467.jpg

Providing artificial habitat around the yard will offer native bees somewhere to nest.

"This can be as simple as drilling holes in wood, and things like leaf cutter bees will come and nest in them," Dr Smith said.

"Creating areas of bare soil where bees might dig down into it and putting out pieces of hollow bamboo."


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-18/australian-native-bee-nests-made-with-recycled-tvs/8366420

[william r sanford72]

Trees for Bees

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Trees_for_bees_balkan_ecology_project.png

Trees are an important, stable source of food for bees and other pollinators providing thousands of flower heads all in one place. Balkan Ecology Project share a list of great bee trees that indicates when the trees are in flower, what they offer the bees, i.e pollen, nectar or honey dew and whether and when the trees offer fruits, nuts or wildlife foods.

Trees are an important, stable source of food for bees and other pollinators providing thousands of flower heads all in one place.

I could go on and list their other virtues but the fact you’re on my blog leads me to assume that you already have a pretty good appreciation of both trees and bees so let’s get straight to the point of this post and find out which trees attract bees.

The good news is there are trees that provide nectar and pollen for bees pretty much all year round. Better news is that most of them are very easy to grow and suitable for growing in a wide range of conditions including small and large gardens and in the wild.

I’ve put together five lists of trees that you’ll find below;

1. Trees for Bees that also provide fruit or nuts
2. Nitrogen Fixing Trees for Bees
3. Ornamental Trees for Bees
4. Master list including all of the above in alphabetical order
5. Master list including all of the above in order that trees flower
Indicated on the lists are when the trees are in flower, what they offer the bees, i.e pollen, nectar or honey dew (see below for honey dew description), and whether and when the trees offer fruits, nuts or other wildlife foods. I’ve also included a link to plant profiles of trees that we stock in our bio nursery. You can find details of a bee tree multi pack below that we are offering from the nursery this spring.

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Trees-for-Bees-Chart-01.png

Nitrogen Fixing Trees for Bees

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Trees-for-Bees-Chart-02.png

Ornamental Trees for Bees

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Trees-for-Bees-Chart-03.png

Master list including all of the above in alphabetical order

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Trees-for-Bees-Chart-04.png

Master list including all of the above in order that the trees flower

It’s no coincidence that flowering and bee activity are triggered by warming temperature, During long cold winters in locations at high altitude or regions of high latitude, plants will not follow the sequence as illustrated below. In our gardens at approx. 580 m above sea level on the 42nd parallel north, the below table is an accurate representation, although there is a lot of variation within the month.

http://permaculturenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Trees-for-Bees-Chart-05.png

Honey Dew

If you have ever parked your car under a tree and arrived back to find it covered in a sticky substance, you have come across honey dew. You have the sap-sucking psyllids or aphids to thank for this.

An aphid feeds by inserting its straw-like mouthpart (proboscis) into the cells of a plant and draws up the plant’s juices or sap. Most aphids seem to take in from the plant sap more sugar than they can assimilate and excrete a sweet syrup, honey dew, that is passed out of the anus.

For many other insects including ants, wasps, and of course the bees, this is a valuable source of food. Ants harvest it directly from the aphids, bees generally collect it from where it falls.

Originally Published: http://balkanecologyproject.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/trees-for-bees.html

http://permaculturenews.org/2017/03/15/trees-for-bees/

[william r sanford72]

Pollination mystery unlocked by bee researchers

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2014/1-bee.jpg

Bees latch on to similarly-sized nectarless flowers to unpick pollen – like keys fitting into locks, University of Stirling scientists have discovered.

Research, published in Ecology and Evolution, shows the right size of bee is needed to properly pollinate a flower. The insect fits tightly with the flower's anthers, to vibrate and unlock pollen sealed within.

Dr Mario Vallejo-Marin, from Stirling's Faculty of Natural Sciences, said: "We found that a pollinator's size, compared to the flower, significantly influences how much pollen is deposited."

Experts found more pollen grains are deposited when the pollinator's body is the same size or wider than the space between the flower's reproductive organs.

Dr Vallejo-Marin said: "Some plants, particularly those that are buzz-pollinated – a technique where bees hold onto the flower and vibrate to shake out the pollen – require a close physical interaction between their floral sexual organs and their visitors.

"The closer the bee fits to the flower, allowing it to touch both the male and female sexual organs, the more efficiently the insect can transfer pollen between plants."

Bees that are too small, relative to the size of the flower, transfer fewer pollen grains to other flowers and act 'pollen thieves', extracting the pollen they need without pollinating the flower.

Flowers need pollinators to collect and transport pollen to fertilise other flowers and trigger fruit and seed production.

Former Stirling PhD researcher Dr Lislie Solís-Montero, who works in El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) research centre in Mexico, added: "Bees that are too small in relation to the distance between a flower's sexual organs behave as pollen thieves – removing pollen, but depositing very little.

"Our findings will help understand natural populations of nightshade and whether a visitor acts as a pollinator, or a pollen thief. This is not only relevant in its native range in Mexico, but also in the invasive species which is found right around the world."

Dr Vallejo-Marin added: "Surprisingly, visits by smaller bees were associated with more seeds being produced, indicating that more pollen does not necessarily create more seeds.

Seed production may also depend on the quality of the pollen and different kinds of pollen grains competing to germinate. However, by identifying whether visiting bees and complex flowers match physically, we can predict whether these bees are likely to be effective pollen carriers or not."

The ecologists used a species of nightshade plant (Solanum rostratum), which was buzz-pollinated with captive bumblebees of varying sizes. They recorded the number of visits received, pollen deposition, and fruit and seed production. Varieties of nightshade include potatoes, tomatoes and peppers.

More information: Lislie Solís-Montero et al. Does the morphological fit between flowers and pollinators affect pollen deposition? An experimental test in a buzz-pollinated species with anther dimorphism, Ecology and Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1002/ece3.2897

Journal reference: Ecology and Evolution
Provided by: University of Stirling

Vid in Link:
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-pollination-mystery-bee.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2017-03-pollination-mystery-bee.html

[william r sanford72]

Another Massive Bee Kill In California

Published on Mar 24, 2017

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk about massive bee kill in California, ICAR institute releases 465 bio-pesticides, Michigan pesticide applicator certification, pesticide poisoning statistics, and discussion about the Virginia's State pollinator protection plan.
www.theorganicview.com.

wBhh-ASzXBk

[william r sanford72]

Honey bees navigate using magnetic abdomens

http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/thumb/21/3/39/2017-03-27-Johnston-bees.jpg

Honey bees appear to sense magnetic fields using a magnetic structure in their abdomens, according to a team of physicists and biologists in Canada. The researchers came to this conclusion by carrying out a series of physics and behavioural experiments on the insects, which showed that this sensory ability can be disrupted using a strong permanent magnet.

Bees are not the only animals that seem to navigate using magnetic fields, with some rodents, birds, fishes, reptiles, bacteria and insects appearing to have this ability too. What is not well understood, however, are the underlying mechanisms of "magnetoreception" that make this navigation possible.

One clue could lie in the fact that some of these organisms contain magnetite – a ferromagnetic oxide of iron that is also found in some types of rock. Indeed in 1997, Joe Kirschvink and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology showed that honey bees respond to local magnetic fields in a way that is consistent with magnetite-based magnetoreception.

Disruptive effect

What Veronika Lambinet, Michael Hayden, Gerhard Gries and colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver have now done is to show that a ferromagnetic material consistent with magnetite exists in the abdomen of honey bees. They found that the material can be magnetized using a strong permanent magnet and that magnetizing the abdomen of a live honey bee disrupts its ability to navigate using local magnetic fields.

The researchers first dissected a number of honey bees, separating the bodies into abdomens, thoraxes and heads before crushing the body parts into pellets representing the three sections of bee anatomy. They then used a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to measure the magnetization of each pellet as it was exposed to an applied magnetic field of varying strength and direction. The resulting plots of magnetization versus applied field showed no evidence for ferromagnetism in pellets made from thoraces and heads – but a clear hysteresis loop indicative of ferromagnetism for the abdomen sample.

The team then used a strong permanent magnet to expose live honey bees to a magnetic field of 2.2 kOe – several thousand times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field – for about 5 s. Further measurements with the SQUID revealed that pellets made from the abdomen of these bees were more strongly magnetized than pellets made from bees that had not been exposed to a magnetic field.

Food source

To see how this magnetization affected the ability of live bees to navigate to a food source, the team first trained a group of bees to locate a sugar reward in an environment where electrical coils create a magnetic field. Half of these trained bees were then magnetized and their performance was compared with an un-magnetized control group. The team found that the magnetized bees were unable to find the reward, suggesting that their magnetoreceptors had been disrupted by the magnetization process.

While the study does not provide direct information about the biological mechanisms involved in magnetoreception, Hayden says: "The fact that we were able to disrupt the magnetic sense may well help to open doors or provide traction for future lines of inquiry."

Hayden adds that the team hopes "to eventually address questions such as the potential impact of industrial electromagnetic noise on the bees' magnetoreceptor and their overall well-being".

He also believes that future experiments could aim at investigating the microstructure of the magnetoreceptor. "Indeed, bees could become the model organism for studying magnetoreception," Hayden adds.

The study is described in Royal Society Proceedings

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2017/mar/27/honey-bees-navigate-using-magnetic-abdomens

[william r sanford72]

USDA..NATIONAL HONEY REPORT March 27, 2017

www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf

[ThePythonicCow]

Honey bees navigate using magnetic abdomens
The Electric Universe of the Thunderbolts Project (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA), found in the belly of the beast bee :).

[william r sanford72]

Apitherapy: Bees as Medicinal Midwives

Pharmacology is the branch of medicine dealing with the actions of drugs in the body—their therapeutic and toxic effects. Our ancestors were the original pharmacologists; developing drugs from plant and animal sources. The word pharmacy originated from an Egyptian word, pharmaki, and the Greek, pharmakon. It is also related to the Egyptian word pharagia, which means “the art of making magic”. The ability of organisms to make medicine and to self-medicate play key roles in the development of pharmacology AND in the making of magic….

Making magic with plants and flowers has its roots deeply entwined in the interspatial relationships over millennia with insects as pollinators. Pollinators procured the sweet and tangy nectars and the rich and robust pollens for their own nutrition and self-medication. In so doing, they have helped to fertilize flowering plants and thus, have served as midwives to blooms across the globe producing food and medicine for varied species for millennia. The foraged food from flowers that bees collect is indeed magical in that it not only feeds them and their developing young directly, as well as other critters and humans, but also serves as medicine to their super-organismal health network. This ability to transform flower power into sweet elixirs and other potent hive products provides medicine for the one --- and the many.

What is it that the bees have been eating and sharing with other organisms that lend to health? Bees visit numerous flower blooms and the mixtures through biological processes of chemistry and physiology keeps them healthy and provides healthy products which they share with humans as pharmaceutical (plant derived) medicines. As super-organisms, honeybees have evolved as an efficient and productive species. More recently, they, along with other pollinators have been experiencing increasing challenges from climate fluctuations, habitat encroachment and industrial agricultural development.  Yet, there are pockets here and there around the globe, where the natural landscape and topography is helping to nurture stronger and healthier species, whose subsequent generations-- like seeds, carry their genetic story to unfold over time while providing pollination for growing food, feeding life, and making medicine, magic, near and far. And, when bounties are plentiful, their products can be shared.

New Mexico’s Land of Enchantment is one such place. NM plays host to 7 out of the 8 climactic zones- from desert to tundra, only lacking tropical. Enchanted landscapes chisel and sculpt challenging and unique circumstances living under the state flag Zia sun emblem. Father Time tests and Mother Nature encourages. Plants and organisms that have adapted to the diverse and adverse conditions of our enchanted lands have unique and creative healing properties, as is evident in the traditional and cultural practices of both our Native Indigenous and Hispano societies. Early pharmacologists focused on natural substances, mainly plant extracts. It was until the 17th century that botany and medicine went hand and hand, and then it changed: Science diverged from its physical foundation to controlled laboratories. The industrialization of agriculture and “conventional” societies changed perspectives and approaches. We are now becoming more conscious and returning to integrative approaches that our ancestors have known and applied generation upon generation.

Pharmacology developed in the 19th century as a biomedical science that applied the principles of scientific experimentation to therapeutic contexts. Today, pharmacologists harness the power of genetics, molecular biology, chemistry, and other advanced tools to transform information about molecular mechanisms and targets into therapies directed against disease, defects or pathogens, and create methods for preventative care, diagnostics, and, ultimately, personalized medicine. But, for millennia, other organisms have been serving as pharmacologists and have helped to harness the power of healing from their natural surroundings. In turn, this has helped to challenge and enhance their health through selective pressures authored by Mother Nature. Over time, these organisms have developed diets and essences of being that have integrated into the very context of nutrition and health for a myriad of other creatures, including humans, via diversified fruit and vegetable produce options, grains, and other forage. By pollinating animal forage, these pollinator organisms also help to produce meat and fiber; such fantastic feats for such small beings.

Read:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-health/apitherapy-bees-as-medicinal-midwives-zbcz1703

[william r sanford72]

Social Bees Have Kept Symbiotic Gut Bacteria for 80M Years, New Study Says

About 80 million years ago (Cretaceous period), a group of bees began exhibiting social behavior. Today, their descendants — honey bees, stingless bees, and bumble bees — carry ‘stowaways’ from their ancient ancestors.

http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/2013/09/image_1383-Trigonisca-bee.jpg
The stingless bee Trigonisca ameliae in Colombian copal. Image credit: Dr David Penney / University of Manchester.

At least five host-specific species of bacteria, living symbiotically in the guts of social bees, have been passed from generation to generation for 80 million years, according to a study published in the March 29, 2017 issue of the journal Science Advances.

This is the first study to chart the evolution of the gut community of bacteria in a group of animal hosts so far back in time.
“The fact that these bacteria have been with the bees for so long says that they are a key part of the biology of social bees,” said lead co-author Nancy Moran, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas, Austin.

“And it suggests that disrupting the microbiome, through antibiotics or other kinds of stress, could cause health problems.”
Most insects, including nonsocial bees, don’t have specialized gut microbes. Because they have limited physical contact with individuals of their own species, they tend to get their microbes from their environment.

Social bees, on the other hand, spend much time in close contact with one another in the hive, making it easy to transfer gut microbes from individual to individual.
“Having a social lifestyle enabled the specialized community of bacteria to diversify along with the bees through deep time,” Prof. Moran said.

The last common ancestor of modern social bees picked up five species of bacteria from the environment around 80 million years ago.

Those bacteria survived and evolved inside the guts of the host bees for millions of years, diversifying into strains that are specific to each new species of social bee that evolved since then.

Those five ancient bacterial lineages still form a major part of the gut microbiota of honey bees and bumble bees, but less so in stingless bees, which were more likely to lose bacterial lineages over time.

Just as these five species of bacteria seem to be indispensable to their bee hosts, they too can’t live without their hosts.
By adapting to life inside bees, they’ve lost their ability to live in the outside world. For example, the bee gut has lower oxygen levels than the atmosphere has.

“Most of them can’t live under atmospheric oxygen levels. They can’t just grow in nectar or on the surface of a plant. They have to be in the bee gut,” Prof. Moran said.

According to entomologists, there are hundreds of species and three main groups of social bees living today.

The honey bees include the domesticated western honey bee (Apis mellifera), which has been spread around the world by humans for honey production and pollination of crops, and some cousins living in Asia and Australia.

Stingless bees live in tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas, Southeast Asia, Australia and Africa.

Bumble bees live mostly in northern temperate climates of the Americas and Eurasia.

Bumble bees live mostly in northern temperate climates of the Americas and Eurasia.

For the study, the researchers isolated gut bacteria from 27 bee species (25 social and 2 nonsocial species) and sequenced DNA from the bees’ entire gut microbiomes.

For each major species of bacteria, the authors built a phylogeny, or evolutionary family tree, that showed how the species branched off into distinct strains.

And here is the remarkable thing: if you were to set one of these bacterial family trees — for example, the tree for the variety of Lactobacillus associated with bees — next to the family tree of social bees, they would look strikingly similar.

When a new species of bee branches off from its cousins, a new strain of the bacterial species often branches off from its cousins.

The end result of this co-speciation is that for the hundreds of species of social bee alive today, each has its own unique strains of shared species of bacteria.

http://www.sci-news.com/biology/social-bees-symbiotic-gut-bacteria-04747.html

[william r sanford72]

NC House Bill 363, Social Media Censorship & March Of Argentine Ants

Published on Mar 30, 2017
In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk about the North Carolina's State pollinator protection plan, social media censorship and the march of the Argentine ants.

www.theorganicview.com

z6bp4UOmlA4

[william r sanford72]

Honey Bees Have Sharper Eyesight Than We Thought

Summary: According to a new study, honey bees have much better vision than previously believed.

Source: University of Adelaide.

Research conducted at the University of Adelaide has discovered that bees have much better vision than was previously known, offering new insights into the lives of honey bees, and new opportunities for translating this knowledge into fields such as robot vision.

The findings come from “eye tests” given to western honey bees (also known as European honey bees, Apis mellifera) by postdoctoral researcher Dr Elisa Rigosi (Department of Biology, Lund University, Sweden) in the Adelaide Medical School, under the supervision of Dr Steven Wiederman (Adelaide Medical School, University of Adelaide) and Professor David O’Carroll (Department of Biology, Lund University, Sweden).

The results of their work are published today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Bee vision has been studied ever since the pioneering research of Dr Karl von Frisch in 1914, which reported bees’ ability to see colors through a clever set of training experiments.

“Today, honey bees are still a fascinating model among scientists, in particular neuroscientists,” Dr Rigosi says.

“Among other things, honey bees help to answer questions such as: how can a tiny brain of less than a million neurons achieve complex processes, and what are its utmost limits? In the last few decades it has been shown that bees can see and categorize objects and learn concepts through vision, such as the concept of ‘symmetric’ and ‘above and below’.

“But one basic question that has only been partially addressed is: what actually is the visual acuity of the honey bee eye? Just how good is a bee’s eyesight?”

Dr Wiederman says: “Previous researchers have measured the visual acuity of bees, but most of these experiments have been conducted in the dark. Bright daylight and dark laboratories are two completely different environments, resulting in anatomical and physiological changes in the resolution of the eye.

“Photoreceptors in the visual system detect variations in light intensity. There are eight photoreceptors beyond each hexagonal facet of a bee’s compound eye, and their eyes are made out of thousands of facets! Naturally, we expected some differences in the quality of bees’ eyesight from being tested in brightly lit conditions compared with dim light,” he says.

Dr Rigosi, Dr Wiederman and Professor O’Carroll set out to answer two specific questions: first, what is the smallest well-defined object that a bee can see? (ie, its object resolution); and second, how far away can a bee see an object, even if it can’t see that object clearly? (ie, maximum detectability limit).

To do so, the researchers took electrophysiological recordings of the neural responses occurring in single photoreceptors in a bee’s eyes. The photoreceptors are detectors of light in the retina, and each time an object passes into the field of vision, it registers a neural response.

Dr Rigosi says: “We found that in the frontal part of the eye, where the resolution is maximized, honey bees can clearly see objects that are as small as 1.9° – that’s approximately the width of your thumb when you stretch your arm out in front of you.

“This is 30% better eyesight than has been previously recorded,” she says.

https://i1.wp.com/neurosciencenews.com/files/2017/04/honeybee-vision-neurosciencneews.jpg?w=750

“In terms of the smallest object a bee can detect, but not clearly, this works out to be about 0.6° – that’s one third of your thumb width at arm’s length. This is about one third of what bees can clearly see and five times smaller than what has so far been detected in behavioral experiments.

“These new results suggest that bees have the chance to see a potential predator, and thus escape, far earlier than what we thought previously, or perceive landmarks in the environment better than we expected, which is useful for navigation and thus for survival,” Dr Rigosi says.

Dr Wiederman says this research offers new and useful information about insect vision more broadly as well as for honey bees.

“We’ve shown that the honey bee has higher visual acuity than previously reported. They can resolve finer details than we originally thought, which has important implications in interpreting their responses to a range of cognitive experiments scientists have been conducting with bees for years.

“Importantly, these findings could also be useful in our work on designing bio-inspired robotics and robot vision, and for basic research on bee biology,” he says.

Funding: This research has been supported with funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Swedish Research Council, and the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education.

Source: Elisa Rigosi – University of Adelaide

Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to Dr Elisa Rigosi, Lund University.

Original Research: Full open access research for “Visual acuity of the honey bee retina and the limits for feature detection” by Elisa Rigosi, Steven D. Wiederman & David C. O’Carroll in Scientific Reports. Published online April 6 2017 doi:10.1038/srep45972

http://neurosciencenews.com/honey-bee-eyesight-6356/

[william r sanford72]

Neonicotinoids Found In Water & They Said What

Published on Apr 10, 2017
In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk about new research concerning neonicotinoids found in water and then take a trip down memory lane to revisit significant research about neonicotinoids by Dr. Dennis Van Englesdorf and Dr Jeff Pettis.
www.theorganicview.com

Rh9NYsdix-c

[william r sanford72]

I will never forget observing the first honeybee dislodge a mite off its body in a hive ...it never was about how to prevent...it was about finding a balance.. helping the bees do what they been doing for millions of years despite man or mite.

William.

Mite-Resistant Russian Honey Bees Might Not Prevent Varroa Infestations

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/honey-bee-with-varroa-mite-2.jpg
The European honey bee (Apis mellifera), shown above with a Varroa destructor mite on its thorax, can be bred, or “selected,” for mite resistance, such as in the Russian honey bee stock. However, a new study shows the Russian honey bee may still be vulnerable in areas with significant Varroa mite presence

By Meredith Swett Walker

Imagine a parasite about the size of a grapefruit, and it’s latched onto your back where you just can’t reach it. Now imagine that parasite is sucking your blood and that its cronies are reproducing rapidly in your home and attacking your family. This horrifying scenario is essentially what the mite Varroa destructor inflicts on honey bees. The aptly named destructive parasite is a leading cause of colony collapse disorder in honey bees and responsible for significant economic losses in the beekeeping industry.

A study published in March in the Journal of Economic Entomology examines whether honey bees specially bred to be “mite-resistant” might be the solution to Varroa infestations. Researchers at the USDA’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center compared Varroa mite populations in hives of the Russian honey bee, a stock of the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) that has been selected (or bred) for its resistance to Varroa, with mite populations in hives of honey bees that have not been selected for mite-resistance. Previous studies have shown that Russian bees have lower levels of Varroa infestation than do unselected lines of European honey bees. This study measured mite populations in the hives, but it also measured the numbers of foraging worker bees with mites on them that went in and out of hives—a variable that proved to be crucial.

Varroa mite infestations wreak havoc on honey bee colonies. The mites feed on the bee’s hemolymph—a bodily fluid analogous to blood—weakening the bee. Their bites leave open wounds on bees and can transmit serious diseases. Female Varroa mites lay their eggs on developing bee larvae and young mites feed on the larvae before they emerge from their brood cells. Bees who have been parasitized as larvae may have deformities and shortened life spans.

European honey bees have limited defenses against Varroa mites, and infestations frequently kill colonies. Beekeepers typically control Varroa by treating hives with mite-specific pesticides, or “miticides.” These can be effective, but Varroa is developing resistance to some of these chemicals. Also, miticides can contaminate honey and wax harvested from treated hives. This has led some beekeepers to turn to mite-resistant stocks of honey bees to avoid using miticides.

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/russian-honey-bee-queen.jpg

The mite-resistant “Russian honey bee” is a strain of A. mellifera that originated in the Primorsky Krai region of Russia where A. mellifera had been exposed to Varroa since around 1900. Some strains of A. mellifera in the region appeared to have developed a degree of genetic resistance to Varroa, so the USDA Agricultural Research Service evaluated these strains, and, in 1997, mite-resistant Russian strains were imported into the United States.

Russian honey bees resist Varroa infestations because they exhibit hygienic behaviors such as increased grooming and removal of parasitized larvae. These bee behaviors make it harder for Varroa to reproduce within the hive and thus reduce mite populations. But recent research suggests that the mite population in a bee colony is not solely dependent on mite reproduction within the colony; it also depends on mites being introduced from outside the colony. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, Ph.D., a research leader at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center and first author on the Russian honey bee study says mites can enter the colony by hitching rides on foraging workers.

There are two ways this can happen, she says. When a colony is badly infested with Varroa, it begins to collapse. Workers from the failing colony may sometimes drift into neighboring hives, bringing their mites along with them. Alternatively, foraging workers from a healthy colony may enter a collapsing, mite-infested hive to steal honey, and they can inadvertently bring mites back to their home hive along with their loot.

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/hives-with-pvc-tubes.jpg
Researchers fitted honey bee hive entrances with PVC tubes, which allowed the researchers to periodically collect foragers entering and leaving the hives and determine how many foragers were carrying Varroa mites.

The number of mites hitching rides into to a colony on foraging bees is key because the hygienic behaviors that suppress Varroa infestations in Russian honey bee hives may not be effective against these hitchhiking mites. Indeed, DeGrandi-Hoffman and colleagues found that at a study site where similar numbers of foragers with mites were observed at Russian and European honey bee colonies, the two types of colonies showed similar levels of mite infestations. At another study site, where fewer foragers with mites were collected at Russian hives than at European hives, the Russian colonies had smaller Varroa populations.

This suggests that when there are few foraging workers transferring mites between colonies, the Russian honey bee’s mite-resistant behaviors are able to suppress Varroa populations relative to mite populations in European colonies. But at locations or times when there are greater numbers of foragers with mites, Russian honey bees may be just as susceptible to Varroa infestations as non-mite resistant bees.

Sadly, climate change may exacerbate the Varroa problem. Mite populations within a colony increase in the fall, as do the numbers of foraging bees carrying mites. “As fall temperatures get warmer and periods of flight weather continue into November, not only do bees fly late in the fall when they should be in the hive in winter cluster, but mites can continue to migrate into colonies on foragers,” says DeGrandi-Hoffman.

Breeding stocks of honey bees that do not admit foragers from other hives or that exclude foragers with mites could help control Varroa infestations. But in the meantime, Russian honey bees may only be able to resist Varroa in areas in which mites are already well-controlled—or, in other words, neighborhoods where bees are unlikely to pick up hitchhikers.

Read More

“Population Growth of Varroa destructor (Acari: Varroidae) in Colonies of Russian and Unselected Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Stocks as Related to Numbers of Foragers With Mites ”

Journal of Economic Entomology.

https://entomologytoday.org/2017/04/11/mite-resistant-russian-honey-bees-might-not-prevent-varroa-infestations/

[william r sanford72]

Live From The Honey Bee Yard

Published on Apr 17, 2017

In this segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host, June Stoyer talks to beekeepers Tom Theobald and Miles McGaughey about the process of transporting honey bees from California back to Colorado. “The Neonicotinoid View”, which is produced by The Organic View Radio Show is unique, weekly program that explores the impact of neonicotinoids on the environment. Tune in each week as host, June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald, explore the latest research and news from the beekeeping community.

www.theorganicview.com

37EuqADr6nQ

[william r sanford72]

Get to Know Tropilaelaps Mites, Another Serious Parasite of Honey Bees

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/tropilaelaps-clareae.jpg?w=460&h=376
Tropilaelaps clareae is among several species of mites in the genus Tropilaelaps that parasitize European honey bees (Apis mellifera) in Asia. While Tropilaelaps mites have not reached Europe or North America, a new review of existing research on the genus offers a comprehensive look at the mites and identifies gaps in existing knowledge about the genus. (Photo credit: Pest and Diseases Image Library, Bugwood.org)

By Josh Lancette

The plight of honey bees is well documented, as is the cause of much of their grief: parasitic mites. Varroa destructor gets the largest amount of attention as the most devastating parasite of European honey bees (Apis mellifera), but other serious parasitic mites exist as well. In a new review article published in the Journal of Economic Entomology, a group of entomologists profile Tropilaelaps, a genus of mites found in Asia that parasitizes honey bees and could pose a threat to global European honey bee populations if it is introduced into new areas.

Varroa and Tropilaelaps mites have coexisted in A. mellifera colonies in Asia for more than 50 years. Both hurt honey bee colonies in similar ways, by feeding on the bees’ hemolymph and vectoring harmful pathogens, such as deformed wing virus.

“In Asia, Tropilaelaps mites are more serious parasites of the honey bee  than Varroa mites,” says Lilia de Guzman, Ph.D., a research entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service and one of the authors of the paper. “At present, worldwide honey bee beekeeping is suffering, primarily due to Varroa mite parasitism.  Thus, the possible introduction of Tropilaelaps mites outside their current range, to places such as North America or Europe, would intensify existing problems.”

While the Tropilaelaps mites are not known to have been introduced to North America or Europe yet, current knowledge of the mites indicates that they could survive in other regions than they currently do. For example, they were found in Africa, indicating that they can survive long distance travel and are established in South Korea, where winters can be harsh.

“There are enormous gaps in our knowledge regarding Tropilaelaps mites, a parasite that is not in the United States at this time but could come to the United States at some point,” says de Guzman.”Adequate knowledge on the biology and roles of both parasite and host is crucial in the development of control methods against them.”

The authors hope their article will address some of the knowledge gaps while also encouraging more research into the gaps that remain.

“We wrote this article to raise awareness about these parasitic mites and their impacts on the health of honey bees, as well as to communicate current gaps in our knowledge that need to be addressed if we are to develop an integrated approach to managing these important parasites if they should become established in the United States,” says de Guzman. “The article contains all currently available information about Tropilaelaps mites of honey bees. This includes information on their life history and ecology in order to familiarize the community on what these mites look like, their current distribution, the signs of their presence (damages they inflict) on honey bee hosts, and how to manage them. We also offer research ideas that need immediate attention in order to be ready if these mites do arrive. We believe this paper will prove to be an excellent reference for researchers, policy makers, and beekeepers interested in Tropilaelaps mites.”

Read more:“Ecology, Life History, and Management of Tropilaelaps Mites”

Vid in link:
https://entomologytoday.org/2017/04/17/get-to-know-tropilaelaps-mites-another-serious-parasite-of-honey-bees/

[william r sanford72]

Making the bed just right for alkali bees

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/makingthebed.jpg
A female alkali bee visits alfalfa flowers for pollen and nectar. Credit: Jim Cane

Last summer, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) entomologist Jim Cane spent a week visiting alfalfa fields near the town of Touchet, in Walla Walla County, Washington. He wasn't scouting for insect threats or damage to the legume crop. Instead, he was collecting data on the alkali bee, a solitary, ground-nesting species that alfalfa seed growers count on for peak yields. Alfalfa seed is sold to grow premium hay for dairy cows and other livestock.

Known scientifically as Nomia melanderi, the alkali bee is a champion pollinator when it comes to alfalfa flowers—even outperforming the respected honey bee. In fact, some Touchet farmers maintain parcels of open soil called "bee beds" to encourage female alkali bees to nest and raise their young, ensuring generations of pollinators and profitable seed yields for the future. Some of these sites have been maintained for more than 50 years, underscoring the insect's importance to local alfalfa growers.

"Alkali bees from 1 acre of nesting bed—well populated—can readily pollinate 100 or more acres of alfalfa, for a crop of about 100,000 pounds of clean seed," says Cane, with the ARS Pollinating Insect-Biology, Management, Systematics Research Unit in Logan, Utah.

In June 2016, Cane travelled from Logan to Touchet to learn more about the female bee's nesting requirements, especially her preferred soil-moisture levels. Cane teamed with Gaylon Campbell and other soil hydrology specialists from Decagon Instruments, located in Pullman, Washington. Together, they measured the flow of water vapor from the surrounding soils into the bee's underground tunnels and brood chambers. Each chamber houses one larva and a ball of pollen and nectar for it to eat as it grows and develops.

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/1-makingthebed.jpg[IMG]
An alkali bee larva feeds on a pollen ball provided by its mother.

Cane says female alkali bees are particular about where they'll nest, preferring, for example, moist basin-type soils with salty surfaces. With Decagon's technical help, Cane hopes to acquire some hard science on the bee's soil-moisture needs so that alfalfa growers can manage their bee beds accordingly, whether that means using subirrigation or other methods. Larvae, for example, need enough moisture to keep from drying out in their chambers, but not so much that molds can grow on and ruin their pollen provisions, says Cane.

In related work, Cane also examined the diet of the mother bee, showing that besides daylong foraging for pollen and nectar for her progeny, she also takes several pollen meals for herself. That paper, published in the March 2016 issue of Apidologie, "is the first to show for any nonsocial bee that the mother bee eats several pollen meals daily, to gain protein and fat enough to produce her large eggs," says Cane.

The findings could help alfalfa seed growers avoid overstocking their bees and provide them with guidance on adding strips of an earlier blooming crop to feed young mother bees while they await alfalfa bloom.

[IMG]https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/2-makingthebed.jpg
Alkali bee nests rise from the soil at the edge of an alfalfa field.

Provided by: Agricultural Research Service

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-04-bed-alkali-bees.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2017-04-bed-alkali-bees.html

[william r sanford72]

Shaking Bees

Published on Apr 19, 2017

There is a lot of work that goes into transporting honey bees. The journey for beekeepers and honey bees is far from easy. It is also one that is time sensitive and requires great care! In this segment of The Neonicotinoid View, Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talks to host, June Stoyer as he continues the discussion from last week about his recent trip to California to pick up packs of honey bees.
www.theorganicview.com

vsHpBWAbYxM

[william r sanford72]

Bees face heavy pesticide peril from drawn-out sources

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/beesfaceheav.jpg

Honeybees - employed to pollinate crops during the blooming season - encounter danger due to lingering and wandering pesticides, according to an analysis of the bee's own food.

Researchers used 120 pristine honeybee colonies that were placed near 30 apple orchards around New York state. After allowing the bees to forage for several days during the apple flowering period, the scientists examined each hive's "beebread" – the bees' food stores made from gathered pollen – to search for traces of pesticides.

In 17 percent of colonies, the beebread revealed the presence of acutely high levels of pesticide exposure, while 73 percent were found to have chronic exposure.
The new Cornell study was published April 19 in Nature Scientific Reports.

"Our data suggest pesticides are migrating through space and time," said lead author Scott McArt, assistant professor of entomology, who explained that bees may be gathering pollen from nontarget wildflowers, field margins and weeds like dandelions where insecticides seem to linger.

"Surprisingly, there is not much known about the magnitude of risk or mechanisms of pesticide exposure when honeybees are brought in to pollinate major agricultural crops," he said. "Beekeepers are very concerned about pesticides, but there's very little field data. We're trying to fill that gap in knowledge, so there's less mystery and more fact regarding this controversial topic."

More than 60 percent of the found pesticides were attributed to orchards and surrounding farmland that were not sprayed during the apple bloom season, according to the study. McArt said that persistent insecticides aimed at other crops may be surrounding the orchards. In addition, pre-bloom sprays in orchards may accumulate in nearby flowering weeds.

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/1-beesfaceheav.jpg

"We found risk was attributed to many different types of pesticides. Neonicotinoids were not the whole story, but they were part of the story." he said. "Because neonicotinoids are persistent in the environment and accumulate in pollen and nectar, they are of concern. But one of our major findings is that many other pesticides contribute to risk."

Mass-blooming crops flower in big bursts during the pollination season, so crop producers rent armies of honeybees to supplement the work of wild bees. "There are so many flowers at one given time, often there may not be enough wild bees to perform sufficient pollination services," said McArt.

Crop pollination by insects, particularly bees, can be valued at more than $15 billion annually to the U.S. economy, according to research by Nicholas Calderone, professor emeritus of entomology. Producers and beekeepers are now concerned about the high rates of hive declines – estimated to be about 42 percent in 2014-15 domestically. In New York, the losses are often over 50 percent.

To understand the economics, beekeepers may charge more than $100 per colony for pollination services for apple producers in New York, almond producers in California and blueberry growers in North Carolina. For large farms, several hundred to a thousand pollinating colonies are brought in via large trucks.

Commercial beekeepers sometimes assume they will lose entire colonies, which is why pollination service rates have tripled or quadrupled over the past 15 years, McArt said. He recently shared his research with growers at a New York State Integrated Pest Management meeting, and several farmers said they are interested in altering crop management practices to reduce honeybee injury.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Department of Agriculture and Markets assembled a Pollinator Protection Plan in 2016. Scientists are developing best management practices, reviving pollinator populations, researching and monitoring, and developing outreach and educational programs for beekeepers and producers.Co-authors on the study, "High Pesticide Risk to Honeybees Despite Low Focal Crop Pollen Collection During Pollination of a Mass Blooming Crop," are lab manager Ashley Fersch; graduate student Nelson Milano; Lauren Truitt '17; and former research associate Katalin Böröczky.

More information: Scott H. McArt et al. High pesticide risk to honey bees despite low focal crop pollen collection during pollination of a mass blooming crop, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/srep46554

Journal reference: Scientific Reports

Provided by: Cornell University

https://phys.org/news/2017-04-bees-heavy-pesticide-peril-drawn-out.html

[Ewan]

Thank you for your dedication to this thread and the information you share William. :)

[william r sanford72]

Thank you for your dedication to this thread and the information you share William. :)

Thank You Ewan.Iam gratefull to have this thread to share On.This thread may never had seen the light of day without Northstar and Bill...:heart:....:clapping:

William.

[william r sanford72]

What To Expect As A Hobbyist Beekeeper

Published on Apr 28, 2017

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host, June Stoyer talks to beekeeper Tom Theobald about what new hobbyists should expect their first few years as a beekeeper.

“The Neonicotinoid View”, which is produced by The Organic View Radio Show is unique, weekly program that explores the impact of neonicotinoids on the environment. Tune in each week as host, June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald, explore the latest research and news from the beekeeping community.
www.theorganicview.com

hiM8CQeoSTs

[william r sanford72]

usda national honey report April 24, 2017

www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf

[william r sanford72]

After 2000 Years of Harmony, the Maya May Soon Lose their Stingless Bee Pets

http://latinalista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/bee.jpg

By Kerry Sullivan
Ancient Origins

For several years now, reports have circulated about the worrisome decline of the population of bees. Periodically, newspaper headlines lament the bees’ disappearance as an irreversible tipping point toward environmental devastation. Depending on your political stance, this may or may not be true. However, in a different corner of the world, one species of beloved pet bees is being supplanted by a far more productive species introduced from abroad. The endangered little buddies are known as Melipona beecheii and Melipona yucatanica. For thousands of years, these stingless bees have been cultivated by people of Central America, particularly the Maya people. But now, the more productive yet less friendly Apis mellifera from Africa has brought the American bees to the brink of extinction and with them, the loss of a millennia-old symbiotic relationship.

http://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/Mok-Chi-bee_0.jpg
Ah-Muzen-Cab or Mok Chi, shown with insect wings, perhaps patron deity of beekeepers, on a codex-style Maya vessel.

The Maya Religious Apiary

The ancient Maya people perfected a particular style of beekeeping (or apiary), partly to obtain the bees’ honey but also because they consider the bees to be sacred. The tradition is over 2000 years old and is still practiced today by the modern Maya people living along the Caribbean coast. “For thousands of years, Mayans were expert practitioners of bee husbandry, and honey was an essential forest resource…as a sweetener, as an antibiotic and as an ingredient in the Mayan version of mead” wrote David Roubik (dubbed the ‘The Bee Man’ by National Geographic) in a 2005 paper for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. “The Mayans, like other tropical forest cultures, worked with large-bodied meliponine bees that produce a variety of honeys. Their favorite, and one of the most productive species, has been Melipona beecheii, ‘Xunan kab’, which means, literally, ‘royal lady’.” (Smithsonian Tropical Research Center, 2005)

http://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Melipona-species-of-stingless-bee.jpg?itok=zpxz0j6_
Melipona species of stingless bee, close to the Xunan kab or ‘Royal Lady’ of Central and South America.

This royal lady bee, Xunan kab, was the subject of religious ceremonies performed at the Temple of the Descending God in Tulum (located approximately 81 miles (130 km) south of modern-day Cancun). She is the representative of the bee-god Ah-Muzen-Cab and is depicted carved over entranceways as if flying downward, from the sky to the ground. Tulum is believed to have been a hub for trade and perhaps honey and wax goods were a specialty.

The Maya-Bee Coexistence

Aside from evidence gleaned in ruins and information passed down through generations, much of what is known about ancient Maya beekeeping practices comes from early accounts written by Spanish missionaries. In particular, during the 16th century, Bishop Diego de Landa documented the religious traditions of the Maya living on the Yucatan peninsula. Cultivating the bees represented a unique symbiotic relationship with nature. Maya beekeepers would harvest the honey and wax and in exchange protect the bees from predators and harsh weather and insure the hives were well maintained in special logs. Great care was given to ensure that no bee was harmed in the extraction of honey; however, if a bee was accidently killed, it would be properly buried under a small leaf. The harvesting occurred twice a year during a festival that was accompanied by much drinking of honey mead.

http://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Modern-Maya-bee-keeping-facility.jpg?itok=AEW_r7IB
Modern Maya bee keeping facility, with traditional log hives.

But Xunan kab was not only kept by the high priests. Many Maya families kept log-hives near their homes. While the temple had 1000-2000 log-hives, a Maya family would probably have around 50. Today, the average is more like 12. There is even some evidence that the hives were passed down through generations. These family-friendly bees do not sting, however, if irritated, they will bite and leave a welt about the size of a mosquito bite.

A single log-hive of Melipona beecheii can produce 4.5 pounds (2 kilograms) of honey each year. Moreover, the honey produced by the stingless bees is different from stinging bees.

“The honey is much sweeter and sharper, and it may even have a floral aftertaste, which makes it quite extraordinary. Numerous medicinal benefits are linked with the honey produced by Melaponine or stingless bees by the Mayan people in the Yucatan peninsula. Since the honey is noted for its antibiotic properties, it has been used to treat wounds and eye infections.” (Hive and Honey Apiary, 2017) "

http://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Queen-Bee.jpg?itok=dcecptOp
A Queen Bee in a Hive

However, ordinary honeybees can produce 60 pounds (27 kg) of honey or more each year. Originally from Africa, Apis mellifera was introduced to the Americas by the European colonizers. Today, the African bee is much more economically attractive to beekeepers. These bees compete with local bees for floral resources. This competition is increasingly fierce as the availability of necessary flowers is reduced by deforestation, forest fragmentation, and severe weather such as hurricanes.

Like the steadily disappearing bees of the US, there is woefully little interest in the fate of the bees in Central America. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Center writes, “The authors of this paper originally submitted their manuscript to a number of conservation journals who, in Roubik’s words: ‘told us that there are so many extinctions, that they are not even reporting them anymore.’

The article, presenting a very cogent conservation strategy for saving the Mayan ‘royal lady,’ appeared in the June, 2005, “Bee World,” published by the International Bee Research Association.” (Smithsonian Tropical Research Center, 2005).

Hive and Honey Apiary. “Mayan People and Their Stingless Honeybee.” Hive and Honey Apiary. Hive and Honey Apiary, 2017. Web. http://www.hiveandhoneyapiary.com/mayanpeopleandtheirstinglesshoneybee.html

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. “Mayan Stingless Bee Keeping: Going, Going, Gone?.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 June 2005. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050615062105.htm

http://latinalista.com/columns/blogbeat-columns/after-2000-years-of-harmony-the-maya-may-soon-lose-their-stingless-bee-pets

[william r sanford72]

Polli-Nation Pollinator of the Month: Mexican Long-tongued bat

(Beyond Pesticides, May 2, 2017) The Mexican long tongued bat is the pollinator of the month for May.  The Mexican long tongued bat, scientific name Choeronycteris mexicana, is a species of bat aptly named for its tongue, which has the remarkable ability to extend to nearly a body length. It is less-commonly referred to as the hog-nosed bat.

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/mexican-long-tongued-bat-300x235.jpg

Range

The Mexican long-tongued bat’s range extends from the southwest of the United States through Mexico and into Central America, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In the United States, the bat is restricted to the far-south of California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas. It is found in most areas of Mexico but is absent from the Yucatan peninsula and the gulf coast. Further south, the bat is also found in southern Guatemala and El Salvador in addition to northern Nicaragua. The Mexican long-tongued bat participates in seasonal migrations rather than hibernation. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department admits that the study of the bat’s migratory patterns has been inadequate. However, it is known that the females establish maternity roosts in the southwest of the United States in late spring. They and their young depart for Mexico and Central America with the onset of cold weather in October and November. There is some evidence that a few individuals will remain in warmer northern areas over the winter.

Diet and Pollination

Mexican long-tongued bats feed primarily on the nectar and pollen of night-blooming flowers. Favorites include agave and cacti. They are also known to eat cactus fruit as well as insects found on flowers and fruit where they feed. Their preferences for agave and cactus makes them an important pollinator as they carry pollen from one plant to another. The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service notes that bats primarily pollinate large flowers that produce strong fragrance and large volumes of nectar. Over three-hundred species of fruit-bearing plants depend on the Mexican long-tongued bat and other bat species for pollination.

Physiology

The Mexican long-tongued bat belongs to the group of phyllostomid or “leaf nosed” bats. These bats are characterized by a projection from the end of the nose that looks like a leaf. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department advises that the Mexican long-tongued bat can be distinguished from other “leaf nosed” bats by their short ears, narrow snout, and presence of a small tail. The Smithsonia Museum of Natural History notes that the nose leaf may help direct the bat’s echolocation signals. The National Science Research Library at Texas Tech University describes the Mexican long-tongued bat as medium sized – between three and four inches in length and weighing less than a tenth of a pound – with sooty-gray to brown coloration. Their extendable, long, tapering, brush-tipped tongues allow them to access nectar from deep within a great variety of night-blooming flowers while hovering.

Ecological Role

The Mexican long-tongued bat plays a multifaceted ecological role as predator, prey, and pollinator. Their diet largely consists of agave nectar and they play a major role in the pollination of non-cultivated agave. While nectar and pollen are their primary food source, they also prey on any insects who are present when they are feeding at a flower. In addition to their role in pollination, the bats also contribute to the survival of cacti by dispersing their seeds. According to the food-web site, What Eats, bats play an ecological role as part of the diet of a number of predators. Predatory birds, like hawks and owls, in addition to snakes and predatory mammals are known to include bats among their prey.

The role of the Mexican long-tongued bat in pollination has been somewhat diminished by the expansion of agriculture in its range. According to a 2014 Wired article, cultivated agave is actively pruned to prevent flowering. These agave reproduce via proliferation of plantlets. The Mexican-long tongued bat and other bat species mentioned in the article do not play a primary role in producing commercial agave “nectar,” which is not floral nectar, but a synthetic syrup made from the sap of the agave plant. In fact, destruction of habitat to create commercial agave fields may actually be hurting the bat populations.

Threats to Existence

The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List categorizes the Mexican long-tongued bat status as “near threatened.” This means that the species is not currently endangered or vulnerable but is close to qualifying for those designations and is expected to move to a threatened category in the near future. The IUCN cites its wide range across North and Central America as an encouraging point but also cites concerns regarding the species dependence on fragile agave populations which are subject to infringement by livestock grazing and the practice of prescribed fires.

In addition to danger relating to the availability of agave, the Mexican long-tongued bat is subject to the threat of loss of roosting sites. The caves which harbor these bats are increasingly being invaded by miners and caving tourists which render the caves inhospitable. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department clarifies that the bats are very sensitive and, when disturbed, will abandon their roost.

A recent study in Taiwan connected the use of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid pesticide, to diminished ability to echolocate among bats. They found that bats who fed on insects exposed to imidacloprid developed difficulty travelling on established paths and frequently became lost while hunting. The researcher noted “When toxic substances accumulate to a certain level, they damage the bats’ neurons and destroy their echolocation system.”

Threats to bat species are particularly concerning because of their slow rate of reproduction. Bat mothers only give birth to a single pup each year. This renders bat populations particularly vulnerable to factors that might disturb food sources or prevent successful migration during mating season.

How to Protect the Species

Mexican long-tongued bats live in a range of environments including scrub and saguaro desert, deciduous, pine, and oak forests, and canyons. Preservation of these habitats as well as food sources is imperative to protect the future of the Mexican long-tongued bat. Similarly, insisting on habitat preservation and personally fostering food sources for your local bats is necessary to protect your regions species. Even if the Mexican long-tongued bat’s range doesn’t reach your region, there are many other species of bats who act as beneficial pollinators. Consult these species profiles to determine which bats contribute to pollination in your area.

It is also critical to avoid planting any seeds or flowers that have been coated in pollinator-toxic neonicotinoids. As established in the aforementioned study which linked imidacloprid to loss of ability to echolocate in bats, these chemicals can undermine your intent to provide habitat for wild pollinators. See Beyond Pesticides’ Pollinator Friendly Seed and Nursery Directory to source safe seeds. For more information, see the webpage on Managing Landscapes with Pollinators in Mind. You can also get active in your community to protect these pollinators by holding native planting days in the spring, and advocating for changes to community pesticide policies.

In addition to actively opposing destruction of habitat and food sources, you can provide personal support to local bat populations. One option is to install a bat house on your property. You can build your bat house yourself or order one online to provide non-traditional habitat for your region’s species.

Further, Mexican long-tongued bats and other bat species have been known to visit hummingbird feeders. If you do host a number of local species at your hummingbird feeder, refer to this recipe, endorsed by the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, to ensure the health of hummingbirds and bats alike. Make sure to use organic sugar to avoid exposing visitors to unnecessary pesticides. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department supports the use of feeders to support bats which arrive too early in spring or which remain through the winter. However, they also note that sugar water, while helpful sustenance, will not support long-term survival of bats because it lacks important nutrients.

It is important to educate others to dispel the myths surrounding bats in your community. Bats are an important part of local ecosystems and play a large role in pollination and control of insect populations. There are only three species of bats feeding primarily on blood. These species are not found in the United States but have created a widespread fear around the larger 1,200 species order. Another myth is that bats are a common carrier of rabies. Bats, like all mammals, are capable of carrying rabies. However, infection is not widespread and the odds of a bat exposing you to rabies are very low. Know that individual bats who are active during daylight hours and those who are not disturbed when approached by humans are more likely to be infected. Remember, bats are wild animals and should only be handled by trained professionals. The organization Bat Conservation International has more information on bat myths here.

Citations

Chen, Chi-chung and Elizabeth Hsu, Research finds pesticide impairs echolocation ability in bats http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201701110013.aspx

Godínez-Alvarez, H., Valiente-Banuet, A. and Rojas-Martínez, A., 2002. The role of seed dispersers in the population dynamics of the columnar cactus Neobuxbaumia tetetzo.

Ecology, 83(9), pp.2617-2629.International Union for Conservation of Nature, Redlist of Threatened Species: Choeronycteris mexicana   http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/4776/0

Pearson, Gwen, Tequila, Booze, and Bats https://www.wired.com/2014/06/tequila-booze-and-bats/

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, North American Mammals: Choeronycteris mexicana https://naturalhistory.si.edu/mna/image_info.cfm?species_id=43

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Mexican Long-tongued Bat http://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/mexlong/

Texas Tech University, National Science Research Library, Mexican Long-tongued Bat http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/tmot1/choemexi.htm

USDA Forest Service, Bat Pollination https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/animals/bats.shtml

What Eats, What Eats a Bat? http://www.whateats.com/what-eats-a-bat

Winter, Y. and von Helversen, O., 2003. Operational tongue length in phyllostomid nectar-feeding bats. Journal of mammalogy, 84(3), pp.886-896.

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2017/05/polli-nation-pollinator-month-mexican-long-tongued-bat/

[william r sanford72]

Finally! A Peek at Mysterious Bees in the Rain Forest Treetops

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/sweat-bee-visiting-balsa-tree-flower.jpg?w=460&h=664
These sweat bees (genus Megalopta) are unique in that they forage in the evening and at dawn, well outside the normal foraging times of other day-flying bees. Here, a sweat bee arrives at a balsa-tree flower under cover of darkness. The bee is about the size of a honeybee, and the flower is about as big as a coffee cup.

By Leslie Mertz

Adam Smith, Ph.D., has been studying a certain group of very unusual bees in Panama for 15 years, but he had never actually been able to witness a key part of their behavior: their foraging forays. That’s because the bees get their pollen and nectar from flowers that not only bloom at night but also sit high in the rain forest canopy. “I always thought, what a shame that I can’t study it because they’re all up in these tall treetops,” says Smith, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at George Washington University.

But then the unexpected happened.

Scientist-turned-photographer Christian Ziegler got funding from National Geographic to take photos of the monkeys, birds, and other animals residing in the Panamanian rain forest canopy. To do it, he built towering scaffolding up into the very trees where Smith’s bees foraged. Smith recalls, “He asked if we wanted to film some of our bees up there when he wasn’t using the towers himself, and I said, ‘Of course!’ I had studied these insects at their nests for years, and now finally we could go up and see what’s going on at the flowers.”

Smith’s long-term fascination with the bees, which are two species of sweat bees in the genus Megalopta, stems from his interest in animal behavior and, particularly, social behavior and cooperation. “As an undergraduate student, I studied birds and bird song, but if you’re interested in social cooperation, the bees, wasps and ants have so much to offer,” he says. After switching focus to entomology, he began to ponder the costs and benefits of living in a group versus living alone, and that led him to a few species of bees and wasps that do both. The Megalopta species in Central America were among that number.

While the sweat bees’ extraordinary social flexibility is Smith’s primary interest, he has always been intrigued by one other quirk. “They have this other thing that is even weirder for bees: They fly when it’s dark. Very few bees do that, because bee vision is adapted to daylight, and of course flowers are typically day-active,” he says. Other researchers studied their vision and found that the bees still need at least some light to see, and Smith’s own work videotaping the nests showed that they do all their foraging during two approximately hour-long spurts, one around sunset and another around dawn. The question was, why?

“Here we had these sweat bees sitting in their nests 22 hours a day. I could understand why they can’t fly in the middle of the night—they can’t see—but why not start a little bit earlier in the afternoon or go a little bit later in the morning so they can get in some more foraging?” he says. “I just thought, Well, they’re lazy. That was my working hypothesis,” he laughs.

Smith gained a new appreciation for the bees once he climbed Ziegler’s towers and got a good look at what was happening. It turned out that the sweat bees forage for a short period around sunset and sunrise for a couple of reasons, which he describes in a new article in the Journal of Insect Science. First and foremost, he says, they do it to avoid bullying from other more aggressive bees that live in large colonies and visit the flowers in broad daylight. In fact, he says, they saw absolutely no overlap in the sweat bees with other bees at the flowers. “This is highly suggestive of the idea that the bees are avoiding what we call ‘interference competition,’ and instead are making a few very efficient trips to get all their foraging done quickly when no one else is around to bother them.”

The short foraging time also makes sense from a parenting standpoint. When adult sweat bees are away from the nest, he explains, ants will enter and eat the young. “That means that there should be a very strong selection pressure to getting the foraging done as quickly as possible so they can spend most of their time at their nests to guard against predators.” The bees, he concludes, are not lazy after all. Rather, they are very efficient foragers and excellent parents.

That mystery solved, Smith is back to his primary studies of social versus solitary behaviors, but he will always remember his time in the treetops. “It was a ton of fun. Just being up on these towers at night and hearing the night insects come out, or going up at early in the morning, watching the sun rise and seeing the birds and monkeys wake up, it is just really a special place to be,” he says. “And to get up in the trees and observe these insects in a new way, it was just wonderful.”

Read More
“Is Nocturnal Foraging in a Tropical Bee an Escape From Interference Competition?”

https://entomologytoday.org/2017/05/02/finally-a-peek-at-mysterious-bees-in-the-rain-forest-treetops/

[william r sanford72]

Pesticides Negatively Impact Ovary Development in Queen Bumblebees

We’ve known for a while that pesticides can have a negative impact on living bumblebees, but new research diving into how they affect unborn bumblebees and the queen of the hive appears to be just as frightening.

https://assets.labroots.com/_public/_files/system/ck/trending/bumblebee-1481404_1280_984fe33e6cd4b3d66cbbe43b0d9e942a.jpg

The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reveals that the chemicals in certain pesticides cause issues for the development of the queen bee’s ovaries.

As a result, fewer eggs are being produced and fewer bumblebees are being born because of it. More strikingly, we have our very own anti-insect measures to blame for it.

The study looked at the effects of one pesticide in particular: neonicotinoid. The team looked into the effects of realistic amounts of the pesticide on 506 test subjects spanning four different bumblebee species captured near London and saw the same results in all of them across the board.

“We consistently found that neonicotinoid exposure, at levels mimicking exposure that queens could experience in agricultural landscapes, resulted in reduced ovary development in queens of all four species we tested,” explained study lead author, Dr Gemma Baron from the Royal Holloway University of London.

Importantly, the pesticides had a species-specific impact on the feeding habits of the bumblebees too:

“Impacts of neonicotinoid exposure on feeding behavior were species-specific, with two out of four species eating less artificial nectar when exposed to the pesticide. These impacts are likely to reduce the success of bumblebee queens in the spring, with knock-on effects for bee populations later in the year,” Baron continued.

While previous studies looking into the effects of pesticides on bumblebees do exist, they differ from this study because they spent more time looking at the worker class of bees rather than the queen.

Moreover, this study looked at the effects of pesticides on multiple bumblebee species, rather than one, which offers even more valuable data towards our understanding of pesticide impact on bumblebees.

Because the world is going through a somewhat alarming shortage of bumblebees right now, the use of pesticides is going through a lot of scientific examination at this point in time. With the first U.S.-based bumblebee officially joining the endangered species list, and no clear indication of things changing for the better, bumblebees just might be in some serious trouble.

Hopefully, with the backing of all this scientific evidence, governments will have what they need to better regulate pesticide use so that we can help save the bees. An even better solution would be to find a chemical that does away with the actual pests and leaves bumblebees unscathed completely.

For now, you can do nature a favor and encourage bee populations to multiply by planting more flowers, as habitat loss is another one of the leading reasons for the global decline in bumblebee populations.

https://www.labroots.com/trending/chemistry-and-physics/5902/pesticides-negatively-impact-queen-bee-ovary-development

[william r sanford72]

Where have all the insects gone?

Entomologists call it the windshield phenomenon. "If you talk to people, they have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash on your windscreen," says Wolfgang Wägele, director of the Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity in Bonn, Germany. Today, drivers spend less time scraping and scrubbing. "I'm a very data-driven person," says Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Oregon. "But it is a visceral reaction when you realize you don't see that mess anymore."

Some people argue that cars today are more aerodynamic and therefore less deadly to insects. But Black says his pride and joy as a teenager in Nebraska was his 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1—with some pretty sleek lines. "I used to have to wash my car all the time. It was always covered with insects." Lately, Martin Sorg, an entomologist here, has seen the opposite: "I drive a Land Rover, with the aerodynamics of a refrigerator, and these days it stays clean."

Though observations about splattered bugs aren't scientific, few reliable data exist on the fate of important insect species. Scientists have tracked alarming declines in domesticated honey bees, monarch butterflies, and lightning bugs. But few have paid attention to the moths, hover flies, beetles, and countless other insects that buzz and flitter through the warm months. "We have a pretty good track record of ignoring most noncharismatic species," which most insects are, says Joe Nocera, an ecologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.

Of the scant records that do exist, many come from amateur naturalists, whether butterfly collectors or bird watchers. Now, a new set of long-term data is coming to light, this time from a dedicated group of mostly amateur entomologists who have tracked insect abundance at more than 100 nature reserves in western Europe since the 1980s.

Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons, the group—which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades—found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites.

http://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__699w__no_aspect/public/cs_70512N_Hoverfly.jpg?itok=Y-Cr8U6H
Hover flies, often mistaken for bees or wasps, are important pollinators. Their numbers have plummeted in nature reserves in Germany.

Such losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost hopes that it's not representative—that it's some strange artifact."

No one knows how broadly representative the data are of trends elsewhere. But the specificity of the observations offers a unique window into the state of some of the planet's less appreciated species. Germany's "Red List" of endangered insects doesn't look alarming at first glance, says Sorg, who curates the Krefeld society's extensive collection of insect specimens. Few species are listed as extinct because they are still found in one or two sites. But that obscures the fact that many have disappeared from large areas where they were once common. Across Germany, only three bumble bee species have vanished, but the Krefeld region has lost more than half the two dozen bumble bee species that society members documented early in the 20th century.

Members of the Krefeld society have been observing, recording, and collecting insects from the region—and around the world—since 1905. Some of the roughly 50 members—including teachers, telecommunication technicians, and a book publisher—have become world experts on their favorite insects.

Siegfried Cymorek, for instance, who was active in the society from the 1950s through the 1980s, never completed high school. He was drafted into the army as a teenager, and after the war he worked in the wood-protection division at a local chemical plant. But because of his extensive knowledge of wood-boring beetles, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1979. Over the years, members have written more than 2000 publications on insect taxonomy, ecology, and behavior.

The society's headquarters is a former school in the center of Krefeld, an industrial town on the banks of the Rhine that was once famous for producing silk. Disused classrooms store more than a million insect specimens individually pinned and named in display cases. Most were collected nearby, but some come from more exotic locales. Among them are those from the collection of a local priest, an active member in the 1940s and 1950s, who persuaded colleagues at mission stations around the world to send him specimens. (The society's collection and archive are under historical preservation protection.)

http://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__699w__no_aspect/public/Insects_350.png?itok=mCoRqutS

Tens of millions more insects float in carefully labeled bottles of alcohol—the yield from the society's monitoring projects in nature reserves around the region. The reserves, set aside for their local ecological value, are not pristine wilderness but "seminatural" habitats, such as former hay meadows, full of wildflowers, birds, small mammals—and insects. Some even include parts of agricultural fields, which farmers are free to farm with conventional methods.

Heinz Schwan, a retired chemist and longtime society member who has weighed thousands of trap samples, says the society began collecting long-term records of insect abundance partly by chance. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, local authorities asked the group for help evaluating how different strategies for managing the reserves affected insect populations and diversity.

The members monitored each site only once every few years, but they set up identical insect traps in the same place each time to ensure clean comparisons. Because commercially available traps vary in ways that affect the catch, the group makes their own. Named for the Swedish entomologist René Malaise, who developed the basic design in the 1930s, each trap resembles a floating tent. Black mesh fabric forms the base, topped by a tent of white fabric and, at the summit, a collection container—a plastic jar with an opening into another jar of alcohol. Insects trapped in the fabric fly up to the jar, where the vapors gradually inebriate them and they fall into the alcohol. The traps collect mainly species that fly a meter or so above the ground. For people who worry that the traps themselves might deplete insect populations, Sorg notes that each trap catches just a few grams per day—equivalent to the daily diet of a shrew.

Sorg says society members saved all the samples because even in the 1980s they recognized that each represented a snapshot of potentially intriguing insect populations. "We found it fascinating—despite the fact that in 1982 the term ‘biodiversity' barely existed," he says. Many samples have not yet been sorted and cataloged—a painstaking labor of love done with tweezers and a microscope. Nor have the group's full findings been published. But some of the data are emerging piecemeal in talks by society members and at a hearing at the German Bundestag, the national parliament, and they are unsettling.

Beyond the striking drop in overall insect biomass, the data point to losses in overlooked groups for which almost no one has kept records. In the Krefeld data, hover flies—important pollinators often mistaken for bees—show a particularly steep decline. In 1989, the group's traps in one reserve collected 17,291 hover flies from 143 species. In 2014, at the same locations, they found only 2737 individuals from 104 species.

Since their initial findings in 2013, the group has installed more traps each year. Working with researchers at several universities, society members are looking for correlations with weather, changes in vegetation, and other factors. No simple cause has yet emerged. Even in reserves where plant diversity and abundance have improved, Sorg says, "the insect numbers still plunged."

Changes in land use surrounding the reserves are probably playing a role. "We've lost huge amounts of habitat, which has certainly contributed to all these declines," Goulson says. "If we turn all the seminatural habitats to wheat and cornfields, then there will be virtually no life in those fields." As fields expand and hedgerows disappear, the isolated islands of habitat left can support fewer species. Increased fertilizer on remaining grazing lands favors grasses over the diverse wildflowers that many insects prefer. And when development replaces countryside, streets and buildings generate light pollution that leads nocturnal insects astray and interrupts their mating.

Neonicotinoid pesticides, already implicated in the widespread crash of bee populations, are another prime suspect. Introduced in the 1980s, they are now the world's most popular insecticides, initially viewed as relatively benign because they are often applied directly to seeds rather than sprayed. But because they are water soluble, they don't stay put in the fields where they are used. Goulson and his colleagues reported in 2015 that nectar and pollen from wildflowers next to treated fields can have higher concentrations of neonicotinoids than the crop plants. Although initial safety studies showed that allowable levels of the compounds didn't kill honey bees directly, they do affect the insects' abilities to navigate and communicate, according to later research. Researchers found similar effects in wild solitary bees and bumble bees

Less is known about how those chemicals affect other insects, but new studies of parasitoid wasps suggest those effects could be significant. Those solitary wasps play multiple roles in ecosystems—as pollinators, predators of other insects, and prey for larger animals. A team from the University of Regensburg in Germany reported in Scientific Reports in February that exposing the wasp Nasonia vitripennis to just 1 nanogram of one common neonicotinoid cut mating rates by more than half and decreased females' ability to find hosts. "It's as if the [exposed] insect is dead" from a population point of view because it can't produce offspring, says Lars Krogmann, an entomologist at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum in Germany.

No one can prove that the pesticides are to blame for the decline, however. "There is no data on insecticide levels, especially in nature reserves," Sorg says. The group has tried to find out what kinds of pesticides are used in fields near the reserves, but that has proved difficult, he says. "We simply don't know what the drivers are" in the Krefeld data, Goulson says. "It's not an experiment. It's an observation of this massive decline. The data themselves are strong. Understanding it and knowing what to do about it is difficult."

http://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__699w__no_aspect/public/cs_70512N_Collection.jpg?itok=lApadxxP
The Krefeld Entomological Society's collections contain millions of insect specimens.

The factors causing trouble for the hover flies, moths, and bumble bees in Germany are probably at work elsewhere, if clean windshields are any indication. Since 1968, scientists at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research center in Harpenden, U.K., have operated a system of suction traps—12-meter-long suction tubes pointing skyward. Set up in fields to monitor agricultural pests, the traps capture all manner of insects that happen to fly over them; they are "effectively upside-down Hoovers running 24/7, continually sampling the air for migrating insects," says James Bell, who heads the Rothamsted Insect Survey.

Between 1970 and 2002, the biomass caught in the traps in southern England did not decline significantly. Catches in southern Scotland, however, declined by more than two-thirds during the same period. Bell notes that overall numbers in Scotland were much higher at the start of the study. "It might be that much of the [insect] abundance in southern England had already been lost" by 1970, he says, after the dramatic postwar changes in agriculture and land use.

The stable catches in southern England are in part due to constant levels of pests such as aphids, which can thrive when their insect predators are removed. Such species can take advantage of a variety of environments, move large distances, and reproduce multiple times per year. Some can even benefit from pesticides because they reproduce quickly enough to develop resistance, whereas their predators decline. "So lots of insects will do great, but the insects that we love may not," Black says.

Other, more visible creatures may be feeling the effects of the insect losses. Across North America and Europe, species of birds that eat flying insects, such as larks, swallows, and swifts, are in steep decline. Habitat loss certainly plays a role, Nocera says, "but the obvious factor that ties them all together is their diet."

Some intriguing, although indirect, clues come from a rare ecological treasure: decades' worth of stratified bird droppings. Nocera and his colleagues have been probing disused chimneys across Canada in which chimney swifts have built their nests for generations. From the droppings, he and his colleagues can reconstruct the diets of the birds, which eat almost exclusively insects caught on the wing.

The layers revealed a striking change in the birds' diets in the 1940s, around the time DDT was introduced. The proportion of beetle remains dropped off, suggesting the birds were eating smaller insects—and getting fewer calories per catch. The proportion of beetle parts increased slightly again after DDT was banned in the 1970s but never reached its earlier levels. The lack of direct data on insect populations is frustrating, Nocera says. "It's all correlative. We know that insect populations could have changed to create the population decline we have now. But we don't have the data, and we never will, because we can't go back in time."

Sorg and Wägele agree. "We deeply regret that we did not set up more traps 20 or 30 years ago," Sorg says. He and other Krefeld society members are now working with Wägele's group to develop what they wish they had had earlier: a system of automated monitoring stations they hope will combine audio recordings, camera traps, pollen and spore filters, and automated insect traps into a "biodiversity weather station". Instead of tedious manual analysis, they hope to use automated sequencing and genetic barcoding to analyze the insect samples. Such data could help pinpoint what is causing the decline—and where efforts to reverse it might work best.

Paying attention to what E. O. Wilson calls "the little things that run the world" is worthwhile, Sorg says. "We won't exterminate all insects. That's nonsense. Vertebrates would die out first. But we can cause massive damage to biodiversity—damage that harms us."

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone

[william r sanford72]

moving honeybee swarm into Bee Sphere

For inquiries and questions about bee-centric apiculture, please email me at gaiabees@gmail.com (gaiabees.com).

Some info on the hive in english can be found at https://www.bienenkugel.de/english/

bYfiYkz3wPY

[pyrangello]

Was speaking with a guy that runs a plant greenhouse this weekend, we got on the subject of the bees. He had 7 hives a few years back, one year he yielded 400 lbs of honey. His hives were next to an alfalfa field for years, that is until the farmer switched his field to the GMO corn. Guess what happened the summer the GMO corn was planted that was next to the bee hives, ALL OF THE 7 BEE HIVES AND THE BEES DIED!

There is now the alfalfa again next to the hives but he said the bees are struggling , and i'm thinking its because that coating Monsanto puts on its GMO corn seeds stays in the ground for 20 years after its use.

I know another guy who planted GMO corn and heirloom corn for his deer hunting plots one year. Guess what the deer never touched the GMO corn field that year and ate only the Heirloom corn. I don't think we need any more studies just action.

[william r sanford72]

Was speaking with a guy that runs a plant greenhouse this weekend, we got on the subject of the bees. He had 7 hives a few years back, one year he yielded 400 lbs of honey. His hives were next to an alfalfa field for years, that is until the farmer switched his field to the GMO corn. Guess what happened the summer the GMO corn was planted that was next to the bee hives, ALL OF THE 7 BEE HIVES AND THE BEES DIED!

There is now the alfalfa again next to the hives but he said the bees are struggling , and i'm thinking its because that coating Monsanto puts on its GMO corn seeds stays in the ground for 20 years after its use.

I know another guy who planted GMO corn and heirloom corn for his deer hunting plots one year. Guess what the deer never touched the GMO corn field that year and ate only the Heirloom corn. I don't think we need any more studies just action.

Agree...10 years ago and up to this moment.Thats why i still have hives.Why i post research papers and studies etc to learn and to give someone who isn't aware or is new..or just curious of how dire the level of pollution from the water on up the chain of life some insight.Even a small action can help at this point.
Solutions on the other hand....well..thats gonna bee a tough one.


William.

[william r sanford72]

How the Varroa Mite Co-Opts Honey Bee Behaviors to Its Own Advantage

https://entomologytoday.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/varroa-destructor-mites.jpg?w=460&h=286
Varroa destructor

As the managed honey bee industry continues to grapple with significant annual colony losses, the Varroa destructor mite is emerging as the leading culprit. And, it turns out, the very nature of modern beekeeping may be giving the parasite the exact conditions it needs to spread nearly beyond control.

In an article published yesterday in Environmental Entomology, researchers argue that the Varroa mite has “co-opted” several honey bee behaviors to its own benefit, allowing it to disperse widely even though the mite itself is not a highly mobile insect. The mite’s ability to hitchhike on wandering bees, the infections it transmits to bees, and the density of colonies in managed beekeeping settings make for a deadly combination.

“Beekeepers need to rethink Varroa control and treat Varroa as a migratory pest,” says Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, Ph.D., research leader and location coordinator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona, and lead author of the research.

In the wild, bee colonies tend to survive despite Varroa infestations, and colonies are usually located far enough apart to prevent mites from hitching rides to other colonies on foraging bees. Wild bee colonies’ natural habit of periodically swarming—when the colony grows large enough that a portion of its bees splinter off to create a new colony elsewhere—also serves as a mechanism for thinning out the density of mite infestations and their associated pathogens. In managed honey bee settings, though, these dynamics are disrupted, DeGrandi-Hoffman says. Colonies are kept in close proximity, and swarming is prevented.

DeGrandi-Hoffman, USDA-ARS colleague Henry Graham, and Fabiana Ahumada of AgScience Consulting, conducted an 11-month study of 120 honey bee colonies in one commercial bee operation, comparing those treated with mite-targeting insecticide (miticide) in the spring and fall with those treated only in the fall, and they found no significant difference in the results: more than half of the colonies were lost across the board. This aligns with what has been seen by beekeepers and researchers alike in recent years: Varroa populations continue to grow even after being treated with effective miticides. But why? The answer may be in its dispersal mechanisms.

The researchers also conducted mathematical simulations of Varroa mite population dynamics to examine the effects of both migration of foragers between colonies and swarming. When bees can wander into other colonies—either to “rob” them of their honey or because they’ve simply lost their way—Varroa populations across colonies climb. Likewise, prohibiting colonies from splintering periodically via swarming also leads mite populations to rise.

In the wild, DeGrandi-Hoffman and her colleagues note, driving a colony to collapse is against Varroa mites’ own interest; if the colony dies, the mites die with it. But in commercial beekeeping settings, increasing infestation of a colony activates the dispersal mechanisms the mites need to spread. Weakened foragers are more likely to wander to other colonies, and weakened colonies are more likely to see foragers from healthy colonies visit to rob them of honey. In both cases, mites can hitch a ride from one colony to another.

It all adds up to a critical point for managed honey bee industry. The researchers cite the need for new integrated pest management strategies to treat Varroa destructor as a migratory pest, as well as for further research into the specifics of Varroa dispersal.

“Colony losses in the U.S. are at unsustainable levels for commercial beekeepers. These beekeepers supply colonies for the pollination of crops that represent one-third of U.S. agriculture and are essential components of heart healthy and cancer-prevention diets,” says DeGrandi-Hoffman. “This research provides evidence that the tried and true ways of controlling Varroa are no longer feasible, and that new methods that are designed for control of a migratory pest are required.”

Read more at:
“Are Dispersal Mechanisms Changing the Host–Parasite Relationship and Increasing the Virulence of Varroa destructor (Mesostigmata: Varroidae) in Managed Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Colonies?”

https://entomologytoday.org/2017/05/10/how-the-varroa-mite-co-opts-honey-bee-behaviors-to-its-own-advantage/

[william r sanford72]

Judge Rules that EPA Neonicotinoid Registrations Violated Endangered Species Act

(Beyond Pesticides, May 11, 2017) On Monday, a federal judge in California ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) when it issued 59 neonicotinoid insecticide registrations between 2007 and 2012 for pesticide products containing clothianidin and thiamethoxam. The original lawsuit against EPA, Ellis v. Housenger, was filed in March 2013, by beekeeper Steve Ellis and a coalition of other beekeepers and environmental groups, including Beyond Pesticides. The 2013 lawsuit focused on the EPA’s failure to protect pollinators from dangerous pesticides and challenged EPA’s oversight of the bee-killing pesticides, clothianidin and thiamethoxam, as well as the agency’s practice of “conditional registration” and labeling deficiencies.

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/bees-18192_960_720-300x200.jpg

According to George Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety’s legal director and the lead plaintiffs’ counsel, “This is a vital victory. Science shows these toxic pesticides harm bees, endangered species and the broader environment. More than fifty years ago, Rachel Carson warned us to avoid such toxic chemicals, and the court’s ruling may bring us one step closer to preventing another Silent Spring.”

The judge presiding over the case rejected claims by pesticide producers and their supporters that the plaintiffs failed to establish a causal link between the pesticides and the plaintiffs’ injury. U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney did not order EPA to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which is required when registering a pesticide in order to mitigate risks to endangered species. Instead, she directed the parties, including the plaintiffs, defendant EPA, and intervenor Bayer CropScience, to move forward with a settlement conference to resolve the disputes. Thus, additional proceedings will follow the decision to assess the proper solution for EPA’s violations, which may lead to cancellations of the 59 pesticide registrations, including agricultural products such as seed-coating insecticides.

“Vast amounts of scientific literature show the hazards these chemicals pose are far worse than we knew five years ago – and it was bad even then,” said Center for Food Safety attorney Peter Jenkins, who was involved in the proceedings. “The nation’s beekeepers continue to suffer unacceptable mortality of 40 percent annually and higher. EPA must act to protect bees and the environment.”

The recent ruling denied other claims in the lawsuit that were based on the plaintiffs’ emergency legal petition made in March 2012, because the court lacked jurisdiction due to conflicting laws or EPA’s actions were not “approvals” subject to court challenge. Beyond Pesticides, along with numerous commercial beekeepers and environmental organizations filed this petition with EPA to suspend use of a pesticide that is linked to honey bee deaths, urging the agency to adopt safeguards. The legal petition, which specified the pesticide clothianidin, was supported by over one million citizen petition signatures and targeted the pesticide for its harmful impacts on honey bees.

This ruling comes at a time when neonicotinoid-treated seeds are pervasive and widely used across the agricultural landscape, home gardens, and public spaces. Of the two most widely planted crops in the United States, between 79 to 100 percent of corn seed and 34 to 44 percent of soybean seed were treated with neonics in 2011. A conservative estimate of the area planted with neonic-treated corn, soybean, and cotton seed totals just over 100 million acres, or 57 percent of the entire area for these crops.

Systemic neonicotinoid pesticides, which include clothianidin and thiamethoxam, move through the plant’s vascular system and are expressed through pollen, nectar, and guttation droplets. These pesticides have been found by a growing body of scientific literature  to be linked to pollinator decline in general. Neonics are associated with decreased foraging  and navigational ability, as well as increased vulnerability to pathogens and parasites as a result of suppressed bee immune systems. While the benefits to farmers are insignificant, the harm neonicotinoids cause to the wider environment is of serious concern. The dust released from planting coated seeds can drift off-field and contaminate field margins with high levels of these toxic pesticides. The Center for Food Safety’s report, Net Loss, cites findings that, depending on the crop, only five percent of the active chemical in a seed coating actually enters a crop. The other 95% of the chemical makes its way into the environment, either through seed dust, soil contamination, or water runoff.

In light of the shortcomings of federal action to protect pollinators, it is left up to us to ensure that we provide safe havens by creating pesticide-free habitat and educating others to do the same. You can pledge your green space as pesticide-free and pollinator-friendly. It does not matter how large or small your pledge is, as long as you contribute to the creation of safe pollinator habitat.

Show appreciation for both wild and managed pollinators by taking local action. Get involved at the community level to pass policies that protect imperiled pollinators. Right now, without federal protection, the rusty patched bumblebee needs concerned communities throughout the country to step in and makes changes that give it a fighting chance. Use Beyond Pesticides’ resources and educational materials, including our BEE Protective doorknob hangers to get the word out. And be sure follow Beyond Pesticides’ ongoing series celebrating unsung wild pollinator heroes through the Polli-NATION campaign.

Sources: Center for Food Safety, Courthouse News Service

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

http://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2017/05/judge-rules-epa-neonicotinoid-registrations-violated-endangered-species-act/

[william r sanford72]

Judge Rules EPA Systematically Violated Endangered Species Act

Published on May 11, 2017

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk to Mr. Peter Jenkins from the Center For Food Safety in regards to breaking news regarding a decision by the federal court that ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) systematically violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA)!

www.theorganicview.com

DD13q1pZBFU

[william r sanford72]

The Armenian Hive: Hands Free Beekeeping (In English)

ixincTVcVpA

[mgray]

Well my hive is constructed and I am awaiting a bee colony to arrive. It is still very cool here in the Northeast of the US, so I believe it will be a few weeks before I see any activity with the hive.

[william r sanford72]

Small Hive Beetle SHB Dealing with them for over 15 years

Published on May 12, 2017

A lecture given at the 2016 National Honey Show entitled "Small Hive Beetle SHB Dealing with them for over 15 year" by David Tarpy.

Tzkrrz1Ufew

[william r sanford72]

Instrumental Insemination, the History, the Techniques and Future Possibilities

Published on May 15, 2017
A lecture given at the 2016 National Honey Show entitled "Instrumental Insemination, the History, the Techniques and Future possibilities" by Susan Cobey.

-IrmEEaTxug

[william r sanford72]

The New World Carnolian Project

Published on May 15, 2017
A lecture given at the 2016 National Honey Show entitled "The New World Carnolian Project" by Susan Cobey.

iYmLoZdkYe0

[william r sanford72]

Young Regality - A day in the life of a young Honeybee Queen

Published on May 15, 2017
A lecture given at the 2016 National Honey Show entitled "Young Regality - A day in the life of a young Honeybee Queen" by David Tarpy

EynQxLn7d60

[william r sanford72]

Well my hive is constructed and I am awaiting a bee colony to arrive. It is still very cool here in the Northeast of the US, so I believe it will be a few weeks before I see any activity with the hive.

:highfive:mgray...my only suggestion...2 hives are better than 1 when first starting out..

:heart:
William.

[william r sanford72]

Beekeepers Discuss EPA's Negligence In Protecting Honey Bees

Published on May 18, 2017

Last week, a federal court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) systematically violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a key wildlife protection law, when it approved the use of neonicotinoids, a family of deadly pesticides, scientifically proven to kill bees and other pollinators. EPA had unlawfully issued 59 pesticide registrations between 2007 and 2012 for a wide variety of agricultural, landscaping and ornamental uses
Although this is a big victory, unfortunately, there still is a very long way to go. What does this mean for the future of commercial migratory beekeepers? What will this mean as far as the protection of honey bees?
www.theorganicview.com

KcfxhjZmt8w

[william r sanford72]

Its that time in Iowa Again....

Corn seed treatment insecticides pose risks to honey bees, yield benefits elusive
May 23, 2017

Nearly every foraging honey bee in the state of Indiana will encounter neonicotinoids during corn planting season, and the common seed treatments produced no improvement in crop yield, according to a Purdue University study.

Neonicotinoids, including clothianidin and thiamethoxam, are a class of insecticide commonly applied as a coating to corn and soybean seeds to protect them from early-season pests. Since the coatings are sticky, a talc or graphite powder is added to vacuum systems in planters to keep the seeds from clumping. Powder exhausted from the planter contains neonicotinoids.

The United States is losing about one-third of its honeybee hives each year, a significant problem since the bees pollinate many crops used to feed people and livestock. Neonicotinoids, which are highly toxic to honeybees, are being scrutinized as a possible contributor to the losses.

Christian Krupke, a professor of entomology, showed in 2012 that exhausted insecticides collected on flowers that border agricultural fields and were present in hives near those fields. Bees in those hives showed physical signs of insecticide poisoning, and dead bees tested positive for the neonicotinoids used as seed treatments of corn and soybeans.
Now, Krupke, along with collaborators Jeff Holland at Purdue, Elizabeth Long at Ohio State University, and Brian Eitzer with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, have measured the drift of those neonicotinoids from fields and found that the insecticides can settle on flowers up to 100 meters from the edge of the planted fields, the farthest distance examined in the study. Their findings are published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Mapping Indiana's corn acreage, as well as the areas that may receive drift, the authors say that 42 percent of the state is exposed to neonicotinoids during crop planting. Looking at public data on the location of apiaries and projecting the range that honey bees forage, they found that 94 percent of bees could fly through areas that contain lethal doses of the insecticides during the period when corn is planted.

"Our previous study showed that these neonicotinoids are likely to leave the field, but we wanted to demystify that distance and show how far the material moves, at what concentrations and what the actual risk is," Krupke said. "There was a misconception that any bees not living near corn were likely to be fine. But that's not true, and it's clear that these insecticides are reaching into the places bees forage and putting them at risk."

Krupke's team set up dust collection stations at 12 Indiana fields where corn was being planted and collected samples for two years at distances up to 100 meters. Analysis of the collected dust showed lethal doses of neonicotinoids were reaching the farthest traps. Added to the clouds over the fields during planting, Krupke said bees are exposed to significant risk.

"As planter exhaust is blown up and away from the equipment, it gets into the air stream and is at the mercy of whatever is going on with the wind," Krupke said. "It's not all that different from the pesticide drift that we've talked about for years, but these products were supposed to solve that problem. Now we know that they also drift."

In the same study, the researchers found no evidence that neonicotinoids increased yield in corn. The authors tested untreated corn seed, and seeds coated with neonicotinoids and fungicides at both high and low doses, at three locations around Indiana. There were differences in pest damage at one site, but those did not translate into yield loss.

The authors conclude that the lack of benefit for corn yields in their study, as well as inconsistent findings in U.S. corn, soybean and oilseed rape in Europe, "suggest that the current use levels of insecticidal seed treatments in North American row crops are likely to far exceed the demonstrable need, and our results likely reflect a scarcity of target pests."

The industry continues to work on alternative seed lubricants to reduce dust movement at planting, but to date progress has been limited. According to a Penn State study analyzing USDA pesticide use data, the rates of neonicotinoid use in corn have doubled since 2012.

Finally, the authors say that the risk to bees and other non-target organisms could be more significant than their paper suggests. They only examined cornfields in this study, and soybeans are also typically treated with neonicotinoids. The study transects were limited to 100 meters from field edges, but it's possible that lethal doses reach further. And they did not account for the fact that bees create static charges on their bodies during flight, which means they may be attracting insecticide-tainted dust during flight and not just when landing on flowers.

Neonicotinoids are on almost all corn and most soybean seeds sold in the U.S., though Krupke said that this study and other reports of inconsistent yield benefits, show that widespread use is unnecessary and farmers could benefit from access to seeds not treated with insecticide. He will focus research on determining the circumstances in which neonicotinoids are useful for improving yield, and he will encourage farmer access to neonicotinoid-free seed, which is almost non-existent in the current market.

"The good news is that because farmers often don't need these additions to seeds or benefit from them, we can easily and rapidly reduce the risk simply by having untreated seeds available," Krupke said. "That would also allow farmers to make some side-by-side comparisons in their own fields."

More information: Planting of neonicotinoid-treated maize poses risks for honey bees and other non-target organisms over a wide area without consistent crop yield benefit. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12924

Vid in Links:
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-corn-seed-treatment-insecticides-pose.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2017-05-corn-seed-treatment-insecticides-pose.html

[william r sanford72]

Two thousand people march against Monsanto and Syngenta in Switzerland

http://www.gmwatch.org/images/banners/March_against_Monsanto_and_Syngenta_Basel_3_1200x600.jpg
Peaceful demonstration in Basel calls for paradigm change in agriculture

In Basel, Switzerland, the home town of the chemicals giant Syngenta, the third March Against Monsanto and Syngenta was held on Saturday 20 May 2017. Two thousand people turned out to demonstrate against toxic pesticides, GMOs, and patents on seeds. They demanded an ecological and diverse agriculture which serves food security instead of profit.
The demonstration ended at the Syngenta headquarters and was accompanied by street artists, musicians, and children dressed as bees.

http://www.gmwatch.org/images/banners/March_against_Monsanto_and_Syngenta_Basel_1_1200px.jpg

In front of the Syngenta headquarters, Fern Rosenstiel, an environmental scientist from Kauai, Hawaii, spoke about the use of highly toxic pesticides – pesticides that are banned in Switzerland – on Syngenta test fields in Hawaii. She said: “Syngenta must finally take responsibility for the health problems in Hawaii.”

Syngenta is currently caught up in legal battles over its farming of GM crops in Hawaii and is planning to sell its operations in the state.

This year the main focus of the protest was the increasing market power in the agrochemical industry. In addition to the planned acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina and the merger of Dow and Dupont, Bayer plans to take over Monsanto. Altogether, the three companies would control over 60% of the commercial seed and pesticide market.

“Syngenta is now Chinese but that does not mean that our resistance against the business practice of Syngenta stops now,” said Ueli Gähler from Multiwatch. “Today, we protest in solidarity with smallholders in China and the rest of the world.”

The march against Monsanto and Syngenta in Basel was supported by more than 50 organisations from Switzerland and Germany, including Basel unions, the Green Party, and environmental, agricultural and development organisations such as Greenpeace, Uniterre and SWISSAID.*

http://www.gmwatch.org/images/banners/March_against_Monsanto_and_Syngenta_Basel_2_1200px.jpg
Zoë Roth from the event’s organising committee drew a positive conclusion: “The high turnout at the March against Monsanto and Syngenta in Basel confirms the desire for ecological farming.”

* The complete list of supporting organisations and more information are available at: www.marchagainstsyngenta.ch

More pictures and videos are available at: https://www.facebook.com/events/717720845062095/801452983355547/?notif_t=plan_mall_activity&notif_id=1495272708590184

http://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/17638

[william r sanford72]

Musical interlude by Roger Waters...Who Needs Information...K.A.O.S Radio.

IXIyFM60uPg

[william r sanford72]

Mountain honey bees have ancient adaptation for high-altitude foraging

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/mountainhone.jpg
East African honey bees are shown. The dark monticola bee (top) is associated with the isolated highland forests and the bright scutellata bee (bottom) occurs in the surrounding lowland savannahs. Credit: Andreas Wallberg and colleagues.

Mountain-dwelling East African honey bees have distinct genetic variations compared to their savannah relatives that likely help them to survive at high altitudes, report Martin Hasselmann of the University of Hohenheim, Germany, Matthew Webster of Uppsala University, Sweden, and colleagues May 25th, 2017, in PLOS Genetics.

Honey bees living in the mountain forests of East Africa look and behave differently from bees inhabiting the surrounding lowland savannahs. Mountain bees are larger, darker and less aggressive than savannah bees, and can fly at lower temperatures and conserve honey when flowers aren't blooming. To understand the genetic basis for these high-altitude adaptations, researchers sequenced the genomes of 39 bees from two highland and two lowland populations in Kenya. The genomes of all the populations are highly similar, but two regions located on chromosome 7 and 9 show consistent differences between bees living in high and low-altitude environments. The segment on chromosome 7 contains e.g. receptor genes for a neurotransmitter called octopamine, which plays a role in learning and foraging. The clear divergence of these two genetic variations suggests that they have an ancient origin and likely existed in bee populations before the groups spread their mountain and savannah habitats.

This comprehensive study of the genomes of high-altitude honey bees in Kenya reveals novel insights into their evolutionary history and the genetic basis of local adaptation. Scientists had thought that mountain and savannah populations were each distinct sub-species. The high degree of similarity in their genomes, as revealed in the current study, shows that they constantly interbreed. The highly diverged segments likely represent structural rearrangements, such as inversions, in which the exchange of genetic material is suppressed. Previous studies have identified octopamine as an important signaling molecule in other insects living in low temperature and low oxygen conditions.

Martin Hasselmann adds: "Our findings complement several other landmark studies (for example in Heliconius butterflies and Solenopsis ants) where adaptations have been similarly tied to structural variants or supergenes. However, this phenomenon has never been documented in honey bees before. Our results should therefore spur further research into the role of supergenes in environmental adaptation. We are planning now to measure the distribution of these divergent segments in other geographic locations and to elucidate the functional link of these genes with behavior."

Explore further: Genes key to killer bee's success

More information: Wallberg A, Schöning C, Webster MT, Hasselmann M (2017) Two extended haplotype blocks are associated with adaptation to high altitude habitats in East
African honey bees. PLoS Genet 13(5): e1006792. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006792

Journal reference: PLoS Genetics

Provided by: Public Library of Science

https://phys.org/news/2017-05-mountain-honey-bees-ancient-high-altitude.html

[william r sanford72]

USDA HONEY MARKET FOR THE MONTH OF APRIL, 2017

www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf

[william r sanford72]

Why You Should Not Become A Beekeeper

Published on Jun 1, 2017

The global population of our pollinators is indeed declining. Beekeeping is a huge responsibility and is not as simple as some may think. While some blogs and websites offer beekeeping as a quick fix for helping support bees, it is not always a wise choice.
www.theorganicview.com

5fadVnjszqo

[bluestflame]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0HpE2sMVW4]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD15MT1IqTk

found some wild ones in a log when i was cutting firewood , so i brought them home , in the log , seem to have settled in ok ( wood is sugargum)

i put them under the trailer for a modicum of shelter , though i walk past it many times in a day , shed is out back to the left , they seem pretty quiet

[william r sanford72]

To keep bees from disappearing, listen to their buzz

http://www.futurity.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/bee-near-flower_1600-1400x400.jpg

An inexpensive acoustic listening system can monitor bees in flight using data from small microphones in the field. New research shows how farmers could use the technology to monitor pollination and increase food production.

According to recent studies, declines in wild and managed bee populations threaten the pollination of flowers in more than 85 percent of flowering plants and 75 percent of agricultural crops worldwide. Widespread and effective monitoring of bee populations could lead to better management; however, tracking bees is tricky and costly.

http://www.futurity.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Long-Tongued-Bumble-Bee-Queen_740.jpg
Bombus balteatus queen collecting nectar from the alpine clover, Trifolium parryi. The buzzes of bees flying from flower to flower tell scientists how much pollination the clover population is getting over time and predict seed production in these alpine wildflowers. (Credit: Jennifer Geib/Appalachian State University)

“Causes of pollinator decline are complex and include diminishing flower resources, habitat loss, climate change, increased disease incidence, and exposure to pesticides, so pinpointing the driving forces remains a challenge,” says Candace Galen, professor of biological science in the University of Missouri College of Arts and Science.

“For more than 100 years, scientists have used sonic vibrations to monitor birds, bats, frogs, and insects. We wanted to test the potential for remote monitoring programs that use acoustics to track bee flight activities.”

First, the team analyzed the characteristic frequencies—what musicians call the pitch—of bee buzzes in the lab. Then, they placed small microphones attached to data storage devices in the field and collected the acoustic survey data from three locations on Pennsylvania Mountain in Colorado to estimate bumble bee activity.

Using the data, they developed algorithms that identified and quantified the number of bee buzzes in each location and compared that data to visual surveys the team made in the field. In almost every instance, the acoustic surveys were more sensitive, picking up more buzzing bees.

“Eavesdropping on the acoustic signatures of bee flights tells the story of bee activity and pollination services,” Galen says.

“Farmers may be able to use the exact methods to monitor pollination of their orchards and vegetable crops and head off pollination deficits. Finally, global ‘citizen scientists’ could get involved, monitoring bees in their backyards.”

http://www.futurity.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Long-Tongued-Bumble-Bee_740.jpg
Long-tongued bumble bee queens of Bombus balteatus visit flowers of the alpine skypilot Polemonium viscosum. These large bees have a distinctive flight buzz, the bee version of a cargo-plane flying from flower to flower. (Credit: Zoe Moffett/Colorado College)

Currently, using the algorithms developed in this study, the team is developing a smartphone app that could record buzz activity as well as document the bees photographically. Future studies could determine whether bees detect competitors by sound and whether flowers have chemical responses to bee buzzes, Galen says.

The study appears in PLOS ONE. The National Science Foundation funded the research. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agency. Coauthors of the study are from Webster University, Lincoln University, and the University of Missouri.

Source: University of Missouri

Original Study DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179273

http://www.futurity.org/monitoring-bees-buzzing-1453572/

[william r sanford72]

Why Honeybees Are The Wrong Problem To Solve

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/06/13/imagecredit-ianwebster2-3f05201d10ab4bde791bae0c2ce6f242d474d6d6-s800-c85.jpg
A rendering of Pollinator Pathways across the U.S.

A lot of people think of Sarah Bergmann as the "Honeybee Lady" — and that really annoys her.

It's an attribution that might make sense at first glance, given that Bergmann is the celebrated creator of what's called the Pollinator Pathway project. So, pollinators, honeybees — what's the problem?

Well, spend a little time with Bergmann and you'll see that the issue she's trying to address with the Pollinator Pathway is way bigger than honeybees and their current Colony Collapse Disorder troubles. In fact, for Bergmann, the honeybees are actually part of a much bigger problem she's trying to solve. And that much bigger problem is nothing less than how to design the planet in a human-dominated age.

The basic idea of Bergmann's Pollinator Pathway is to connect landscapes that have been broken up by human development. The goal is to allow pollinators to move as they need to, in order to do their good work. Bergmann, a designer by training, has won various kinds of attention for the Pollinator Pathway project, including a Genius Award from Seattle's The Stranger magazine, as well as articles in Popular Science, GRIST and even an NPR story a few years back.

But Bergmann has found that almost everyone she talks to misses the point of her work. The problem starts when people hear "pollinator" and assume the project is about honeybees. But for Bergmann, honeybees aren't the ones with the problem, they're part of the problem.

"I don't mean that to be an [deleted expletive]," she told Atlas Obscura magazine in a story about her work. "The entire basis of my work is basically: Don't save anything, and certainly don't save the honeybee."

If that seems like a radical statement, that's because Sarah Bergmann thinks on radically large scales. She believes we've got the environment and our place in it all wrong, especially in this dawning era of climate change. She told me:

"I made the Pollinator Pathway to bring about a shift in environmental imagination. I'm saying that we aren't thinking big enough for the world we live in. It's about thinking less like conservationists, and a lot more like designers. Moving away from ideas of restoration and conservation, and moving toward the idea that we are active participants in the design of the planet."

From Bergmann's perspective, everything living designs the environment.

"We live in a designed world," she explains. "I mean this in the sense of the built world — everything from our sneakers to our highways and even our national parks — but also the design of all species."

She gives the example of how a beaver organizes not just the shape but also the behavior of the pond it inhabits.

"The design of other species also holds together the physical shape and behavior of the world," she says. "We are beneficiaries of this design."

So how does this relate to the honeybees?

"This is about connecting landscapes," Bergmann explains. "And what that really means is, plants."

Plants create the basic fabric of ecosystems that define different kinds of landscapes. And pollinators, for Bergmann, are just the sex life of plants. It's at this point that Bergmann's insights into the "design" of the natural world really hit their stride. We may think of honeybees as nature's pollinator extraordinaire but they are, in fact, anything but natural.

"Honeybees were part of a massive transformation of landscape now called the Columbian Exchange," Bergmann says. From the 15th to 18th centuries, Europeans relocated animal and plant species around the world via trade and travel at an unprecedented rate in Earth's history. That's how honeybees got here. They were purposeful imports from Europe.

Then they escaped and went feral into the landscape (they were called the white man's fly by Native Americans). Remarkably, after a while people just thought of them as natural.

But then the story shifts again. These days, almost all honeybees are working for Big Agriculture. Trucked in boxes with road trip "pollen patty" food, they make their way across the country stopping in different states as the agricultural season progresses.

So for Bergmann, modern honeybees are part a wave of purposeful design.

"It was the global scaling up of agriculture," she says. "We designed a system that required an outside pollinator in order to produce food, because, by design, these landscapes [of Big Agriculture] have no biodiversity."

Pollination services, which are what the road-tripping honeybees provide, are a new industry that was born from the choices we were making about our land use. For Bergmann, these sprawling farms "are economic landscapes, pared down to a handful of components that now make up our industrial food supply: seed, soil, water, fertilizer, pesticide, time—and now pollination services."

So while people began fretting for the honeybees after Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) hit the news, Bergmann's larger point that honeybees are actually bit pollination players in most natural landscapes got lost. She says the bulk of pollination in the natural world is really being carried off by other kinds of bees as well as bats, butterflies, moths, flies, midges and more. And these are the pollinators she's interested in building pathways for — because they're ones that represent thriving and diverse ecosystems.

And while huge monoculture industrial farms may provide much of our food right now, their species "simplicity" is exactly their vulnerability (as the CCD illustrates). So from Bergmann's perspective, thriving, diverse ecosystems are exactly what we need to "design" into a future that includes a thriving biosphere with a big honking project of civilization in it.

In the final analysis, Bergmann's Pollinator Pathway is the ultimate "think globally act locally" kind of project. A specific city might think about how to create specific corridors that allow natural pollinators to move through its domains and connect outer, fragmented "natural" landscapes. But hiding within the project is a much deeper vision of how to understand the human future in the Anthropocene.

The distinctions between natural and human landscapes will have to be redefined as our activity touches every aspect of the planet's operation. It is in this way that we must come to understand how to make choices — how to design our interactions with the rest of the world to ensure that everyone and everything thrives.

And that's how Sarah Bergmann is on to something much bigger than honeybees.

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/06/13/532729268/why-honeybees-are-the-wrong-problem-to-solve

[Cidersomerset]

http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.21.17/orb/4/img/bbc-blocks-dark.png

The battle for nesting sites among the birds and the bees

By Helen Briggs
BBC News...4 hours ago
From the section Science & Environment


https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/2342/production/_96462090_gettyimages-590051802.jpg
The White-tailed bumblebee emerges early in the spring

read more....http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40260319

====================================================
====================================================


Thousands of bees swarm into car - BBC News

Dwyk8TZ4cj8

Published on 13 Jun 2017

A swarm of up to 20,000 bees has taken over a car in Hull.
Shirley Taylor said the bees took residence in her Nissan car parked outside her
front door in Watt Street, on Sunday.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40258679/bee-swarm-swamps-car-in-hull

[avid]

I have had a very sad situation, doing an extension to my home, bumble bees nest in cavity wall, gave them alternate routes, noone could/would rescue them, so sadly their opening was cemented in by builders on Friday. Have helped 2 stray bees outside this weekend. We removed most of nest during building work weeks ago, only about 20 regular bumble bees. I feel so bad about this, but most had already gone. Bless those wee creatures 😱

[william r sanford72]

Commercial Beekeeper Jim Doan Discusses Bee Informed Partnership Survey

Uploaded on Jun 13, 2017

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk to commercial beekeeper, Jim Doan about the new Bee Informed Partnership survey. Jim as some of you may recall, is a New York commercial, migratory beekeeper who at one point managed about 5300 hives. The first time Jim was on The Neonicotinoid View was exactly 4 years ago when his operation, which was one of the first known beekeeping operations, succumbed to the exposure of neonicotinoids.
www.theorganicview.com

Ys1JG-qIqGY

[william r sanford72]

Your next happy hour buzz, brought to you by bees

http://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/bumblebeer_lede_image_overide-e1497646986890-1200x675.jpg
Bumblebeer — Only two species of yeast --- ale yeast and lager yeast -- have been used for traditional beer brewing over the last 600 years. A lab in North Carolina may have found a third in the strangest place: On bees and wasps.

Anne Madden bends creatures to her will, with the deftness of a shepherd. But Madden is a microbe wrangler — her critters cover petri dishes. Rather than merely observe bacteria and fungi, Madden sees a community ready for work. If not for fungi, bacteria-fighting penicillin or heart-saving statins would not exist. If not for bacteria, the world would not have pickles. PICKLES!

“We have to find it. We have to bring it into the lab, and then we have to convince it to do something,” Madden told the NewsHour inside a lab at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where she works as an environmental microbiologist.

These days, her experiments are buzzing, as she takes microbes — yeast — from bees and convinces them to brew beer.

But don’t fret. It’s less gross than it sounds. No “mass bug-icide” was committed, and no insect body parts feature in the final suds.

Rather, the discovery of bumblebeer yeast recalls a serendipitous science at the heart of beer history — and may also represent the first new yeast in 600 years capable of making traditional beer.

nI4j8AgFCeI

Bumblebeer bubbles to the surface

Bumblebeer began in 2014, as an academic science fair project.

Rob Dunn, an applied ecologist at North Carolina State University, had joined forces with the campus research brewer John Sheppard to develop a science-themed exhibit for the World Beer Festival — due to be held the next year in Raleigh.

Dunn was recruited because of his reputation for revealing the unseen organisms in our everyday lives. Over the years, his lab has conducted a series of bug censuses and found all sorts of freeloaders.

One project had citizen scientists in Raleigh swab for dust around their houses, in search of trace DNA left behind by critters. The survey revealed that an ordinary home contains up to 200 types of bugs, a thriving ecosystem of carpet beetles, aphids, cockroaches, paper wasps, spiders and silverfish.

That’s not even the strangest part.

“So far, we’ve found that wealthy people have more kinds of insects in their houses, which some people loved, other people didn’t like that so much,” Dunn joked in his office covered with antique maps and glass cases full of bees, flies and butterflies.

When the team expanded the survey to more than 700 homes nationwide, they discovered dust mites — whose feces and corpses trigger allergic reactions and asthma — are most abundant on the East Coast. Need respiratory relief? Head West.

http://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/dust-mites_ladybugsmec13900-fig_final.png
Invasive allergies. As part of a bug census, Rob Dunn’s lab surveyed the geographical distributions of insects that cause allergies (dust mites) and indoor pests (ladybugs). Photo by Madden AA et al., Molecular Ecology, 2016.

Another census revealed that giant Japanese camel crickets, an invasive species, have “moved basement to basement across North America totally unnoticed,” Dunn said. “People don’t like them because they jump at you out of the dark.”

The team estimated that 700 million of these thumb-sized crickets might exist across the eastern United States alone — which may ultimately work in our favor. They found new kinds of bacteria from the guts of these crickets can break down a waste product of the paper industry and turn it into energy.

Few labs are equipped to find such microbes and bugs in such random environs, so if anyone could find a beer-making germ in the wild, it was Dunn’s team.

But where to start?

Dang, this yeast smells good

Beer, wine and other booze is made with yeast — single-celled microorganisms from the fungus kingdom. More than 1,500 yeast species are known around the world, and yet humans have essentially relied on only two types of alcohol-producing yeast — ale yeast and lager yeast — since the earliest days of brewing 9,000 years ago.

That’s because our partnership with beer-making yeast likely began by accident and evolved through happenstance. Scientists didn’t even realize yeast were living organisms until the 1830s, and it took Louis Pasteur another 20 years to discover how the microbes take sugars and chemically transform — ferment — them into alcohol.

Yeast microbiologists believe the earliest brewers were flying blind, driven by the sweet smells made when yeast ferment a wet pile of sugar-rich grains or a piece of fruit rotting in an orchard.

“It’s easy to imagine people thinking this smells just right to make a good bread. It smells just right to make a good beer, I’m going to save it,” Dunn said. And from that came bread, sourdough and beer recipes, passed down through generations.

http://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Foods-made-by-yeast-1-1024x576.jpg
Yeast feast. Aside from beer, other foods made with yeast include cottage cheese, ketchup, sauerkraut, soy sauce, vinegar and yogurt.

Those smells arise from an ancient relationship between yeast and insect pollinators, Madden said.

Yeast live in flower nectar, where the microbes feast on boatloads of sugar. The yeast produce alcohol, along with those sweet aromas that tickle our noses, which in turn attract the buzzing bugs. Bees sometimes get drunk off this fermented nectar.

But flowers and fruits wilt in the cold of winter, which would kill the yeast too, meaning the microbes need a place to escape.

“So the question remains, where are yeasts in the winter, where are yeasts hiding in the world?,” Madden asked. “Yeasts are particularly bad at moving themselves from place to place. They don’t have a lot of the skillsets that other microbes or other larger organisms have.”

So the yeasts hitch rides on the insect pollinators, as they move from flower to flower. She said researchers had found winery yeasts in the winter on the bodies of hibernating wasps, which visit these sugar sources during the summer.

“We actually think, based on some work from colleagues in Italy, it’s very likely that those first beers and breads were relying on yeasts from insects too,” Dunn said. Madden and Dunn began with a plan: to intercept yeast as they rode on bees or wasps, in hopes of finding one to make alcohol.

But wild animals are filthy, covered or filled with thousands of microbes. You can’t just drop a bee into juice and hope for fermentation. Madden would need to combine her senses and modern microbiology.

She started in North Carolina fields, where she caught a single paper wasp — a bug known to harbor large communities of yeast. She then transferred every microbe from its body to a petri dish. A couple days later, a forest of microbes appear on the dish.

First, she looked to separate the yeast from other fungi or bacteria on the plate. “It’s about understanding when something glistens in a certain way,” Madden said. “It has got a different color than others. It’s slightly less slimy.” Next, she picked a handful of yeast candidates, grew them on a new dish and followed her nose. Fermenting yeast smell pleasant due to compounds called “organoleptics” that they make from sugar. The fruity and biscuity notes define the final taste of the beer.

Her third task was running the DNA from these candidates through a National Institutes of Health database to ensure her picks weren’t related to pathogens. The final stage is a color-coded chemical test because to make beer, the yeast must be able to process maltose — a sugar found in malted barley. If the yeast can’t use those sugars, they are not going to produce alcohol.

If the test tube turns bright yellow, then the yeast is a winner and ready for the brewhouse.

Wild yeast, banished

So far, Madden has found two yeasts, one from a single wasp and one from a single bee, capable of making beer.

“People tend to ask us how many insects died to make beer, and the answer is very few. Once the yeast is separated, we can use the yeast for eternity without going back to those insects” Madden said. “To make all of the different bumblebeers that we’ve made, we’ve killed two bugs. You’ve likely killed more bugs on your way to a bar to get beer.”

Her picks landed with John Sheppard, the North Carolina State research brewer, who found that bumblebeer yeast sits on unique pedestal in brewing. Many wild yeasts are considered contamination in the domestic beer industry because they produce a lot of off flavors, Sheppard said.

But once upon a time, wild yeast were unavoidable in alcohol production. It’s pretty easy to contaminate your food when you don’t know microorganisms cover every inch of your body…and pretty much everything else.

The first brewers recognized that the top portion of a beer barrel could be saved and reused to brew a consistent product. Little did they know it also contained a microbial stew made primarily of ale yeast (species: Saccharomyces cerevisiae). Sure, every now and again, their batches might get skunked by the other microbes in the stew — hello, sour beer!

But the practice worked well in warmer regions where civilizations began.

The tactic became less viable as folks moved into the colder climates of Germany and northern Europe, where the Big Bang of brewing ultimately happened.

http://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Saccharomyces_cerevisiae_SEM.jpg
Tale of two yeast. Only two species of yeast — ale yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae; pictured above) and lager yeast — have been used for traditional beer brewing for the last 600 years. A lab in North Carolina may have found a third in the strangest place: On bees.

In the early- and mid-1400s, Bavarian brewers stumbled upon lager yeast, which was technically the crud left behind in the bottom of the barrel.

“All of a sudden, they could now brew at colder temperatures and get crisper cleaner flavors,” said Chris Todd Hittinger, a University of Wisconsin geneticist who isn’t involved with the bumblebeer project.

Cold brewing made beer less likely to spoil, and sparked the domestic age of beermaking. In April 1516, Bavaria issued Reinheitsgebot — a “purity order” — that limited beer’s ingredients to barley malt, water, hops and bottom fermenters (lager yeast).

Add the steam engine and colonialism, and lager-style beers eventually spread across the world. Today, cold-adapted lager yeast account for 90 percent of global beer markets, Hittinger said, such as for big brands like Miller, Budweiser, Heineken, Stella Artois and Corona. Ale yeast became reserved for the speciality menu: pale ales, India pale ales, stouts, porters and wheat beers.

Ale yeast and lager yeast became the standard bearers, because they make significant quantities of alcohol without adding natural flavors, Sheppard said.

They’re basic Beckys — bland and easily influenced, with more in common than early brewers could have guessed.

Thirty years ago, modern genetics revealed lager yeast to be a “living descendent” of ale yeast — created when the latter mated with a yeast strain identified as Saccharomyces eubayanus in 2011 by Hittinger and Argentine biologist Diego Libkind. Moreover, domestication pushed these strains through a genetic bottleneck, forcing them to produce more and more alcohol while simultaneously losing their traits needed for survival in the wild.

And wild yeast? To brewers, wild yeast became the smelly friend you forget to invite to parties — banished by everyone except for imbibers of sour beers, where a funky taste is sought.

http://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/LaurenNichols-20160401-IMG_1674-1024x683.jpg
Paper carrier. Madden started her search in North Carolina fields, where she caught a single paper wasp — a bug known to harbor large communities of yeast.

Wild yeast, rising

Enter bumblebeer yeast. It’s wild, yet can make traditional lager-style beer without stank flavors. But using bumblebeer yeast, Sheppard can also tweak the fermenting conditions, so a honey flavor emerges without adding honey. Tweak them again, and he can brew a light tangy sour beer.

“The adaptable nature to these wild yeast means if you change the conditions, they’re going to give you quite different flavor profiles in the beer,” Sheppard said.

The bumblebeer team is particularly interested in sour beers, which are usually difficult to concoct.
“It’s true. The traditional sour beer process is much more complicated, because you have this community of organisms that starts the fermentation,” Hittinger said.

People nab these unconventional organisms from inconceivable places. (One brewer in Oregon made a sour beer from wild yeast pulled from his beard.) But as a result of their unpredictability, a typical sour beer takes months or years to make.

Bumblebeer does the same job in a couple of weeks. Dunn, Madden and Sheppard have patented and licensed these strains, which are Lachancea yeast — a group that diverged from ale and lager yeast 100 million years ago. Other researchers have tested Lachancea strains for beer production, but the bumblebeer strains are the first slated for commercialization. That’s partially because bumblebeer yeast, under the right conditions, pumps out 10 times more acid than these other strains, which is what creates the tangy taste of sour beer.

http://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/LaurenNichols-20150821-IMG_8077.jpg
Bee(r) on display. A visitor checks out the bumblebeer exhibit at the 2015 World Beer Festival in Raleigh.

“There are more traits that differ as relate to mouth feel, flavor and aroma and industrial performance,” Madden said.

They have also laid foundation needed to repeat the feat of discovering beer-producing strains in the wild.

“[Bumblebeer] might be a new type of beer that’s somewhere between a sour beer and an ale beer,” Hittinger said.

North Carolina’s Deep River Brewing rolled out the first suds made from bumblebeer yeast earlier this year.

“So we’ve worked recently with one species of camel cricket, one bumblebee, one wasp — and we’ve found three things useful to society,” Dunn said. “Two are new yeasts for making beers, one is a new kind of bacteria for breaking down waste.”

Now just imagine what might be hiding in the millions of unknown insects across globe, Dunn continued.

“Who knows what we could discover there? It could be new compounds for medicine. It could be even more new yeasts for beer. It could be new bacteria that help us make energy.” Dunn said.

“And we’ve barely started to look.”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/next-happy-hour-buzz-brought-bees/

[william r sanford72]

There’s Something Wrong With the Bees’: On Sun Hives and Crisis Houses

by Carrie Foulkes
19th June, 2017

The form of an organism – and its relationship to the space around it – will reveal to us the characteristics of its being

The Bee

I have a memory of having to do an exercise at school. A sheet of paper was divided into two columns, with pictures of animals on one side and pictures of animal products on the other. You had to draw straight lines to match them up. Cow and milk. Sheep and woollen socks. Bees and honey. I wonder why I remember this. It must have unsettled me in some way. It wasn’t an intuitive way of viewing animals, at least not to a child’s mind. Maybe characteristics such as the sounds they make – moo – baa – bzz – (or in Germany where I spent a few of my younger years – muh – mäh – summ) would have seemed more appropriate. From the earliest age, we are encouraged to look at life in terms of what can be extracted from it. What we can take, rather than what we can give. We do not think of ourselves as stewards, guardians of the earth. We are managers. Consumers.

When we think about bees, we often refer to them as a colony. A family may consist of up to 50,000 bees, all related by blood, scent and purpose. Another way of perceiving the bees, and one that appears quite naturally in mind if you spend any length of time with them, is as a single organism consisting of all the individual bees and their honeycomb together. In this way each bee is akin to a cell, the cells together forming organs, the organs together a system, an organism with many parts, each aspect indivisible from the others. Thinking about a single bee is like thinking about a single cell in an eyeball without considering its context in the body – its dependence on arteries, tissues, orbit, muscles and brain – all the things that together permit sight. You may choose then to refer to the Bee, a name encompassing all the bees in a particular nest as well as their comb.

The hive is in many ways similar to a mammal. Its heat is carefully regulated – on hot days bees will stand in the entrance and fan their wings to introduce an air current. On cold days they’ll cluster within the hive, ensuring that the temperature is maintained at the warmth necessary for the survival of queen and young. This temperature is precise – only slightly lower than the temperature of a human body. Young bees are raised internally, in an area called the brood nest.

The bees waterproof their home with propolis, an antibacterial paste made from the resin of trees. The scent of propolis is heavenly. A transcendent perfume. One sniff and you are transported into the realm of the Bee – one of nectar, air and light.

Once you begin to think of the bees in this way, the idea of removing a comb as it pleases you, of extracting honey and using wax for candles and beauty products becomes problematic. You are not just reaching into a box of insects, but entering the body of a living animal.

The Sun Hive

German sculptor and beekeeper Günther Mancke united his extensive observations and artistic vision to guide the creation of a new kind of hive for the bees. He called it the Weissenseifener Hängekorb. In English we call it the Sun Hive. Round in shape, it is designed with the needs and natural preferences of the bees in mind. This marks a profound difference between the Sun Hive and ‘conventional’ hives, which have developed according to human convenience, prioritising ease of access, ease of honey harvest.

http://dark-mountain.net/content/uploads/2017/06/NBKT-interior-view-of-Bien-house-1024x768.jpg

Günther noted that bees often choose to make their homes in the hollows of trees, at a preferred height of between 2.5 and 6 metres. The Sun Hive is therefore suspended from a tree or from a purpose-built frame. It must be sheltered from the rain. When unconstrained by the boxes we put them in, bees build rounded combs. The curve of the comb is determined by the arc of a chain of bees stretching from one side of the nest to the other and can be calculated according to the formula for a catenary curve. The form of the Sun Hive mirrors this curve, allowing the bees to build their comb without impediment.

The shape of the Sun Hive echoes the oblong form of a bee’s body. It consists of a combination of two skeps (coated with cow dung for warmth) and wooden support structures. Skeps are baskets woven from natural materials, usually rye straw (biodynamically grown where possible). They have been used as beehives for hundreds of years, although the use of box hives with movable combs quickly became more popular by the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Sun Hive is a conservation hive whose form is guided by the needs of the bees rather than the aim of honey production.  A bee-centric approach recommends minimal intervention in the life of the hive. The Sun Hive is therefore seen by many conventional beekeepers as a threat not only to their practice of honey harvesting but also to the health of bee populations as a whole. Advocates of the Sun Hive often refer to themselves as bee guardians or natural beekeepers – they aim to provide habitat for the bees but to otherwise leave them in peace. Some see this hands-off style of beekeeping as irresponsible. The chemical treatments used to control bee pests such as varroa are claimed to be indispensable, despite the fact that untreated, unmanaged bees do just fine on their own as they have done for millennia. The Sun Hive is designed with a movable comb system, unlike a traditional skep basket. This permits the bee guardian to inspect the hive when necessary, although such inspections are kept to a minimum and the bees are not treated with chemicals.

Weak colonies die. Strong colonies swarm. They split in two. This is their means of reproduction. A virgin queen goes forth on her mating flight and only the strongest, healthiest, fastest males are able to mate with her. Swarm suppression, queen breeding and importation, artificial insemination, the use of chemical treatments and pesticides – is it any wonder that ‘colony collapse disorder’ is occurring with increasing frequency in places where practices such as this are mainstream? Humans interfere with natural processes and then wonder why things go awry. Must be something wrong with nature, we say. There’s something wrong with the bees.

The boxes we’ve built for the bees reflect our own homes with their angular walls and corners. Our cubic, linear thinking. We find it hard to think in curves. The move away from keeping bees in skeps has been ‘a move away from the principle of rounded forms to that of cuboid and square ones, and thus from the holistic and organic to the atomistic and additive. That is to say, the materialistic modes of thought that have been developing since the fifteenth century have also come to permeate the relationship between mankind and the bee.’2
Each bee has a role within the hive. This is a fiercely and undeniably interdependent community in which the work of each serves the needs of all. Far from the ‘rigidity of parallel lines and the monotony of equal distances’3 characterised by conventional box hives, the Sun Hive epitomises love – both the love of humankind for the bees, and the principle of love at work within the hive itself. As author and social activist bell hooks writes: ‘remember, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving’.4 Just showing care for the bees is not enough – ‘there can be no love without justice’.5

With our shrinking forests and dwindling forage, the bees face a diminishing habitat. The Sun Hive and other bee-friendly hives, such as log hives and the Freedom Hive (a cylinder made of wood and straw, lighter than a log hive and easily hoisted into trees or placed on a tripod stand) created by beekeeper Matt Somerville, seek to restore lost habitat. A resurgence in traditional practices such as tree beekeeping (in which hollows are formed in living trees) and the work of communities of natural beekeepers and allies such as the Natural Beekeeping Trust, based in southern England, represent a vital turning of the mind and will towards giving to rather than taking from the bees.

Crisis House

I recently took a trip to Scotland, thought I’d spend a couple weeks in these northern lands to which I’m drawn by a mysterious magnetism. I wanted to simply be there, and also to meet with potential doctoral supervisors at universities in Edinburgh and Glasgow. I’d looked forward to this journey for some time, but I’d been struggling with the sense of crushing fatigue that is often a feature of my life with chronic illness. Instead of abandoning my plans, I opted to take the train rather than drive.

With hindsight, I see that I expected to find an illuminated path waiting for me in Edinburgh. Everything would click into place and I’d know what I was supposed to do. Instead, I found myself on a bridge over Waverley Station. I was on the edge, looking. I went back to my rented room and sobbed. I lay silently on the bed staring at the ceiling. It got dark outside.

I called a local Thai place, ordered a curry for collection. Stepped out feeling shaky, pierced by streetlights and voices, unsteady on my feet. I sat on a bench opposite the curry house just south of the Meadows and it was there I realised that I was ill again, that I wasn’t just having an emotional moment, I needed help.

I ended up in a crisis house. I was fortunate to find myself there instead of the hospital. I was free to be myself without the imposition of other people’s prescribed modes of health and being. I was able to express myself, to rest and to recover in a way that felt right for me. When I’ve been hospitalised in the past, I’ve been treated as a case to be managed, a problem to be solved, a body to be confined and kept alive. In a residential crisis house you are regarded as an autonomous human, albeit one in pain. It provides a safe space to be with that pain, to move through it instead of around it, to encounter it instead of numbing or ignoring it. I emerged on the other side of my distress without the need for medical intervention.

There are very few such crisis houses in the UK and in my view there should be more. I have experienced this setting on both sides – as a guest and also as a volunteer at a house in north London, where I served as a befriender for several years. People in crisis are initially befriended over the phone. Conversations may lead to an invitation to stay at the house for five days, free of charge, where the guest will encounter and be befriended by numerous volunteers. The essence of befriending is non-judgemental active listening. Not trying to fix, to deny, to solve, to dismiss, to console. Simply being with the person and accepting them as they are. No matter what they’ve done or what’s been done to them. Honouring their intrinsic value, validating their experiences, holding hope for them when they are hopeless. It was a compassionate and demanding place to work. By no means does it transform the lives of everyone that comes to stay. Five days is hardly enough to undo a lifetime of trauma or heal a broken heart. But providing people with an opportunity to reflect, to be heard, is invaluable. Ultimately the crisis house maintains that humans have the right to choose to end their lives. The hope is that they will find another option, and that they can be supported to think carefully before making this decision.

As someone living with ongoing physical and mental health problems, I feel especially grateful for places that allow me to simply be – that don’t make me feel worthless, dispensable or a burden. The amount of energy that goes into hiding sickness could be better spent on other things. ‘For where I am closed, I am false’, says Rilke. I need contemplative time built into the fabric of my days. If I don’t get it I start to become unwell.

Love is generous and fearless. It creates space for something to be itself, to evolve, to be ever in flux and in harmony with its own nature. Sometimes I feel I’m being forced into a form that doesn’t suit me. I must seek a habitat for myself in which I can flourish.

http://dark-mountain.net/content/uploads/2017/06/Webp.net-resizeimage-1024x682.jpg

The wisdom of beings

The pathologisation of distress is in many ways akin to the pulling out of weeds we deem unsightly but that may be contributing to the health and balance of the soil. When we think in terms of roundness rather than linearity, we recognise the vast ecological network in which all things are connected. This isn’t to say that there are never times when pulling weeds or medicating distress is beneficial or even necessary to promote wellness. But my instincts tell me we are too quick to judge things on the basis of immediate utility rather than longer-term sustainability and growth.

In considering the Sun Hive alongside my personal experiences of distress, I do not mean to use the bees as a metaphor, to plunder nature for her poetry. Instead I wish to suggest that our reductive attitudes towards both bees and human health may be symptomatic of a prevailing mindset of exploitation and control. When we operate from a place of fear rather than of love, there can be no health, no harmony. There is much to learn from the Bee. By offering our attention and letting go of our received knowledge we may come to understand her true nature, with humility, awe and kindness.

What would happen if we trusted in the innate wisdom of beings? What if we permitted things to live according to their own principles, allowed them to organise their own lives? Consider the wisdom of the swarm. The triumphant joyous flight of a virgin queen. We have much to gain from acknowledging that not everything can be known. That what we think of as ‘understanding’ is often inadequate. Purely cerebral thinking is in many cases disengaged, confined to existing constructs and narrow vocabularies that seek to make sense of and thereby limit life. Our words imply a world of things with secure identities to which things happen, rather than a fluid world populated by beings in a process of becoming. If our language and our modes of being and relating could somehow make room for surprise, discovery and change, how different we might feel. Ultimately our feelings are not the priority, but rather liberation from a human-centric and materialistic way of thinking that limits the potential of humans, bees and the broader ecosystem of which we are both part.

http://dark-mountain.net/

[william r sanford72]

usda..NATIONAL HONEY REPORT..June 23, 2017

www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf

[william r sanford72]

Beekeepers Sweeten Solar Sites With the 'Tesla of Honey'

By pairing pollinators with solar farms, Travis and Chiara Bolton are reimagining commercial beekeeping.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2017/06/23/solar-beekeeping/01-solar-beekeeping-minnesota.adapt.590.1.jpg
Honeybees likes these at the University of California, Davis, are essential to food crops, but imperiled. A new standard for solar farms aims to expand both clean energy and pollinator habitat.

By Christina Nunez

The SolarWise garden in Ramsey, Minnesota, doesn't look especially cutting edge as solar farms go. But in April, it quietly achieved a milestone: It became the first U.S. solar facility to host commercial beekeeping. The apiary is part of an effort to rethink how land for clean energy can be used to supply more than just kilowatts.

Instead of the gravel or turf grass that typically underlies a solar array, the one in Ramsey has low-growing, pollinator-friendly plants and 15 hives installed by Bolton Bees, a local honey producer about 35 miles away in St. Paul. Two other solar apiaries followed in the state, with more on the way.

The rise of solar energy in the United States coincides with a growing awareness that pollinators, which help grow three-quarters of the world's food crops, are in trouble. American produce ranging from almonds to blueberries depends heavily on this winged workforce. But in the U.S., beekeepers lost more than 40 percent of their colonies in 2016 due to a variety of factors.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2017/06/23/solar-beekeeping/02-solar-beekeeping-minnesota.adapt.590.1.jpg
Travis and Chiara Bolton founded their Minnesota company after beekeeping as a hobby for several years

The couple behind Bolton Bees, Travis and Chiara Bolton, are building their small business on an expansive vision, one where the use of land for solar is sweetened by the presence of local bees. (See nine ways you can help bees at home.)

Chiara Bolton first learned about beekeeping on an economic development project in rural Tibet. But when she tried it back home, she learned how hard it was to keep bees alive during the harsh Minnesota winters.

"I kind of got hooked," she says. Together, season after season, she and Travis bred Minnesota-hardy bees and found a market among backyard beekeepers who needed queens that could withstand the winters.

At the time, she was a nursing home manager and he had a home remodeling business. But two years ago, they quit their existing jobs to focus full-time on beekeeping, selling both bees and location-specific honey.

"One of the things that’s so special about beekeeping is you get to be in nature all day, every day," Travis Bolton says. "Our office is in a beautiful meadow surrounded by woods."
When they saw a solar array go up nearby, they mused that it might make a good location for hives. But they didn't pursue the idea until a local clean energy advocate, Fresh Energy, invited them to install hives at the Ramsey site.

"It’s been pretty amazing how fast it’s caught on," he says. "My phone rings almost constantly." The Boltons are in talks to install apiaries at more solar projects in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois.

Why Pollinator-Friendly?

Rob Davis, director of Fresh Energy's media and innovation program, says that as pro-solar policies progressed in Minnesota, he began hearing more about land use concerns: Was it a good idea to take productive farmland and cover it with solar panels?

"We realized that rural Minnesota, and rural areas of the country, needed to be able to see that they would benefit from this transition to clean energy," he says.

While the practice of coupling solar arrays with meadows is common in Europe, it's relatively new in the United States, where solar was pioneered via desert megaprojects in California and Nevada. Newer projects in the Midwest and elsewhere need to take farm communities into account.

A recently established solar standard in Minnesota encourages developers to plant wildflowers and native plants along with panels as a way to make them more appealing to pollinators and to farmers with land to lease or crops nearby. For developers, Davis says, the upfront cost of the seeds and planting is offset in the long term by lower maintenance costs—no turf to mow or gravel erosion to manage.

Davis says he approached Bolton Bees because he was struck by their modern packaging and variety of local honeys.

"It feels like the Tesla of honey," he says. "It's honey that makes you think about the supply chain. It's honey that actually educates you."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2017/06/23/solar-beekeeping/03-solar-beekeeping-minnesota.adapt.590.1.jpg
Bolton Bees' jars tell the story of the place where each location-specific honey was harvested.

Solar Honey Startup

After installing their first solar hives in April, the Boltons took the concept and ran with it. They plan to extract 4,000 pounds of solar honey this year; some will be sold in grocery stores, while some will go to solar customers. They have also trademarked a Solar Honey standard and label that they hope other beekeepers will adopt, promoting the idea of smarter land use and local beekeeping.

"We definitely have big ambitions for this," Travis Bolton says. "We think this is a model that can be replicated by local beekeepers throughout the country."

Many commercial beekeepers move their hives around the country, following seasons and crops. The Boltons are advocating more local habitat, such as the new solar meadows, and more local bee stock. Because their colonies are bred to be in one place, they say, the hives tend to be more stable.

The couple also wants to inspire a new generation of local beekeepers, noting that many in the profession are aging out of it.

"There are many beekeeping businesses like ours throughout the country," Travis Bolton says. "But there could be more."


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/chasing-genius-solar-honey-pollinator-friendly-energy/

[william r sanford72]

Hmmm...:facepalm:

Forget Pesticides, Farmers Can Shoot Bad Bugs With Lasers

The Photonic Fence intelligently targets and kills flying pests at a rate of 20 per second, leaving other friendly insects alone.

By Matthew Humphries

https://assets.pcmag.com/media/images/545714-intelligent-ventures-photonic-fence-laser-bug-zapper.jpg?thumb=y&width=810&height=456

Farming on an industrial scale means dealing with pests that ravage crops also needs an industrial-size solution. Until now, that has meant relying on pesticides.

But the problem with pesticides is they kill just about everything and that's not a great situation to be in, especially where bees are concerned.

We need a more intelligent solution for killing flying pests, and according to Wired, the Photonic Fence could be it.

Former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold setup the company Intellectual Ventures and came up with the Photonic Fence (PF) idea back in 2010.

It's basically an intelligent laser zapper for killing bugs. The intelligent bit is PF's ability to tell the difference between individual bugs and deciding which ones to shoot down based on a kill list.

rD_eIutuGtE

The PF uses a combination of cameras and optics to create a wall of near-infrared light with 100 meter range. Any bug flying into this area will be identified and then killed with a laser blast if it is on the kill list. So precise is the identification, the device can tell the difference between male and female mosquitoes. The kill rate is equally impressive at 20 bugs per second.

Although not commercially available yet, Intellectual Ventures does have its first customer in the form of the US Department of Agriculture. They have installed PF machines in Florida to help control the Asian citrus psyllid, which has decimated citrus production in the state.

If the Photonic Fence is as good as it sounds, we could all eventually want one to keep our homes and gardens free of unwanted invaders. And if it ends up being a better solution than pesticides for farmers, then we'll all be better off.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/354562/forget-pesticides-farmers-can-shoot-bad-bugs-with-lasers

[Cidersomerset]

http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.21.17/orb/4/img/bbc-blocks-dark.png

Large-scale study 'shows neonic pesticides harm bees'

By Rebecca Morelle
Science Correspondent, BBC News

29 June 2017
From the section Science & Environment

The most extensive study to date on neonicotinoid pesticides
concludes that they harm both honeybees and wild bees.

Researchers said that exposure to the chemicals left honeybee
hives less likely to survive over winter, while bumblebees and
solitary bees produced fewer queens.

The study spanned 2,000 hectares across the UK, Germany and
Hungary and was set up to establish the "real-world" impacts of
the pesticides.

read more...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40382086

[RunningDeer]

Bayer Study Finds Bayer Pesticides Are Killing Bees


It’s 5+ minutes in length and begins @ 4:24 (https://youtu.be/urVr0o6x9zc?t=4m24s).

urVr0o6x9zc

Published on Jul 6, 2017

Welcome to New World Next Week — the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. In this week’s episode:

(see summary for rest of links (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urVr0o6x9zc))

Story #1: Mainstream Media Now Advocating ‘All Citizens’ Spend Time in Prison as ‘Service’ to Country

The #CNNBlackmail Meme Wars
CNN Goes COMPLETELY INSANE, Threatens to Dox Reddit User Over Meme


Story #2: Bayer Accidentally Funds Study Showing Its Pesticide is Killing Bees, Promptly Denies Conclusions

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/bayer-funds-study-showing-pesticide-killing-bees/
“Country-Specific Effects of Neonicotinoid Pesticides on Honey Bees and Wild Bees”
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6345/1393.full
NWNW Flashback: China Pushes Public to Accept GMO as Syngenta Takeover Nears (May 25, 2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yBikiyObcI
Gene-Editing Companies Attack Research Revealing Unintended CRISPR Effects
http://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/17714-gene-editing-companies-angry-at-research-revealing-unintended-crispr-effects
As UK’s National Health Service’s Tainted Blood Was Killing Thousands, They Were Planning to Use Victims as Guinea Pigs for R&D
https://twitter.com/rayvahey/status/882179205521211392


Story #3: US to Create ‘Space Corps’ in Radical Air Force Overhaul

Video: U.S. Planning to Create 'Space Corps' as Sixth Branch of Armed Forces
Audio: Congressman Proposes Military 'Space Corps'
Audio: House Panel Votes to Split Air Force, Create New U.S. ‘Space Corp’
NWNW Flashback: Pentagon Moving to Weaponize Space (Jun. 26, 2015)

[mgray]

It is so upsetting. I have 4 large beds filled with vegetables and a wild flower garden that covers 100 sq feet and I still do not have any bees in the yard.

I purchased a hive and set it up. Used lemongrass oil to entice a colony and still no bees.

Beekeepers in my general area do not have nucs to sell either.

[william r sanford72]

It is so upsetting. I have 4 large beds filled with vegetables and a wild flower garden that covers 100 sq feet and I still do not have any bees in the yard.

I purchased a hive and set it up. Used lemongrass oil to entice a colony and still no bees.

Beekeepers in my general area do not have nucs to sell either.

mgray attracting honeybees during swarm season is tricky enough.They tend to swarm during nectar derths/seasonal blooms when there is a healthy colony and there ready to swarm.They swarm for a few reasons.. You may attract them tho odds are high you may have to seek the bees out yourself...otherwise you maybe waiting for a long time.Put a call in to your local extension office about catching swarms and even other beekeepers and maybe the local beekeeper groups in your area.
No worrys...The bees will come you may just have to help a little.:happythumbsup:

:heart:

[william r sanford72]

First Honey Bees in California

A plaque outside the San Jose airport commemorates the insect's arrival to the West Coast.

Though now an integral part of large-scale agriculture throughout the United States, honey bees were unknown on the West Coast until they arrived at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport. Well, at least what would one day become the airport.

In 1853, Texan Christopher A. Shelton purchased 12 hives of bees from an unknown beekeeper in what is now Colon, Panama. The bees, already transported to Panama from New York, were then sent up to San Francisco and Alviso, the nearest port to San Jose, by steamer. They then continued their journey via train and mule to the 1939-acre Rancho Potrero de Santa Clara where Shelton settled.

Only enough bees to form one hive survived. These German black bees (Apis mellifera mellifera) endured the tedious trek and were propagated throughout California and soon the whole of the West Coast. Shelton was not so fortunate and died alongside other prominent South Bay Residents of the time on the infamous Jenny Lind steamship explosion just a month after the receipt of his bees. His three hives—it didn’t take long for his original stock to multiply—were sold at auction for $110 each, 22 times the price of a beehive on the East Coast.

Today, the descendants of those immigrant bees are indispensable assets for North American farmers. In the spring, honey bees are trucked into California almond orchards to pollinate the blossoming trees. They’re then packed up and shipped to Oregon and Washington, where they pollinate berry fields and fruit orchards before continuing on their nationwide circuit.

Though not native to the U.S., honey bees are absolutely essential to U.S. agriculture. Their introduction into California was key to the state’s rise as a major global agricultural producer. A marker commemorating the historic introduction of the honey bee sits in front of the international terminal of the San Jose Airport.

Photos in the link:
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/first-honey-bees-in-california

[william r sanford72]

Emails show Bayer and Syngenta fought scientists for data on bees study

http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/GettyImages-537930788.jpg

Bayer and Syngenta repeatedly asked scientists to give them raw data on a major new study which found that neonicotinoid pesticides cause harm to bees before it was published, according to emails obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) rules.

Both companies cited their position as co-funders to try to get information from researchers at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), including on experiments paid for by the government backed National Environment Research Council (NERC).

The pesticide giants also encouraged the academics to study their own research on bees, which showed no harm from their products; only to be rebuffed by the researchers.

Published last week in the prestigious journal Science, the CEH study made headlines for showing for the first time that neonicotinoids can cause harm to honey bees in real world conditions. It also showed that the nicotine-based chemicals can harm the reproductivity of wild bees.

Since publication, both companies have attacked the study and criticised CEH for the way it presented the findings.

The body is one of the leading centres for the scientific study of pesticides. But speaking to Energydesk, Bayer refused to say if it would continue to back research by CEH.

“There are a lot of questions coming out of this data and it will be a while before we have definitive answers about what we want to do next,” said Dr Julian Little, Bayer’s head of government relations in the UK.

“It’s a bit early to say of course we’re going to be working with them, or we’re definitely not going to be working with them. It will depend entirely on the situation going forward.”

Landmark findings

The chemical companies spent around $3million on research by CEH looking at the impact of neonics on honey bees and wild bees.

However, the emails reveal that disagreement between the companies and the researchers arose when Bayer and Syngenta made repeated efforts to get access to the raw data from experiments on wild bees, which was funded by NERC.

On January 11 2017, a Bayer staff member wrote to Professor Rosemary Hails at CEH to say: “As co-owner we believe we are entitled to unlimited, unrestricted and prompt access to all such data and information, including, but not limited to, the data called raw data.”

The Bayer representative went on to express their frustration at CEH’s refusal to hand over the data, despite repeated requests.

CEH refused to hand over the raw data on the wild bees experiment to the companies until after the peer review process, but did present the data on honey bees.

Frustration

Since publication, both companies attacked the study and criticised CEH for the way it had chosen to present its findings.

Bayer’s Julian Little told Energydesk: “We’re quite frustrated about how these results have been portrayed. The reality seems to be a long way away from the headline.”

Discussing the emails, Little said: “As we funded the vast majority of the study, unsurprisingly we were keen on getting the information as soon as possible. Especially when there had already been significant delays in us being given that information.

“I’m not sure how that becomes a conspiracy theory. We asked for the information, they said they weren’t going to give it to us until they had all the information published. No doubt we said that doesn’t seem very fair, but they said that’s the way it was going to be so we said: ‘OK’.”

Syngenta were similarly blunt when approached by Energydesk about the emails.

A company spokesperson said: “CEH appear to have responded to funding, interaction, and requests for data by drawing an even stronger negative conclusion regarding the impact of neonicotinoids on bees.”

Disagreement

From the outset of the research, Bayer, Syngenta and CEH disagreed over the size and scope of the study.

Emails from 2014 between the three parties, obtained by the environmental organisation Buglife, showed Bayer and Syngenta discussing the tests design, monitoring and data analysis with scientists from CEH.

At the time, MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee expressed concern about the pressure being applied to CEH by the two companies.

But Bayer stressed the scientific independence of CEH and their own arms length role in the study. During a select committee enquiry on the impacts of neonicotinoids, Julian Little told MPs:

“We are not doing the work. The work is being overseen by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Yes, we are putting the money up for it, but it is being done by independent scientists”.

“They are working with both Defra and [the European Food Safety Authority] to ensure that those protocols are relevant and, of course, all the information that comes from those studies will be with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and I am certain it will be published at some point in the future”, he continued.

However, the emails obtained in 2014 show that the chemicals companies looked to focus the study solely on honey bees leaving out other pollinators, ostensibly to reduce costs.

Internal documents from that same year, obtained using FOI, show that CEH felt that limiting the research to honey bees would reduce the scientific scope of the study.

Professor Richard Pywell from CEH and co-author of the study, wrote in an email dated 21 March 2014: “Syngenta and Bayer have suggested that the study should focus on just Honeybees to reduce overall costs… CEH believe that this reduces considerably the scientific scope of the study and while we appreciate the potential saving in overall costs, we are concerned about the impact on the merit of the experiment.”

‘Complete freedom’

Speaking just before the findings were made public, Professor Richard Pywell from CEH and co-author of the study, told Energydesk that his organisation were determined to keep the research independent and appointed an independent scientific advisory panel, chaired by Bill Sutherland from Cambridge University, to that end.

“From the outset, we made it very clear that we would have complete freedom to design and report this study as we saw fit. We’ve made all of the protocols and the data once it’s been published, available to everyone.

“The funders had no input on the paper we submitted for peer review. We only shared a copy with funders at the proof stage when it could no longer be changed. That was the agreement.They had no input, no influence. We only shared it with them at the proof stage.”

“Some of the arguments around access to data were because CEH had funded the wild pollinator work and in the end we reached an agreement.”

Asked if CEH would work with Bayer and Syngenta again, Pywell said: “We would do it again. We would welcome the opportunity to do something like this. Someone has to do it. We’re just doing independent research.”

Read the emails here.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3892619-Combined-Emails-1-Redacted-SB-Names.html

http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2017/07/12/bayer-syngenta-scientists-neonicotinoids-bees/

[william r sanford72]

This Man Endured Bee Stings and a Death-Defying Climb to Photograph Last Honey Hunter

By Hannah Lang 12 July 2017

Renan Ozturk braved millions of giant honeybees and jungle heat to get the perfect shot.

http://cdn.natgeotv.com.au/factsheets/thumbnails/article-honey-hunter.jpg?v=27&azure=false&scale=both&width=1024&height=560&mode=crop

Renan Ozturk and his team admit they weren’t prepared for the Himalayan giant honeybees. They were dangling over 60m in the air off a cliff documenting Mauli Dhan, the last remaining person to go after the hallucinogenic honey the bees produce in eastern Nepal, when Ozturk realized his American-made bee suit was no match for the local stingers.

Himalayan honeybees are twice the size of American honeybees, and they stung right through the protective clothing.

“I’m used to doing really challenging mountain climbing stories [with the likes of Alex Honnold] and coming from that climbing background we thought this was going to be no big deal,” the Utah native said. "But it was more than we bargained for."

http://cdn.natgeotv.com.au/gallery/this-man-endured-bee-stings-and-a-death-defying-climb-to-photograph-last-honey-hunter/Honey%20Hunter.jpg?v=27&azure=false&scale=both&width=728&height=405&mode=crop

And while Mauli climbs the cliffs to the beehives without any protection, harness, or even shoes, Ozturk and writer Mark Synnott carried camera equipment, 90kg of rope, and an improvised wooden seat so the harness wouldn’t cut off the circulation in their legs.

“The weight of the rope is really challenging to have on you and you have to have enough rope to be able to escape to the ground in case you were having an allergic reaction,” Ozturk said.

In addition to lugging around cumbersome equipment, Ozturk had to find a way to stabilize himself in the open air so he could photograph Mauli’s journey.

“Once you rappel down to the space, you just start spinning uncontrollably, so you go off to the side somewhere to stabilize, but there was not enough time and it was too difficult to do that,” he said.

Ozturk and Synnott were only able to face the action for about ten seconds before spinning wildly out of control, so the two came up with a way to kick off of one another to reach a steady spot for a longer period of time.

“It’s a very hard situation to be able to focus and it also happens to be pretty fast,” said Ozturk, who says he was stung about 30 to 50 times. “The honey hunters have a process that they go through where everything happens quickly and efficiently because they don’t have all of this modern equipment.”

The most important thing, however, was to be a “silent fly on the wall,” Ozturk said.

“You just want to give the subject a space—not touch them, not really interfere with anything that they’re doing because it could lead to their death,”  he said.

This was especially challenging, as Ozturk had cultivated a close relationship with Mauli. He spent hours interviewing him in the Kulung man’s home, tagging along as he harvested crops in the fields of his small village, and even speaking to him in Nepali, which Ozturk had learned during a study abroad program.

“Overall by the end of this, we felt more like friends and part of a team rather than just being there as photographers,” he said.

Since returning home, Ozturk has developed a severe allergic reaction to bee stings that has landed him in the hospital.

While on an assignment in the Congo, with limited access to healthcare, he had to administer an EpiPen as he felt his airways closing and his face swelling.

“I guess it works in an opposite way,” he said. “It’s kind of counterintuitive, the more you get stung the more of an allergy you develop.”

But even an allergy won’t stop Ozturk from returning to Nepal. He’s been visiting the country for 15 years, and has no shortage of future story ideas in the Himalayan country. To him, all of the trouble was more than worth it.

“It’s really amazing to watch despite all of our challenges,” he said. “It’s more impressive to see what they’re doing up there and to get the chance to document it.”

Header: Renan Ozturk’s self portrait of his feet as they dangle in mid-air with Mauli, the last honey hunter, who ascends his hand woven bamboo rope in the background. Ozturk’s ankles are tapped to protect them from getting stung by the nearby bees.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/people/this-man-endured-bee-stings-and-a-death-defying-climb-to-photograph-last-honey-hunter.aspx

[william r sanford72]

Are Hummingbirds The Next Casualty Of Neonics

Published on Jul 14, 2017

Almost a decade ago, Dutch toxicologist, Dr. Henk Tennekes predicted the mass decline of numerous species due to the widespread use of neonicotinoids. Unfortunately, his prediction has come to fruition. North American hummingbirds are in severe decline. In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk about the decline of hummingbirds. www.theorganicview.com


CYEJFlWAzhM

[william r sanford72]

8 Ways To Recognize Your Bees Are Experiencing A Dearth

When nectar stops flowing during the summer, your bees will exhibit unusual behavior. Here are the signs that your hive is in a dearth.

http://hobbyfarms.com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/18101550/bees_Zelijko-Stjepanovic-600x347.jpg

You’ll reach a point in summer—and it’s different for every area—where the season heats up, the flow of nectar slows and the bees reduce their activity. This is not thier choice. If it were, they’d work every day, all day, all year long. This period in the season is called a dearth. If it’s long, hot and dry, some bees might struggle. If it’s shorter, they bounce back quickly. (Just the same, don’t harvest honey just yet.) Knowing when this time rolls around each year is more of an art than a science. Recognizing a dearth requires a keen eye to the winds (and rains) and an ear to the bees. How do you know the dearth is on in your area? Here are eight ways to tell.

1. The Hive Sound Changes

One of the first things you’ll notice is the sound. The hives are louder during a dearth, seemingly more agitated. Bees will move around the outside of the hive, and it will almost seem as if they’re swarming.

2. Robbing Begins

You might see robbing in progress (where foreign bees, of the same or other species, attempt to steal honey from your hives), or you might see the aftermath. The aftermath can be brutal: dead or dying bees around the front entrance of ground in front of the hive.

3. Bees Visit Second-Best Sources

If you’re watching the bees in the garden, you might see your workers on flowers they normally pass over.

4. Bees Double-Check Flowers

Again, if you’re watching foraging bees closely, you’ll see some unusual activity during a dearth. You might also see foragers revisiting the same flowers they just left. They’ll bounce back and forth from the same few flowers in the same proximity. This behavior rarely happens during good honey flows.

5. Bees Fly Low (And Curiously)

Dearth bees dart and meander. They fly low to the ground and mill around. They’ll come up to you curiously and investigate everything with less urgency than they would have during a flow. Compare this to the directed, focused flying of a forager in times of nectar flow, and the difference will be obvious.

6. Bees Investigate New Smells

Bees desperate for nectar will investigate anything with a floral scent—including you, your perfume or any fragrances you’re wearing.

7. Bees Visit Odd Places

Honeybees in a dearth might move about aimlessly. Without the directed purpose of collecting honey, they search, crawl around and forage for water.

8. Bees Are More Aggressive

Your previously gentle bees might seem a bit more worked up during a dearth. They might be more defensive of the hive in general. This is normal, especially if you consider there’s always the potential for robbing at this time.

The sad truth is that there’s not much we can do about the dearth while we’re in it. It’s part of the flow of the season, and we have to roll with it. What we can do as beekeepers is anticipate the dearth each year. This means keeping your spring honey harvests modest, and saving a bit of honey to feed back to your bees if they’re in a tight spot during the dearth. Certainly don’t harvest honey at this time, that’s for sure. Otherwise, keep a close eye on your hives, and ride it out with them.

http://www.hobbyfarms.com/dearth-bees-beekeeping-signs/

[william r sanford72]

Chinese Family Has Been Living with an Open Beehive in Their Living Room for 12 Years

The sight of a single bee buzzing around is enough to drive some people into a frenzy, but one family in China has somehow been living with an entire beehive in their living room for 12 years. They even collect the honey from it and sell it for a small profit.

Remember the BEEcosystem, that observational beehive that lets you keep bees inside your home as pets? Well, it turns out you don’t need it. You can just let bees build their own beehive on your furniture and let them fly around freely. It sounds crazy, but one family in China is proof that it can be done, and not just for a few days or weeks, but over a decade.

http://www.odditycentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/indoor-beehive-750x421.jpg

A Pear video that recently went viral in China shows a home in Gunagnan, China, where bees have been living inside the wooden furniture for 12 years. Owner Yongfu Li says that they simply came in one day and started building their hive. There was a wedding in the family that day, and he viewed the arrival of the bees as a good omen, so instead of driving them away, the man just allowed them to build a home inside his living room.

“The day these bees came was a great day (the wedding), I think they knew it was a great day,” Li said. “Fengshui masters said they came to work for me.”

http://www.odditycentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/indoor-beehive2-750x421.jpg

Taking the fengshui interpretation to heart, Yongfu Li let the bees build their hive and started collecting the honey they produced, three times a year. He ends up with about 5 kg of honey every time, which he then sells for around 100 RMB ($15) a pound, raking in a total of $450 a year. Not a bad deal, if you exclude having to share your house with hundreds of bees.

Li has now been sharing his house with a free colony of bees for 12 years – or so he claims – and even though the video doesn’t mention any bee stings, I think it’s fair to assume that the man and his family have been stung a few times during that time.

SwldiKe2M7U


http://www.odditycentral.com/news/chinese-family-has-been-living-with-an-open-beehive-in-their-living-room-for-12-years.html

[william r sanford72]

Commercial Beekeeper Jim Doan Discusses Bee Informed Partnership Survey

Uploaded on Jun 16, 2017

In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk to commercial beekeeper, Jim Doan about the new Bee Informed Partnership survey. Jim as some of you may recall, is a New York commercial, migratory beekeeper who at one point managed about 5300 hives. The first time Jim was on The Neonicotinoid View was exactly 4 years ago when his operation, which was one of the first known beekeeping operations, succumbed to the exposure of neonicotinoids.
www.theorganicview.com

VI-Rl2yJQdw

[william r sanford72]

What Happens When You Eat Psychedelic 'Mad Honey'?

In the mountains of Nepal, the region of Turkey closest to the Black Sea, the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and a handful of other locales around the globe, bees produce a particularly potent type of honey. It looks and tastes a lot different from the stuff you might squeeze out of a bear-shaped bottle. More importantly, though, it has a little more of a hallucinogenic effect than your average honey. To put it mildly, just one spoonful can get you as f!!cked up as a football bat.

Known to cause nausea, dizziness, and vomiting, this so-called mad honey is reddish in color and bitter in taste. As such, there’s little chance that you’d consume it by accident, and in fact, many people seek it out and pay a premium for it. As National Geographic reports, some harvesters risk their lives to raid beehives for the honey. Devotees say it has medicinal benefits, claiming that it helps with arthritis and sexual performance, among other things.

Mad honey is made by bees that feed on rhododendron flowers, which give it its psychoactive effects. Rhododendrons, evergreen flowering plants that grow in temperate, mountainous areas around the world, contain chemicals called grayanotoxins.

https://fsmedia.imgix.net/fd/92/c3/2a/47ca/4578/b9c9/2e9bfc07bd8a/rhododendron-flowers-contain-grayanotoxins-which-make-their-way-virtually-unchanged-through-bees-in.jpeg?auto=format%2Ccompress&w=700
Rhododendron flowers contain grayanotoxins, which make their way virtually unchanged through bees into their honey.

These neurotoxic compounds are cyclic diterpenes that exist in varying concentrations and varieties, depending on the particular rhododendron species and the time of year.

Scientists have identified more than 25 types of grayanotoxins in rhododendrons. These chemicals make their way into the honey of bees that are feeding primarily on rhododendrons during the late spring, when so many of the plants are flowering that the bees can feast solely on rhododendron flowers without foraging elsewhere. In fact, some Turkish beekeepers even place their bee hives near rhododendron groves so that the bees will forage there, according to Modern Farmer.

Grayanotoxins, whether consumed in mad honey or in any part of the rhododendron, work in the human body by binding to voltage-gated sodium ion channels in cells. This keeps the channels from closing quickly, explains forensic toxicologist Justin Brower in his blog, Nature’s Poisons]

“The result is a state of depolarization in which sodium ions are freely flowing into the cells, and calcium influx is on the rise. The increase in calcium stimulates the release of acetylcholine,” he writes. This acetylcholine excess causes what’s known as a cholinergic syndrome, which results in a set of symptoms known by their toxicology acronym, SLUDGE: Salivation, Lacrimation (crying), Urination, Defecation, Gastrointestinal distress, and Emesis (vomiting). In low to moderate doses, it’s known to cause heart rate and blood pressure to drop, and in high enough doses it can theoretically kill you, though there seem to be few reported cases of death from mad honey.

https://fsmedia.imgix.net/f2/37/e1/ac/2e94/45fd/8a9b/e2aec003f23d/grayanotoxins-function-on-voltage-gated-sodium-ion-channels-causing-them-to-get-depolarized-this-c.gif?auto=format%2Ccompress&w=334&gifq=35
Grayanotoxins function on voltage-gated sodium ion channels, causing them to get depolarized. This can, in turn, result in a cholinergic syndrome characterized by the acronym SLUDGE: Salivation, Lacrimation (crying), Urination, Defecation, Gastrointestinal distress, and Emesis (vomiting).

Like other traditional medicines, the rationale behind mad honey is as mythical as it is scientific. There’s a story that the army of the Persian King Mithridates defeated its Roman foes by littering the road with enticing mad honey honeycombs. According to this millennia-old story, the invading troops ate the honey and were easily defeated while under the influence of its intoxicating effects.

Experienced users know that a small amount is all that’s needed, especially since a substance like mad honey possesses its toxins in unknown concentrations. Others, like members of the message boards of Erowid, a community notorious for experimentation, strongly recommend against consuming rhododendron components.

It’s not just intoxication that people seek from it, though. As stated before, many people claim that mad honey offers relief from arthritis and helps enhance sexual performance. Like many traditional medicines, there isn’t a wealth of experimental data or clinical trials to back up these claims, but in recent years there is some evidence to suggest that they’re not too farfetched.

Researchers have found some evidence that suggests that grayanotoxin-containing preparations could help with hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, and even cold sores. These are just preliminary studies, though, and as such should not be taken as evidence that mad honey is safe or effective.

Medical remedies aside, if you’re searching for that next great high, mad honey is probably not the best place to look. Perhaps we can suggest something a bit more reliable.

https://www.inverse.com/article/33974-mad-honey-rhododendron-grayanotoxin

[william r sanford72]

Genomes are coming: Sequence libraries from the honey bee reflect associated microbial diversity

One of the coolest of reasons that cheap sequencing is nifty, in my opinion, is that it has allowed researchers to study individual eukaryotic organisms, and their associated microbes (their microbiome). Let’s be real, we are in the midst of identifying essential interactions between eukaryotes and their microbes, which are key in driving evolution. If you’ve any doubt about that, feel free to check out this great read, or take a glance at this article.

http://www.molecularecologist.com/2017/07/genomes-are-coming-sequence-libraries-from-the-honey-bee-reflect-associated-microbial-diversity/

[william r sanford72]

usda-national honey prices July 24, 2017

www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf

[william r sanford72]

Gaia Bees...Circle of Life.

eb5Jy5k9mA4

[william r sanford72]

100,000 Pages of Chemical Industry Secrets Gathered Dust in an Oregon Barn for Decades — Until Now

July 26 2017,

For decades, some of the dirtiest, darkest secrets of the chemical industry have been kept in Carol Van Strum’s barn. Creaky, damp, and prowled by the occasional black bear, the listing, 80-year-old structure in rural Oregon housed more than 100,000 pages of documents obtained through legal discovery in lawsuits against Dow, Monsanto, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Air Force, and pulp and paper companies, among others.

As of today, those documents and others that have been collected by environmental activists will be publicly available through a project called the Poison Papers. Together, the library contains more than 200,000 pages of information and “lays out a 40-year history of deceit and collusion involving the chemical industry and the regulatory agencies that were supposed to be protecting human health and the environment,” said Peter von Stackelberg, a journalist who along with the Center for Media and Democracy and the Bioscience Resource Project helped put the collection online.

Van Strum didn’t set out to be the repository for the people’s pushback against the chemical industry. She moved to a house in the Siuslaw National Forest in 1974 to live a simple life. But soon after she arrived, she realized the Forest Service was spraying her area with an herbicide called 2,4,5-T — on one occasion, directly dousing her four children with it as they fished by the river.

The chemical was one of two active ingredients in Agent Orange, which the U.S. military had stopped using in Vietnam after public outcry about the fact that it caused cancer, birth defects, and serious harms to people, animals, and the environment. But in the U.S., the Forest Service continued to use both 2,4,5-T and the other herbicide in Agent Orange, 2,4-D, to kill weeds. (Timber was — and in some places still is — harvested from the national forest and sold.) Between 1972 and 1977, the Forest Service sprayed 20,000 pounds of 2,4,5-T in the 1,600-square-mile area that included Van Strum’s house and the nearby town of Alsea.

As in Vietnam, the chemicals hurt people and animals in Oregon, as well as the plants that were their target. Immediately after they were sprayed, Van Strum’s children developed nosebleeds, bloody diarrhea, and headaches, and many of their neighbors fell sick, too. Several women who lived in the area had miscarriages shortly after incidents of spraying. Locals described finding animals that had died or had bizarre deformities — ducks with backward-facing feet, birds with misshapen beaks, and blinded elk; cats and dogs that had been exposed began bleeding from their eyes and ears. At a community meeting, residents decided to write to the Forest Service detailing the effects of the spraying they had witnessed.

“We thought that if they knew what had happened to us, they wouldn’t do it anymore,” Van Strum said recently, before erupting into one of the many bursts of laughter that punctuate her conversation. We were sitting not far from the river where her children played more than 40 years ago, and her property remained much as it was back when the Forest Service first sprayed them with the herbicide. A mountain covered with alder and maple trees rose up across from her home, just as it did then, and the same monkey puzzle tree that was there when she moved in still shaded her dirt driveway.

But Van Strum, now 76, is much changed from the young woman who politely asked that the federal agency stop spraying many years ago. After the Forest Service refused their request to stop using the herbicides, she and her neighbors filed a suit that led to a temporary ban on 2,4,5-T in their area in 1977 and, ultimately, to a total stop to the use of the chemical in 1983.

For Van Strum, the suit was also the beginning of lifetime of battling the chemical industry. The lawyer who had taken their case offered a reduced fee in exchange for Van Strum’s unpaid research assistance. And she found she had a knack for poring over and parsing documents and keeping track of huge volumes of information. Van Strum provided guidance to others filing suit over spraying in national forests and helped filed another case that pointed out that the EPA’s registration of 2,4-D and other pesticides was based on fraudulent data from a company called Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories. That case led to a decision, in 1983, to stop all aerial herbicide spraying by the Forest Service.

“We didn’t think of ourselves as environmentalists, that wasn’t even a word back then,” Van Strum said. “We just didn’t want to be poisoned.”
Still, Van Strum soon found herself helping with a string of suits filed by people who had been hurt by pesticides and other chemicals. “People would call up and say, ‘Do you have such and such?’ And I’d go clawing through my boxes,” said Van Strum, who often wound up acquiring new documents through these requests — and storing those, too, in her barn.

https://cdn01.theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2017/07/poison-papers-carol-vanstrum-3-1501077878-1024x819.jpg
Some of the more than 100,000 pages of discovery material related to the chemical industry that were stored in Carol Van Strum’s barn in rural Oregon.

Along the way, she amassed disturbing evidence about the dangers of industrial chemicals — and the practices of the companies that make them. Two documents, for instance, detailed experiments that Dow contracted a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist to conduct on prisoners in the 1960s to show the effects of TCDD, a particularly toxic contaminant found in 2,4,5-T. Another document, from 1985, showed that Monsanto had sold a chemical that was tainted with TCDD to the makers of Lysol, who, apparently unaware of its toxicity, used it as an ingredient in their disinfectant spray for 23 years. Yet another, from 1990, detailed the EPA policy of allowing the use of hazardous waste as inert ingredients in pesticides and other products under certain circumstances.

There were limits to what Van Strum could prove through her persistent data collection. The EPA had undertaken a study of the relationship between herbicide exposure and miscarriages and had taken tissue samples from water, animals, a miscarried fetus, and a baby born without a brain in the area. The EPA never released the full results of the “Alsea study,” as it was called, and insisted it had lost many of them. But a lab chemist provided Van Strum with what he said was the analysis of the test results he had been hired to do for the EPA, which showed the samples from water, various animals, and “products of conception” were significantly contaminated with TCDD.

When confronted, the EPA claimed there had been a mix-up and that the samples were from another area. Van Strum filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the results and, for years, battled in court to get to the bottom of what happened. Though the EPA provided more than 34,000 pages in response to her request (which Van Strum carefully numbered and stored in her barn), the agency never released all the results of the study or fully explained what had happened to them or where the contaminated samples had been taken. And eventually, Van Strum gave up. The EPA declined to comment for this story.

https://cdn01.theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2017/07/poison-papers-carol-vanstrum-2-1501077873-1024x683.jpg
Carol Van Strum prepares to work on her property with her dogs Maybe and Mike at her side in May 2017.

She had to make peace with not fully understanding a personal tragedy, too. In 1977, her house burned to the ground and her four children died in the fire. Firefighters who came to the scene said the fact that the whole house had burned so quickly pointed to the possibility of arson. But an investigation of the causes of the fire was never completed.

Van Strum suspected some of her opponents might have set the fire. It was a time of intense conflict between local activists and employees of timber companies, chemical manufacturers, and government agencies over the spraying of herbicides. A group of angry residents in the area near Van Strum’s home had destroyed a Forest Service helicopter that had been used for spraying. And, on one occasion, Van Strum had come home to find some of the defenders of the herbicides she was attacking in court on her property.

“I’ve accepted that I’ll never really know” what happened, said Van Strum, who never rebuilt her house and now lives in an outbuilding next to the cleared site where it once stood.
But her commitment to the battle against toxic chemicals survived the ordeal. “If it was intentional, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “After that, there was nothing that could make me stop.”

Still, after all these years, Van Strum felt it was time to pass on her collection of documents, some of which pertain to battles that are still being waged, so “others can take up the fight.” And the seeds of many of the fights over chemicals going on today can be tied to the documents that sat in her barn. The Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories scandal is central in litigation over the carcinogenicity of Monsanto’s Roundup, for instance. And 2,4-D, the other active ingredient in Agent Orange, is still in use.

Meanwhile, private timber companies continue to use both 2,4-D and Roundup widely, though not in the national forest. Van Strum has been part of an effort to ban aerial pesticide spraying in the county, and is speaking on behalf of the local ecosystem in a related lawsuit.

“I get to play the Lorax,” Van Strum said. “It’s going to be fun.”

https://theintercept.com/2017/07/26/chemical-industry-herbicide-poison-papers/

[william r sanford72]

The Neonicotinoid View -More Lies, Deceit and Cover Ups

Published on Jul 28, 2017

As the global population of honey bees and other pollinators continues to decline, industry continues to make every effort to distort the truth, conceal the evidence and deceive the public. In this week’s segment of The Neonicotinoid View, host June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk about a major cover-up by EPA! www.theorganicview.com

ZIPsLb5f2W4

[william r sanford72]

The Etruscans Were Expert Beekeepers, Ancient Honeycombs Suggest

The charred remains of 2,500-year-old honeycombs, as well as other beekeeping artifacts, have been discovered in an Etruscan workshop in northern Italy.
The findings included the remains of a unique grapevine honey produced by traveling beekeepers along rivers, according to a new study.

"The importance of beekeeping in the ancient world is well known through an abundance of iconographic, literary, archaeometric and ethnographic [or cultural] sources," Lorenzo Castellano, a graduate student at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and first author of the new study, told Live Science. (In archaeometry, scientists use physical, chemical and mathematical analyses to study archaeological sites.)

Even so, since honeycombs are perishable, direct fossil evidence of them is "extremely rare," he added. [24 Amazing Archaeological Discoveries]

Castellano and his colleagues at the University of Milan and the Laboratory of Palynology and Paleoecology of the Institute for the Dynamics of Environmental Processes at Italy's National Research Council (CNR-IDPA) in Milan found several charred honeycombs, preserved honeybees and honeybee products scattered on the floor of a workshop at the Etruscan trade center of the ancient site of Forcello, near Bagnolo San Vito in the Mantua province.

Dating to around 510 B.C. to 495 B.C., the building had been destroyed by a violent fire and was later sealed by a layer of clay so it could be built over.

"The findings are therefore preserved in situ, albeit heavily fragmented and often warped by the heat of fire," Castellano and his team wrote in July in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The researchers examined bee-breads (a mixture of pollen and honey), fragments of charred honeycombs, remains of Apis mellifera (honeybees) and a large amount of material resulting from honeycombs that had melted and clumped together.

Chemical analysis and an examination of pollen and spores collected at the site confirmed the presence of beeswax and honey on a large portion of the room. Moreover, they found that pollen from a grapevine (Vitis vinifera) abounded in samples from the melted honey and in the honeycomb fragments, indicating the presence of a unique grapevine honey produced from predomesticated or early-domesticated varieties of grapevine.

"Vitis pollen is missing in bee-breads, suggesting that we are dealing with an unprecedented Vitis honey preserved by charcoalification," the researchers concluded.

(Charcoalification, also called carbonization, is a process in which organic carbon substances are converted into a carbon-containing residue.)

Today, grapevine honey really has nothing to do with bee-produced honey; it is a kind of syrup produced by boiling grape juice.

The analyses revealed other unique aspects about the Etruscan beekeeping.

Pollen composition showed that honeybees were feeding on plants, including grapevines and fringed water lily, from an aquatic landscape, some of which weren't known to grow in the area.

Such a scenario would have been possible beekeepers who collected bees along a river while aboard a boat, bringing the bees and their hives to workshops to extract the honey and beeswax.

Indeed, the finding confirms what Roman scholar Pliny the Elder wrote more than four centuries later about the town of Ostiglia, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the site.

According to Pliny, the Ostiglia villagers simply placed the hives on boats and carried them 5 miles (8 km) upstream at night.

"At dawn, the bees come out and feed, returning every day to the boats, which change their position until, when they have sunk low in the water under the mere weight, it is understood that the hives are full, and then they are taken back and the honey is extracted," Pliny wrote.

The finding also shows the Etruscans' high level of specialization in beekeeping.

"It also provides unique information on the ancient Po Plain environment [a geographical feature in northern Italy] and on honeybees' behavior in a pre-modern landscape," Castellano and colleagues concluded.

Pictures with link:
https://www.livescience.com/59970-etruscans-were-expert-beekeepers.html

[william r sanford72]

Parallels Between Unresponsive Honey Bees and Human Autism
Neuroscience NewsJuly 31, 2017

Summary: Researchers report genes implicated in human ASD are regulated differently in honeybees that are more unresponsive than their nestmates. The PNAS study provides insight into the genetic heritage shared across species and offers clues about the evolution of social behavior.

Source: University of Illinois.

Honey bees that consistently fail to respond to obvious social cues share something fundamental with autistic humans, researchers report in a new study. Genes most closely associated with autism spectrum disorders in humans are regulated differently in unresponsive honey bees than in their more responsive nest mates, the study found.

The findings, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, appear to be unique to genes associated with autism and not to other behavioral disorders in humans.

The study is a first glimpse of the molecular heritage shared across the animal kingdom, the researchers say, and offers tantalizing clues about the evolution of social behavior.

“Some honey bees are more active than others, and some appear indifferent to intruders that threaten the hive. This, in itself, is not unusual,” said University of Illinois entomology professor Gene Robinson, who led the new analysis. “Honey bees take on different roles at different stages of their lifecycle, and not every bee can – or should – function as a guard.”

But when postdoctoral researcher Hagai Shpigler observed that some of those same bees also were unmoved by the presence of queen larvae – a stimulus that typically spurs diligent action in nurse bees – it suggested something unusual was going on, said Robinson, who directs the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the U. of I.

“For any given task, most honey bees fall somewhere in the highly engaged to moderately engaged camp,” Robinson said. “Typically, honey bees will respond more robustly to one stimulus than to another.”

But a small subset of bees tested by Robinson and his colleagues were either always on – energetically responding both to intruders and to queen larvae – or always off, he said.

The unresponsive bees’ lack of social awareness might be seen as similar to the social difficulties faced by some people with autism, Robinson said. But comparing behavior is not enough, he said. Analyzing the genes that drive behavior and how those genes are regulated is key to understanding whether the two phenomena are related.

To get at this question, the team analyzed 246 groups of bees from seven genetically distinct honey bee colonies, carefully testing each bee in various social contexts, then analyzing levels of gene expression in their brains. They found that more than 1,000 genes were regulated differently between unresponsive bees, nurse bees and guards.

The researchers next turned to a list of genes and gene expression profiles associated with autism in humans. Their goal was to determine whether a significant proportion of the autism-related genes also played a role in the unresponsive bees.

“We figured out a way to make an unbiased statistical test that will tell us whether a human gene list and a honey bee gene list overlap more or less than expected by chance,” said Michael Saul, a postdoctoral researcher who led the statistical analysis with statistics professor Sihai D. Zhao.

That test revealed significant overlap between the unresponsive honey bees’ gene expression profile and genes closely associated with autism in humans. Further analyses found no significant overlap with human genes associated with depression, schizophrenia or several other mental disorders, or with other bee gene lists.

https://i0.wp.com/neurosciencenews.com/files/2017/07/bee-human-autism-genewtics-neurosciencenews.jpg?w=750
Socially unresponsive bees share something fundamental with autistic humans, new research finds.

“Our data are telling us that social unresponsiveness does have some common molecular characteristics in these distantly related species,” Robinson said.

“It’s important to point out some caveats,” he said. “Humans are not big bees and bees are not little humans. The social responsiveness depends on context, and is different in the two cases. Autism spectrum disorder is very complex, and unresponsiveness is not the only behavior associated with it.”

While social behavior likely evolved independently in honey bees and humans, Robinson said, “our data reveal that they make use of common toolkits, common building blocks.”

“What really excites me about this study is that there appears to be this kernel of similarity between us and honey bees, a common animal inheritance that potentially drives social behavior in similar ways,” Saul said. “We haven’t proved this, but this work is telling us where to look for that in the future.”

http://neurosciencenews.com/autism-bees-7211/