Calling all light warriors - the Bees need you!

[Cidersomerset]

This man drove 40 miles with 3000 bees loose in his truck

7xhXpVYugd8

Published on 5 May 2018
http://kdvr.com/2018/05/03/man-drives-40-miles-with-3000-bees-loose-in-truck-cab/

[william r sanford72]

Is NRCS Effort Merely A Band-Aid On A Gushing Wound?

Published on May 14, 2018

Recently, the USDA’s NRCS which stands for the (Natural Resources Conservation Service) made some changes to its Conservation Enhancement Activity (E595116Z2) available to corn and soy farmers.

This Conservation Enhancement is designed to "Eliminate routine use of neonicotinoid seed treatments to reduce risk of pesticides in surface water by reducing the total amount of chemical applied and reducing the potential for delivery of chemicals into water bodies that would impair water quality and fish and wildlife habitat" Is this a step in the right direction or an effort to put a band-aid on a gushing wound?

www.theorganicview.com

iNh3pefg_KU

[mischief]

Hi William,
Once again, thanks for keeping this thread alive!
Can I also, once again urge everyone to think locally native when they are wondering what to plant in their gardens?
I do think this is really important,

This is what I am doing at the moment, (still). If its not a herb, vegetable, fruit that I need or bee plant, its a local native species.
Good things take time though.

Things have been going really well. my fruit trees are producing beautifully, my bees are going into their second winter looking really good. My vegie garden is hanging in there, not the greatest but I do get to eat lovely organic vegies.
I managed to get hold of some plastic small cell frames for my hive and put these in. The best time would have been in spring, but I only found them in time to get them into the hive in summer.
So far, i have not had to use any harsh chemical treatments. I did use the Food grade mineral oil fogging method over the first winter and into spring. I ran into a bit of trouble with Deformed wing virus in late spring early summer and moved over to treating with the essential oils treatment- Apilife var. I havent seen DWV since.
I am only doing any treatment if I see there is a problem and havent for months now.
The colony isnt huge in comparison to other beekeepers in my area, per their reports, but is bigger than it was going into winter last year.

This has been such a fantastic learning curve and I am still loving every minute of it.

If others are interested in keeping bees in their own back yard, I recommend a long hive rather than a vertical type AND with an observation window, so you can see what is going on in there without having to constantly open it up and in the process, upset your bees.
I have found the mesh screen along with the solid bottom board trays to be another excellent way of seeing what is going on in the hive. I keep the trays very well oiled after noticing that this does a better job of trapping any mite that fall onto it, as well as trapping the wax moth.

One thing I did that I can't remember if I have already mentioned it, is to put some ceiling grade insulation over the inner covers of the hive.
One day in winter, I noticed that I could feel the heat of the bees through this and realised that this heat should not be escaping like it was. A small piece of insulation from my own roof space that is made of wool, has made a huge difference.

This year, I again have brassicas growing- turnips,black radish,mustard, mustard lettuce. these have been specifically sown so that they will just bolt to flower around mid/late winter and will continue to grow right through til late spring when other things will be available.
Sometimes I have mild winters, like last year and the bees are flying even in winter. These and the Rosemary provide some very welcome food for our little friends.

All going well, I will have a go at expanding my hive numbers from one to three.
One of the concerns I have, is the over population of hives in a given area.
Ideally, I would like my colony to do the natural thing and swarm, but....I cant guarantee that they will choose one of my new hives.
In my area, if they do swarm, they are likely to die or wind up in the hands of a beekeeper who thinks that the best way to keep them is to pour in harsh chemicals and pillage hard won honey with no real regard to the results of their actions.
If they do manage to swarm successfully, the chances are that due to current mentality, the swarm will be removed rather than left to survive or will be destroyed. the mentality here is that swarms are diseased and should be rehomed where they can be properly medicated... or destroyed so they dont spread diseases.

Errr, didnt actually want to finish on such a sour note, so.. a little about the new hives I have got ready for next year.

I said I prefer long hives and I do, but the new ones are double deep langstroth hives, not quite like Layens or built per a book I got on Layens hives, but as close as I could get without having to build the whole thing myself...AND I am also using the Small cell frames in these too.

These new ones are being put in spots around my back yard so that there is at least 10-15 metres between each.
I cant wait for spring to see how it all works out.

[william r sanford72]

Monsanto in Epic Fail with attempted attack on Global Glyphosate Study

In attempting to discredit a study that found that glyphosate-based herbicides affect rats' health, Monsanto got three crucial facts wrong

EXCERPT: Monsanto’s Mr. Partridge continued by telling the Guardian; “All the research to date has demonstrated that there is no link between glyphosate and cancer.” Does this not seem to be a bit off topic Mr. Partridge? There is no suggestion in the short-term studies, which he was being asked about, that glyphosate is linked to cancer.
---

Monsanto in Epic Fail* with attempted attack on Global Glyphosate Study
Sustainable Pulse, 22 May 2018

https://sustainablepulse.com/2018/05/22/monsanto-in-epic-fail-with-attempted-attack-on-global-glyphosate-study/#.WwRPckxFy02
[links to sources at the URL above]

The peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts from the pilot phase of the Global Glyphosate Study were revealed last Wednesday in a Press Conference at the European Parliament.

The results of the short-term pilot study showed that glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) were able to alter certain important biological parameters in rats, mainly relating to sexual development, genotoxicity and the alteration of the intestinal microbiome, at the ‘safe’ level of 1.75 mg/kg/day set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

As is normal practice for Monsanto, their Public Relations department was soon in action to try and crush the scientists involved and the study results, which could cause major damage to the product that supports their whole business model – the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup.

However, this time their PR campaign against the Study was only met with contempt and disdain from journalists, politicians and the public in countries across Europe.

Monsanto’s epic fail began with their comments in The Guardian newspaper:

Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s VP for global strategy told the Guardian: “The Ramazzini Institute is an activist organisation with an agenda that they have not disclosed as part of their crowdfunding efforts. They wish to support a ban on glyphosate and they have a long history of rendering opinions not supported by regulatory testing agencies.”

There are many things that are ‘interesting’ about Scott Partridge’s comment:

Epic Fail #1: Monsanto attacked the wrong Institute

The excellent Guardian article was mainly discussing a study on the microbiome of the rats, hence the title: “Glyphosate shown to disrupt microbiome ‘at safe levels’, study claims”. This study was actually carried out at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York on samples provided by The Ramazzini Institute.

The truth is that Monsanto has never been faced with an independent study on glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides, in which multiple Institutions and Universities are involved. They are used to attacking one single scientist or a small institution.

The Global Glyphosate Study involves The Ramazzini Institute, the University of Bologna (Faculty of Agriculture, Veterinary Science and Biostatistics) the Genoa Hospital San Martino, the Italian National Institute of Health, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and the George Washington University.

Monsanto have now shown that they will struggle to attack this group of well-respected Institutions!

Epic Fail #2: Monsanto suggests expert cancer scientists are activists

Monsanto’s Mr. Partridge was obviously having a bad day, as he also suggested that “The Ramazzini Institute is an activist organization”. This could not be further from the truth. In fact they are expert scientists who have been protecting public health for over 40 years.

The activities of the Ramazzini Institute (RI) focus primarily on the experimental identification and quantification of carcinogenic risks and on the evaluation of the efficacy and safety of drug therapies and active ingredients that may be used to prevent the development and/or progression of cancer.

The Ramazzini Institute’s long-term studies on Formaldehyde, Vinyl Chloride and Benzene, amongst others have led to global regulatory change on these chemicals.

The RI study design closely mirrors the human condition, in which persons may be exposed to agents in all phases of life for varying lengths of time. A distinctive characteristic of most RI carcinogenicity studies is that rodents are treated from prenatal life and kept under observation until natural death or at least 130 weeks of age. This lifespan protocol is in contrast with most laboratories where rodents are treated starting from adulthood and sacrificed at 110 weeks of age (representing about 2/3 of the lifespan) and corresponding to 60-65 years in humans. This practice means that the researchers miss a significant proportion of cancers induced by early exposure during pregnancy and that might show up in old age.

Sorry Mr. Partridge and Monsanto, you cannot change the truth!

Epic Fail #3: Monsanto claims no link between glyphosate and cancer… off topic

Monsanto’s Mr. Partridge continued by telling the Guardian; “All the research to date has demonstrated that there is no link between glyphosate and cancer.”

Does this not seem to be a bit off topic Mr. Partridge? There is no suggestion in the short-term studies, which he was being asked about, that glyphosate is linked to cancer.

However, if Monsanto really want to bring up this topic, we would suggest they have a chat to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), who classified glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015.

Oh… I forgot they are currently also trying to campaign against IARC too, including an attempt to stop the U.S. government from funding the Agency. I wonder why that is…..

It is time that we all stop Monsanto in their tracks and support the Global Glyphosate Study, which is being funded by the public worldwide.

* Urban Dictionary - Epic Fail: A mistake of such monumental proportions that it requires its own term in order to successfully point out the unfathomable shortcomings of an individual or group.

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

https://mailchi.mp/f87ff3047d77/monsanto-in-epic-fail-with-attempted-attack-on-global-glyphosate-study?e=eb54924245

[william r sanford72]

The influence of temperature and photoperiod on the timing of brood onset in hibernating honey bee colonies

Fabian Nürnberger​, Stephan Härtel, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter
May 25, 2018

Author and article information

Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Bayerische Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Abstract

In order to save resources, honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies in the temperate zones stop brood rearing during winter. Brood rearing is resumed in late winter to build up a sufficient worker force that allows to exploit floral resources in upcoming spring. The timing of brood onset in hibernating colonies is crucial and a premature brood onset could lead to an early depletion of energy reservoirs. However, the mechanisms underlying the timing of brood onset and potential risks of mistiming in the course of ongoing climate change are not well understood. To assess the relative importance of ambient temperature and photoperiod as potential regulating factors for brood rearing activity in hibernating colonies, we overwintered 24 honey bee colonies within environmental chambers. The colonies were assigned to two different temperature treatments and three different photoperiod treatments to disentangle the individual and interacting effects of temperature and photoperiod. Tracking in-hive temperature as indicator for brood rearing activity revealed that increasing ambient temperature triggered brood onset. Under cold conditions, photoperiod alone did not affect brood onset, but the light regime altered the impact of higher ambient temperature on brood rearing activity. Further the number of brood rearing colonies increased with elapsed time which suggests the involvement of an internal clock. We conclude that timing of brood onset in late winter is mainly driven by temperature but modulated by photoperiod. Climate warming might change the interplay of these factors and result in mismatches of brood phenology and environmental conditions.

Read More:https://peerj.com/articles/4801/

[william r sanford72]

Robo-Bees Can Infiltrate and Influence Insect Societies To Stop Them From Going Extinct

Written By
Dan Robitzski

https://futurism.com/robo-bees-infiltrate-study-insect-societies-prevent-extinction/

Right now, there are swarms of robots that are so good at blending into their surroundings that they have been unquestioningly accepted into society. Their mission? Learn how the organisms they’ve been sent to study operate and socialize, then use their new knowledge to steer the cultures they’ve infiltrated towards what their creators decide will be a better future.

Thankfully, this isn’t about highly sophisticated androids seeking to destroy human society from the inside out (those don’t yet exist… at least not as far as we know).

Nope, we’re talking about bees.

This month, a five-year European research initiative called FOCAS (Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems) came to a close. The purpose of the study: to learn the ways that social animals communicate. To accomplish that goal, researchers made swarms of robots designed to fool bees and zebrafish that looked and acted enough like the real thing to take part in the animal’s society.

This means the researchers got an unprecedented look inside the literal hive-mind that is a honeybee colony, and may even be able to use these robots to steer the bees towards adaptation and survival as they face potential extinction.

x8xuYp0I1TI

These robots are the result of years and years of work in swarm robotics. It’s not enough to build a little drone that can do bees’ characteristic waggle dance; the researchers needed to create a team of tiny bots that have a hive-mind of their own. They also needed to be able to move, act, and learn as a unit rather than a jumbled mess of machinery.

For example, engineers from the University of Graz used artificial intelligence to evolve the robots’ behavior to be more like that of real-life bees as the drones themselves became more sophisticated. They also got two robotic swarms to interact with each other, flying around as cohesive units without individuals flying off on their own, or crashing into one another.

All of these minor, incremental improvements were intended to progress the bots towards the ultimate goal: robo-spies so advanced that the real animals would accept, communicate with, and even follow them. After being plopped into a colony and acting like they belong there for long enough, the robots seem to pass as the real thing. While species-saving programs aren’t in play quite yet, the team’s work shows that real bees will go along with the robotic insect’s programmed behavior, and the insider’s perspective of a honeybee colony can help scientists understand exactly what environmental factors are putting pressure on bees and other animals.

The robotic Spies Who Stung Me could have more uses than simply keeping bees alive — they could also help manage livestock and agriculture. That may help explain Walmart heavily invested in and patented similar technology earlier this year.

While the idea of replacing dead honeybees with robotic pollinators is somehow both depressing and wildly impractical, these new swarms coming out of FOCAS can give us a much better idea of how animals like bees operate, and how best to help them survive as they face the prospect of their demise.

https://futurism.com/robo-bees-infiltrate-study-insect-societies-prevent-extinction/

[william r sanford72]

Bees adjust to seasons with nutrients in flowers and 'dirty water'
May 30, 2018, Tufts University

Researchers at Tufts University have discovered that honey bees alter their diet of nutrients according to the season, particularly as winter approaches. A spike in calcium consumption in the fall, and high intake of potassium, help prepare the bees for colder months when they likely need those minerals to generate warmth through rapid muscle contractions. A careful inventory of the bees' nutrient intake revealed shifting sources (from flowers to mineral rich 'dirty water') and how limitations in nutrient availability from these sources can have implications for the health of both managed and wild colonies.

The study, which is available in the May print edition of the Journal of Insect Physiology, examined mineral content gathered by and contained in adult bees and in their sources of food, exploring how they maintain the right nutritional balance of micronutrients. For most of the minerals tracked, it was found that the bees sought alternate sources to complement variation in the floral supply.

"We typically think of honey bees as gathering all the food they need for the colony from flowers, but in fact, our research showed that bees search strategically among different sources, including water, to boost their stores of calcium and maintain potassium levels in preparation for the cold season," said Philip Starks, associate professor of biology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts. "Honey bee nutritional requirements are quite complex, and they can face limitations because of levels of micronutrients in their environment."

The study findings build on previous research led by Dr. Rachael Bonoan from the Starks lab that revealed that honey bees use water sources to complement, and sometimes supplement, the minerals in their floral diet. For example, as magnesium levels drop in pollen during the summer and fall, the bees pick up the difference from mineral rich water.

Alternatively, calcium levels in gathered pollen increase in the fall, but so do the bees' preference for calcium in water, perhaps reflecting a shift from brood rearing to overwintering, the researchers speculate. Ample calcium and potassium are useful for the muscle activity needed to generate heat in the hive during the winter months.

"These results have implications in the field," said Rachael Bonoan, lead author of the study and recent Ph.D. graduate from the Starks Lab. "Ultimately, one of the goals of studying mineral needs of honey bees is to create season- or crop-specific supplemental diets for beekeepers. Beyond honey bees, we can support wild pollinators by planting diverse floral, and thus nutrient-rich, sources."

There are many factors that have been blamed for the recent decline of bee populations, including the use of pesticides, the emergence of parasites and pathogens, and climate change. While diversity in the food supply may be one factor, its relative impact on the honey bee crisis has not yet been determined. This particular study, however, expands our understanding of the dynamic nutritional needs of bee colonies and provides further insight as to how we might manage the health of honey bee populations that support the natural environment and our food supply.

Also contributing to the study was Tufts University undergraduate Luke O'Connor, whose work formed the basis of his senior honor's thesis.

Explore further: Despite few taste genes, honey bees seek out essential nutrients based on floral resources

More information: Bonoan R.E., O'Connor L.D., Starks P.T. Seasonality of honey bee (Apis mellifera) micronutrient supplementation and environmental limitation, Journal of Insect

Physiology. (May-June 2016) 107:23-8; DOI: 10.1016/jinsphys.2018.02.002

Provided by: Tufts University

Vid and visuals in the link:https://phys.org/news/2018-05-bees-adjust-seasons-nutrients-dirty.html

[william r sanford72]

Tips on Working Bees By Randy Oliver.. NY Bee Wellness.

Randy Oliver of scientificbeekeeping.com..NY Bee Wellness Workshop, Good for beginning beekeepers. Basic management of bees, disease identification.
Take notes, pause, playback, watch over.

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/

OcfqTx4_FAo

[william r sanford72]

The Times They are a Changin...

NY Bee Wellness.

Randy Oliver scientificbeekeeping.com; Current topics on beekeeping, apiculture; NY Bee Wellness workshop

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/

rw9XfkI17rQ

[william r sanford72]

bit o music..Geinō Yamashirogumis AKIRA - Kaneda's Theme.

hpDvtIt6Lsc


Rock on...

[william r sanford72]

Bayer to ditch Monsanto name after mega-merger

By AFP
Mail Online, 4 Jun 2018
www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-5803197/Bayer-ditch-Monsanto-mega-merger.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Weedkiller arms race -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- 'Number one in seeds' -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

https://mailchi.mp/d167762bc18d/bayer-to-ditch-monsanto-name-after-mega-merger?e=eb54924245

[william r sanford72]

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

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

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

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

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

Explore further: Genes key to killer bee's success

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

Abstract

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

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

Journal reference: Journal of Proteome Research

Provided by: American Chemical Society

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

[Stephanie]

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

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

[william r sanford72]

Bayer: A history

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

.......

Bayer: A history

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

https://mailchi.mp/2a3cd140e9fc/bayer-a-history?e=eb54924245

[william r sanford72]

Honey Bees Grasp the Concept of Zero Finds Study

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

By Loukia Papadopoulos

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

Insects get it too

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

KQkP85I2UJM

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

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

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

Zero is lower than one

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

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

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

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

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

https://interestingengineering.com/honey-bees-grasp-the-concept-of-zero-finds-study

[william r sanford72]

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

by Dan Robitzski

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

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

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

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

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

REresGT06CY

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

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

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

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

https://futurism.com/drone-bees-pollinate-new-york-apple-orchard/

[william r sanford72]

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

By Adrienne Antonsen

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

Caring Male Giant Water Bugs Attract More Females

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Pics in the link:
https://entomologytoday.org/2018/06/14/new-research-showcases-best-brightest-insect-fathers/

[william r sanford72]

More Research Needed to Better Balance Honey Bees and Native Bees

By Andrew Porterfield

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More
“Floral Resource Competition Between Honey Bees and Wild Bees: Is There Clear Evidence and Can We Guide Management and Conservation?”
https://academic.oup.com/ee/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ee/nvy077/5032480?redirectedFrom=fulltext


https://entomologytoday.org/2018/06/18/more-research-needed-to-better-balance-honey-bees-and-native-bees/

[william r sanford72]

usda NATIONAL HONEY REPORT for may 2018

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

[william r sanford72]

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

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

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

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

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

Intense foraging affects bees' mental health

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why should we care about bees?

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

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

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

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

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-bees-stressed-colony-collapse.html#jCp

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

[william r sanford72]

Seeds That Poison...

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

Beyond Pesticides:https://beyondpesticides.org/

x3s3DVLdv6I

[william r sanford72]

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

(Beyond Pesticides, June 19, 2018)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/french-beekeepers-accuse-bayer-after-glyphosate-found-honey-doc-15q7rk1

https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2018/06/french-beekeepers-sue-bayer-monsanto-glyphosate-honey-u-s-court-allows-glyphosate-contamination-honey-labeled-100-pure/

[william r sanford72]

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

SnTz09-nk9c

Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

Scientists find evidence of 27 new viruses in bees

June 20, 2018 by Sara Lajeunesse, Pennsylvania State University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journal reference: Scientific Reports

Provided by: Pennsylvania State University

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-scientists-evidence-viruses-bees.html

[william r sanford72]

New and Easy Marking Method Tracks Bees Without Killing Them

By Leslie Mertz, Ph.D.

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

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

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

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

Taking a Powder

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

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

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

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

Devising a No-Kill Method

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

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

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

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

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

Read More
“A Nonlethal Method to Examine Non-Apis Bees for Mark-Capture Research”
https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/18/3/10/5020712

https://entomologytoday.org/2018/06/21/new-and-easy-marking-method-tracks-bees-without-killing-them/

[william r sanford72]

Bit more tunes..How To Shake Hands.

yuphcpY5a5A

Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

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

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Ed

15RdKqyPvU4

[Star Tsar]

IJrKlSkxRHA

:bearhug:

[william r sanford72]

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

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

[william r sanford72]

Can somebody give me a hand!!!!

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

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

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

Mr. Ed..

pywh8NMd_eU

[william r sanford72]

Retraction by corruption

A new peer-reviewed paper analyzes the 2012 Séralini study and the furore it caused

With the publication of the Monsanto Papers in August 2017, new light was shed on the much-publicised retraction of a 2012 study by a primarily French team led by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini.

The study had found serious harm to the health of laboratory rats from consumption of two of Monsanto’s products, the GM maize NK603 and the herbicide Roundup, which the maize is engineered to tolerate, fed at environmentally relevant doses. The new paper reviews the history of the retraction and describes how it was engineered by Monsanto with the apparent collusion of the the editor-in-chief of the journal.

A newly published paper by Dr Eva Novotny, "Retraction by corruption: the 2012 Séralini paper", describes the rat feeding trial by the Séralini team and the previously published trial by Monsanto scientists. The latter had concluded that the GM maize is “safe and nutritious”, but did not investigate the effects of Roundup and was too short to examine long-term effects – only 90 days compared with the two-year period of the Seralini study.

Because the results of the Séralini study brought into question the safety of all GM crops (because they are not tested in long-term feeding studies), and also the safety of Monsanto’s widely-used herbicide Roundup, Monsanto’s future and the future of GM crops in general were suddenly in jeopardy. Publication of the Séralini paper therefore caused a hailstorm of criticism which ignored the possibility that these products were harming the health of people or animals that consumed the maize or traces of the herbicide on food crops.

The new paper begins with a description of the earlier paper by Monsanto scientists, highlighting what Dr Novotny sees as the shortcomings of the design and comparing it with the Séralini paper. She states that despite several relative strengths of Séralini’s study, critics denounced it severely, claiming that he used the ‘wrong’ strain of rat and not enough rats per group (only 10) – even though these aspects were essentially the same as in the Monsanto study.

Although Monsanto had 20 rats per group, only 10 animals from each group were used in the analysis of blood and urine; and no explanation was given of the method of selection. This left open the possibility that the healthiest rats were selected from groups fed the GM maize and the unhealthiest were chosen from the control group – thus minimizing any differences between the treatment and control groups.

At issue here is the length of time that the two studies lasted. For a long-term two-year study such as Séralini's, some scientists argue that more rats are needed than in a 90-day subchronic study such as Monsanto's. The aim in using more rats is so that the age-related diseases that naturally occur in older rats do not get confused with the effects of the substance under test. Nevertheless, standard OECD long-term toxicity protocols, while they recommend using 20 rats per sex per group, only require 10 per sex per group to be analysed for blood and urine chemistry – the same number as Séralini used and analysed. Thus the Séralini study is comparable to these OECD protocols with regard to numbers of rats analysed.

Dr Novotny states that criticisms of the Séralini study were largely based on the incorrect assumption that it was a carcinogenicity study, although the paper was entitled “Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize”. In addition, the authors stated in their introduction that they had no reason or intention to carry out a carcinogenicity study.

The significance of the distinction between a carcinogenicity study and a toxicity study is that investigation of carcinogenicity requires at least 50 rats per group, to avoid a ‘false negative’, i.e. failing to spot instances of a rare occurrence. But the statistician Paul Deheuvels countered that the very fact that increases in tumours were seen in the Séralini experiment in groups of only 10 animals makes it probable that the effect is real.

Whichever side of the argument one falls on regarding numbers of rats, the necessity to report tumours in toxicity studies is not in doubt. Standards set by the OECD for toxicity studies require the development of tumours to be reported. In this respect, it would have been remiss of Séralini's team to have kept quiet about the tumours.

The Monsanto study showed statistically significant differences between the GM-fed rats and the controls, but Dr Novotny explains that these were dismissed as being “not biologically meaningful” — a scientifically invalid assumption because no evidence was presented to back it up. The death of one rat was also confidently dismissed as not being related to the diet, even though the cause of death could not be ascertained.

In comparing Monsanto's study with Séralini's, Dr Novotny argues that Monsanto's study design falls short. For example, the base diet used by Monsanto, including that of the control rats, was almost certain to have included a large proportion of other GMOs. Seralini’s team, on the other hand, grew their feed especially and tested their base diet for GMOs – finding none.

Yet despite these factors, all criticism fell upon Séralini's study, which found harm from the GM maize and Roundup, and no criticism was raised against Monsanto's study, which declared the GM maize to be safe and nutritious.

Among those who dismissed Séralini's results were the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). However, some EFSA experts have ties to the the GM industry and the agency was essentially defending its own previous opinion that the GMO tested was safe.

Dr Novotny recounts that one important critic, who consulted with Monsanto as to what to say by way of denunciation, was Prof Richard Goodman, who was then made associate editor for biotechnology by the editor-in-chief of the journal that had published both the Monsanto and Séralini papers. Unusually, a second peer review of the Séralini study was undertaken, with (again unusually) the evidence of the raw data. Nothing amiss could be discovered; but, 14 months after the Seralini paper first appeared online in the journal, the editor-in-chief, A. Wallace Hayes, retracted the paper on the sole grounds of its being “inconclusive”.

This is a unique and unrecognised reason for the retraction of a scientific paper. Dr Novotny counters that most scientific papers must be considered inconclusive. The retraction led to another round of reprisals, this time from independent scientists who pointed out the unfair treatment of papers finding harm from GM products in comparison with those finding safety. Eventually the paper was republished by another journal.

Later research

Since the republication of the Séralini study, subsequent developments include a research finding that most of the standard rodent diets tested that are used as the basis for the feed given to rats in laboratory trials are contaminated with pesticides and unlabelled GMOs. This contamination casts doubt on the reliability of all previous studies that used these diets yet failed to control for these elements. Other studies support aspects of Seralini’s work, including a molecular analysis of the body tissues of the rats fed the lowest dose of Roundup, which showed that they suffered from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Monsanto orchestrated retraction

Dr Novotny recounts that the manner in which the retraction of the Séralini paper was brought about became clear when Monsanto’s internal emails, memos and other documents were released for publication by the judge in a legal case charging Monsanto with causing non-Hodgkin lymphoma in people using Roundup.

The disclosure was made after Monsanto failed to take the necessary measures to protect this material. Emails reveal how Monsanto was careful to remain undercover while urging pro-GM scientists to write to the journal to denounce the Séralini study. The journal’s editor-in-chief, who held a paid consultancy agreement with Monsanto, appears to have actively colluded with Monsanto and even encouraged Monsanto scientists to volunteer as reviewers for the second peer review. He must have known they would fiercely attack any research casting doubt on the safety of their lucrative products. Who the actual peer reviewers were has not been revealed.

Dr Novotny's account of the events surrounding the Séralini study reveals the depths of deception and malpractice to which some scientists and corporations will resort in order to protect their products, even when they know or suspect that those products are harming the public. The journal that retracted the study, Food and Chemical Toxicology, no longer has Goodman and Hayes in place on its editorial board, but its publisher Elsevier should publish an apology to the Seralini team for its journal's role in the affair and the resulting damage to the reputations of the scientists involved.

The full paper can be accessed online at http://www.seralini.fr under "Research Papers on GMOs".

The direct link is..http://www.seralini.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Novotny-JBPC-2018-On-Seralini-FCT-retraction.pdf

http://www.gmwatch.org/

https://mailchi.mp/381042619d00/retraction-by-corruption?e=eb54924245

[william r sanford72]

Species shifts in the honey bee microbiome differ with age and hive role
July 3, 2018 by Kim Kaplan, Agricultural Research Service

The makeup of microbial species—the microbiome—in a honey bee queen's gut changes slowly as she ages, while a worker bee's microbiome changes much more rapidly, according to a new study published by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists.

Learning the details of the honey bee gut microbiome is offering potential for a whole new set of tools for managing honey bee colonies, explained ARS microbial ecologist Kirk E. Anderson at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona.

"We established the close connection of the makeup of the honey bee microbiome with the physiology of aging and stress. Our results provide a roadmap to improving colony health through improving queen rearing, nutrition and other management practices," he explained.

Honey bee queens, which lay all of the eggs in a hive, commonly last about three years in managed colonies before beekeepers replace them as reproduction slows. But in recent years, queens have been failing more quickly. This is a factor in higher colony losses reported during the past 12 years and has increased beekeepers' costs and labor. Queens currently cost about $25 each

The honey bee gut microbiome plays a significant role in metabolism, development and growth, and immune system function and protection against pathogens. Five to seven bacterial species groups usually make up the vast majority of a honey bee's core microbiome from among a common list of 10-12 species groups. The exact mix depends on a honey bee's age and function in the hive.

Anderson and ARS molecular biologist Vincent Ricigliano found that as a queen ages, in her gut microbiome, the levels of two bacterial species groups slowly increase: Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, both known for providing probiotic benefits in mammals including humans. At the same time, her microbiome has decreased levels of Proteobacteria species, which are often associated with unhealthy microbial imbalances.

The rate of this shift is associated more with a queen's biological age than her chronological age. Queens age biologically at different rates depending on their colony's exposure to a variety of environmental stresses, which can include available nutrition and exposure to temperature extremes.

Interestingly, during this study, the researchers discovered a new potentially queen-specific pathogen not detected in any adult worker bees—Delftia bacteria (in the order Burkholderiales). The occurrence of Delftia in the queen's mouth and gut rose or fell opposite to the levels of bacteria considered beneficial. This suggests Delftia may play a part in early queen mortality, according to Anderson.

In comparison, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium levels dropped, and the number of Proteobacteria went up as worker bees aged. Workers' microbiomes appear to change in a highly predictable fashion, especially with age. This may mean early shifts in worker microbiota could be used as a warning indicator for colony dwindling and/or failure.

Applying this new information to enhancing honey bees' microbiome may represent a new strategy to slow their aging or to combat physiological stress.

In addition, as understanding of the honey bee's relatively straightforward microbiome increases, the ARS researchers are hopeful that bees may offer an excellent model in which to study the much more complex microbiome of other species including humans.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-species-shifts-honey-bee-microbiome.html#jCp

Explore further:https://phys.org/news/2015-03-environment-microbiome-queen-bees.html

https://phys.org/news/2018-07-species-shifts-honey-bee-microbiome.html

[william r sanford72]

How To Introduce A Queen At Night

Doing a little work for dad on this one. I don't explain in incredible detail with charts and pictures and such, which really seems to stump some people, but if you pay attention you'll learn how to introduce a queen at night.

Step one: Put her on the landing board.
Step two: See step one.

The red light has nothing to do with introducing the queen it just makes night time beekeeping much less painful. Bees can't see the red light. This was an LED head lamp.

iqv_GAx0P84

[william r sanford72]

Worker bees select royal (sub)family members, not their own supersisters, to be new queens
Queens also found to mate with many more drones than previously thought

Date:
July 11, 2018

Source:
PLOS

Summary:
When honey bees need a new emergency queen, they forego the chance to promote members of their own worker subfamilies, opting instead to nurture larvae of 'royal' subfamilies, according to a new study.

When honey bees need a new emergency queen, they forego the chance to promote members of their own worker subfamilies, opting instead to nurture larvae of "royal" subfamilies, according to a study published July 11 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by James Withrow and David Tarpy of North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

When a queen suddenly dies, workers must select a group of larvae to raise as emergency queens, so the question arises whether workers tend to select larvae of their own subfamily over those of others, thus promoting their own genes at the expense of those from other subfamilies.

Here, the authors examined DNA from an average of 92 workers and 85 emergency queens from 6 different colonies. They found that the number of subfamilies per colony ranged from 34 to 77, vastly outnumbering previous estimates. By comparing the DNA of the emergency queens to that of the colony's subfamilies, they found that the majority of emergency queens were raised from subfamilies with very few members, many of which are so rare that they are mostly undetected in typical colony sampling of workers. Thus the authors argued, workers chose members of other "royal" subfamilies over their own "supersisters" to become new queens.

The characteristics that distinguish these lucky larvae from their hive mates are still unknown, as are many of the factors in play that override a possible "selfish gene" drive that might otherwise reward choosing one's own family members for the royal treatment. "While many of the specific details and mechanisms are still to be determined," Withrow said, "at this point we may safely conclude that, while inclusive fitness for nepotism may favor the individual level during emergency queen rearing, that advantage is profoundly overridden by opposing selective forces acting at multiple levels favoring cooperation and altruism."

The study strengthens the evidence that "the good of the hive" overpowers the narrow genetically selfish interests of individual workers.

Withrow adds: "While we already knew that honey bee queens mate with a large number of drones to bring genetic diversity into their colonies, this study suggests that many of a queen's mates are fathering only a tiny fraction of her total offspring. But workers are preferentially selecting members of these cryptic subfamilies for rearing into new queens."

Journal Reference:
James M. Withrow, David R. Tarpy. Cryptic “royal” subfamilies in honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies. PLOS ONE, 2018; 13 (7): e0199124 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199124

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180711141359.htm

[william r sanford72]

Presence of Neonic Insecticides in Wild Turkeys Highlights Widespread Contamination of the Environment

(Beyond Pesticides, July 12, 2018) Neonicotinoid insecticides have become notorious for their impacts to insect pollinators like bees and butterflies, but research finding the presence of these chemicals in wild turkeys is raising new concerns about the ubiquitous nature of these chemicals once released into the environment. Published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research by a team from the University of Guelph (UG), this new study highlights the broader effects of neonicotinoids on wildlife, and underlines calls to restrict the use of these products in favor of a more sustainable pest management approach.

Looking at roughly 40 wild turkeys in southern Ontario, researchers found 10 that contained pesticide residue in their livers. Claire Jardine, PhD, pathobiology professor and study co-author notes that wild turkeys in agricultural regions are more likely to be contaminated. “Wild turkeys supplement their diet with seeds from farm fields,” she indicated in a press release.

The agrichemical industry coats a majority of corn and soybean seeds with neonicotinoids prior to planting. Because of their systemic nature, neonicotinoids are incorporated the seedlings as they grow, with the promise by the industry that this will alleviate pest pressure. However, a significant body of research, including EPA studies, have found that neonicotinoid seed treatments provide little to no benefit to farmers. An assessment published earlier this year by an international team of scientists found that an alternative insurance model could easily replace the need for farmers to purchase expensive neonicotinoid-coated seeds.

“A number of member hunters throughout southern Ontario had seen wild turkeys in the fields eating these seeds,” said another study co-author Amanda MacDonald, PhD. “In certain areas, they noticed a lack of young birds and wanted to know if neonicotinoids had anything to do with it.” As she noted, “There has been growing concern among natural resource managers, conservationists and hunters about whether the use of neonics may be linked to poor reproductive output of wild turkeys.”

Earlier research investigating how neonicotinoids affect birds had found that a single kernel of neonicotinoid-coated corn was enough to kill a songbird. Insecticides like neonicotinoids also been found to interfere with migration patterns, building evidence that the decline of many grassland birds is linked to the widespread use of pesticides on farmland. Although researchers have only tested for the presense of neonicotinoid contamination, the number of detections and reports from those on the ground paint a concerning picture. “We need to continue to assess levels of neonics in a variety of wildlife, especially those that may feed off the ground or consume plants and insects and therefore might be more likely to come into contact with them,” said another study coauthor, Nicole Nemeth, PhD.

Beyond Pesticides continues to work to raise awareness about the dangers and hazards these chemicals pose to wildlife and the wider environment. For more information about neonicotinoid coated seeds and what you can do in your community to protect pollinators and other species impacted by neonicotinoids, see the short video, “Seeds that Poison.”

We can manage land to produce food and encourage wild game without the use of toxic pesticides by moving to organic land management practices. These methods forgo pesticide use in favor of cultural practices that improve soil health and enhance natural ecosystem processes. For more information on organic land management see the recent article in Pesticides and You titled “Thinking Holistically When Making Land Management Decisions.”

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

Source: Environmental Science and Pollution Research, EurekAlert

https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2018/07/presence-neonic-insecticides-wild-turkeys-highlights-widespread-contamination-environment/

[william r sanford72]

The Sting of Defeat: A Brief History of Insects in Warfare

By Ryan C. Gott, Ph.D.

Humans have waged entomological warfare, the use of insects and other arthropods as part of wartime tactics, in myriad ways for thousands of years. The long history of entomological warfare makes it a fascinating subject with many interesting examples from both entomological and sociological standpoints. This brief review is not meant to make light of this serious subject but rather to encourage reflection on sometimes regrettable actions of the past and inspire hope for positive humanitarian applications of entomology in the present and the future.

Entomological warfare (EW) has manifested through human history in three main forms: insects directly used as weapons, insects used to destroy crops, and insects used as vectors to inflict disease. More recently, though, insects have become sources of innovation for advanced military technology.

Insects as Weapons

During the Second Parthian War, King Barsamia used scorpion-stuffed pots thrown at the enemy to defend the ancient Middle Eastern city of Hatra from the Romans. It’s possible that these literal bug bombs also contained rove beetles in the genus Paederus. These small rove beetles’ hemolymph contains the compound pederin.

Pederin causes dermatitis and blistering when contacting skin, a likely scenario when panicked warriors began smashing beetles thrown onto them. King Mithridates VI of Pontus also enlisted arthropods in his wartime maneuvers but favored those of the hymenopteran persuasion. During the Third Mithridatic War, Mithridates ordered grayanotoxin-laden honey created by rhododendron-foraging honey bees to be left along roads for pursuing Roman invaders. Warriors eating this honey as part of their pillaged loot experienced intense sickness and hallucinations, giving it the name “mad honey.” The incapacitated Romans were then easy targets for Mithridates’ army. Mithridates also ordered the release of hornets and bees into sapper tunnels dug beneath battlefields. Clearly, applied entomology has a very long, if brutal, history.

Insects as Crop Pests

Deploying insects to destroy enemy crops is an odious act of EW of which many countries have accused one another, but it also one that is rarely proven. In 1944 Germany was accused of slipping Colorado potato beetles into Britain to decimate crops. After the Vietnam War, North Korea accused the United States of releasing insects in its agriculture (though any plant loss may have actually been caused by the defoliant Agent Orange). And in 1997 Cuba accused the U.S. of aerially dropping thrips onto the island during the Cold War. It’s near impossible to prove if these claims are true, but they certainly served their purpose of elevating one country’s complaints against another onto the world stage. Modern EW like the use of insects to destroy crops would be banned under the Biological Weapons Convention of the Geneva Conventions. Of course an individual country can ignore these conventions at any time, and not all countries subscribe to them in the first place.

Insects as Disease Vectors

Mosquitoes and yellow fever, lice and typhus, fleas and plague: Such insects may be most infamous as vectors of debilitating diseases. From Napoleon’s conquests to the American Civil War, battles and wars have been decided by these insect-initiated illnesses, whether accidentally or intentionally (such as the catapulting of plague-ridden corpses over city walls). Many countries have investigated the efficacy of insects and their associated diseases as biological weapons, including the United States, which has tested insect-based tactics on American citizens, notably in Operations Drop Kick, Big Buzz, and Big Itch. But the case of Dr. Shiro Ishii is perhaps the most disturbing example of vectors being used for entomological evil.

Dr. Shiro Ishii was a microbiologist and a Japanese army medical officer during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. As he rose through the ranks, Ishii was placed in charge of building and running Unit 731, a top-secret biological weapons research and development facility. Unit 731 was established in northeast China in a Japanese puppet state on nearly 6 square kilometers of land. Officially, Unit 731 operated as a water purification plant and lumber mill, part of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army.

Ishii and others working at Unit 731 would eventually kill well over 10,000 Chinese citizens and prisoners of war over the years. They referred to their victims as maruta or “logs,” which both referenced the cover story of being a sawmill and revealed their complete disregard for the lives of these people. Unit 731 investigated, among many deplorable things, the best disease and vector combinations to attack an enemy and the best way to introduce that vector, via water supply, air, on so on. For an in-depth account of the work of Ishii, and more on EW in general, the book Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War by Jeffrey Lockwood is a highly recommended read.

Insects as Inspiration

More recently, our ever-adaptable insects have a new role in warfare, one of bioinspiration rather than weaponry. An alloy capable of returning to its original shape, based on the cuticle of the ironclad beetle, is being developed for use in military vehicles. An engineering firm in the United Kingdom is developing a defense surveillance drone called the Skeeter with flight capabilities based on those of dragonflies. And many people have heard of the RoboBee, a tiny flying robot with mechanics based on insects that could also have covert surveillance applications.

With these as just a few of the ways insects continue to inspire innovation, entomology clearly has a bright future. As all entomologists know, there is still so much to learn from and about insects.

Ryan C. Gott, Ph.D., is an entomologist interested in ecotoxicology, pesticide resistance, and pest management. He is currently the Associate Director of Integrated Pest Management at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh.

https://entomologytoday.org/2018/07/13/sting-defeat-brief-history-insects-entomological-warfare/

[william r sanford72]

Honey collection declines in the Sundarbans

The months of April, May and June are considered the natural period for honey collection in the mangrove forest

The collection of wild honey from the Sundarbans has fallen so much over the past few years, traditional honey collectors known as the “Mawali” are no longer motivated to enter the forest in the allotted time.

According to the Forest Department, a total of 723 quintal of wild honey was collected from the Burigoalini range in Sundarbans West Zone last year.

The range is considered to be the largest honey collection zone in the mangrove forest.

From the same range, 885 quintal was collected in 2015-16, 1030 quintal in 2014-15, and 1082 quintal in 2013-14.

“In the last few years, those who are entering the forest at the government declared time, are getting less amount of honey,” Sirajul Islam, a Mawali from Datinakhali area under the Burigoalini range, told the Dhaka Tribune.

Forest officials have blamed the reduced volume of honey on rising water salinity levels and the construction of mobile phone towers inside the forest.

Experts believe the changing of the flowering time period during the natural collection months of April, May and June could also be a factor.

The forest department only issues permits to the Mawali people for entering and collecting honey from the Sundarbans during this fixed timeframe.

“The government should shift the official time period for honey collection ahead by 15 days, as honey production has been beginning earlier than usual,” Pavel Partha, an ecology and biodiversity researcher with 12 years of experience working in Sunderbans, said.

“Many of the plants in the mangrove forest are dependent on honey for pollination. If the honey is not collected on a regular basis, the bees will become naturally lazy, and this could halt their movement as well as the pollination of plants.”

Rising sea levels and salinity

According to a recent government study titled “Assessment of Sea Level Rise and Vulnerability in the Coastal Zone of Bangladesh through Trend Analysis,” the water level in the Ganges tidal floodplain increased by 7-8mm per year over the last 30 years.

At the same time, it increased by 6-9mm per year in the Meghna Estuarine floodplain, and by 11-20mm a year in the Chittagong coastal plain area over the same period. The increasing sea level has led to salt encroaching further inland.

Data from the Soil Resource Development Institute (SRDI) shows that total area affected by salt in the coastal region increased by 26% from 1973 to 2009, with 3.5% of the increase taking place in the last nine years.

Areas affected by high salinity are primarily located in the southwestern and central zones of the coastal region.

“We have seen that less honey is being collected in recent years, and are trying to address the issue,” Md Bashirul-Al-Mamun, divisional forest officer of Sundarbans West Zone, said.

“Increasing salinity may have reduced the flowering of mangrove trees and led to the reduction in honey collected.”

Forest economy

The permit for a boat carrying up to nine people for honey collection requires a fee of around Tk7,000, with each person allowed to collect up to 75kg of honey. The forest department issues the permit from April 1 each year.

All of the teams that apply get permission to roam the entire forest and collect honey for a month. Apart from collectors with permission, many also enter the forest illegally in order to collect various resources, including honey.

According to the Forest Department, about 16,000 maunds (1 maund=37.32kg) of honey and honeycombs are extracted from the Sundarbans annually.

Around 500,000 people living on the periphery of the forest are hugely dependent on the forest for resources such as honey, fish, shrimp fry, crabs, Nipah Palm (Golpata), and wood.

https://www.dhakatribune.com/climate-change/2018/07/13/honey-collection-declines-in-the-sundarbans

[william r sanford72]

Thor Hansons Book...'Buzz' Offers An Adoration For Bees Amid Continued Die-Offs

Book Review by Barbara J. King, NPR.

Ecological statistics pertaining to bees carry a sting: More than 75 percent of the world's 115 primary crops require pollination or thrive better through interaction with pollinators.

Bees are the primary pollinators in the animal kingdom, yet sudden and massive die-offs of these insects began in 2006 and continue now, with a 30 percent annual loss reported by North American beekeepers.

These statistics — and the severity of this enormous reduction in bee numbers — is at the heart of Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees authored by conservation biologist Thor Hanson.

The now-famous "Colony Collapse Disorder," where whole populations fall apart when workers go off on foraging trips and never return to the hive, is only part of the story, Hanson emphasizes. Bees face extreme pressures from the four P's — caused or exacerbated by human encroachment upon the natural world: parasites, poor nutrition, pesticides, and pathogens.

A skilled communicator, Hanson explain details of these pressures through his interviews with bee biologists and conservationists. Buzz shines the most brightly, though, when Hanson's own adoration of bees comes through: he wanders around the landscape observing them and musing about their natural history in ways that light up the page and make the book a rewarding choice for readers keen on science and nature.

Vegetarianism is at the heart of bees' lives. At some point in the past, flower-feeding bees evolved from carnivorous wasps.

What would drive such a change? Wasps hunt one kind of prey for their own consumption, but then "track down something entirely different for their offspring." By contrast, "bees had the advantage of one-stop shopping," Hanson notes. "A good flower gave them sugary nectar for their own use, and protein-rich pollen that could be carried back home to nourish the young."

Entomologists cannot pinpoint when this evolutionary divergence of bees from wasps occurred but know that it was before 70 million years ago, the date of the first "unequivocal" bee found in the fossil record. Thinking about this ancient date, the imagination flares: Did towering dinosaurs notice the tiny bees with whom they shared the world?

From that point forward, bees and flowers have been locked in an intricate evolutionary dance. This choreography should not be romanticized, Hanson states flatly: "Bees perceive flowers as a resource, and flowers use bees as convenient tools."

A theme in Buzz is the splendid diversity of the world's bees — a richness tallying to more than 20,000 species — that goes largely unrecognized because honeybees command so much of our attention.

"All the multitudes of wild bees stand in the shadow of their single, better-known cousin," Hanson remarks.

Native only to Africa, Europe and Western Asia, honeybees are invasive here in the Americas where at times they out-compete (and thus harm) native species. Honeybees are highly social, but the popular linkage of bees and bustling hives isn't necessarily accurate: Many bees are solitary. Once a mason-bee mother, for instance, lays an egg, she walls it up with a supply of food and "moves on without a second thought," Hanson explains.

Natural-history work on bees requires collecting bees for close and comparative analysis. This is the method by which entomological science unfolds.

"Killing jars quickly produce piles of dead bees that must be fixed on pins," Hanson says, to allow for accurate identification. Even as he pens a near-ode to a beautiful opalescent alkali bee – "the first one I fell in love with" —he notes how quickly he scooped the bee into that lethal jar. I can't help but think that this specimen collecting, multiplied as it is by all the entomologists, graduate students, and amateurs who carry it out, could be somewhat reigned in for the sake of the living animals, without hurting science.

Just like the Hadza hunter-gatherers of today, our Paleolithic ancestors almost certainly prized the sweetness of honey, and we know that people kept bees long before horses were domesticated or crops like apples or coffee were planted. Now, heavy dependence on bees as a key pollinator for our own foods means we're at a crisis stage.

Hanson travels to the almond groves of California's Central Valley where 81 percent of the world's almonds are grown and where rented pollinators run the show — bees trucked in from as far away as Florida and Maine. Pollinator conservation experts are working to entice local bees to the almond groves by planting bee-friendly flowers and hedgerows.

Hanson urges his readers to go outside on a sunny day, "find a bee on a flower, and settle down to watch." That's a great idea for a languid summer day, and his own rambles to bee-besotted cliffs on the island in Washington State where he lives provide charming models.

Our appreciation for bees shouldn't stop there. Hanson insists that we already know enough about the ecological crisis unfolding "to act in specific ways" on behalf of these insects whose lives intersect so closely with our own. Among other things, all of us — "ordinary citizens" as well as conservationists, Hanson says — can work toward reducing the use of pesticides and build up our landscapes to include more flowers and bee-nesting habitats.

Barbara J. King is an author and anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. Her most recent books are How Animals Grieve and Personalities on the Plate: The Lives & Minds of Animals We Eat.

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/15/628811585/buzz-offers-an-adoration-for-bees-amid-continued-die-offs

[Star Tsar]

Bee-Keepers of London may wish to check this link out for events, advice etc...

http://www.lbka.org.uk/

:bearhug:

[william r sanford72]

Assessment of spatial and temporal variations in trace element concentrations using honeybees (Apis mellifera) as bioindicators

Nenad M. Zaric​1, Isidora Deljanin1, Konstantin Ilijević2, Ljubiša Stanisavljević3, Mirjana Ristić4, Ivan Gržetić2

July 16, 2018

Author and article information
1
Innovation Center of the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, Belgrade, Serbia
2
Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
3
Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
4
Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serb

Subject Areas
Biosphere Interactions, Atmospheric Chemistry, Environmental Contamination and Remediation, Environmental Impacts

Abstract

With the increase in anthropogenic activities metal pollution is also increased and needs to be closely monitored. In this study honeybees were used as bioindicators to monitor metal pollution. Metal pollution in honeybees represents pollution present in air, water and soil. Concentrations of As, Cs, Hg, Mo, Sb, Se, U and V were measured. The aim of this study was to assess spatial and temporal variations of metal concentrations in honeybees. Samples of honeybees were taken at five different regions in Serbia (Belgrade - BG, Pančevo - PA, Pavliš - PV, Mesić - MS, and Kostolac - TPP) during 2014. Spatial variations were observed for Sb, which had higher concentrations in BG compared to all other regions, and for U, with higher concentrations in the TPP region.

High concentrations of Sb in BG were attributed to intense traffic, while higher U concentrations in the TPP region are due to the vicinity of coal fired power plants.

In order to assess temporal variations at two locations (PA and PV) samples were taken during July and September of 2014 and June, July, August and September of 2015. During 2014 observing months of sampling higher concentrations in July were detected for Sb and U in BG, which is attributed to lifecycle of plants and honeybees. During the same year higher concentrations in September were observed for As, Sb in PA and Hg in PV. This is due to high precipitation during the peak of bee activity in spring/summer of 2014. No differences between months of sampling were detected during 2015. Between 2014 and 2015 statistically significant differences were observed for Hg, Mo and V; all elements had higher concentrations in 2014. This is in accordance with the trend of reduction of metal concentrations in the bodies of honeybees throughout the years in this region.

Main article text:https://peerj.com/articles/5197/

[william r sanford72]

Why Are American Beekeepers Losing 40-50% Of Their Bees?

TheOrganicView

Published on Jul 16, 2018

Regardless of the bumper crops hobbyist beekeepers boast about and random pockets where bees appear to be thriving, the fact is American honey bees and other pollinators are in serious trouble. Although each administration makes an attempt to do something to help protect our pollinators, we have a long way to go before we can even think about following in the footsteps of the EU and pass a ban on neonicotinoids.

Recently, the Congressional Pollinator Protection Caucus was held in Washington, DC. Mr. Tim May, President of the American Beekeeping Federation attended and has some interesting facts to share. In this segment of The Neonicotinoid View Radio Show, bee health advocates, June Stoyer and Tom Theobald talk to Tim May about this briefing. Mr. May will also share his views about how American beekeepers are faring, despite confusing statistics from USDA.

www.theorganicview.com

JhtGhyBlX28

[william r sanford72]

Asian Honeybees Perform An Extraordinary Act Of Self-Sacrifice To Protect The Hive Against Invading Hornets

By Rosie McCall

New research, published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, shows that Asian honeybees (Apis cerana japonica) perform an act of incredible self-sacrifice when confronted with an unwelcome guest.

The Japanese giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia japonica) is a particularly nasty predator that can massacre as many as 40 Asian honeybees in a single minute. During the autumn months, when the hornets are at work tending to their larvae, beehives may have to withstand as many as 30 hornet attacks a week. A bee's weapon-of-choice – its stinger – is hopeless against the hornet's rigid exoskeleton, so the Asian honeybee has had to devise a new tactic.

In order to survive the annual barrage of hornet attacks, the honeybees perform an unusual but incredibly altruistic behavior known as “hot defensive bee ball formation”.

Hundreds of worker honeybees will swarm the hornet while vibrating their wings to amp up the heat. The entire process can go on for more than 30 minutes, during which time temperatures inside the ball can climb to 46°C (115°F). It is essentially death by heat as far as the hornet is concerned.

These defensive ball formations were originally described in 1995, and since then, researchers have analyzed the neural mechanisms behind the extraordinary behavior. Now, a team of researchers led by Atsushi Ugajin, an entomologist at Tamagawa University, Japan, has shown that all this swarming and vibrating comes at a great personal cost for the honeybees involved.

To find out what effect the ball formation has on the honeybees' lifespan, the researchers compared the survival rates of participating honeybees to those of non-participating honeybees. All honeybees, regardless of what group they fell into, were the same age at the experiment's start (15 to 20 days) to keep things fair.

Following an attack, the honeybees that formed balls were dead within 10 days. In contrast, those that did not participate in the ball formation and were instead kept in the hive at 32°C (90°F) were all dead within 16 days. (For reference, the average lifespan for an Asian worker honeybee is a few weeks.)

The team was also curious to see what would happen when there was more than one attack, as there often is out in the wild. They noticed that the honeybees involved in the ball forming in the first attack were far more likely to join the ball forming in the second attack. And while the researchers can't say why this is for sure, they suspect this self-sacrificing behavior helps reduce the cost that the ball formations have on the colony by limiting the number of individual honeybees involved in the behavior.

To watch the bees in action, check out this video:

K6m40W1s0Wc

Double-edged heat: honeybee participation in a hot defensive bee ball reduces life expectancy with an increased likelihood of engaging in future defense:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-018-2545-z

Meet the "hot defensive bee ball," one of the craziest tactics in the animal kingdom:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/5892986/meet-the-hot-defensive-bee-ball-one-of-the-craziest-tactics-in-the-animal-kingdom

www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/asian-honeybees-perform-an-extraoidinary-act-of-self-sacrifice-to-protect-the-hive-against-invading-hornets/

[william r sanford72]

Secret test with DNA-hacked maize in Flanders

"I am surprised and disappointed" – Leen Laenens, chairman of Velt (Association for Ecological Life and Gardening)

Below is a Google translation (slightly edited for clarity) of an article that appeared today in the Belgian newspaper De Morgen.

The organisation that conducted the secret test with genome edited (GM) maize, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), has been lobbying for years for less or no regulation for genome editing techniques.

For the threats posed by so-called genome editing techniques, see this statement https://ensser.org/publications/ngmt-statement/ from concerned scientists.

Read this comment on the GMWatch site to access all sources:
https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/18361

Secret test with DNA-hacked maize in Flanders: "I am surprised and disappointed"

Jeroen Van Horenbeek en Barbara Debusschere

De Morgen, 23 July 2018

https://www.demorgen.be/wetenschap/regering-laat-heel-proef-met-gehackte-mais-al-anderhalf-jaar-toe-b4310c58/

On Wednesday, Europe must make a statement about GMO legislation

The Flemish Institute for Biotechnology has been secretly conducting a field trial with genetically modified maize for a year and a half. The plants have been changed via a sensational new technique that does not yet have clear European legislation. Nevertheless, the federal government agreed with it. This was revealed by De Morgen's research.

The new technique is the CRISPR/Cas9 method. This is regarded as a breakthrough in biology: a molecular "craft set" that researchers can cut and paste cheaply, easily and at will into the DNA of plants, animals and human embryos.

The enormous potential of this "DNA hacking" is also the great danger, according to a number of scientists. The method offers the potential to effectively combat many hereditary diseases and also AIDS, malaria and cancer, but you can also develop that never existed before or eradicate entire populations.

In laboratories worldwide, experiments with the CRISPR/Cas9 method are currently taking place. But confidential documents collected by De Morgen show that researchers from the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) have already taken a step further. Since last year they have planted a field with maize plants that have been changed with the new technology.

VIB spokesman René Custers confirms the existence of the field trial. He emphasizes that this is fundamental research. "The DNA of the maize has undergone a minor change in such a way that the impact of environmental stress such as extreme weather conditions or environmental pollution on the genetic material of the plant can be investigated," he says. "With the knowledge we gain, we hope to find ways to better arm plants against those circumstances."

Custers does not want to disclose the location of the field trial. Previous experiments conducted by the VIB, with GM potatoes and poplars, took place in Wetteren. Field Liberation campaigners stormed a potato field there in 2011. Tests with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are therefore sensitive. But that is not the only reason why the maize field trial has been kept secret for so long: there is currently no clear European legislation on CRISPR/Cas9.

European Court

In Europe, since 2012, there has been a discussion about whether new genetic techniques such as CRISPR/Cas9 should be regarded as genetic modification or not. Biotech companies do not think so, because no "foreign" DNA is added and only existing genes are modified. The environmental movement does not agree with this. The EU keeps deliberating. The European Commission called for restraint in the Member States in 2015, but at the same time never did anything to ban research.

In 2016, the VIB researchers became tired of waiting for clarity and then turned to the federal government. Environment minister Marie Christine Marghem (MR) agreed to a field trial. Based on an analysis of the Belgian legislation on GMOs by her administration, Marghem decided that the CRISPR/Cas9 method would not be covered.

This decision made it possible that the field trial could be carried out in complete secrecy, without a time-consuming GMO permit procedure and different types of associated risk analyses.

Asked for a reaction, the Marghem Cabinet could not provide any comment yesterday.

"I am surprised and disappointed," says Leen Laenens, chairman of Velt (Association for Ecological Life and Gardening). "At the start of this month, we sent a letter from Voedsel Anders [Food Otherwise] – which Velt is a part of – to the federal government asking it to apply the precautionary principle. Which means being careful with the new gene techniques. And then you suddenly hear this. It's incomprehensible. As long as there is no clarity, certainly you must not allow such a field test."

That clarity might be coming soon. On Wednesday, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg must settle the discussion on the new genetic techniques. "The question is whether such a plant is a GMO and in order to obtain certainty about it, we applied to the Belgian government. They confirmed to us that our maize plants do not fall under the provisions of Belgian GMO legislation," says Custers. "Of course it is exciting now because the European Court's ruling can change that. We wait. Hopefully there will now be clarity.

We have been urging Europe for a few years now."

Unwanted mutations

In the meantime it appears that the CRISPR/Cas9 method is less predictable than expected. Last week, the leading journal Nature published a study that shows that the technique "causes many profound mutations and DNA damage". Something that earlier research also suggested. "We have underestimated this," says Patrick Hsu (Salk Institute) in Nature.

Professor of botany Michel Haring (University of Amsterdam) advocates transparency: "There are always unexpected and other effects that differ for every plant. You have to check that very well indeed – and we can now do that. But anyone who is enthusiastic about this because it offers a lot of possibilities cannot fail to admit that it is a GMO procedure. The only honest approach is to make that clear to the public."

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

https://mailchi.mp/gmwatch.org/secret-test-with-dna-hacked-maize-in-flanders?e=eb54924245

[william r sanford72]

Why care about Propolis with Marla Spivak

ery beekeeper at one point has dealt with propolis. Whether you have had it stuck to your gloves, suit, or clumped on your hive tool, propolis can bee a nuisance. Where does it come from? Why do bees produce so much? Why should beekeepers care?

Our expert guest panelist, Marla Spivak, will enlighten us on where bees collect this resin, how it benefits our colonies, and how beekeepers can encourage the production of propolis in their bee hives.

Xsj8mB4KKZs

[william r sanford72]

musical interlude/recipe..cooking with clutch.;)

SOTrHrGSeNM

Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

The Buzz Over Queen Bee Learning And Memory

Chinese scientists have demonstrated that epigenetics contributes to superior learning capacities in queen bees.

AsianScientist (Jul. 30, 2018) – A research group in China has found that honey bee queens are better learners than worker bees due to epigenetics.

Their findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. In social insects, the study of learning and memory has been especially productive because multiple aspects of sociality and how animals interact with their environment—colony defense, foraging and even communication—rely upon sophisticated learning and memory. Honey bees have a major ecological role as pollinators in multiple ecosystems.

However, no studies have demonstrated that honey bee queen learning exists or have examined it in detail. In the present study, Professor Tan Ken and his team at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, China, investigated learning in queen bees of the Apis mellifera species.

They focused on olfactory learning because queens, like workers, likely have good olfactory abilities and olfactory learning has been studied in more detail than any other form of honey bee learning. The researchers compared queen and worker bee olfactory learning at different ages using classical conditioning of the proboscis extension reflex.

“Our data provide the first demonstration that honey bee queens, like workers, have excellent learning and memory,” said Tan.

They also found that the proportion of honey bee queens that exhibited olfactory learning markedly exceeded that of workers of the same age, particularly in young bees. Hence, queen bees possess higher learning capacities than worker bees. The researchers also observed that the enzyme Dnmt3, which adds methyl-group tags to DNA, was elevated in queen bees compared to worker bees.

When they inhibited DNA methylation in the bees with the chemical zebularine, both queen and worker bees exhibited significantly reduced learning and memory. Collectively, these findings indicate that epigenetics is important for social insects to remember and recall tasks or interactions required for colony formation.

The article can be found at: Gong et al. (2018) First Demonstration of Olfactory Learning and Long-term Memory in Honey Bee Queens.

Read more from Asian Scientist Magazine at: https://www.asianscientist.com/2018/07/in-the-lab/honeybee-queen-learning-memory/

[william r sanford72]

usda national Honey report for july 2018

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

[william r sanford72]

Funny Honey at the Zoo Reveals Bees’ Foraging on Sugar Baits

By Meredith Swett Walker

Honey bees are hard-working foragers who get most of the carbohydrates they need from floral nectar, but they won’t pass up a sweet snack just because it doesn’t come from a flower. They’ll occasionally forage on honey dew produced by other insects and sugary food left out by humans. The honey bee’s flexibility in foraging from nonfloral sources is handy for beekeepers who can supplement their hives with sugar water when flowers are scarce. But searching for sweetness in the wrong places has the potential to expose bees to danger.

In a new study published this week in the Journal of Insect Science, Nathaniel Kapaldo and James Carpenter, Ph.D., from Kansas State University and Lee Cohnstaedt, Ph.D., from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Center for Grain and Animal Health Research in Manhattan, Kansas, describe significant foraging by honey bee colonies on dyed sugar baits similar to those used in attractive toxic sugar bait (ATSB) systems to control insects such as mosquitoes. While prior studies have shown limited impact of ATSBs on nontarget insects, results of this study suggest that honey bees may have higher exposure to these baits than previously estimated.

ATSBs consist of a sugar source, an oral toxin, and sometimes a chemical attractant. They are gaining popularity as a mosquito-control technique because they are easy to use, reasonably effective, and can be relatively environmentally friendly. Both male and female mosquitoes feed on sugary plant juices, including nectar. Female mosquitoes also require protein-rich blood in order to produce eggs, but both sexes are attracted to and can be killed using sugar baits. Because mosquitoes ingest the bait, the toxin does not have to kill on contact, and so moderate toxins can be used including pyrethroids, borates, and botanicals. To reduce effects on nontarget insects, ATSBs are typically sprayed on foliage, not flowers.

The researchers in Kansas did not set out to study honey bee foraging on sugar baits; they were interested in mosquito movements. They deployed dyed, nontoxic sugar baits to mark mosquitoes in the Sunset Zoo in Manhattan, Kansas, to help determine where they were coming from. Sugar baits consisted of an approximately 1-to-4 ratio of sugar to water and standard food coloring (red, blue, or green) from a grocery store. The sugar bait was sprayed on foliage (not flowers) of plants at three locations in the zoo, and mosquitoes were then sampled to determine if they had dyed foreguts.

But, about one month following the experiment with the dyed sugar baits, the apiculturist maintaining the zoo’s bee hives reported some oddly colored honey. Four of the zoo’s six hives contained red honey—of the 133 kilograms (kg) of honey the apiculturist harvested, about 57 kg of it was dyed bright red.

The dyed honey demonstrates significant foraging by the bees on the sugar baits, which in this instance were not toxic. But, had this been a toxic bait, the effect on the bees could have been significant, depending on the toxin used. Cohnstaedt emphasizes that, based on the amount of honey that contained dye, future studies of the effect of ATSB on honey bee colonies should examine whole-hive health, rather than just the effects on individual bees as has been done in the past. The authors also recommend measuring sublethal effects of toxins used in ATSBs—a toxin may not kill the bees, but it could affect a colony’s ability to forage, produce honey, and reproduce.

If future studies do show that ATSBs are bad news for bees, does that spell the end for this promising vector-management technique? Not necessarily, says Cohnstaedt: “Bait stations versus broadcast spraying would reduce contact with nontarget species and environmental contamination.” Bait stations can be fitted with a screen that prevent bees and other nontarget insects from accessing the toxic sugar bait. ATSB stations could also be used to control mosquitoes and other biting insects indoors.

In science, things don’t always go as planned, and sometimes that’s when you learn the most. According to Cohnstaedt, this study “is a case of turning a disaster into a positive. We really thought we had ruined a lot of honey at the zoo, however it turned out fine as it was a food-grade dye, and we learned a lot about the foraging of bees and sugar baits.”

Read More
“Harvesting Sugar From Nonflowering Plants: Implications of a Marked Sugar Bait on Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Whole Hive Health”https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/18/4/9/5061244

Journal of Insect Science

https://entomologytoday.org/2018/08/01/funny-honey-bees-foraging-attractive-toxic-sugar-baits/

[Foxie Loxie]

Hello, Friend! The above article made me think of the story of some sort of honey being used by someone against the Roman troupes to make them sick. I figured you would know about that! :waving:

[william r sanford72]

Hello, Friend! The above article made me think of the story of some sort of honey being used by someone against the Roman troupes to make them sick. I figured you would know about that! :waving:

Yes indeed Foxie I did post a article some time ago about that battle and How Toxic Honey was used against them and just recently posted another article on insects and warfare..intitled The Sting of Defeat: A Brief History of Insects in Warfare..https://entomologytoday.org/2018/07/...gical-warfare/

Your memory is as sharp as ever Foxie..:sun:

William..

[william r sanford72]

Queen bees and the microbial fountain of youth

August 2, 2018 by Daniel Stolte, University of Arizona

To the untrained eye beholding a beehive, all animals seem equal, but new research reveals that some are more equal than others.

A team of researchers including three graduate students at the University of Arizona discovered that while worker bees and queens can be genetically identical, their vastly different lifespans appear to be connected to different microbes living in their guts.

The observed differences in gut bacteria populations, called microbiomes, could be a clue in a mystery that has vexed scientists for a long time: In two genetically identical castes, why do worker bees die after mere weeks whereas queens can live years?

"Our study is the first to suggest a connection between the bacteria that inhabit the bees' guts, the foods they eat, and physiological differences related to aging, stress and longevity," says Kirk Anderson, a research microbiologist with the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona. Anderson is also an adjunct scientist in the Department of Entomology and Center for Insect Science in the UA's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The study resulted from an interdisciplinary collaboration between the UA, the UA's BIO5 Institute and the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, which is operated by the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The group published their results earlier this month in the high-tier scientific journal Microbiome.

Taking advantage of the UA's next-generation sequencing capabilities, Anderson's team identified the species and amounts of bacteria living in honey bee intestines. This allowed them to compare the bacteria that make up the gut flora in aging workers versus aging queens.

A growing body of research suggests that in humans, so-called probiotic bacteria like Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus are associated with health and longevity, whereas bacteria belonging to a group known as Proteobacteria often are associated with unhealthy microbial imbalances. There appears to be a similar trend in worker bees, leading the researchers to hope that bees could be used as model organisms to study the more complex assemblies of microbes that make up the microbiome in mammals, including humans.

Similar to the physiology of aging, the researchers discovered that queen and worker bees embark on different microbial trajectories: as workers age, their gut microbiomes shift away from the initial dominance of beneficial, probiotic microbes, and their intestines are taken over more and more by bacteria associated with poor health and shorter life expectancy. Queens on the other hand, somehow manage to support a more refined, efficient microbiome, retaining "signatures of youth," as Anderson puts it.

"The aging human gut goes through the same exact thing," he says. "Like the worker bee, it loses the probiotic species like Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus and gains a variety of Proteobacteria, and those changes are intimately tied to our health."

In recent years, interest in the roles of gut microbes has surged. Extensive research has been aimed at disentangling the complex metabolic pathways and interactions among the cells in our body and our microbial commensals and the myriad chemical compounds they produce and exchange.

One such molecule is butyrate, one of many short-chain fatty acids produced by microbial fermentation of dietary fiber. Short-chain fatty acids are known to have important functions ranging from hormone production to the suppression of inflammation and possibly cancer.

"Butyrate is produced in the hindguts of honey bees, via the co-metabolism of bacteria we found to deplete in aging workers and accumulate in aging queens," says Duan Copeland, a co-author and doctoral student in the UA's Department of Microbiology. "Both in honey bees and humans, butyrate is critical to gut health but also affects a broad variety of systemic health issues. It increases immunity and detoxification in bees, and it is known to influence core function in humans, including energy levels and behavior."

"We assume that the presence of the probiotic bacteria is one component of longer life of the queen," says Patrick Maes, a fifth-year doctoral student in the Department of Entomology and Center for Insect Science at the UA. "The other is her much higher levels of vitellogenin, which remain high throughout her life. In workers, you'll see it peak early, then taper off within a few days."

Vitellogenin is a nutrient storage molecule always abundant in the fat and blood of queens. More than simple nutrition, it acts as an antioxidant, improves immunity and suppresses inflammation.

xKa4SApNOVM

"Many of the gut microbes shared by humans and bees can be considered the same characters in a different play," Maes says. "Each harbor similar classes of bacteria. By looking at this simplified system, we can learn a lot about, and possibly augment, the human system."

"The workers will feed her only royal jelly, which they produce in specialized glands. You can think of royal jelly as a type of super food, the bee's equivalent of breast milk, supporting beneficial bacteria and containing antimicrobial peptides."

The study suggests that royal jelly, which enhances the growth of queen-specific gut microbes, sets the queen on a trajectory toward a much longer life by shifting her gut microbiome away from that of the common worker bee. Workers, on the other hand, rely mostly on pollen as their staple food.

Royal jelly, honey and other factors in the hive environment keep unwanted microbes at bay, says Copeland. Bees can acquire their beneficial microbes by coming in contact with food stores, their nest mates and the overall environment in the hive.

The researchers think honey bees could make an excellent model for human microbiome research, because of the striking similarities. While the human microbiome likely comprises thousands of bacterial species, the honey bee has only about a dozen, a much more manageable number to study.

Conventionalized microbiomes, in which all microbes and all their genes are known, are already available for mice, and the same is being realized for honey bees. Such research, says Anderson, could help solve two of the big confounding factors in human microbiome studies: diet and longevity.

"How and why do things get old and die?" he says. "These are fundamental processes that model systems help us explore, and the honey bee with its tractability and relatively simple microbiome could help us answer these questions."

Explore further: Species shifts in the honey bee microbiome differ with age and hive role

More information: Kirk E. Anderson et al. The queen's gut refines with age: longevity phenotypes in a social insect model, Microbiome (2018). DOI: 10.1186/s40168-018-0489-1

https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-018-0489-1

Provided by: University of Arizona

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-queen-bees-microbial-fountain-youth.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-queen-bees-microbial-fountain-youth.html

[william r sanford72]

Take in the world through the eyes of a bee as Bee Simulator gets announced

By Neil Watton (neil363)

Get ready to fly as Bee Simulator is coming to Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch and PC.

There’s some honey-sweet news on the horizon and it concerns the development of Bee Simulator, a game that lets you take in a macro sized world from the perspective of a honeybee.

Arriving on PC later this year, with Xbox One, PS4 and Switch editions dropping a little later, Bee Simulator will see you buzzing around a world inspired by New York’s Central Park, as you compete against other bees in races, collect precious pollen, perform the most outrageous waggle dances and ensure the well being of your entire swarm.

With Gamescom on the horizon, Bee Simulator is preparing to hit new heights and today we get the gift of a brand new trailer, one which shows us the wonderful universe that will be home to our favourite bee-fuelled antics.

“One evening, when I was reading a book about bees to my daughter, I realized that the life of a family of bees is a premade script waiting for a family game. As a parent, I find it important to spend time together on activities we all find interesting and attractive. We designed the Bee Simulator to be such a game” – says Łukasz Rosiński, Creative Director of Varsav Game Studios. “Through the game, the players will learn fun facts about the life of bees, and explore a beautiful world from the perspective of a tiny insect. The split-screen mode will allow you to get to know your colony in a cheerful and entertaining way. We made sure that controlling the flight of the bee will be intuitive for even the youngest players” – ensures Rosiński.

Expect to find a whole ton of adventure included in this bee movie adventure, as you take on the might of the evil wasp and utilise your sting in order to protect your swarm from uninvited guests. But it won’t be just about keeping others safe and Bee Simulator will see you exploring all corners of the park in order to find the very best pollen – if only so you can happily perform a little waggle once you make your way back to the hive, safe in the knowledge that you’ve pleased your Queen.

The main features of Bee Simulator include:

A unique chance to see the macro scale world from the micro perspective of a honeybee;

A realistic representation of a place inspired by Central Park;
Three diverse modes enriched with educational elements: a) Single-player story mode presents you with a family of bees. Can you save the hive from the threat of human beings?;

b) Exploration mode allows you to freely discover a world inspired by Central Park in New York.; c) Split-screen mode can be either used for cooperation or competition. It includes an additional map that makes the game even more fascinating.

A possibility to interact with the surroundings: people, animals, plants, and other insects;

Lack of violence – it’s a perfect choice for parents seeking a game to safely play with their children;
Relaxing music composed by Mikołaj Stroiński, who was responsible for the soundtrack of such games as The Witcher 3 and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

We’ve had the chance to simulate the life of a train driver, and take in the world via the eyes of a goat previously. But being able to fly through the air and worry about nothing but collecting pollen seems like an opportunity too good to miss.

NSEQIvAgH9o


http://www.thexboxhub.com/bee-simulator/

[william r sanford72]

Trump Administration to Abruptly End Ban on Bee-killing Pesticides on National Wildlife Refuges
Also Reverses Ban on Genetically Modified Crops in Refuges

WASHINGTON— The Trump administration’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced it plans to reverse a 2014 national wildlife refuge system ban on the use of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically modified crops that trigger greater pesticide use.

The announcement late this week comes a day after the California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation released a major new analysis finding that four widely used “neonic” pesticides can cause much broader harm than previously thought to pollinators commonly found on many vegetables, fruits and grains, including crops like corn and sorghum that are frequently grown in wildlife refuges.

“Agricultural pesticides, especially bee-killing neonics, have no place on our national wildlife refuges,” said Hannah Connor, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, who this year authored a report documenting the annual use of nearly half a million pounds highly toxic pesticides on America’s wildlife refuges. “This huge backward step will harm bees and other pollinators already in steep decline simply to appease pesticide-makers and promote mono-culture farming techniques that trigger increased pesticide use.

It’s senseless and shameful.”

In 2014 the National Wildlife Refuge system announced it would ban use of neonics and genetically modified crops that cause increased pesticide use on national wildlife refuges. The ban was an effort to ensure that management of the refuges that were created to provide natural habitats for wildlife “restores or mimics natural ecosystem processes…”

Spurred by the growing body of scientific research showing the broad harm neonicotinoids pose to bees and other pollinators, earlier this year the European Union banned neonics for outdoor uses in agriculture. Europe’s decision came after Canada’s pesticide regulatory agency recommended banning imidacloprid, the most widely used neonicotinoid, based on demonstrated harms to aquatic ecosystems.

One of the most important findings of the new California neonic analysis is the discovery of the high risk to bees posed by use of two neonicotinoids, thiamethoxam and clothianidin, on cereal grains like corn, wheat, rice and sorghum.

“Wildlife refuges are places where we should be protecting wildlife, not promoting use of highly toxic poisons on row crops,” said Connor. “All the strongest scientific evidence leaves no doubt we should move aggressively toward banning all outdoor use of these harmful neonics, yet the Trump administration is aggressively expanding their use.”

Background

It’s been well-documented that use of the pesticide glyphosate on crops genetically altered to resist it has played a significant role in the 80 percent decline of monarch butterflies over the past two decades because it kills milkweed, the only food of the monarch caterpillar.

But because over-use of glyphosate -- the active ingredient in Roundup -- has fueled the growth of glyphosate-resistant superweeds across millions of U.S. acres, Monsanto developed seeds that are now resistant to both glyphosate and dicamba, a highly toxic and drift-prone pesticide that, as described in a recent Center analysis, may be even more harmful to monarchs than glyphosate.

One of the biggest problems with dicamba is that it’s notorious for drifting beyond the fields where it’s sprayed. In 2017 alone, dicamba sprayed on genetically engineered crops spurred thousands of reports of drift damage to more than 3.6 million acres of nearby crops and untold stretches of forests and natural areas.

Early estimates from 2018 indicate that 1.1 million acres have been similarly damaged so far this year.

The Trump administration’s re-approval of genetically altered seeds on wildlife refuges will likely increase the use of both glyphosate and dicamba on many refuges.


The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.6 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2018/pesticides-gmos-national-wildlife-refuges-08-04-2018.php

[william r sanford72]

Groundbreaking Research From UC Davis Doctoral Candidate

Doctoral candidate Philipp Brand discovered odorant receptor genes in wingless insects; earlier thought evolved with winged insects

By Maggie Avants,

DAVIS, CA — Doctoral candidate Philipp Brand and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis, had just finished compiling the genome or complete set of genetic material of the firebrat — a tiny wingless, nocturnal insect found throughout much of the world — when something surprised him.

There they were — odorant receptor genes, the scent-detecting genes thought to have evolved with winged insects more than 400 million years ago. But this groundbreaking discovery indicates they evolved millions of years earlier.

The sensory gene is considered one of an insect's most important genes, crucial to foraging, mating and avoiding predators.

"It was interesting because a paper published in 2014 claimed that ORs evolved with winged flight and were thus absent in ancestrally wingless (Apterygota) insects," said Brand, a member of the Population Biology Graduate Group who researches the evolution of olfactory/odorant receptor genes in orchid bees. "Since firebrats are apterygote, we now had proof that this gene family is more ancient than previously thought."

"A week or so after our discovery, a paper coming to the same conclusion but with indirect evidence was posted on the preprint server bioRxiv," Brand related.

That was the sole work of Professor Hugh Robertson of the Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, who specializes in molecular biology and genomics.

Brand proposed that they merge their datasets and write a comprehensive paper of higher impact rather than two independent papers. It was a "go."
The collaborative result: "The Origin of the Odorant Receptor Gene Family in Insects," a newly published paper by a seven-member team from UC Davis, University of Illinois and the University of Tennessee, in the open-access journal eLife, which prints promising research in the life and medical sciences.

The article is online at: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife. https://elifesciences.org/articles/38340

"Our finding that the odorant receptor gene family evolved at the evolutionary base of the insects makes it a major evolutionary novelty that presumably contributed to the adaptation of early insects to terrestrial living," Robertson said.

Said Brand: "Odorant receptors are the largest insect gene family underlying the sense of smell. ORs are thus crucial in the majority of behaviors that involve the sense of smell including foraging, reproduction, and detection of predators."

The cell membranes of odorant receptor neurons are key to detecting scents. In insects, the ORs are usually found in the antennae or mouthparts.

In an effort to identify the origin of the insect OR gene family and the ancestral OR co-receptor (Orco), the team investigated the genome sequences of species belonging to multiple insect and other terrestrial hexapod orders, specifically Collembola (springtails), Diplura (two-pronged bristletails), Archaeognatha (jumping bristletails), Zygentoma (silverfish and firebrats), Odonata (damselflies and dragonflies), and Ephemeroptera (mayflies). A hexapod is a six-legged arthropod named for its most distinctive feature: a consolidated thorax with three pairs of legs (six legs). Most other arthropods have more than three pairs of legs.

In their abstract, the authors wrote that "The origin of the insect odorant receptor (OR) gene family has been hypothesized to have coincided with the evolution of terrestriality in insects. (Christine) Missbach et al. (2014) suggested that ORs instead evolved with an ancestral OR co-receptor (Orco) after the origin of terrestriality and the OR/Orco system is an adaptation to winged flight in insects.

We investigated genomes of the Collembola, Diplura, Archaeognatha, Zygentoma, Odonata, and Ephemeroptera, and find ORs present in all insect genomes butabsent from lineages predating the evolution of insects. Orco is absent only in the ancestrally wingless insect lineage Archaeognatha. Our new genome sequence of the zygentoman firebrat, Thermobia domestica, reveals a full OR/Orco system. We conclude that ORs evolved before winged flight, perhaps as an adaptation to terrestriality, representing a key evolutionary novelty in the ancestor of all insects, and hence a molecular synapomorphy for the Class Insecta."

Synapomorphy is defined as a characteristic present in an ancestral species and shared exclusively by its evolutionary descendants.

The research is a UC Davis cross-departmental collaboration involving associate professor Brian Johnson of the Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, Wei Lin of the Johnson lab and a member of the Entomology Graduate Group; and Brand, who studies with major professor Santiago Ramirez of the Department of Evolution and Ecology.

"A recurring theme in the field of genomics is that incomplete sampling of the relevant taxa often leads to premature conclusions," said Johnson. "Our work on ORs is a good example of this."

Johnson studies the genetics, behavior, evolution, and health of honey bees. His lab currently focuses on the evolution and genetic basis of social behavior using comparative and functional genomics.

The seven-member team, in addition to the UC Davis and University of Illinois scientists, included a trio from the University of Tennessee: Ratnasri Pothula, William Klingeman and Juan Luis Jurat-Fuentes.

Brand recalled that he detected the multiple odorant receptor genes in the firebrat genome in late January or early February.

"I was working at home after my normal work day, because this genome work I did with Brian was a side project for me—he knew of my interest in genomics and offered me the opportunity to collaborate on his lab's ongoing projects."

Brand expects to receive his doctorate from UC Davis in the spring of 2019. A native of Germany and a former research scientist at Ruhr-University, Bochum, he received his master's degree in genetics and evolutionary biology in 2013 from Ruhr-University, and his bachelor's degree in biology in 2010 from Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Earlier this year Brand won the Genome Biology and Evolution (GBE) Best Graduate Paper Award for "The Evolutionary Dynamics of the Odorant Receptor Gene Family in Corbiculate Bees," published in GBE in 2017. Corbiculate refers to pollen-basket bees such as orchid bees, bumble bees, honey bees and stingless bees. His research also won him the Best Graduate Student Poster Award at the 2017 UC Davis Bee Symposium.

Winged insects first appeared on earth 406 million years ago, according to research published in a 2014 edition Science by molecular biodiversity researcher Bernhard Misof, a professor at the University of Bonn, Germany.

Fossil records indicate that hexapods diverged from crustaceans 410 to 510 million years ago, according to Misof.

"At this time in geological history, land masses were dotted with shallow inland seas, and plant life (mostly algae and bryophytes) was largely restricted to coastal habitats and other sites where water was readily available," according to a North Carolina State University's Department of Entomology website.

"The oldest hexapod fossils are found in rocks of the late Devonian period. These rocks also contain numerous other terrestrial arthropods (mites, spiders, centipedes, scorpions, etc.) suggesting that a major radiation of terrestrial life-forms must have occurred during the Ordovician or Silurian period."

The first known fossil record of Apterygota insects, which include firebrats, silverfish and jumping bristletails—dates back to the Devonian period, which began 417 years ago.

The firebrat, found throughout the world under rocks and leaf litter, is an indoor pest of dog food, stored foods, fabric and book bindings. It is commonly found in high-humidity environments such as bakeries and boiler rooms.

According to the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM), both firebrats and their cousin silverfish "have enzymes in their gut that digest cellulose, and they choose bookcases, closets, and places where books, clothing, starch, or dry foods are available. Silverfish and firebrats are nocturnal and hide during the day. If the object they are hiding beneath is moved, they will dart toward another secluded place. They come out at night to seek food and water.

Both insects prefer dry food such as cereals, flour, pasta, and pet food; paper with glue or paste; sizing in paper including wallpaper; book bindings; and starch in clothing. Household dust and debris, dead insects, and certain fungi also are important sources of food. However, they can live for several months without nourishment."

"Large numbers of these insects can invade new homes from surrounding wild areas, especially as these areas dry out during the summer," the UC IPM website says. "They also can come in on lumber, wallboard, and similar products. Freshly laid concrete and green lumber supply humidity, while wallpaper paste provides food."

https://patch.com/california/davis/groundbreaking-research-uc-davis-doctoral-candidate

[william r sanford72]

Czech study shows chlorella algae prolongs bee's lives

Source: Xinhua

PRAGUE, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- A team of Czech specialists have been giving the bees chlorella algae in the form of powder or sweet dough and found out that bees had become more healthy and viable.

Vaclav Kristufek, with the Ceske Budejovice Biology Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, has revealed the results after a research on how chlorella algae affect the lives of bees.

Beekeeping farm Koblizek, in the central Czech city of Jihlava, has become the first in the country to offer natural feed supplement for bees with this algae, which helps them during the critical periods of development of the honeybee colonies.

Based on the results of the 4-year study of the scientists, honey production has increased by 17 percent since the bees got fed with algae.

The outcome of experiment with 30 bee colonies from ten apiaries, made in 2015 and 2016, shows that the freshwater green micro alga chlorella is an attractive food for bees, which they stored in pollen cells and used mainly as a source of protein.

Scientists say that chlorella also contains substances that can act as prevention against the bee plague.

Kristufek, who himself is a beekeeper, noticed an interesting coincidence -- the bees tend to keep in clouds near the algae dryer.

"It was in the spring, when nothing was blooming and there was no pollen at all," Kristufek said. This was how the idea to use algae as a supplementary food for bees appeared, he added.

Chlorella contains 40 to 50 percent of proteins and other substances that are important for immunity. According to scientists, when a bee receives food with algae, it becomes more lively, there are more bees in the hive, the queen bee lays more eggs, more larvae appear, and bee life gets visibly longer.

Scientists then developed a new natural feed supplement for bees called apialgaprotein. It is designed to be given to bees at certain periods of time, such as in the spring at critical periods of honeybee hive development, in the summer after June 20, when the generation of long-lived bees is being developed, and in autumn.

When chlorella is offered to bees in powder, they use it as pollen. According to the research, this has enhanced the function of the pharyngeal glands of the honeybee.

In 2015, there were 54,416 beekeepers in the Czech Republic who kept 596,313 bee colonies. Annual honey production in the country is around 10,000 tons per year. In 2015, the average honey production was 15.5 kilograms per hive.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-08/10/c_137379749.htm

[william r sanford72]

Substances associated with bee ferocity reported
August 15, 2018 by Peter Moon,

Brazilian researchers may have discovered why Africanized honeybees are so aggressive. The scientists detected higher levels of certain chemical substances in the brains of Africanized honeybees than in gentler strains of honeybees bred by beekeepers.

According to a study published in Journal of Proteome Research, the chemical substances in question may trigger irascible behavior by normally placid bees.

The same compounds had been detected in the brains of flies and mice, where they appeared to regulate food intake and digestion. This evidence provides an example of how behavior evolves differently in different species via similar molecular mechanisms.

The research was conducted by Professor Mario Sérgio Palma at the Center for Studies of Social Insects in São Paulo State University's Bioscience Institute (IB-UNESP), Rio Claro, Brazil.

"We study the composition of proteins in the glandular systems of wasps, bees, ants, spiders and scorpions. We analyze the individual functions of each protein and its molecular interactions, as well as its molecular structures. That includes these animals' venoms, their chemical communication systems via chemical compounds, and the neurochemistry of the regulation of arthropod behavior via the nervous system," Palma said.

The study set out to investigate the neurohormone production mechanism in the bee brain. Neurohormones are chemical compounds that regulate the nervous system and are involved in mediating the social behavior of these insects. The study relates to the identification, characterization and quantification of the proteins in animal systems.

"We wanted to study the origin and metabolism of neuropeptide precursor proteins in the bee brain in order to understand how these hormones are produced," Palma said. "We also wanted to identify the brain regions responsible for the action of these compounds. To this end, we used matrix-assisted laser/desorption ionization (MALDI) combined with mass spectrometry imaging (MSI)."

The technique consists of breaking down the atoms or molecules in a sample so that they become charged with more or fewer electrons than the original (ionization) and then separating them by mass/charge ratio in order to identify and quantify them. It can be used to identify chemical compounds inside tissue without requiring cellular extracts and to locate the brain regions in which hormones are active.

"You can use it to investigate the chemical structure of neuropeptides and map the brain regions they affect," Palma explained.

The experiments were performed at IB-UNESP's apiary. Combs containing larvae were incubated in the laboratory, and some 1,000 newly emerged workers were marked on the thorax using nontoxic paint. They were returned to the hive, and when the marked bees were 20 days old, the colony was subjected to what the researchers call an aggression or stinging assay.

The bees, including marked individuals, were placed in an observation arena. A small black leather ball with a diameter of 5 cm was waved several times in front of them.
"Various kinds of warning and attack behavior were observed and recorded by the researchers," Palma said.

Some bees also stung the target and thus got stuck to the surface of the ball by their barbed lancets. Marked individuals were collected, immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen and dissected. Their brains were removed and cut into slices for proteomic analysis. Proteomics is a field of biotechnology that analyzes the entire protein complement of a cell, tissue or organism.

Worker bees that remained in the hive during the attack were also collected for comparison with the aggressive individuals.

Hormones and aggression

Commenting on the comparison between the bees captured outside the hive and individuals who remained inside, Palma stressed that it was not a matter of location but of differences observed between worker bees that displayed the various kinds of alarm and aggressive behavior, especially stinging, and workers that did not become aggressive even when stimulated to do so.

"The precursor proteins in the brains of the non-aggressive bees were found to be intact in their inactive form, meaning these substances didn't stimulate aggressive behavior," he said.

On the other hand, only the mature forms of these proteins were found in the brains of the aggressive bees. They were small pieces of precursor proteins created by the action of enzymes known as proteases. These smaller pieces must undergo further chemical modification (proteolysis or cleavage) in order to become active neuropeptides, that is, hormones acting on the brain in order to adapt the organism according to some behavioral pattern—in this case, the bee's aggressive behavior.

"The neuropeptides we identified can be found with minor structural differences in several insects, but until now, they have rarely been chemically and functionally characterized. In the aggressive bees analyzed, we concluded that the functions of these neuropeptides were to regulate the energy metabolism, activate vigilance and spatial coordination of flight, and stimulate the production of alarm pheromones."

When the researchers observed that the neuropeptides stimulated aggressive behavior, they decided to synthesize these compounds in the laboratory and inject them into young worker bees, presumably too immature to perform aggressive roles in the colony.

"The result was that these workers began displaying aggressive behavior only a short time after being injected with the neuropeptides. This included stinging the targets," said Palma, who is principal investigator for the FAPESP Thematic Project.

Origin of ferocity

The neuropeptide precursors are mature in the brains of adult workers, but in young workers, they have not yet been cleaved and cannot result in mature or active neuropeptides.

By the time workers are between 15 and 20 days old, they have the molecular tools needed to catalyze precursor maturation. As a result, the neuropeptides in their brains are instantly activated in response to threatening physicochemical stimuli, and they begin to behave aggressively.

"When we injected synthetic neuropeptides in their mature form into these young workers, they were endowed with mature neuropeptides, and in a few moments, these compounds activated metabolic and physiological transformations that enabled the bees to behave very aggressively," Palma said.

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

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.8b00098

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-substances-bee-ferocity.html#jCp

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-substances-bee-ferocity.html

[william r sanford72]

New pesticide may harm bees as much as those to be replaced
August 15, 2018 by Marlowe Hood

A new class of pesticides positioned to replace neonicotinoids may be just as harmful to crop-pollinating bees, researchers cautioned Wednesday.

In experiments, the ability of bumblebees to reproduce, and the rate at which their colonies grow, were both compromised by the new sulfoximine-based insecticides, they reported in the journal Nature.

Colonies exposed to low doses of the pesticide in the lab yielded significantly less workers and half as many reproductive males after the bees were transferred to a field setting.

"Our results show that sulfoxaflor"—one of the new class of insecticide—"can have a negative impact on the reproductive output of bumblebee colonies," said lead author Harry Siviter, a researcher at Royal Holloway University of London.

As with neonicotinoids, sulfoxaflor does not directly kill bees, but appears to affect the immune system or the ability to reproduce.

Foraging behaviour, and the amount of pollen collected by individual bees remained unchanged in the experiment.

The study has been published amid legal challenges and shifting national policies on neonicotinoids, among the most commonly used insecticides in the world.

In April, European Union countries voted to ban three neonicotinoid-based products in open fields, restricting use to covered greenhouses.

Earlier this month Canada followed suit, announcing the phase-out of two of the pesticides widely applied to canola, corn and soybean crops.

Neonicotinoids are based on the chemical structure of nicotine and attack insect nervous systems. Sulfoximine insecticides, while in a different class, act in a similar way.

Unlike contact pesticides—which remain on the surface of foliage—neonicotinoids are absorbed by the plant from the seed phase and transported to leaves, flowers, roots and stems.

They have been widely used over the last 20 years, and were designed to control sap-feeding insects such as aphids and root-feeding grubs.

Past studies have found neonicotinoids can cause bees to become disorientated such that they cannot find their way back to the hive, and lower their resistance to disease.

Colony collapse

Other research has shown that crop pests have also built up resistance.

"Sulfoximine-based insecticides are a likely successor and are being registered for use globally," Siviter noted.

In 2013, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved two sulfoxaflor-based pesticides for sale under the brand names Transform and Closer.

Sulfoxaflor is also registered in Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, India, Mexico and a couple of dozen other countries.

Experts not involved in the research praised its methodology and said the findings should sound an alarm.

"This study shows an unacceptable scale of impact on bumblebee reproductive success, after realistic levels of exposure to sulfoxaflor," commented Lynn Dicks, an Natural Environmental Research Council Fellow at the University of East Anglia.

Conducting such research should be a "mandatory requirement" before pesticide companies bring such products to market, he said.

For Nigel Raine, a professor at the University of Guelph in Canada who holds a chair in pollinator conservation, "the findings suggest that concerns over the risks of exposing bees to insecticides should not be limited to neonicotinoids."

Fears have been growing globally in recent years over the health of bees.

Pesticides have been blamed as a cause of colony collapse disorder along with mites, pesticides, virus and fungus, or some combination of these factors.

The United Nations warned last year that 40 percent of invertebrate pollinators—particularly bees and butterflies—risk global extinction.

Explore further: EU court upholds curbs on bee-killing pesticide https://phys.org/news/2018-05-eu-court-curbs-bee-killing-pesticide.html

More information: Harry Siviter et al. Sulfoxaflor exposure reduces bumblebee reproductive success, Nature (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0430-6

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-pesticide-bees.html#nRlv

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-pesticide-bees.html#jCp

[william r sanford72]

Pesticide damage to DNA found "programmed" into future generations

EXCERPT: [Dr Paul] Winchester lays the blame [for rising infertility] at the feet of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which doesn't consider epigenetic or generational effects of chemicals, and the pesticide and chemical manufacturers like Monsanto. "They can sell all the Roundup they want, but if it's in me they are going to have to pay for that. Every molecule that I find is on them … What I want to know is: has my fetus had altered DNA imprinting because of this chemical? I have a right to know that. If we are going to have to wait 75 years to find out if my grandchildren are going to be affected by it, I think somebody has to pay. They better put a fund together. I want somebody's head to roll. I don't think that the EPA and Monsanto get to walk away."

https://mailchi.mp/gmwatch.org/pesticide-damage-to-dna-found-programmed-into-future-generations?e=eb54924245

Ken Roseboro
EcoWatch, 16 Aug 2018

https://www.ecowatch.com/generational-harm-of-pesticides-2596453994.html

"They can sell all the Roundup they want, but if it's in me they are going to have to pay for that. Every molecule that I find is on them … What I want to know is: has my fetus had altered DNA imprinting because of this chemical? I have a right to know that. If we are going to have to wait 75 years to find out if my grandchildren are going to be affected by it, I think somebody has to pay. They better put a fund together. I want somebody's head to roll. I don't think that the EPA and Monsanto get to walk away."

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

[william r sanford72]

Australia: Councils urged to suspend use of Roundup or face risk of legal action

Councils should ban the use of Roundup or risk being sued by employees and residents if their health is affected

https://mailchi.mp/gmwatch.org/australia-councils-urged-to-suspend-use-of-roundup-or-face-risk-of-legal-action?e=eb54924245

Councils urged to suspend use of Roundup or face risk of legal action
by Sarah Brookes

Hills Gazette (Australia), August 16, 2018

https://www.communitynews.com.au/hills-gazette/news/councils-urged-to-suspend-use-of-roundup-or-face-risk-of-legal-action/

COUNCILS should ban the use of Roundup or risk being sued by employees and residents if their health is affected, say action groups.

The call comes in the wake of a landmark lawsuit in the United States in which a jury found chemical giant Monsanto liable for causing a school groundsman’s cancer from his exposure to the weedkiller.

The active chemical in Roundup – glyphosate –is classified as probably carcinogenic by the World Health Organisation but is still approved for use in Australia.

Alliance for a Clean Environment convenor Jane Bremmer said councils should immediately suspend the use of glyphosate in public places, particularly children’s playgrounds.

“Local government authorities are now compelled by this legal precedent to protect their constituents and worker’s health and their own legal liability by suspending the use of glyphosate in public places and invest in safer, alternative weed control practices,” she said.

“It is simply absurd to suggest that allowing children to play on freshly sprayed grass within minutes of a pesticide application is safe.

“It’s a tragic case of the Emperor’s new clothes with potentially deadly consequences.”

The Shire of Mundaring and City of Kalamunda said they would continue to use glyphosate in line with the advice from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) recommendation that products containing the pesticide were safe to use as per the manufacturer’s instructions.

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

[william r sanford72]

Mack the Bee Dog Sniffs out Trouble in Maryland’s Honeybee Colonies

By Stephanie Gibeault, MSc, CPDT
Aug 17, 2018 | 3 Minutes

scent work

What do almonds, honeybees, and a spore-forming bacterium have in common? Mack, the bee dog. Mack is a 5-year-old Labrador Retriever tasked with protecting Maryland’s commercial honeybee populations from American Foulbrood (AFB) — one of the most devastating honeybee colony diseases.

Mack works alongside owner and handler, Cybil Preston, the chief apiary inspector for the Maryland Department of Agriculture. Preston, a master beekeeper, oversees the certification of honeybee colonies as disease-free. This is particularly important because Maryland bee colonies are often shipped across the country to pollinate food crops of almonds, citrus, and blueberries. In fact, about one-third of America’s crops require pollination, making commercial bee colonies a crucial component of agriculture.

If a colony infected with AFB was shipped to another state, it could destroy local bee populations. “One dead larva could house one million spores, making it extremely contagious,” Preston explains to AKC. Although AFB is harmless to humans, it can quickly spread from hive-to-hive and kill bees. The spores of the bacteria are present in the honey, the wax, and the wooden hive box, so when honeybees instinctively gather food and store it for the winter, the diseased hive can infect surrounding hives. “If a hive dies, other honeybees will rob the honey from the dead colony, thus removing the spores and taking them back to their colony.” That’s where Mack comes in.

Protector of Bees

Mack has been trained to detect the scent of dead bee larva. According to Preston, “Larva that die from the AFB bacteria have a specific scent.” Unlike human inspectors, who must open the colonies to examine the inside, Mack sniffs the outside of beehives and sits to alert Preston when he’s found a trace of AFB. “Mack can complete more inspections than humans, and he can also inspect colonies during cold weather, when colonies cannot be opened for human inspections,” says Preston.

Rather than working year-round, Mack works during the colder weather when the bees are dormant. This helps him avoid being stung. It also allows hive inspections to run all year. Preston explains, “We utilize him at 52 degrees and colder. Humans open hives for inspection at 60 degrees and above. So essentially, Mack works from November through March and human inspectors work March through October.”

Preston adopted Mack when the dog was younger than 2-years-old, and he has been certified as an AFB detector since he was two-and-a-half. The dog is incredibly accurate and can inspect well over 1,000 colonies a month. That makes him an amazing asset to Preston’s department. But training Mack was challenging for Preston because she had never done anything like that before. “I had never trained a dog in scent detection, but had trained my other dogs in obedience and Canine Good Citizen.”

Preston and Mack benefited from the assistance of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. “They trained us on scent detection through a series of drills and games,” says Preston. Mack used special AFB toys. “We played games with toys and training aides saturated in the bacteria.” The pair started training in the spring, and they were certified by the end of the following October.

Although Mack isn’t the first bee dog employed by the Maryland Department of Agriculture, he is the only one working today. In fact, the department is the only one in the country using dogs for bee disease detection. Preston doesn’t know of any other certified bee disease detector dogs in the business.

Expanding the Team

Because Mack’s training was so successful, Preston has decided to add another dog to the detection team. She initially thought any dog could be trained for AFB detection, so she adopted a Beagle-cross named Clark. But Clark didn’t take to the job like Mack. “He is sharp and has high prey drive. But alas, he didn’t work out, as he did not like working on his own. He is a pack dog and would lose confidence and interest when working independently with me. He only liked working when he was Mack’s sidekick.”

So then Preston adopted Tukka, a springer spaniel mix. Where Mack is a laid-back people-pleaser with a high ball-drive, Tukka is a high-energy, high ball-drive firecracker. Because of that, Tukka “requires more training drills to release his intense energy,” says Preston. She hopes to have him certified by the fall. With Tukka and Mack on the job over the winter, Preston’s team will be able to work faster and protect far more honeybees.

Preston, who feels very blessed to do what she does, says her dogs thoroughly enjoy AFB detection. “I think they love training and working because they light up when I use the special words that indicate my intentions. They jump for joy when I say, ‘Let’s go,’ ‘Go get in the van,’ or ‘Let’s go work!'” And when work is over, they are both content to curl up with Preston for snuggles. “Both are lovey cuddle bugs, once they have expended their energy.”

With Mack and Tukka on the job, more and more honeybee populations are being protected from AFB. So, the next time you’re enjoying a handful of almonds or blueberries, think about the debt we owe to honeybees and the bee dogs protecting them.

Canine Good Citizen (CGC)

This program is recognized as the gold standard for dog behavior. In CGC, dogs who pass the 10 step CGC test can earn a certificate and/or the official AKC CGC title. Dogs with the CGC title have the suffix, "CGC" after their names.

Pictures of the Dogs and such in Link:https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/news/feature/bee-dog-protects-colonies/

[MistressJan]

This is our fourth year as beekeepers or at least people who are kept by bees. It's been an extraordinary journey, watching these beings and adopting a natural approach to beekeeping. We've never believed in poisons to deal with pests, so why would anyone put that on bees? The downside is that our bees don't survive the winter. We had five hives going into last winter which was by our standards mild and none survived. So we've decided to simply purchase one bee package per year to support our gardens and if they survive, then great. Last year we had two swarms from one nuc we purchased, so that's why we had five. It was amazing to have all of the bees throughout the compound.

We approach things backwards. Instead of supporting growth, we react to pests etc. with poisons that may initially stop the problem, but create far more destruction in the long run. We reinforce the negative, so to speak, instead of bringing balance to the circumstance, in this case, bees. We believe we need to interfere when we should observe.

Thank you so much for posting all of this info. I haven't read through all of it yet, but I look forward to doing so.

Blessings!

[william r sanford72]

Thank you MistressJan..

If I read your comment correctly you mentioned that your bees don't survive winter?..Is that all your hives every winter?

If that's the case then I say good on you for not giving up and still trying..and you may want to look into catching swarms in your area and outward to gain a wild stock that could have developed a Resistance and or tolerance to the mites and pathogens that go with them on there own..perhaps even a breeder that has developed mite resistance stock..

Otherwise Blessings to you and the bees..

William.

[william r sanford72]

Study finds loss of biodiversity exacerbates pressures on social bees

August 22, 2018, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

Scientists have assumed that habitats with intensive agricultural use are generally bad for bees, because of the exposure to pesticides and the very limited choice of food resources and nesting places. The worldwide extinction of bees was to some extent attributed to this factor. But bees are well able to thrive in agricultural areas, as long as they have access to so-called "habitat islands" with a high plant biodiversity.

This has been demonstrated for the first time in a study by scientists of the University of Würzburg, together with other German and Australian researchers. They published their results in Scientific Reports.

Tetragonula carbonaria is an Australian stingless bee the scientists studied for more than two years. "We used it to examine in an exemplary way whether the fitness and the reproductive success of social bees depends on the plant biodiversity surrounding them and the related quality of food resources," says Dr. Sara Leonhardt, in charge of the study at the University of Würzburg. Social bees include honey bees and stingless bees, among others. They are responsible for a large part of the pollination performance worldwide.

To perform the study, the scientists installed bee colonies in three different habitats. "We chose natural forests, urban gardens and macadamia plantations with intensive agricultural use and observed the growth and the production of worker bees, queens and new colonies," says Dr. Benjamin Kaluza, lead author of the study. They also analyzed the nutritional quality of the pollen and honey collected, and charted the plant biodiversity in these habitats.

Decline of biodiversity as a cause for bee extinction

What they found was that the bees' quality of life was highest in gardens and biodiverse forests, and lowest in plantations. As the plant biodiversity declines, bees produce fewer offspring, and colonies shrink in size. "Bees need diversity," says Kaluza. "Only in environments rich in plant species do they find continuously sufficient, balanced and high-quality food and other resources."

Leonhardt explains that even small habitat islands with a high diversity of blooming plants in flight distance are sufficient for this effect to be apparent. "It allows them to compensate the negative influence of both pesticides and monocultures," she says, and adds: "This result means that the worldwide massive decline of biodiversity could be one of the main causes of bee extinction."

What follows from their findings: "What we hope for now is, of course, more protection and restoration of biodiverse habitats, especially in regions intensive agricultural use, such as plantations," says Kaluza.

Explore further: New publication about bees and their New England habitats available

More information: Benjamin F. Kaluza et al. Social bees are fitter in more biodiverse environments, Scientific Reports (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-30126-0

Journal reference: Scientific Reports

Provided by: Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-loss-biodiversity-exacerbates-pressures-social.html

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-loss-biodiversity-exacerbates-pressures-social.html#jCp

[william r sanford72]

General Mills Faces Class Action Lawsuit over Cheerios Glyphosate Cover Up

Posted on Aug 22 2018 - by Sustainable Pulse

General Mills is facing a potentially damaging class action lawsuit in the U.S. after a florida woman accused it of engaging in deceptive business practices, by not alerting the public that their Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios cereals contain the known carcinogen and the world’s most used weedkilller – glyphosate.

This new class action follows the landmark cancer trial verdict in San Francisco very closely, in which Monsanto was ordered by a jury to pay over USD $289 Million in total damages to the former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, a California father who has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which was caused by Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup.

Florida based Mounira Doss filed the Cheerios weedkiller class action lawsuit last Thursday, stating that she has purchased both Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios. She claims that both herself and other consumers would not have purchased the cereals had they known that the product contained a harmful carcinogen.

Doss also claims that General Mills actively tried to cover up the presence of the dangerous chemical from consumers. She seeks for the company to have to disgorge the profits it gained from selling the cereals in question, and to be forced to stop misrepresenting the products.

A 2016 testing project on glyphosate residues in popular American foods by Sustainable Pulse’s partner The Detox Project and Food Democracy Now! is one of the main pieces of evidence being used in the case according to the court documents, after it found levels of glyphosate in both Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios as well as many other products.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer’s 2015 report classified glyphosate as a ‘probable human carcinogen’ and independent scientists agree that this is currently the best classification of the chemical.

The court documents in the class action point to research suggesting that General Mills’ Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios contain the chemical because it is often sprayed on oats right before they are harvested, as a desiccation tool. Oats are one of the main ingredients in Cheerios.

Doss is represented by Scott P. Schlesinger, Jonathan R. Gdanski, and Jeffrey L. Haberman of Schlesinger Law Offices PA.

She seeks to represent two Classes of consumers — a nationwide Class and a Class of Florida consumers who purchased Cheerios or Honey Nut Cheerios.

Test Your Food and Water at Home for Glyphosate – https://detoxproject.org/testing/glyphosate-test-home-food/

https://sustainablepulse.com/2018/08/22/general-mills-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-cheerios-glyphosate-cover-up/#.W32NBvZFy03

[william r sanford72]

Bumblebees Under Threat From Inbreeding and Disease

WRITTEN BY: Carmen Leitch AUG 24, 2018 04:41 PM PDT

Bumblebees in North America are in decline, and scientists have even placed one species on the endangered list. Habitat loss and pressures from agriculture have been identified as two causes, and new research indicates that disease and inbreeding are contributing to the decline as well. Scientists at York University used genomic sequencing for this work, which has been reported in Frontiers in Genetics.

5ArCB-VqBjg

"The yellow-banded bumblebee has been declining throughout much of its range in North America, but we don't know why," said York U Associate Professor Amro Zayed, Research Chair in Genomics in the Faculty of Science. "We sequenced their genome so we can search for any clues of why the bumblebee is declining."

The investigators found that bumblebee genes that encode for their immune system are under pressure, which is causing problems in the population. The Bombus terricola, or yellow-banded bumblebee, has been called vulnerable to extinction and is part of a subgenus that is nearly lost in Canada.

"This particular bumblebee is down to about ten percent of its former numbers. It used to be one of our most common bumblebees in Southern Ontario. When we created the genome, we looked for signs of inbreeding and unfortunately that's what we found. Bumblebees in Southern Ontario and mid-northern Quebec are becoming more inbred," noted research leader York U biology researcher Clement Kent.

"As bees become more inbred, they encounter difficulties maintaining their populations, but as their populations [get] smaller, they have difficulties avoiding inbreeding. So that is one risk factor that could accelerate their decline. And finding as much inbreeding as we did, is a sure sign that this population is declining rapidly."

Male bees can become infertile when the population inbreeds. When those infertile bees mate with a queen, they don't produce offspring. They may also make sterile males instead of the worker bees they should produce. "That means she may only have half as many workers to build the colony then needed," explained Kent.

Disease is another factor. "If it is disease knocking down these bees, we should see signs of strong selection on genes that are involved with the immune system of bees, and that in fact is what we found," revealed Kent.

About 25 percent of the 46 North American bumblebee species is under threat of extinction. As pollinators, bees have an impact on humans and we should work to protect them if we expect food production to continue normally.

"What this research does is give us a tool that can show us that pathogen spillover or disease outbreak could explain why these populations declined in Southern Ontario and Quebec. It's useful because the rusty-patched bumblebee is thought to have declined by a disease outbreak, but I've only found two in Canada since 2005. Something like this gives us another way of testing why these bees are declining when it's really hard to locate them, let alone sample them in the wild," said York U Assistant Professor Shiela Colla of the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES)

"It's like detective work to find out why native bumblebees are declining. For this research to find things at the genetic level that we've been looking at at the landscape level, is surprising, and adds support as another line of evidence."

It's been suggested that disease is spreading from managed bumblebees used to grow vegetables like greenhouse tomatoes and sweet peppers; they carry illness at a higher rate than wild bees. Managed bees often get nectar outside of the greenhouse, and probably disseminate their diseases that way.

https://www.labroots.com/trending/genetics-and-genomics/12514/bumble-bees-threat-inbreeding-disease

Conservation Genomics of the Declining North American Bumblebee Bombus terricola Reveals Inbreeding and Selection on Immune Genes
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2018.00316/full

[Foxie Loxie]

I've only seen a couple bumblebees in my area this summer. :star:

[william r sanford72]

usda NATIONAL HONEY REPORT..Aug 24, 2018.

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

[william r sanford72]

Bees help keep Philippines coconut production abuzz

A disaster-vulnerable and poor village in the Philippines’ Bicol region is now starting on the path towards resilience, food security, and sustainable economic growth with help from these little buzzy friends.

Thirty-eight-year-old Leony Gabiazo could have been a housewife but thanks to the buzzing beekeeping business in Bulusan, a rural town in Bicol region in the Philippines, both she and her husband, Dennis Dominguez, could have jobs.

Gabiazo and Dominguez started work at Balay Buhay sa Uma Bee Farm (BBu) since it opened in 2000. But besides propagating native “kiwot” (Tetragonula biroi) bees to make honey, the husband and wife team is also helping increase the number of another crop in the Philippines: Coconuts.

When BBu farm owner Luz Gamba-Catindig discovered that kiwot bees are excellent coconut pollinators, she soon expanded the bee farm operations to coconut plantations.

BBu has been pollinating coconut trees at Villa Corazon farm with stingless “kiwot” bees. The bees are also known pollinators of high-value crops such as mangoes. As coconut pollinators, kiwot bees have helped the farm increase its yield by up to 50 per cent.

“The reason for the higher yield is that fewer young coconuts fall to the ground,” Catindig said.

“The tiny size of the bees let them penetrate the coconut flowers,” explained former BBu beekeeping consultant Floreza Palconitin-Broqueza.

It’s kind of a showcase. If people can see that the farm is earning, they will believe and they will be encouraged.
Cleofas Cervancia, head, University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) Bee Program

Catindig started to see the improvement in yield six months after using kiwot bees for pollination, and since then harvests have been good even after the typhoon season, which usually sees a decline in harvests due to felled coconut flowers.

“My husband is earning P300 per day and gets a P10,000 bonus every time harvest is good, either from Villa Corazon or BBu,” Gabiazo said.

Techno-demo farm

Catindig and her coconut farmers trained under the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) Bee Program headed by Dr. Cleofas Cervancia. Bbu became a project site—a learning ground for existing and interested beekeepers and crop growers.

As a techno-demo farm, BBu is able to train more bee hunters and community members through sponsored programs. Training participants are also taught not to burn the forest for honey and instead engage them in kiwot beekeeping for their livelihood source.

Catindig got her first kiwot colonies from slash-and-burn farmers who also hunted for bees in the wild. She initially bought five colonies in 2004 and 1,000 colonies more later, rescuing the bees in the process.

“We harvest once in every year (instead of several times because it rains most of the time in the area),” said Catindig. The sweet and sour kiwot honey costs P3,000 ($56 USD) per gallon.

She added that while the Tetragonula species do not produce as much honey as other bee species because of their size, unlike other species, they produce pollen and propolis, making them ideal for pollination.

People would visit the bee farm would also pitch their hammocks or ask to rent a shade. This gave Catindig the idea to include eco-tourism as another livelihood source. Now, she rents out huts and villas as accommodation in the sprawling farm.

Gabiazo said that the kiwot beekeeping changed their lives with stable and decent income. “Now we have a carabao, a motorcycle, a tricycle and a piggery because of the bonus we get from the farms,” she said.

Because beekeeping requires organic farming since bees will not survive chemical sprays, the farm, which also added pineapple and banana into its crop variety, also serves fresh, organic food to guests.

“It’s kind of a showcase. If people can see that the farm is earning, they will believe and they will be encouraged,” Cervancia said.

Leading agriculture program

The municipality of Bulusan adopted the beekeeping project as its banner agriculture program in 2017 with the aid of the Agriculture Training Institute (ATI). Its 40 beneficiaries—mostly bee hunters and recipients of lands in upland areas—reside in the outskirts of Mt. Bulusan.

The project’s main objective is to improve the farmers’ productivity, which is also one of the main goals set by the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) in its 2018-2022 roadmap for the industry.

Each beneficiary received 11 colonies of kiwot bees, which were bought from six bee hunters for P500 ($26 USD) per colony. Some of the beneficiaries bought a few more colonies, giving the hunters—who are beneficiaries themselves—additional income.

Bulusan Mayor Michael Gusayko said there have been fewer requests for financial aid from the groups—who normally relied on government welfare assistance for food and basic necessities—since they started the project.

A big and healthy pollination hive can yield three bottles of honey, said Cecilia Olan who monitors all the beneficiaries and also a beneficiary herself. A 750 ml bottle costs P900 ($47 USD).

With the beneficiaries living nearby coconut plantations these get pollinated too like the neighbouring farms.

Proper profiling helps in the positive community response to this project. As in the words of Gabiazo, as former hunters, “their interest with the bees is already there.”

Climate change mitigation

According to a UN-Habitat report on Sorsogon’s vulnerability to climate change, the province is at risk of extreme tropical cyclones which locals associate with climate change.

The province has been experiencing more than the average three cyclones in two years and more rain volume and stronger winds from typhoons. Climate change also causes the increasing incidence of evacuation of families from urban coastal areas, especially those living in informal settlements, and riverbank erosion.

Cervancia said kiwot bees can help in mitigating climate change because they visit more cash crops based on pollen analysis. They make fast ecosystem recovery possible, too, through intense pollination.

When Typhoon Nina hit the region in 2016, villagers from Bulusan were among the more than 10,000 evacuees who fled flooding. Both the Balay Buhay sa Uma Bee Farm and Villa Corazon Farm financially recovered fast, despite losing many of their bee colonies.

More women in training

More women in the community are also following the steps of Gabiazo. Cervancia said a majority of the training participants in the second part of the program was women. The training involves a meticulous process, from picking the pollen and extracting the honey to separating the propolis.

Such livelihood opportunities keep family breadwinners away from environmentally destructive activities such as slash-and-burn farming and deforestation. Through agro-tourism, the bee farm gives jobs to these farmers, their housewives, and other community breadwinners.

The park’s rich vegetation makes Bulusan an ideal place for beekeeping, while at the same time protecting it and the communities in lowland and coastal areas through beekeeping.

For Cervancia, the most important takeaway from beekeeping is the conservation awareness a person develops. It makes people protectors of the environment especially if they know their livelihood depends on it.

As a livelihood source, it motivates them to do more from teaching their families the do’s and don’ts of harvesting honey and product development.

Catindig brings the Dominguez couple to training and seminars around the country to equip them with new technical skills. Beekeeping has become a family enterprise, and in Catindig’s case, a community livelihood.

Sustainable, viable enterprise

Beekeeping is an emerging industry in the Philippines. With the right intervention and strategies, it is “seen to address food security and provide income-generating opportunities to Filipinos,” said Rita dela Cruz of the Bureau for Agricultural Research.

Focusing on native bees allows for sustainable beekeeping – the native bees lessen the need for imported bees and also reduce start-up costs.

As former Bicol Regional Apiculture Center head Maria Dulce Mostoles said, beekeeping “is just right for many families who can’t afford sophisticated housing.” It promotes conservation too.

The pollination hive developed by UPLB is easy to mass produce, supports large-scale pollination services, and allows production of quality products in an easy processing and hygienic way.

If adopted by the entire province of Sorsogon, almost 50,000 coconut-dependent farmers in the province will benefit. In 2015, only 7.6 million of the province’s 9.5 million coconut trees were fruit-bearing. It can also be replicated across the country, where 68 of 81 provinces are planted with coconut.

Kiwot bees can help senile coconut trees bear fruits. In ideal conditions, kiwot bees can increase yield by 80per cent, and coconut provides adequate pollen for the bees as it continues to bloom all-year round.

Even with the recent improvement in coconut production, the Philippine coconut industry has yet to tap its potential in exports. For agriculture columnist Dr. William Dar, “addressing low yields at the farm level can be an excellent move to helping realize that.”

His recommendation? To put measures that help poor farmers earn more. Under the PCA road map, it means improving coconut yields and at the same time creating value-added products that naturally come with coconut production.

This story is produced under the Earth Journalism Network Asia-Pacific Story Grants 2018 with the support of Sweden/SIDA.

http://www.eco-business.com/news/bees-help-keep-philippines-coconut-production-abuzz/

[william r sanford72]

Seasick Steve - Can U Cook?

PNITvUaehN0

Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

A Night With the Synchronous Fireflies in the Great Smoky Mountains

By Pamela Blauvelt

This past June, some colleagues and I spent a magical night among the fairies in one of the most beautiful spots on Earth. What’s even better is that those twinkling lights were thousands and thousands of insects! We spent the night in absolute darkness in the forest with a bunch of strangers to get a glimpse of some bugs. Crazy? Maybe. Worth it? Absolutely.

Mary Vongas of ChemTec Pest Control in New Jersey, my colleague Eva Spencer at Griffin Pest Solutions in Michigan, and I were a lucky trio who got to take a trip to the synchronous firefly event in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2018. This annual event is on most entomologist’s (and pest management professional’s) bucket list, a beautiful example of just how unusual insect dating and mating rituals can get.

Located in a small section of our country’s most-visited national park, the annual synchronous firefly event is the two-week mating season for the Photinus carilonus, America’s only species of firefly capable of a synchronized lighting display. Its mating season usually begins by late May and ends in early June, although this varies with temperature, weather, and rainfall.

The males of these tiny, flying fireflies, sometimes regionally known as lightning bugs, light up or “flash” their abdomens at females to attract a mate. It’s this lighting pattern that makes the fireflies at the event so famous.

Instead of the random, flash-at-will pattern common in most all other firefly species, the male Photinus carilonus has been flash-mobbing potential girlfriends for thousands of years. The males time or synchronize their flashes together as a mass, all going off together for a few twinkling seconds, then all going dark for a few moments. This pattern repeats all through the dusk and early night hours. Throughout the woods and across the park, from a height ranging from two feet off the ground to 10 feet above the forest floor, these fireflies spread out, twinkling like moving strands of Christmas lights, threaded through the trees, brush, and even over rivers and ponds.

The females stay on or close to the ground during this display, responding with a quick double flash as a response to the males. Scattered throughout this display, you’ll also get glimpses of the 18 other firefly species located within the park. One of note is a deadly copycat species that mimics the synchronous firefly’s flashes to lure in a mate, only to consume them. Watching this display with the other visitors—young and old, from as close as Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to as far away as Osaka, Japan—in the dark coolness of an early summer night is truly a back-to-nature experience and well worth the multiple years spent entering (and losing) the lottery for a coveted spot on the shuttle buses.

Every year, around late April, the National Park Service announces the dates for the lottery to view the synchronous firefly event. In 2018, the park received 22,000 applications for the coveted 1,800 parking passes. Each parking pass is good for one vehicle with up to six firefly enthusiasts. Lottery winners and their scheduled view dates are announced during the second week of May. Costs are minimal: $2.00 per shuttle passenger and a $20 reservation fee. Applying for the lottery is free. When the day of your pass arrives, you pull into the park’s Sugarlands Visitor Center before 7 p.m. and get in line for a shuttle. The park service staff is good about giving you advance notice of what to bring and how to prepare for the night.

We spoke with many steadfast lottery applicants who waited more than five years to be selected. If you’re one of the lucky lottery winners, our best advice is to share the experience with family and friends, meet a few new friends on the way, and, when the show starts, just sit back, relax, and take in the magic.


https://entomologytoday.org/2018/08/31/a-night-with-the-synchronous-fireflies-in-the-great-smoky-mountains/

[william r sanford72]

Principles of using of vibro-acoustic markers and communicational signals in the process of bees' lives

August 31, 2018, CORDIS

How do the bees use this system of vibro-acoustical signals? Understanding now, how marker and communicational vibro-acoustic signals are arranged, and what, in principle, they serve, let's consider their application in the daily life of beehives.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-principles-vibro-acoustic-markers-bees.html#jCp

Let's suppose that a bee of the age of about 5 days moves along the hive. Its own marker is set in the "position" "free," or it is not emitted in principle. The bee falls into the zone of action of vibro-acoustical marker signals of the group of bees No. 1, engaged in feeding the larvae with royal jelly. Her internal program verifies the possibility of joining this cluster. She analyzes the correspondence of work to her age. The answer is "no," this work cannot be performed yet.

It's too early. Her glands are not matured yet. The bee continues her movement, and falls into the zone of action of vibro-acoustical marker of the group of bees No. 2. This marker determines the work of the bees on cleaning the cells for laying eggs by the queen. Her internal program analyzes the situation. The answer is "no." The bee has already left this age range. The bee continues her movement, and falls into the zone of action of vibro-acoustical markers of the group of bees No. 3. They are engaged in feeding the larvae with honey and pollen. The internal program of the bee analyzes the situation. The analysis shows that according to the age of the bee, this work is quite suitable for her. The bee joins the cluster, setting her own marker in accordance with the work being performed.

The view is somewhat simplistic. Most likely, there should be some marker, or communication, which may be tactile, that determines the need for such connection to the cluster of working bees.

It is possible that American scientists observed one of these signals during their studies. This was so-called worker piping. It is possible that this signal had a different purpose, because the bee roamed the honeycomb for a long time, and periodically released it—during an hour, or an hour and a half.

In all cases, the signal was seen as a short pulse, lasting from 0.5 to 1.5 seconds, filled with a frequency of 337 + -15 hertz. This data also confirms once again our idea that the bees communicate using very short impulse signals, which are difficult to process with the help of Fast Fourier Transform algorithms.

But this is not the end of the problems. There are some other technical features involved in understanding of the "language" of bees, but we do not have space and time to talk about them in this article.

Thus, we once again wish to state the following:

The vibro-acoustic signals of bees are a set of short pulses of certain frequency, or sum of frequencies, followed by certain intervals, and are markers of the type of activity of the bees, or communicational signals. These markers and communicational signals do not carry in themselves meaningful, as in our understanding, information, such as letters or words. They are only a means to attract attention, and markers of performed works or emotional states.
All these signals are used together with tactile signals and with the eyesight of bees.

Explore further: Sick bees eat healthier

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-principles-vibro-acoustic-markers-bees.html

[Foxie Loxie]

Fireflies....who doesn't remember catching fireflies to put in a jar on warm summer nights?! :blushing:

[william r sanford72]

Don't feel bad Foxie..I did the same and I also used em for night fishing back in the day..when a fire couldn't bee made or a lantern drew to many bugs as kids we would catch em and smear the ends of our pole with the glow..wouldn't think of doing that now...


William.

[william r sanford72]

Telling the Bees

By John Greenleaf Whittier

Here is the place; right over the hill
Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred,
And the poplars tall;
And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o’errun,
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,
And the same brook sings of a year ago.

There ’s the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;
And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.

I mind me how with a lover’s care
From my Sunday coat
I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair,
And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.

Since we parted, a month had passed,—
To love, a year;
Down through the beeches I looked at last
On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.

I can see it all now,—the slantwise rain
Of light through the leaves,
The sundown’s blaze on her window-pane,
The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

Just the same as a month before,—
The house and the trees,
The barn’s brown gable, the vine by the door,—
Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back,
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,
Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!

Then I said to myself, “My Mary weeps
For the dead to-day:
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
The fret and the pain of his age away.”

But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,
With his cane to his chin,
The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on:—
“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45491/telling-the-bees

[william r sanford72]

“Telling the Bees”
In nineteenth-century New England, it was held to be essential to whisper to beehives of a loved one’s death.

By Colleen English.

While most common in the nineteenth century, the practice of “telling the bees” about significant life events endures, albeit in a different form, to the present day. The most pervasive and affecting depiction of this tradition can be found in the New England Quaker writer John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1858 poem “Telling the Bees.”

An unnamed speaker returns to his lover’s abode after a year’s absence. He describes his previous visit there in careful detail before noting that nothing had changed, not the house or the trees, save the family beehives. The speaker’s attention is drawn to these objects by the movements of a “chore-girl small” who sings a mournful tune as she drapes the hives with “shred of black.” It is apparent from the actions of the chore-girl that something is very wrong here. This is a house in mourning, a realization that sends a wintry chill through the speaker, who then begins to listen intently to the girl’s lachrymose tune. He becomes aware that “she was telling the bees of one / Gone on the journey we all must go!”

His first thought is that his beloved’s grandfather has died, a conclusion that gives him comfort, knowing that he “sleeps / The fret and the pain of his age away.” His thoughts are then interrupted by the sound of a dog whimpering. He looks up. There, in the doorway, is the old man, his head resting on his cane, very much alive. The chore-girl continues to sing to the bees, and now he can make out what she is telling them. She sings: “Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! / Mistress Mary is dead and gone!” The poem ends with this communication to the bees, foregrounding their importance in a ritual conveying human grief.

Whittier himself was eager to locate the tradition of “telling the bees” within the folklore of rural New England. When he published the poem in the Atlantic in 1858 he included an introduction to the poem where he notes that this ritual that has “formerly prevailed” was brought to America from “the Old Country.” That Whittier felt it necessary to include a note about this tradition indicates that, even in the mid-nineteen-century, the tradition of “telling the bees” was fading.

In an 1858 letterto fellow poet and Atlantic contributor Rose Terry Cooke, Whittier mentions that, following the advice of the Atlantic’s first editor, James Russell Lowell, he changed the title to “Telling the Bees” and added a verse “for the purpose of introducing this very expression.” Whittier’s comments, and his introductory note, indicate a desire to preserve this particular folkloric ritual, to educate the unaware. The emphasis that Whittier places on this concept of delivering important information to the bees implies that there is a special relationship that exists between honeybees and humans that is essential to maintain.

This practice of “telling the bees” may have its origins in Celtic mythology where the presence of a bee after a death signified the soul leaving the body, but the tradition appears to have been most prominent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the U.S. and Western Europe. The ritual involves notifying honey bees of major events in the beekeeper’s life, such as a death or marriage.

While the traditions varied from country to country, “telling the bees” always involved notifying the insects of a death in the family—so that the bees could share in the mourning. This generally entailed draping each hive with black crepe or some other “shred of black.” It was required that the sad news be delivered to each hive individually, by knocking once and then verbally relaying the tale of sorrow.

Charles Fitzgerald Gambier Jenyns, a British Victorian apiarist and rector, in his A Book about Bees (1886) asserts that this message should be delivered to the hives at midnight. In other regions, like in Whittier’s New England, they simply hung crepe on the hive and then sang to the bees that, “So-and-so is dead.” Other variations include merely telling (rather than singing) or whispering the information. In some places they may say “Little brownies, little brownies, your master (or mistress) is dead.”

Tammy Horn, a literary scholar and apiarist, writes in Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation (2005) that in New Hampshire, the news of a death must not only be sung, but the verses must also rhyme. She provides a sample verse: “Bees, bees, awake! / Your master is dead, / And another you must take.” If the bees begin to buzz after this information has been delivered, it is seen as a good omen.

Horn also writes of another death custom associated with bees: that of “ricking,” a ritual that required the eldest son in the bereaved family to shift all of the hives to the right in order to signify that a change has occurred. Another take on this was to shift the hives so that their entrances faced the family home. This tended only to occur if the deceased was being waked in the home.

The consequences of not telling the bees could be dire. Another Victorian biologist, Margaret Warner Morley, in her book The Honey-Makers (1899), cites a case in Norfolk where a man purchased a hive of bees at an auction. When the man returned home with them, the bees appeared very sickly. It occurred to their new owner that they hadn’t been properly put into mourning after the death of their former owner. He decided to drape the hive with black cloth, and soon after he did, the bees regained their health. There are also tales of entire bee colonies dying if the family failed to notify them of a death.

Throughout the nineteenth-century and well into the twentieth, there were reports of rural people who firmly believed in this tradition of telling the bees. There is even a report of bees brought to a funeral, presumably after being told of the death. In 1956, the AP reported a strange occurrence at the funeral of John Zepka, a beekeeper from the Berkshire Hills. As the funeral procession reached the grave, the mourners discovered swarms of bees hanging placidly from the ceiling of the tent “and clinging to floral sprays. They did not annoy the mourners—just remained immobile.” According to a New York Times dispatch from Adams, MA, published on July 16, 1956: “Nothing like it had ever been seen before.” This curious case seemed to confirm the need to “tell” the bees, further strengthening the conviction that there exists a mournful sympathy between bees and humans.

The mourning practices of this area of New England were, as nineteenth-century folklorist Pamela McArthur Cole has commented, anachronistic even in 1894. These practices included the superstition that you must touch the corpse before burial, else the departed will reappear to the mourner in a dream. Cole observes that, by 1842, only a few individuals had actually witnessed the ritual of “telling the bees.” Although Whittier’s popular ballad would not be published for another sixteen years, the tradition, while not widely practiced, had clearly taken hold in the public imagination.

Unhappy events were not the only occasions that the bees were invited to participate in. The bees were in fact so integral to human rituals that Cole notes of a wedding: “The little workers were to be informed of the event, and receive a bit of wedding cake.” The hives were sometimes adorned with flowers to celebrate the proceedings.

Morley (the Victorian biologist) observes that, in Brittany, it was traditional to decorate the hives for wedding celebrations with scarlet cloth, while in Westphalia, Germany, the newlyweds must introduce themselves to the bees or else they will have an unlucky marriage. This homage paid to the bees during nuptials could be a way of compensating the creatures for the vast amounts of honey consumed during the celebrations.

Yet it is in mourning rather that in nuptial celebrations that the tradition of telling the bees lingers. “Telling the bees” resonates in the poetry of twentieth-century confessional poet Sylvia Plath’s “bee poems,” a poetic sequence in her collection, Ariel. Plath had direct experience with beekeeping: Her father was an entomologist who specialized in bees. Shortly before her suicide, Plath began to keep bees herself. In “The Arrival of the Bee Box” (1962), she compares the “clean wood box” to a small coffin and refers to the beekeeping net as a “funeral veil,” thus drawing explicit connections between beekeeping, death, and mourning.

Today, with the bee crisis reaching alarming heights, we seem to have returned to a morbid intimacy with bees. In early June 2018, French beekeepers, many clad in traditional protective suits and veiled hats, held a symbolic funeral in central Paris to protest the use of pesticides that many see as being responsible for the death of thousands of honeybees. This problem is not unique to France, or even to Europe: In North America, colony collapse disorder—the name given to the phenomenon where honeybees suddenly abandon their hive—has raised alarms about the environmental implications of diminishing honey bee populations.

While many nineteenth-century commentators on the tradition of “telling the bees” speculated that the custom would die out as more information was gained about beekeeping, the mock-funeral in France attests to its legacy.

In Paris, as beekeepers hovered over gravestone-like bee boxes and coffins containing beekeeper effigies, it was unclear whether the beekeepers were mourning for the bees or for the demise of their profession. Given that bees pollinate 70 of the 100 crops that feed 90% of the world, this mourning for the bees—and for the humans that tend to them—is fitting. It is more than likely that if the bee population becomes extinct, humankind will follow close behind. While the future of the honeybee remains uncertain, this staged funeral serves as a powerful reminder that our fate is inexorably linked to that of bees. If they were to depart, the journey “we all must go” will come sooner than we realize.

https://daily.jstor.org/telling-the-bees/

[william r sanford72]

Musical intermission..Book of Bad Decisions...Emily Dickinson.

T86cUiSEukI


Rock on..

[Star Tsar]

Hey William hive been missing you...


Smithsonian Magazine

Bees Take A Break During Total Solar Eclipses

Published 10th October 2018

https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/LbEclEuRC8Oz6ZkLxDDStetUD3U=/800x600/filters:no_upscale()/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/20/a0/20a06c42-a8ff-4bea-815a-3912dbc59de3/182411.jpg

On August 21st 2017 human beings in North America from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic seaboard took a break from their normal routines to experience the marvel of the total solar eclipse.

And so did the Bees...

Read all about it here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/busy-bees-take-break-during-total-solar-eclipses-180970502/

N6txgLZ_FPk

[mischief]

I thought i'd share an interesting observation

I was watching a paper wasp working a Dandelion flower and was wondering if I should squish it- we have a high population of these here and I have always understood that they are Not friends of bees.

As I was contemplating murder, a honey bee landed on the flower right behind it and also started collecting nectar, making its way up the flower, directly underneath the wasp.
I was watching this thinking....that bee is going to get speared, its right under the wasps stinger!

But NO! The wasp lifted all left feet up and over the bee, scooted off to the side of the flower til the bee had its back to it and then walked back over to it...I'm thinking okay, now its all on, now you're a gonner!!!

But no! the wasp placed both antennea on the bees back, stepped away and then when it turned to face it, stepped back and head butted the bee twice in the face knocking the bee completely off the flower.

All I could think was...Okay, its spring, maybe wasps are also more interested in gathering nectar at this time of year, rather than seeing honey bees as a protein source and Dandelions are a great source of nectar.

I find nature absolutely fascinating.

[william r sanford72]

Throwing nature under the bus: GMO bees and robo-bees

Published: 29 October 2018

https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/18543

“Robotic bees could pollinate plants in case of insect apocalypse”, ran a recent Guardian headline reporting how Dutch scientists “believe they will be able to create swarms of bee-like drones to pollinate plants when the real-life insects have died away”.

And that’s not the only techno-fix on offer for the mass extinction of pollinators. Also in the works are GMO bees, including ones resistant to pesticides, which are a key contributor to the crisis engulfing insects around the globe.

Are robotic bees the future?

Over 75% of the leading types of global food crops are reliant on pollinators and the FAO says their help is worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year. So it’s hardly surprising that Walmart is among those filing patents on robotic bees.

But Jeff Ollerton, a leading expert on pollination ecology, calls claims that robots are the fix for pollinator wipe-out “complete bull****”. According to Ollerton, “No one who knows anything about pollinators thinks that this is feasible... Each year it takes at least 22 trillion pollinator visits to the flowers of coffee plants to sustain global coffee production. That's one crop.”

Bee expert Dave Goulson is equally unimpressed. In his article, “Are robotic bees the future?”, he also points to the numbers. To take care of insect pollination, robotic bees would need to replace “countless trillions” of insects – “All to replace creatures that currently deliver pollination for free.”

It’s not just the mind-boggling scale and expense of replacing pollinators that concerns experts like Goulson and Ollerton. They also point to the environmental costs: the resources and pollution involved in producing a vast army of pollinating drones, the energy costs for running them, and the disposal/pollution costs when they stop working. In contrast, real bees, says Goulson, in addition to being biodegradable, “avoid all of these issues; they are self-replicating, self-powering, and essentially carbon neutral”.

Goulson also points out, “Bees have been around and pollinating flowers for more than 120 million years; they have evolved to become very good at it. It is remarkable hubris to think that we can improve on that.”

Send in the GMO bees

But “another controversial response to the slump in bee populations” aims to do exactly that, according to a recent article by Bernhard Warner in The Guardian. Instead of replacing pollinators, this techno-fix involves genetically engineering “more resilient” strains of the honeybee that could better survive the hazards of pesticides, as well as the bee viruses and parasites that humans have spread around the globe.

The first honeybee queen was successfully genetically engineered in 2014 in a Düsseldorf lab. Its director Martin Beye says his lab is simply exploring the genetic basis of bee behaviour and not trying to build a GMO bee for release into the wild.

But according to Bernhard Warner: “The truth is that Beye’s highly detailed paper serves as a kind of blueprint for how to build a bee. Thanks to research like his, and the emergence of tools such as CRISPR, it has never been cheaper or so straightforward for a chemical company to pursue a superbee resistant to, say, the chemicals it makes.

Takeo Kubo, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Tokyo, was the second scientist in the world to make a genetically modified bee in his lab. He told me that he, too, is focused on basic research, and has no ties to the agriculture industry. But, unlike Beye, he welcomes the prospect of GM bee swarms buzzing around the countryside. Lab-made, pesticide-resistant bees could be a real saviour for beekeepers and farmers, he says. And, he adds, the science is no more than three years away.”

“I’m now 57 years old,” he told Warner in an email, “and completely optimistic to see such transgenic bees in the marketplace in my lifetime!”

Many beekeepers are understandably alarmed. According to Warner, “Beekeepers fear genetic engineering of honeybees will introduce patents and privatisation to one of the last bastions of agriculture that is collectively managed and owned by no one.” They also fear that GM bees will pollute the gene pool of traditional honeybees and destroy the vibrant local market in such strains.

Warner says there are also health concerns. Bee stings can already produce allergic reactions in some people that range from the mild to the life-threatening. Could the sting of GM bees “introduce new allergy risks”?

And there are ecological concerns. Honeybees can already out-compete wild bees, posing a real problem in areas of limited forage where wild bee species are under threat. So wouldn’t smaller struggling bee species face an even bigger threat from a pesticide-resistant “superbee”?

Throwing nature under the bus

There is a still more fundamental problem with projects that envisage changing or replacing bees to accommodate intensive farming practices. Jay Evans, who heads the bee research lab at the US Department of Agriculture, told Warner that designing a pesticide-proof honeybee, or a “bulletproof bee”, as Evans calls them, would “throw a lot of nature under the bus”.

Dave Goulson sees exactly the same problem with robotic bees. “If farmers no longer need to worry about harming bees they could perhaps spray more pesticides, but there are many other beneficial creatures that live in farmland that would be harmed; ladybirds, hoverflies and wasps that attack crop pests, worms, dung beetles and millipedes that help recycle nutrients and keep the soil healthy, and many more. Are we going to make robotic worms and ladybirds too? What kind of world would we end up with?”

In other words, technologists intent on propping up a form of agriculture where farmers don’t need to worry about harming bees are actually fueling the devastating trajectory that is already causing massive insect declines. And, as a recent Guardian editorial noted, the global collapse of insect numbers is in turn a threat to almost every other species on the planet.

Even the GMO bee pioneer Martin Beye agrees that building a GMO bee is “a stupid idea”. Rather than pesticide-proof bees, he told Warner, we need to move to farming practices that don’t harm bees. “They should be working on that. Not on manipulating the bee.”

Dave Goulson puts it like this, “Do we have to always look for a technical solution to the problems that we create, when a simple, natural solution is staring us in the face? We have wonderfully efficient pollinators already, let’s look after them, not plan for their demise.”

Read this article on the GMWatch site and access sources:
https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/18543

[william r sanford72]

Cuckoo Bumble Bees: What We Can Learn From Their Cheating Ways (If They Don’t Go Extinct First)

By Meredith Swett Walker

Raising kids is a lot of work; it takes a lot of energy to feed and defend helpless offspring. So, brood parasites trick someone else into doing it for them.

This reproductive strategy is well known in birds, such as cuckoos or the brown-headed cowbird, but brood parasitism is much rarer in insects. Some of the best examples are the cuckoo bumble bees in the subgenus Psithyrus.bombus

Cuckoo bumble bee queens employ sophisticated con artistry to infiltrate the nests of their hosts, but they don’t simply dump their eggs in another bumble bee nest, like a cuckoo bird. Because their host bumble bees are eusocial, cuckoo bumble bees have to have to trick the entire colony, not just mom and dad. These bees are also considered “social parasites” because they exploit the whole colony, tricking the host workers into rearing cuckoo brood.

Learning how cuckoo bumble bees cheat the eusocial system can tell scientists a lot about how insect sociality evolves and how hosts and parasites coevolve antagonistically with each other. But, despite their fascinating lifestyle, the ecology of half of the 28 species of cuckoo bumble bees is totally unknown. That lack of knowledge is due in part to their rarity and also, perhaps, to some anti-parasite bias.

In research published this month in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America, Patrick Lhomme, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas in Morocco, and Heather Hines, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology and entomology at Penn State University, review what we know about the ecology and evolution of cuckoo bumble bees and why our opportunities to study the fascinating bees may be running out.

Nest usurpation—when one queen invades the nest of another, kills the original queen and adopts her brood—is common among bumble bees and usually occurs within a species.

This is called “facultative social parasitism,” and it’s a strategy deployed by bumble bee queens only under certain ecological conditions. But cuckoo bumble bees are “obligate brood parasites”—in other words, they cannot reproduce without their hosts. They cannot produce their own workers, they lack pollen baskets on their legs and so cannot collect pollen to feed their own offspring, and they cannot produce enough wax to build their own nest.

Instead, cuckoo bumble bees must find a host colony of another bumble bee species, and it has to be just the right size. Too large, and there will be too many workers defending the nest and the cuckoo will be killed. Too small and there will be too few workers to raise the cuckoo’s offspring. So, cuckoo bumblebees must be selective.

They also have to be tough fighters to defend themselves from attacking workers as they infiltrate the nest and kill the host queen. Thus, cuckoo bumble bees are heavily armored with larger and stronger mandibles, a hardened abdomen, and a thicker, more powerful sting.

After it infiltrates a nest, the invading cuckoo must defuse the battle and integrate into the host colony. Some cuckoo bumble bees do this by mimicking the chemical cues used by their host species. Other cuckoos produce few recognition chemicals of their own and then take on the “scent” of the colony via contact with nest materials and workers.

Finally, once hatched, cuckoo larvae must trick the host workers into feeding them. How this works is largely unknown. Previous research by Lhomme suggests that colonies taken over by cuckoo bumble bee queens may lose their ability to recognize outsiders in general and so be more accepting of cuckoo larvae when they hatch.

Despite their fascinating adaptations, cuckoo bumble bees are understudied. This is partly due to their rarity in space and time. Because they produce no workers of their own, they are not out and about foraging for long. Cuckoo queens are only above ground and active for a short period while searching for host nests and mating with the short-lived male cuckoos.

So, it can be difficult for researchers to find and observe cuckoo bumblebees. And there are just not very many of them: Sampling suggests that, even accounting for the lack of workers, their population sizes may be small.

But another factor that may contribute to our lack of study of these bees is our general attitude towards parasites. In the past, they may have been viewed as enemies of the “real bumble bees” says Lhomme. In addition, they are not effective pollinators and were therefore not seen as “useful” to humans.

Biologists may now be fascinated by brood parasites, but the public is often less enamored. “The first question people often ask me when I tell them about my research is ‘Why do you study bumble bees that are so mean!?’,” says Lhomme. “It’s said as a joke of course, but I think it’s characteristic of what people really think. I believe the public has less sympathy for parasitic species in general.” And this attitude may hurt conservation efforts.

Many bumble bee species are declining alarmingly due to climate change, loss of habitat, and introduced diseases. When populations of their host species decline, cuckoo bumble bees decline as well. They are particularly vulnerable to extinction because of their relative rarity as a brood parasite. But, people tend to forget that parasitism, in its various forms, is widespread in the living world. Around half of the species on Earth are parasites of some sort.

Parasites “are not only important in shaping the populations or the behavior of free-living species, they are an integral part of the ecosystem and the complex food web,” says Lhomme. “They are thus as important to protect as free-living species.”

Lhomme and Hines hope their review will stimulate further research into cuckoo bumble bee biology and promote conservation efforts.

Perhaps with better understanding, more people will see the beauty in these brood parasites. Lhomme refers to a quote from esteemed scientist and author Stephan Jay Gould: “We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well—for we will not fight to save what we do not love.”

Read more:Ecology and Evolution of Cuckoo Bumble Bees;
https://academic.oup.com/aesa/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aesa/say031/5115643

https://entomologytoday.org/2018/10/29/cuckoo-bumble-bees-cheating-ways/

[bluestflame]

here's another "build it they will come " moment , i built up the box, put in some frames , some drops of lemongrass oil every couple of days

about a month later, the swarm dropped in for a look then continued across the road

i went up for a look to see where they'd settled but they appeared to have moved on

so i returned to polishing a slab of redgum i'd been working on with a buffer on an angle grinder , didn't hear their approach , ended up i was in the middle of a cloud of bees that came back 5g0eNY7RQc4

the NEXT DAY i happened to look across to an old discarded box i had NOT setup specifically and noticed an abnormal number of "scouts"buzzing around the entrance and improperly aligned top of the box i had thought they were just robbing the old wax

EgHFtdhhkv0

[MistressJan]

We don’t treat our bees preferring the natural beekeeping approach. Unfortunately, we’ve not had any hives survive winter which they should. Mostly, they just leave, no evidence of anything wrong. It may be a Queen death and they eventually die out which is what it looks like. But with ongoing pesticide use by neighbors, chemtrails and other nonsense, the bees may have a hard time negotiating where they are. So we expect to purchase a package of bees each year and if they survive then that’s a blessing.

The very idea of gmo bees or robotic bees is awful. Commercial beekeepers take their bees around to this crop and that crop but it’s all monocropping and the bees don’t get enough variety in their diets to remain healthy. Since humans have decided to interfere in the bees’ lives we ought to at least provide them with the best experience possible and then get out of their way. That’s essentially what we do...plant flowers etc. that support a varied diet. And they pollinate everything on the property.

Thanks for sharing what you do...

Blessings

Jan

[william r sanford72]

Thank you bluestflame and MistressJan..

Mistressjan your outlook and positive view and willingness to not give up is refreshing.

William.

[william r sanford72]

Honey Bees May Fight Off Viruses With Help From Fungi

By Gemma Tarlach

It’s not easy being a bee these days. Apis mellifera, the Western honey bee, is crucial to agriculture worldwide but faces a growing number of pests and pathogens against which beekeepers have few weapons.

But the bees themselves may be showing us the way forward: New research suggests the foraging insects may obtain protection against some viruses by consuming fungi, then returning to the hive to spread its medicinal value.

Honey bees contribute more than $15 billion annually to U.S. agriculture, and hobbyist beekeepers raise millions more bees in their backyards (full disclosure: I have three hives in a community garden).

While the science and economics of saving honey bees can be controversial, no one can deny that the insects are facing a host of threats not historically seen in the U.S., which have led to a dramatic increase in colony losses. Over the past decade, annual colony deaths have averaged more than 30 percent.

Much of the blame falls on the aptly-named parasitic mite Varroa destructor, which arrived in force in the 1980s and has since been associated with the spread of at least ten viruses that affect honey bees.

One of those pathogens, deformed wing virus (DWV), causes shriveled wings and shortened life spans in individual worker bees, and can reduce an entire colony’s health. Another, Lake Sinai virus (LSV), was identified only in 2010 but has since established itself throughout the U.S.

There are no treatments for these viruses; beekeepers instead try to control the Varroa populations within each colony. (Most colonies have some degree of Varroa present; it’s when levels exceed a certain threshold that viral infection and a decline in colony health become more likely.)

The tools at beekeepers’ disposal range from chemical-free Integrated Pest Management practices (such as disrupting the mites’ reproductive cycle by manipulating where and when the parasites can breed within a hive) to a variety of miticides. Many of the miticides cause significant bee death if misapplied, and the wily Varroa has developed resistance to some of the chemicals. Robust control of the virus-carrying parasites continues to elude beekeepers.

What a Fungi

Foraging honey bees, however, have been observed consuming mycelium, the thread-like filaments found on many mushrooms. Like other fungi, mushrooms can produce chemicals with natural antimicrobial properties, including antibacterial and even antiviral compounds. Researchers wondered whether forager bees eating the mycelium and then returning to the hive to share it with other bees might provide some antiviral protection for the entire colony.

To find out, a team cultivated several fungi species known to produce antiviral compounds and fed extracts of their mycelium to honey bees, initially in a lab environment. Several species appeared to reduce the amount of pathogens present; the researchers chose the two most promising fungi, amadou (Fomes fomentarius) and red reishi (Ganoderma resinaceum), for field trials.

The results of the trials were impressive: the extracts, fed to bees in sugar syrup, significantly reduced the viral load of the colonies. How significant? Colonies that were fed the extracts saw a 79-fold reduction in DWV and a 45,000-fold LSV reduction (not a typo) compared with control colonies.

The findings are potentially game-changing in the ongoing fight against bee viruses, but more work needs to be done. The researchers noted, for example, that they found some antiviral activity in the birchwood used to cultivate the mushrooms. It’s possible the tree’s phytochemicals work in concert with mycelium compounds to provide protection against viruses for the bees.

The study appears today in Scientific Reports and is open access. You can also read Discover‘s profile of one of the study’s authors, myco-evangelist Paul Stamets, who champions the many benefits of mushrooms and other fungi, from controlling blood sugar to cleaning up oil spills.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/10/04/bees-fungi/#.W9nbzfZFy00


Extracts of Polypore Mushroom Mycelia Reduce Viruses in Honey Bees

Abstract

Waves of highly infectious viruses sweeping through global honey bee populations have contributed to recent declines in honey bee health. Bees have been observed foraging on mushroom mycelium, suggesting that they may be deriving medicinal or nutritional value from fungi. Fungi are known to produce a wide array of chemicals with antimicrobial activity, including compounds active against bacteria, other fungi, or viruses. We tested extracts from the mycelium of multiple polypore fungal species known to have antiviral properties. Extracts from amadou (Fomes) and reishi (Ganoderma) fungi reduced the levels of honey bee deformed wing virus (DWV) and Lake Sinai virus (LSV) in a dose-dependent manner. In field trials, colonies fed Ganoderma resinaceum extract exhibited a 79-fold reduction in DWV and a 45,000-fold reduction in LSV compared to control colonies. These findings indicate honey bees may gain health benefits from fungi and their antimicrobial compounds.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-32194-8

[william r sanford72]

usda..National Honey Report for the month of October 2018

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

[william r sanford72]

Bee Like Water...

Cockroaches use a little kung fu to stave off zombie wasp attacks

By Christian Cotroneo

LA5VtG1Iz4U

We so seldom see articles extolling the reasons why we should appreciate cockroaches.

Mostly, we're obsessed with how to get rid of them.

Sure, roaches are no honeybees. Or even ants. But it doesn't mean we can't learn a thing or two from them.

Like, for instance, how to successfully fend off a zombie attack.

While humans have yet to deal with an actual zombie outbreak — aside from isolated events at the local mall around Christmas time — cockroaches have been fighting off zombification for a long time.

That would be due to a creature that we will never, ever write an appreciation of: the emerald jewel wasp, or just jewel wasp for short.

But make no mistake. These critters are no gems.

Despite being considerably smaller than the American cockroach, a jewel wasp is capable of making short work of the roach, thanks to the fearsome "neurotoxic cocktail" it wields.

With Halloween barely in the rear-view mirror and many of us undoubtedly suffering from horror fatigue, we won't go into grisly detail here.

We'll spare you the terrifying sequence that sees a wasp plunge its stinger directly into the roach's brain. And we won't dwell on how the toxin robs the roach of its ability to move on its own ...

No, let's just skip to the good stuff.

A new study suggests roaches may have figured out how to get off this ride from hell. They use good old-fashioned, butt-kicking kung-fu.

Kick like your life depends on it

That's right, according to the study published this week in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution, cockroaches kick like, well, the way you'd kick if someone was trying to turn you into a zombie.

They kick so hard, the researchers noted, that the jewel wasp's head can fall right off.

(And you thought you'd never catch yourself cheering for a cockroach.)

But most times, those quick, hard kicks are just enough to convince the wasp to go looking for an easier candidate for the job of being Satan's slave.

The jewel wasp actually delivers two stings that seal the roach's doom: one, paralyzes it and the second — the brain-piercer— turns it into a zombie.

Understandably, it's that first sting that needs to be avoided. For the study, Ken Catania of Vanderbilt University watched about 55 clashes between wasp and roach, slowing each down to about 1,000 frames per second.

Roughly half the roaches fell to the wasps instantly. The other half, however, delivered very high, powerful kicks directly to the wasp's proverbial melon.

Those kicks — from spike-laden legs no less — sent the aggressor "careening into the walls of the filming chamber," Catania wrote.

Every now and then, heads would even roll. But that's not all these feisty roaches did. Some dodged the dive-bomb outright. Even when they were caught in the wasp's clutches, a roach would use a "stiff-arm" defense to hold back the stinger. And finally, some desperate wretches resorted to biting the wasp in the belly at the very moment it drove the stinger into its brain.

So yes, we do have a thing or two we can learn from cockroaches. If ever you find yourself in the clutches of a zombie, you've got to kick and fight and even bite like there's no tomorrow. Or at least not a tomorrow you want to live in.

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/cockroach-kicks-zombie-wasp

[william r sanford72]

Propolis Power-Up: How Beekeepers Can Encourage Resin Deposits for Better Hive Health

By Andrew Porterfield

Propolis, a mass of plant resins built by honey bees inside their hives, has drawn attention in recent years partly because of its alleged (but as yet unproven) health benefits to humans. But, perhaps more important, it also shows health benefits to bees themselves. Created from resins and other oils and fats collected from trees, propolis helps preserve the structural integrity of a bee hive and protects against wood decay, fungus, and water.

Propolis has also been connected to benefiting honey bee (Apis mellifera) immune systems, saving energy that would otherwise have been used to protect against nest-invading beetles like Aethina tumida or parasites like the Varroa destructor mite, Nosema fungus, and viruses. In the past, some beekeepers have tried to keep their hives “clean” of propolis, believing it impeded with honey-making activities. Today, though, scientists and beekeepers have begun looking at encouraging propolis production to help sustain healthy hives.

In a new study published today in the Journal of Economic Entomology, three researches—Cynthia Hodges, master beekeeper and co-owner of Hodges Honey Apiaries in Dunwoody, Georgia; Keith Delaplane, Ph.D., entomology professor at the University of Georgia; and Berry Brosi, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental science at Emory University in Atlanta—looked at four different ways to enhance propolis growth in bee hives.

The team found that three surface modifications—plastic trap material on the hive wall interior, parallel saw cuts on hive wall interior, and brush-roughened wall interiors—were all equally capable of resulting in increased propolis production, compared to a fourth method, a control, in which the hive wall interiors we left unmodified.

The researchers divided 20 colonies into five apiary sites and randomly applied one of the three texture treatments or control to each colony. Bees in the colonies foraged for propolis resins from plants common to the Appalachian Piedmont in the southeastern U.S., including conifers, oaks, pecan, red maple, yellow poplar, and urban ornamental plants. The researchers then measured extensiveness and depth of propolis deposits in the hives over time.

Their results showed that any hive interior treatment significantly increased propolis deposition compared to a non-treatment control. Sampling over time showed propolis hoarding and accumulation, as well. None of the texture treatments showed significantly different results from each other.

While all treatments resulted in more propolis deposition, the researchers point to the roughened interior of the hive walls as the best method for encouraging deposition. In fact, leaving lumber naturally rough, with no planning or sanding, would provide a simple and effective surface for boosting propolis, they write.

“We come down in favor of roughened or un-planed wood,” says Delaplane, “because, unlike the plastic trap, it will not subtract from the bee space engineered around the walls and combs. What you see in our pictures is the work of a steel brush. Naturally un-planed wood would be much rougher and, I would expect, even better at stimulating propolis deposition.”

Other researchers have shown that propolis development has a strong effect on the members of the bee hive. These other investigations have shown that interior walls painted with propolis extract resulted in colonies with lower bacterial loads and with worker bees that expressed lower levels of immune gene expression. Sustained activation of immune genes comes at an energy cost, which can result in a reduction in brood numbers and pose a threat to overall colony health.

Further studies have shown that reduced immune activation (and therefore less energy spent on fighting infection) comes from reduced pathogen loads in high-propolis colonies and not from immune suppression by propolis.

“I don’t know of any beekeepers deliberately encouraging their bees to collect propolis,” says Delaplane, adding that many keepers in the past have tried to clear propolis from their hives. “But today we know that this bias is misdirected. I believe encouraging propolis deposition is one more thing beekeepers can do to partner with biology instead of ignore it.”

https://entomologytoday.org/2018/11/28/propolis-how-beekeepers-encourage-better-hive-health/

Read more: Textured Hive Interiors Increase Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Propolis–Hoarding Behavior
https://academic.oup.com/jee/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jee/toy363/5199372

[Hervé]

The insect apocalypse is here (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html?fbclid=IwAR11i8ccebrghHiWXJ2U3VW5rI8CFJJGIoJZv23Vd8GOk1yRPU4qeVY9mok)

Brooke Jarvis The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html?fbclid=IwAR11i8ccebrghHiWXJ2U3VW5rI8CFJJGIoJZv23Vd8GOk1yRPU4qeVY9mok)
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 14:10 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s24/499637/large/02mag_insects_image2_jumbo_v5.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/499637/full/02mag_insects_image2_jumbo_v5.jpg)



Sune Boye Riis was on a bike ride with his youngest son, enjoying the sun slanting over the fields and woodlands near their home north of Copenhagen, when it suddenly occurred to him that something about the experience was amiss. Specifically, something was missing.

It was summer. He was out in the country, moving fast. But strangely, he wasn't eating any bugs.

For a moment, Riis was transported to his childhood on the Danish island of Lolland, in the Baltic Sea. Back then, summer bike rides meant closing his mouth to cruise through thick clouds of insects, but inevitably he swallowed some anyway. When his parents took him driving, he remembered, the car's windshield was frequently so smeared with insect carcasses that you almost couldn't see through it. But all that seemed distant now. He couldn't recall the last time he needed to wash bugs from his windshield; he even wondered, vaguely, whether car manufacturers had invented some fancy new coating to keep off insects. But this absence, he now realized with some alarm, seemed to be all around him. Where had all those insects gone? And when? And why hadn't he noticed?

Riis watched his son, flying through the beautiful day, not eating bugs, and was struck by the melancholy thought that his son's childhood would lack this particular bug-eating experience of his own. It was, he granted, an odd thing to feel nostalgic about. But he couldn't shake a feeling of loss. "I guess it's pretty human to think that everything was better when you were a kid," he said. "Maybe I didn't like it when I was on my bike and I ate all the bugs, but looking back on it, I think it's something everybody should experience."

I met Riis, a lanky high school science and math teacher, on a hot day in June. He was anxious about not having yet written his address for the school's graduation ceremony that evening, but first, he had a job to do. From his garage, he retrieved a large insect net, drove to a nearby intersection and stopped to strap the net to the car's roof. Made of white mesh, the net ran the length of his car and was held up by a tent pole at the front, tapering to a small, removable bag in back. Drivers whizzing past twisted their heads to stare. Riis eyed his parking spot nervously as he adjusted the straps of the contraption. "This is not 100 percent legal," he said, "but I guess, for the sake of science."

Riis had not been able to stop thinking about the missing bugs. The more he learned, the more his nostalgia gave way to worry. Insects are the vital pollinators and recyclers of ecosystems and the base of food webs everywhere. Riis was not alone in noticing their decline. In the United States, scientists recently found the population of monarch butterflies fell by 90 percent in the last 20 years, a loss of 900 million individuals; the rusty-patched bumblebee, which once lived in 28 states, dropped by 87 percent over the same period. With other, less-studied insect species, one butterfly researcher told me, "all we can do is wave our arms and say, 'It's not here anymore!' " Still, the most disquieting thing wasn't the disappearance of certain species of insects; it was the deeper worry, shared by Riis and many others, that a whole insect world might be quietly going missing, a loss of abundance that could alter the planet in unknowable ways. "We notice the losses," says David Wagner, an entomologist at the University of Connecticut. "It's the diminishment that we don't see."

Because insects are legion, inconspicuous and hard to meaningfully track, the fear that there might be far fewer than before was more felt than documented. People noticed it by canals or in backyards or under streetlights at night - familiar places that had become unfamiliarly empty. The feeling was so common that entomologists developed a shorthand for it, named for the way many people first began to notice that they weren't seeing as many bugs. They called it the windshield phenomenon.

To test what had been primarily a loose suspicion of wrongness, Riis and 200 other Danes were spending the month of June roaming their country's back roads in their outfitted cars. They were part of a study conducted by the Natural History Museum of Denmark, a joint effort of the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University and North Carolina State University. The nets would stand in for windshields as Riis and the other volunteers drove through various habitats - urban areas, forests, agricultural tracts, uncultivated open land and wetlands - hoping to quantify the disorienting sense that, as one of the study's designers put it, "something from the past is missing from the present."

When the investigators began planning the study in 2016, they weren't sure if anyone would sign up. But by the time the nets were ready, a paper by an obscure German entomological society had brought the problem of insect decline into sharp focus. The German study found that, measured simply by weight, the overall abundance of flying insects in German nature reserves had decreased by 75 percent over just 27 years. If you looked at midsummer population peaks, the drop was 82 percent.

Riis learned about the study from a group of his students in one of their class projects. They must have made some kind of mistake in their citation, he thought. But they hadn't. The study would quickly become, according to the website Altmetric, the sixth-most-discussed scientific paper of 2017. Headlines around the world warned of an "insect Armageddon."

Within days of announcing the insect-collection project, the Natural History Museum of Denmark was turning away eager volunteers by the dozens. It seemed there were people like Riis everywhere, people who had noticed a change but didn't know what to make of it. How could something as fundamental as the bugs in the sky just disappear? And what would become of the world without them?

Anyone who has returned to a childhood haunt to find that everything somehow got smaller knows that humans are not great at remembering the past accurately. This is especially true when it comes to changes to the natural world. It is impossible to maintain a fixed perspective, as Heraclitus observed 2,500 years ago: It is not the same river, but we are also not the same people.

A 1995 study, by Peter H. Kahn and Batya Friedman, of the way some children in Houston experienced pollution summed up our blindness this way: "With each generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation takes that amount as the norm." In decades of photos of fishermen holding up their catch in the Florida Keys, the marine biologist Loren McClenachan found a perfect illustration of this phenomenon, which is often called "shifting baseline syndrome." The fish got smaller and smaller, to the point where the prize catches were dwarfed by fish that in years past were piled up and ignored. But the smiles on the fishermen's faces stayed the same size. The world never feels fallen, because we grow accustomed to the fall.

By one measure, bugs are the wildlife we know best, the nondomesticated animals whose lives intersect most intimately with our own: spiders in the shower, ants at the picnic, ticks buried in the skin. We sometimes feel that we know them rather too well. In another sense, though, they are one of our planet's greatest mysteries, a reminder of how little we know about what's happening in the world around us.

We've named and described a million species of insects, a stupefying array of thrips and firebrats and antlions and caddis flies and froghoppers and other enormous families of bugs that most of us can't even name. (Technically, the word "bug" applies only to the order Hemiptera, also known as true bugs, species that have tubelike mouths for piercing and sucking - and there are as many as 80,000 named varieties of those.) The ones we think we do know well, we don't: There are 12,000 types of ants, nearly 20,000 varieties of bees, almost 400,000 species of beetles, so many that the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane reportedly quipped that God must have an inordinate fondness for them. A bit of healthy soil a foot square and two inches deep might easily be home to 200 unique species of mites, each, presumably, with a subtly different job to do. And yet entomologists estimate that all this amazing, absurd and understudied variety represents perhaps only 20 percent of the actual diversity of insects on our planet - that there are millions and millions of species that are entirely unknown to science.

With so much abundance, it very likely never occurred to most entomologists of the past that their multitudinous subjects might dwindle away. As they poured themselves into studies of the life cycles and taxonomies of the species that fascinated them, few thought to measure or record something as boring as their number. Besides, tracking quantity is slow, tedious and unglamorous work: setting and checking traps, waiting years or decades for your data to be meaningful, grappling with blunt baseline questions instead of more sophisticated ones. And who would pay for it? Most academic funding is short-term, but when what you're interested in is invisible, generational change, says Dave Goulson, an entomologist at the University of Sussex, "a three-year monitoring program is no good to anybody." This is especially true of insect populations, which are naturally variable, with wide, trend-obscuring fluctuations from one year to the next.

When entomologists began noticing and investigating insect declines, they lamented the absence of solid information from the past in which to ground their experiences of the present. "We see a hundred of something, and we think we're fine," Wagner says, "but what if there were 100,000 two generations ago?" Rob Dunn, an ecologist at North Carolina State University who helped design the net experiment in Denmark, recently searched for studies showing the effect of pesticide spraying on the quantity of insects living in nearby forests. He was surprised to find that no such studies existed. "We ignored really basic questions," he said. "It feels like we've dropped the ball in some giant collective way."

If entomologists lacked data, what they did have were some very worrying clues. Along with the impression that they were seeing fewer bugs in their own jars and nets while out doing experiments - a windshield phenomenon specific to the sorts of people who have bug jars and nets - there were documented downward slides of well-studied bugs, including various kinds of bees, moths, butterflies and beetles. In Britain, as many as 30 to 60 percent of species were found to have diminishing ranges. Larger trends were harder to pin down, though a 2014 review in Science tried to quantify these declines by synthesizing the findings of existing studies and found that a majority of monitored species were declining, on average by 45 percent.

Entomologists also knew that climate change and the overall degradation of global habitat are bad news for biodiversity in general, and that insects are dealing with the particular challenges posed by herbicides and pesticides, along with the effects of losing meadows, forests and even weedy patches to the relentless expansion of human spaces. There were studies of other, better-understood species that suggested that the insects associated with them might be declining, too. People who studied fish found that the fish had fewer mayflies to eat. Ornithologists kept finding that birds that rely on insects for food were in trouble: eight in 10 partridges gone from French farmlands; 50 and 80 percent drops, respectively, for nightingales and turtledoves. Half of all farmland birds in Europe disappeared in just three decades. At first, many scientists assumed the familiar culprit of habitat destruction was at work, but then they began to wonder if the birds might simply be starving. In Denmark, an ornithologist named Anders Tottrup was the one who came up with the idea of turning cars into insect trackers for the windshield-effect study after he noticed that rollers, little owls, Eurasian hobbies and bee-eaters - all birds that subsist on large insects such as beetles and dragonflies - had abruptly disappeared from the landscape.

The signs were certainly alarming, but they were also just signs, not enough to justify grand pronouncements about the health of insects as a whole or about what might be driving a widespread, cross-species decline. "There are no quantitative data on insects, so this is just a hypothesis," Hans de Kroon, an ecologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, explained to me - not the sort of language that sends people to the barricades.

Then came the German study. Scientists are still cautious about what the findings might imply about other regions of the world. But the study brought forth exactly the kind of longitudinal data they had been seeking, and it wasn't specific to just one type of insect. The numbers were stark, indicating a vast impoverishment of an entire insect universe, even in protected areas where insects ought to be under less stress. The speed and scale of the drop were shocking even to entomologists who were already anxious about bees or fireflies or the cleanliness of car windshields.

The results were surprising in another way too. The long-term details about insect abundance, the kind that no one really thought existed, hadn't appeared in a particularly prestigious journal and didn't come from university-affiliated scientists, but from a small society of insect enthusiasts based in the modest German city Krefeld.

Krefeld sits a half-hour drive outside Düsseldorf, near the western bank of the Rhine. It's a city of brick houses and bright flower gardens and a stadtwald - a municipal forest and park - where paddle boats float on a lake, umbrellas shade a beer garden and (I couldn't help noticing) the afternoon light through the trees illuminates small swarms of dancing insects.

Near the center of the old city, a paper sign, not much larger than a business card, identifies the stolid headquarters of the society whose research caused so much commotion. When it was founded, in 1905, the society operated out of another building, one that was destroyed when Britain bombed the city during World War II. (By the time the bombs fell, members had moved their precious records and collections of insects, some of which dated back to the 1860s, to an underground bunker.) Nowadays, the society uses more than 6,000 square feet of an old three-story school as storage space. Ask for a tour of the collections, and you will hear such sentences as "This whole room is Lepidoptera," referring to a former classroom stuffed with what I at first took to be shelves of books but which are in fact innumerable wooden frames containing pinned butterflies and moths; and, in an even larger room, "every bumblebee here was collected before the Second World War, 1880 to 1930"; and, upon opening a drawer full of sweat bees, "It's a new collection, 30 years only."

On the shelves that do hold books, I counted 31 clearly well-loved volumes in the series "Beetles of Middle Europe." A 395-page book that cataloged specimens of spider wasps - where they were collected; where they were stored - of the western Palearctic said "1948-2008" on the cover. I asked my guide, a society member named Martin Sorg, who was one of the lead authors of the paper, whether those dates reflected when the specimens were collected. "No," Sorg replied, "that was the time the author needed for this work."

Sorg, who rolls his own cigarettes and wears John Lennon glasses and whose gray hair grows long past his shoulders, is not a freewheeling type when it comes to his insect work. And his insect work is really all he wants to talk about. "We think details about nature and biodiversity declines are important, not details about life histories of entomologists," Sorg explained after he and Werner Stenmans, a society member whose name appeared alongside Sorg's on the 2017 paper, dismissed my questions about their day jobs. Leery of an article that focused on him as a person, Sorg also didn't want to talk about what drew him to entomology as a child or even what it was about certain types of wasps that had made him want to devote so much of his life to studying them. "We normally give life histories when someone is dead," he said.

There was a reason for the wariness. Society members dislike seeing themselves described, over and over in news stories, as "amateurs." It's a framing that reflects, they believe, a too-narrow understanding of what it means to be an expert or even a scientist - what it means to be a student of the natural world.

Amateurs have long provided much of the patchy knowledge we have about nature. Those bee and butterfly studies? Most depend on mass mobilizations of volunteers willing to walk transects and count insects, every two weeks or every year, year after year. The scary numbers about bird declines were gathered this way, too, though because birds can be hard to spot, volunteers often must learn to identify them by their sounds. Britain, which has a particularly strong tradition of amateur naturalism, has the best-studied bugs in the world. As technologically advanced as we are, the natural world is still a very big and complex place, and the best way to learn what's going on is for a lot of people to spend a lot of time observing it. The Latin root of the word "amateur" is, after all, the word "lover."

Some of these citizen-scientists are true beginners clutching field guides; others, driven by their own passion and following in a long tradition of "amateur" naturalism, are far from novices. Think of Victorians with their butterfly nets and curiosity cabinets; of Vladimir Nabokov, whose theories about the evolution of Polyommatus blue butterflies were ignored until proved correct by DNA testing more than 30 years after his death; of young Charles Darwin, cutting his classes at Cambridge to collect beetles at Wicken Fen and once putting a live beetle in his mouth because his hands were already full of other bugs.

The Krefeld society is volunteer-run, and many members have other jobs in unrelated fields, but they also have an enormous depth of knowledge about insects, accumulated through years of what other people might consider obsessive attention. Some study the ecology or evolutionary taxonomy of their favorite species or map their populations or breed them to study their life histories. All hone their identification skills across species by amassing their own collections of carefully pinned and labeled insects like those that fill the society's storage rooms. Sorg estimated that of the society's 63 members, a third are university-trained in subjects such as biology or earth science. Another third, he said, are "highly specialized and highly qualified but they never visited the university," while the remaining third are actual amateurs who are still in the process of becoming "real" entomologists: "Some of them may also have a degree from the university, but in our view, they are beginners."

The society members' projects often involved setting up what are called malaise traps, nets that look like tents and drive insects flying by into bottles of ethanol. Because of the scientific standards of the society, members followed certain procedures: They always employed identical traps, sewn from a template they first used in 1982. (Sorg showed me the original rolled-up craft paper with great solemnity.) They always put them in the same places. (Before GPS, that meant a painstaking process of triangulating with surveying equipment. "We are not sure about a few centimeters," Sorg granted.) They saved everything they caught, regardless of what the main purpose of the experiment was. (The society bought so much ethanol that it attracted the attention of a narcotics unit.)

Those bottles of insects were gathered into thousands of boxes, which are now crammed into what were once offices in the upper reaches of the school. When the society members, like entomologists elsewhere, began to notice that they were seeing fewer insects, they had something against which to measure their worries.

"We don't throw away anything, we store everything," Sorg explained. "That gives us today the possibility to go back in time."

In 2013, Krefeld entomologists confirmed that the total number of insects caught in one nature reserve was nearly 80 percent lower than the same spot in 1989. They had sampled other sites, analyzed old data sets and found similar declines: Where 30 years earlier, they often needed a liter bottle for a week of trapping, now a half-liter bottle usually sufficed. But it would have taken even highly trained entomologists years of painstaking work to identify all the insects in the bottles. So the society used a standardized method for weighing insects in alcohol, which told a powerful story simply by showing how much the overall mass of insects dropped over time. "A decline of this mixture," Sorg said, "is a very different thing than the decline of only a few species."

The society collaborated with de Kroon and other scientists at Radboud University in the Netherlands, who did a trend analysis of the data that Krefeld provided, controlling for things like the effects of nearby plants, weather and forest cover on fluctuations in insect populations. The final study looked at 63 nature preserves, representing almost 17,000 sampling days, and found consistent declines in every kind of habitat they sampled. This suggested, the authors wrote, "that it is not only the vulnerable species but the flying-insect community as a whole that has been decimated over the last few decades."

For some scientists, the study created a moment of reckoning. "Scientists thought this data was too boring," Dunn says. "But these people found it beautiful, and they loved it. They were the ones paying attention to Earth for all the rest of us."

The current worldwide loss of biodiversity is popularly known as the sixth extinction: the sixth time in world history that a large number of species have disappeared in unusually rapid succession, caused this time not by asteroids or ice ages but by humans. When we think about losing biodiversity, we tend to think of the last northern white rhinos protected by armed guards, of polar bears on dwindling ice floes. Extinction is a visceral tragedy, universally understood: There is no coming back from it. The guilt of letting a unique species vanish is eternal.

But extinction is not the only tragedy through which we're living. What about the species that still exist, but as a shadow of what they once were? In The Once and Future World, the journalist J.B. MacKinnon cites records from recent centuries that hint at what has only just been lost:
"In the North Atlantic, a school of cod stalls a tall ship in midocean; off Sydney, Australia, a ship's captain sails from noon until sunset through pods of sperm whales as far as the eye can see. ... Pacific pioneers complain to the authorities that splashing salmon threaten to swamp their canoes." There were reports of lions in the south of France, walruses at the mouth of the Thames, flocks of birds that took three days to fly overhead, as many as 100 blue whales in the Southern Ocean for every one that's there now. "These are not sights from some ancient age of fire and ice," MacKinnon writes. "We are talking about things seen by human eyes, recalled in human memory." What we're losing is not just the diversity part of biodiversity, but the bio part: life in sheer quantity. While I was writing this article, scientists learned that the world's largest king penguin colony shrank by 88 percent in 35 years, that more than 97 percent of the bluefin tuna that once lived in the ocean are gone. The number of Sophie the Giraffe toys sold in France in a single year is nine times the number of all the giraffes that still live in Africa.

Finding reassurance in the survival of a few symbolic standard-bearers ignores the value of abundance, of a natural world that thrives on richness and complexity and interaction. Tigers still exist, for example, but that doesn't change the fact that 93 percent of the land where they used to live is now tigerless. This matters for more than romantic reasons: Large animals, especially top predators like tigers, connect ecosystems to one another and move energy and resources among them simply by walking and eating and defecating and dying. (In the deep ocean, sunken whale carcasses form the basis of entire ecosystems in nutrient-poor places.) One result of their loss is what's known as trophic cascade, the unraveling of an ecosystem's fabric as prey populations boom and crash and the various levels of the food web no longer keep each other in check. These places are emptier, impoverished in a thousand subtle ways.

Scientists have begun to speak of functional extinction (as opposed to the more familiar kind, numerical extinction). Functionally extinct animals and plants are still present but no longer prevalent enough to affect how an ecosystem works. Some phrase this as the extinction not of a species but of all its former interactions with its environment - an extinction of seed dispersal and predation and pollination and all the other ecological functions an animal once had, which can be devastating even if some individuals still persist. The more interactions are lost, the more disordered the ecosystem becomes. A 2013 paper in Nature, which modeled both natural and computer-generated food webs, suggested that a loss of even 30 percent of a species' abundance can be so destabilizing that other species start going fully, numerically extinct - in fact, 80 percent of the time it was a secondarily affected creature that was the first to disappear. A famous real-world example of this type of cascade concerns sea otters. When they were nearly wiped out in the northern Pacific, their prey, sea urchins, ballooned in number and decimated kelp forests, turning a rich environment into a barren one and also possibly contributing to numerical extinctions, notably of the Stellar's sea cow.

Conservationists tend to focus on rare and endangered species, but it is common ones, because of their abundance, that power the living systems of our planet. Most species are not common, but within many animal groups most individuals - some 80 percent of them - belong to common species. Like the slow approach of twilight, their declines can be hard to see. White-rumped vultures were nearly gone from India before there was widespread awareness of their disappearance. Describing this phenomenon in the journal BioScience, Kevin Gaston, a professor of biodiversity and conservation at the University of Exeter, wrote: "Humans seem innately better able to detect the complete loss of an environmental feature than its progressive change."

In addition to extinction (the complete loss of a species) and extirpation (a localized extinction), scientists now speak of defaunation: the loss of individuals, the loss of abundance, the loss of a place's absolute animalness. In a 2014 article in Science, researchers argued that the word should become as familiar, and influential, as the concept of deforestation. In 2017 another paper reported that major population and range losses extended even to species considered to be at low risk for extinction. They predicted "negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization" and the authors offered another term for the widespread loss of the world's wild fauna: "biological annihilation."

It is estimated that, since 1970, Earth's various populations of wild land animals have lost, on average, 60 percent of their members. Zeroing in on the category we most relate to, mammals, scientists believe that for every six wild creatures that once ate and burrowed and raised young, only one remains. What we have instead is ourselves. A study published this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that if you look at the world's mammals by weight, 96 percent of that biomass is humans and livestock; just 4 percent is wild animals.

We've begun to talk about living in the Anthropocene, a world shaped by humans. But E.O. Wilson, the naturalist and prophet of environmental degradation, has suggested another name: the Eremocine, the age of loneliness.

Wilson began his career as a taxonomic entomologist, studying ants. Insects - about as far as you can get from charismatic megafauna - are not what we're usually imagining when we talk about biodiversity. Yet they are, in Wilson's words, "the little things that run the natural world." He means it literally. Insects are a case study in the invisible importance of the common.

Scientists have tried to calculate the benefits that insects provide simply by going about their business in large numbers. Trillions of bugs flitting from flower to flower pollinate some three-quarters of our food crops, a service worth as much as $500 billion every year. (This doesn't count the 80 percent of wild flowering plants, the foundation blocks of life everywhere, that rely on insects for pollination.) If monetary calculations like that sound strange, consider the Maoxian Valley in China, where shortages of insect pollinators have led farmers to hire human workers, at a cost of up to $19 per worker per day, to replace bees. Each person covers five to 10 trees a day, pollinating apple blossoms by hand.

By eating and being eaten, insects turn plants into protein and power the growth of all the uncountable species - including freshwater fish and a majority of birds - that rely on them for food, not to mention all the creatures that eat those creatures. We worry about saving the grizzly bear, says the insect ecologist Scott Hoffman Black, but where is the grizzly without the bee that pollinates the berries it eats or the flies that sustain baby salmon? Where, for that matter, are we?

Bugs are vital to the decomposition that keeps nutrients cycling, soil healthy, plants growing and ecosystems running. This role is mostly invisible, until suddenly it's not. After introducing cattle to Australia at the turn of the 19th century, settlers soon found themselves overwhelmed by the problem of their feces: For some reason, cow pies there were taking months or even years to decompose. Cows refused to eat near the stink, requiring more and more land for grazing, and so many flies bred in the piles that the country became famous for the funny hats that stockmen wore to keep them at bay. It wasn't until 1951 that a visiting entomologist realized what was wrong: The local insects, evolved to eat the more fibrous waste of marsupials, couldn't handle cow excrement. For the next 25 years, the importation, quarantine and release of dozens of species of dung beetles became a national priority. And that was just one unfilled niche. (In the United States, dung beetles save ranchers an estimated $380 million a year.) We simply don't know everything that insects do. Only about 2 percent of invertebrate species have been studied enough for us to estimate whether they are in danger of extinction, never mind what dangers that extinction might pose.

When asked to imagine what would happen if insects were to disappear completely, scientists find words like chaos, collapse, Armageddon. Wagner, the University of Connecticut entomologist, describes a flowerless world with silent forests, a world of dung and old leaves and rotting carcasses accumulating in cities and roadsides, a world of "collapse or decay and erosion and loss that would spread through ecosystems" - spiraling from predators to plants. E.O. Wilson has written of an insect-free world, a place where most plants and land animals become extinct; where fungi explodes, for a while, thriving on death and rot; and where "the human species survives, able to fall back on wind-pollinated grains and marine fishing" despite mass starvation and resource wars. "Clinging to survival in a devastated world, and trapped in an ecological dark age," he adds, "the survivors would offer prayers for the return of weeds and bugs."

But the crux of the windshield phenomenon, the reason that the creeping suspicion of change is so creepy, is that insects wouldn't have to disappear altogether for us to find ourselves missing them for reasons far beyond nostalgia. In October, an entomologist sent me an email with the subject line, "Holy [expletive]!" and an attachment: a study just out from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that he labeled, "Krefeld comes to Puerto Rico." The study included data from the 1970s and from the early 2010s, when a tropical ecologist named Brad Lister returned to the rain forest where he had studied lizards - and, crucially, their prey - 40 years earlier. Lister set out sticky traps and swept nets across foliage in the same places he had in the 1970s, but this time he and his co-author, Andres Garcia, caught much, much less: 10 to 60 times less arthropod biomass than before. (It's easy to read that number as 60 percent less, but it's sixtyfold less: Where once he caught 473 milligrams of bugs, Lister was now catching just eight milligrams.) "It was, you know, devastating," Lister told me. But even scarier were the ways the losses were already moving through the ecosystem, with serious declines in the numbers of lizards, birds and frogs. The paper reported "a bottom-up trophic cascade and consequent collapse of the forest food web." Lister's inbox quickly filled with messages from other scientists, especially people who study soil invertebrates, telling him they were seeing similarly frightening declines. Even after his dire findings, Lister found the losses shocking: "I didn't even know about the earthworm crisis!"

The strange thing, Lister said, is that, as staggering as they are, all the declines he documented would still be basically invisible to the average person walking through the Luquillo rain forest. On his last visit, the forest still felt "timeless" and "phantasmagorical," with "cascading waterfalls and carpets of flowers." You would have to be an expert to notice what was missing. But he expects the losses to push the forest toward a tipping point, after which "there is a sudden and dramatic loss of the rain-forest system," and the changes will become obvious to anyone. The place he loves will become unrecognizable.

The insects in the forest that Lister studied haven't been contending with pesticides or habitat loss, the two problems to which the Krefeld paper pointed. Instead, Lister chalks up their decline to climate change, which has already increased temperatures in Luquillo by two degrees Celsius since Lister first sampled there. Previous research suggested that tropical bugs will be unusually sensitive to temperature changes; in November, scientists who subjected laboratory beetles to a heat wave reported that the increased temperatures made them significantly less fertile. Other scientists wonder if it might be climate-induced drought or possibly invasive rats or simply "death by a thousand cuts" - a confluence of many kinds of changes to the places where insects once thrived.

Like other species, insects are responding to what Chris Thomas, an insect ecologist at the University of York, has called "the transformation of the world": not just a changing climate but also the widespread conversion, via urbanization, agricultural intensification and so on, of natural spaces into human ones, with fewer and fewer resources "left over" for nonhuman creatures to live on. What resources remain are often contaminated. Hans de Kroon characterizes the life of many modern insects as trying to survive from one dwindling oasis to the next but with "a desert in between, and at worst it's a poisonous desert." Of particular concern are neonicotinoids, neurotoxins that were thought to affect only treated crops but turned out to accumulate in the landscape and to be consumed by all kinds of nontargeted bugs. People talk about the "loss" of bees to colony collapse disorder, and that appears to be the right word: Affected hives aren't full of dead bees, but simply mysteriously empty. A leading theory is that exposure to neurotoxins leaves bees unable to find their way home. Even hives exposed to low levels of neonicotinoids have been shown to collect less pollen and produce fewer eggs and far fewer queens. Some recent studies found bees doing better in cities than in the supposed countryside.

The diversity of insects means that some will manage to make do in new environments, some will thrive (abundance cuts both ways: agricultural monocultures, places where only one kind of plant grows, allow some pests to reach population levels they would never achieve in nature) and some, searching for food and shelter in a world nothing like the one they were meant for, will fail. While we need much more data to better understand the reasons or mechanisms behind the ups and downs, Thomas says, "the average across all species is still a decline."

Since the Krefeld study came out, researchers have begun searching for other forgotten repositories of information that might offer windows into the past. Some of the Radboud researchers have analyzed long-term data, belonging to Dutch entomological societies, about beetles and moths in certain reserves; they found significant drops (72 percent, 54 percent) that mirrored the Krefeld ones. Roel van Klink, a researcher at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, told me that before Krefeld, he, like most entomologists, had never been interested in biomass. Now he is looking for historical data sets - many of which began as studies of agricultural pests, like a decades-long study of grasshoppers in Kansas - that could help create a more thorough picture of what's happening to creatures that are at once abundant and imperiled. So far he has found forgotten data from 140 old data sets for 1,500 locations that could be resampled.

In the United States, one of the few long-term data sets about insect abundance comes from the work of Arthur Shapiro, an entomologist at the University of California, Davis. In 1972, he began walking transects in the Central Valley and the Sierras, counting butterflies. He planned to do a study on how short-term weather variations affected butterfly populations. But the longer he sampled, the more valuable his data became, offering a signal through the noise of seasonal ups and downs. "And so here I am in Year 46," he said, nearly half a century of spending five days a week, from late spring to the end of autumn, observing butterflies. In that time he has watched overall numbers decline and seen some species that used to be everywhere - even species that "everyone regarded as a junk species" only a few decades ago - all but disappear. Shapiro believes that Krefeld-level declines are likely to be happening all over the globe. "But, of course, I don't cover the entire globe," he added. "I cover I-80."

There are also new efforts to set up more of the kind of insect-monitoring schemes researchers wish had existed decades ago, so that our current level of fallenness, at least, is captured. One is a pilot project in Germany similar to the Danish car study. To analyze what is caught, the researchers turned to volunteer naturalists, hobbyists similar to the ones in Krefeld, with the necessary breadth of knowledge to know what they're looking at. "These are not easy species to identify," says Aletta Bonn, of the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, who is overseeing the project. (The skills required for such work "are really extreme," Dunn says. "These people train for decades with other amateurs to be able to identify beetles based on their genitalia.") Bond would like to pay the volunteers for their expertise, she says, but funding hasn't caught up to the crisis. That didn't stop the "amateurs" from being willing to help: "They said, 'We're just curious what's in there, we would like to have samples.' "

Goulson says that Europe's tradition of amateur naturalism may account for why so many of the clues to the falloff in insect biodiversity originate there. (Tottrup's design for the car net in Denmark, for example, was itself adapted from the invention of a dedicated beetle-collecting hobbyist.) As little as we know about the status of European bugs, we know significantly less about other parts of the world. "We wouldn't know anything if it weren't for them," the so-called amateurs, Goulson told me. "We'd be entirely relying on the fact that there's no bugs on the windshield."

Thomas believes that this naturalist tradition is also why Europe is acting much faster than other places - for example, the United States - to address the decline of insects: Interest leads to tracking, which leads to awareness, which leads to concern, which leads to action. Since the Krefeld data emerged, there have been hearings about protecting insect biodiversity in the German Bundestag and the European Parliament. European Union member states voted to extend a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides and have begun to put money toward further studies of how abundance is changing, what is causing those changes and what can be done. When I knocked on the door of de Kroon's office, at Radboud University in the Dutch city Nijmegen, he was looking at some photos from another meeting he had that day: Willem-Alexander, the king of the Netherlands, had taken a tour of the city's efforts to make its riverside a friendlier habitat for bugs.

Stemming insect declines will require much more than this, however. The European Union already had some measures in place to help pollinators - including more strictly regulating pesticides than the United States does and paying farmers to create insect habitats by leaving fields fallow and allowing for wild edges alongside cultivation - but insect populations dropped anyway. New reports call for national governments to collaborate; for more creative approaches such as integrating insect habitats into the design of roads, power lines, railroads and other infrastructure; and, as always, for more studies. The necessary changes, like the causes, may be profound. "It's just another indication that we're destroying the life-support system of the planet," Lister says of the Puerto Rico study. "Nature's resilient, but we're pushing her to such extremes that eventually it will cause a collapse of the system."

Scientists hope that insects will have a chance to embody that resilience. While tigers tend to give birth to three or four cubs at a time, a ghost moth in Australia was once recorded laying 29,100 eggs, and she still had 15,000 in her ovaries. The fecund abundance that is insects' singular trait should enable them to recover, but only if they are given the space and the opportunity to do so.

"It's a debate we need to have urgently," Goulson says. "If we lose insects, life on earth will. ..." He trailed off, pausing for what felt like a long time.

In Denmark, Sune Boye Riis's transect with his car net took him past a bit of woods, some suburban lawns, some hedges, a Christmas-tree farm. The closest thing to a meadow that we passed was a large military property, on which the grass had been allowed to grow tall and golden. Riis had received instructions not to drive too fast, so traffic backed up behind us, and some people began to honk. "Well," Riis said, "so much for science." After three miles, he turned around and drove back toward the start. His windshield stayed mockingly clean.

Riis had four friends who were also participating in the study. They had a bet going among them: Who would net the biggest bug? "I'm way behind," Riis said. "A bumblebee is in the lead." His biggest catch? "A fly. Not even a big one."

At the end of the transect, Riis stopped at another parlous roadside spot, unfastened the net and removed the small bag at its tip. Some volunteers, captivated by what the study revealed about the world around them, asked the organizers for extra specimen bags, so they could do more sampling on their own. Some even asked if they could buy the entire car-net apparatus. Riis, though, was content to peer through the mesh, inside of which he could make out a number of black specks of varying tininess.

There was also a single butterfly, white-winged and delicate. Riis thought of the bet with his friends, for which the meaning of bigness had not been defined. He wondered how it might be reckoned. What gave a creature value?

"Is it weight?" he asked, staring down at the butterfly. In the big bag, it looked small and sad and alone. "Or is it grace?"

=================================================

Now that the bugs have gone... the birds are following...

[Hervé]

[...]
=================================================

Now that the bugs have gone... the birds are following...
From a repost of a 2017 article:

‘Decimated’: Germany’s Birds Disappear as Insect Abundance Plummets 76% (https://www.globalresearch.ca/decimated-germanys-birds-disappear-as-insect-abundance-plummets-76/5616314)

By Morgan Erickson-Davis (https://www.globalresearch.ca/author/morgan-erickson-davis)
Global Research, December 08, 2018
Mongabay (https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/decimated-germanys-birds-disappear-as-insect-abundance-plummets-76/) 27 October 2017


https://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/insect-400x352.jpg


Originally published by Mongabay.com and Global Research on November 2, 2017

A new study in PLOS ONE reveals a 76 percent reduction in Germany’s flying insect biomass over the past 27 years while another reports the country’s bird abundance has declined 15 percent in just over a decade.

While the causes behind the insect decline haven’t yet been conclusively studied, the PLOS ONE study suggests agricultural intensification like increased pesticide use may be contributing to the decline.

Neonicotinoid pesticides have been blamed for bee declines, and studies also link them to declines in aquatic insect communities. Many flying insects have aquatic life stages.

More research is underway to better understand the causes and ramifications of such a big decline in flying insect biomass.

Germany’s flying insect biomass has dropped 76 percent in the past 27 years, according to a study published last week in PLOS ONE (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809). The findings have stunned biologists around the world and are prompting concern about potentially disastrous ecological consequences as another study (https://www.nabu.de/news/2017/10/23284.html) finds the country lost 15 percent of its birds in just over a decade.

The study was conducted by researchers at institutions in Germany and the Netherlands. Over the course of nearly 30 years, they collected flying insects within protected areas in lowland western Germany by trapping them with mesh tents that funneled into bottles of alcohol. They then measured the biomass – basically, the combined weight – of the insects to see how it changed from year to year.

In total, the researchers collected 53.54 kilograms of flying insect biomass from 1989 to 2016. This may not sound like much, but the researchers say it represents millions of individual insects.

The results revealed a dramatic decline in flying insects. In total, their biomass dropped 76 percent over the 27-year sampling period; collections from midsummer showed an even bigger reduction –- 82 percent.


https://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/800px-Hetaerina_americana-300x199.jpg (https://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/800px-Hetaerina_americana.jpg)
Flying insects, like this damselfly, perform many important ecological roles.
Photo by Bruce Marlin via Wikimedia Commons (CC 2.5).


While declines in bees and butterflies have been fairly well documented in many regions around the world, this is one of the few studies that have examined biomass trends in flying insects generally. The researchers say their results indicate a more extensive problem than previously thought.
“Our results demonstrate that recently reported declines in several taxa such as butterflies, wild bees and moths, are in parallel with a severe loss of total aerial insect biomass,” the authors write, “suggesting that it is not only the vulnerable species, but the flying insect community as a whole, that has been decimated over the last few decades.”
The study is being lauded by outside researchers. Axel Ssymank is an entomologist and head of the Natura 2000 & Habitats Directive, a program run by the Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (which reports to the Ministry of the Environment). He said the study effectively documented and preserved material collected at the sample sites, and that collection methods were fully standardized. As a result, the study showed “no methodological bias at all” and the results “are beyond doubt and very well documented.”

“The study is the most comprehensive and detailed study on loss of insect biomass … at central-European scale, if not beyond,” Ssymank said in an email to Mongabay.

Why such a big decline?
As insect populations drop off around the world, the lingering question remains “why?” Evidence suggests that there may be myriad causes: Pesticides used on crops around the world have been linked (http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-study-links-pesticides-to-colony-collapse-disorder-2014-5) to the disappearance of bees; global warming seems to be endangering (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320701002580?via%3Dihub) the UK’s garden tiger moth; destruction of prairies for farmland in the U.S. heartland has catapulted tiny skipper butterflies (https://www.fws.gov/midwest/endangered/insects/dask/daskFactSheet.html) towards extinction.

The PLOS ONE study looked a couple possible drivers to see how much of an impact they could be having on flying insects in Germany: climate change and habitat change. It found that while these two influences are likely affecting the country’s insects, they probably couldn’t be causing such a big decline all by themselves.


https://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Rauchschwalbe_Hirundo_rustica-300x200.jpg (https://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Rauchschwalbe_Hirundo_rustica.jpg)
Barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) are listed as Endangered in Nova Scotia.
Photo by Andreas Trepte, www.photo-natur.net (http://www.photo-natur.net), via Wikimedia Commons (CC 2.5).


While they didn’t analyze it as part of their study, the researchers speculate that “agricultural intensification,” such as increased fertilizer and pesticide usage, could be contributing to the decline. They explain that despite being officially protected, all the areas where they collected insects were surrounded by cropland. They say these protected areas could be serving as “sinks or even as ecological traps” where agricultural runoff could be pooling and poisoning ecosystems.

Scientists have long linked pesticide use to insect decline – a reasonable assumption since that’s their very purpose. But research indicates that pesticides are killing more than target insects. For instance, a 2008 study in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00244-007-9073-6) demonstrated low but persistent levels of a common neonicotinoid pesticide in aquatic ecosystems can kill off or reduce the growth of water-dwelling invertebrates. A PLOS ONE study published in 2013 showed the presence of neonicotinoids in Dutch water bodies correlated to big drops in aquatic insect abundance.

Many flying insects have an aquatic phase. Dragonflies, for example, spend most of their lives underwater – as long as six or seven years (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/uniramia/odonatoida.html) for some species – before molting into their iconic flying form for just a few weeks to breed. As they spend time underwater, they are exposed to contaminants that may leach from farm fields or other human developments. If contamination is too high, populations may suffer; some species are so sensitive, that scientists use them as “bioindicators” of the health of water bodies. (http://wupcenter.mtu.edu/education/stream/Macroinvertebrate.pdf) Dragonfly larvae appear to be particularly sensitive to water pollution.

The presence of neonicotinoids in water systems appears to be increasing. Another study in PLOS ONE (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092821#pone.0092821-Stoughton1) published in 2014 found neonicotinoid pesticides were widespread in Canada’s prairie pothole wetlands, where neonicotinoid-treated crops are commonly grown. The researchers even found pesticide presence in wetland areas far from crop fields, “suggesting its susceptibility to transport and potential to affect those wetlands that are isolated from agricultural production,” the study reads.

Neonicotinoids are also suspected of killing terrestrial and arboreal insects, and are perhaps most infamously linked to declines in bee populations (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/neonicotinoid-pesticides-slowly-killing-bees). They comprise one of the most commonly used pesticide classes in the world, with about 95 percent (http://e360.yale.edu/features/declining_bee_populations_pose_a_threat_to_global_agriculture) of U.S. corn and canola crops treated with neonicotinoids in 2009. The European Commission is reportedly considering an all-out ban (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/23/europe-poised-for-total-ban-on-bee-harming-pesticides) of neonicotinoid pesticides in all EU member states.

The authors of the German study published last week did not directly survey their study sites for the presence of neonicotinoids or other pesticides, but say it is critical to uncover the causes responsible for the decline.
“Whatever the causal factors responsible for the decline, they have a far more devastating effect on total insect biomass than has been appreciated previously,” the authors write.
Ssymank further underlines that the 76 percent reduction in flying insects pertains to protected areas, and warns that the numbers in Germany’s agricultural areas “may be much worse.”

Not just insects
The drop-off in Germany’s insect abundance isn’t just concerning to entomologists. Flying insects are important for other wildlife and ecological processes: they are a critical food source for many bird species, and countless plants depend on them for pollination. These effects also translate to benefits for humanity, with the total economic value of pollination estimated to be around $177 billion (https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01293686/document) in 2009. As bees decline, farmers report it’s getting harder (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bee-loss-crops-20150512-story.html) for them to grow crops that depend on bees for pollination.

Scientists think bird populations may already be declining in response to reductions in insects. A recent study of government data (https://www.nabu.de/news/2017/10/23284.html) by German environmental organization Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) estimates that more than 25 million birds disappeared from Germany over the past 12 years. That’s about 15 percent of the country’s total bird population.


https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-czSdTWcGPio/WfZj0FHKlTI/AAAAAAAAmNw/UdOLQMmON2YRMkXp_kWdAqSPgkb8KF3qQCHMYCw/image%255B6%255D?imgmax=800

Source: Desdemona Despair (http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2017/10/decimated-germanys-birds-disappear-as.html)

The authors of the NABU study say that a direct relationship between Germany’s insect and bird declines is very likely. The study also found the bird drop-off correlated to shifts in agricultural land use from pasture and fallow land to more intensively managed corn and rapeseed crops.

Bird disappearances aren’t limited to Germany. On the other side of the Atlantic in North America, barn swallows have declined around 95 percent in the past 40 years (https://phys.org/news/2014-07-swallows.html). Other swallow species also seem to be dropping off. Since swallows are heavily dependent on flying insects (they catch their food on the wing), scientists think insect decline may be to blame here, too.

Researchers admit there is a gap when it comes to thorough surveys of insect abundance and trends, and say the most recent German insect study represents one of the first attempts to address this.
“There is a huge paucity of data on historical patterns of insect populations and work on ecological phenomena that depend upon insects has long suffered due to this gap in our knowledge,” Joe Nocera, a population ecologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, told The Scientist (http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/50673/title/Germany-Sees-Drastic-Decrease-in-Insects/). “And here, with this paper, is one major first step in correcting this.”
Axel Ssymank said the German government is also funding a research project looking at insect biomass and possible reasons behind its decline. Administered under the EU’s Habitats Directive, the project’s results are expected to be released at the end of next year.
“As habitats covered by EU regulations for nature conservation [also] show this decline, we are concerned a lot about losing quality and characteristic species, as well as consequences and effects on other ecosystem components,” Ssymank told Mongabay.
The researchers behind last week’s PLOS ONE study are also digging deeper into Germany’s insect decline, telling The Scientist (http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/50673/title/Germany-Sees-Drastic-Decrease-in-Insects/) they are currently working on an analysis of what consequences a 76 percent decline in Germany’s flying insects may mean for ecosystem functioning and insect-dependent wildlife.
“There is an urgent need to uncover the causes of this decline, its geographical extent, and to understand the ramifications of the decline for ecosystems and ecosystem services,” they write in their study.
Source:
Hallmann, C. A., Sorg, M., Jongejans, E., Siepel, H., Hofland, N., Schwan, H., … & Goulson, D. (2017). More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. PloS one, 12(10), e0185809.
The original source of this article is Mongabay (https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/decimated-germanys-birds-disappear-as-insect-abundance-plummets-76/)
Copyright © Morgan Erickson-Davis (https://www.globalresearch.ca/author/morgan-erickson-davis), Mongabay (https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/decimated-germanys-birds-disappear-as-insect-abundance-plummets-76/), 2018


Related:
The Deathly Insect Dilemma. “It is not Normal for 50%-to-90% of a Species to Drop Dead” (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-deathly-insect-dilemma-it-is-not-normal-for-50-to-90-of-a-species-to-drop-dead/5662215)

[Hervé]

Paul Stamets' epiphany that mushrooms could help save the world's bees (https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/10/06/the-mushroom-dream-of-a-long-haired-hippie-could-help-save-the-worlds-bees.html)

Evan Bush The Seattle Times (https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/10/06/the-mushroom-dream-of-a-long-haired-hippie-could-help-save-the-worlds-bees.html)
Sat, 06 Oct 2018 14:59 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s25/500720/large/paul_stamets.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s25/500720/full/paul_stamets.jpg)
Paul Stamets, a renowned expert on mushrooms, nurtures fungi near his home in Shelton, Washington

The epiphany that mushrooms could help save the world's ailing bee colonies struck Paul Stamets while he was in bed.

"I love waking dreams," he said. "It's a time when you're just coming back into consciousness."

Years ago, in 1984, Stamets had noticed a "continuous convoy of bees" traveling from a patch of mushrooms he was growing and his beehives. The bees actually moved wood chips to access his mushroom's mycelium, the branching fibers of fungus that look like cobwebs.

"I could see them sipping on the droplets oozing from the mycelium," he said. They were after its sugar, he thought.

Decades later, he and a friend began a conversation about bee colony collapse that left Stamets, the owner of a mushroom mercantile, puzzling over a problem. Bees across the world have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Parasites like mites, fast-spreading viruses, agricultural chemicals and lack of forage area have stressed and threatened wild and commercial bees alike.

Waking up one morning, "I connected the dots," he said. "Mycelium have sugars and antiviral properties," he said. What if it wasn't just sugar that was useful to those mushroom-suckling bees so long ago?

In research published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, Stamets turned intuition into reality. The paper describes how bees given a small amount of his mushroom mycelia extract exhibited remarkable reductions in the presence of viruses associated with parasitic mites that have been attacking, and infecting, bee colonies for decades.

In the late 1980s, tiny Varroa mites began to spread through bee colonies in the United States. The mites -which are parasites and can infect bees with viruses -proliferate easily and cause colony collapse in just years.

Over time, colonies have become even more susceptible, and viruses became among the chief threats to the important pollinators for crops on which people rely.

"We think that's because the viruses have evolved and become pathogenic and virulent," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a University of Maryland professor in entomology, who was not involved in the mycelium research. "Varroa viruses kill most of the colonies in the country."

He likened the mites to dirty hypodermic needles; the mites are able to spread viruses from bee to bee.

The only practical solution to date has been to keep the number of Varroa mites within beehives "at manageable populations."

Stamet's idea about bee-helping mycelium could give beekeepers a powerful new weapon.

At first, mushrooms were a hard sell.

When Stamets, whose fascination with fungi began with "magic mushrooms" when he was a "long-haired hippie" undergraduate at The Evergreen State College, began reaching out to scientists, some laughed him off.

"I don't have time for this. You sound kind of crazy. I'm gonna go," he recalled a California researcher telling him. "It was never good to start a conversation with scientists you don't know saying, 'I had a dream.'"

When Steve Sheppard, a Washington State University entomology professor, received a call in 2014 from Stamets, however, he listened.

Sheppard has heard a lot of wild ideas to save bees over the years, like harnessing static electricity to stick bees with little balls of Styrofoam coated in mite-killing chemicals. Stamets' pitch was different: He had data to back up his claims about mycelium's antiviral properties and his company, Fungi Perfecti, could produce it in bulk. "I had a compelling reason to look further," Sheppard said.

Together with other researchers, the unlikely pair have produced research that opens promising and previously unknown doors in the fight to keep bee colonies from collapsing.

"This is a pretty novel approach," vanEngelsdorp said. "There's no scientist who believes there's a silver bullet for bee health. There's too many things going on. ... This is a great first step."

To test Stamets' theory, the researchers conducted two experiments: They separated two groups of mite-exposed bees into cages, feeding one group sugar syrup with a mushroom-based additive and the other, syrup without the additive. They also field-tested the extract in small, working bee colonies near WSU.

For several virus strains, the extract "reduced the virus to almost nothing," said Brandon Hopkins, a WSU assistant research professor, another author of the paper.

The promising results have opened the door to new inquiries.

Researchers are still trying to figure out how the mushroom extract works. The compound could be boosting bees' immune systems, making them more resistant to the virus. Or, the compound could be targeting the viruses themselves.

"We don't know what's happening to cause the reduction. That's sort of our next step," Sheppard said.

Because the extract can be added to syrups commercial beekeepers commonly use, researchers say the extract could be a practical solution that could scale quickly.

For now, they are conducting more research. On Wednesday, Hopkins and Sheppard spent the day setting up experiments at more than 300 commercial colonies in Oregon.

Meanwhile, Stamets has designed a 3D-printable feeder that delivers mycelia extract to wild bees. He plans to launch the product, and an extract-subscription service next year, to the public.

Stamets said he hopes his fungus extract can forestall the crisis of a world without many of its creatures, including bees. He is alarmed at how fast species are going extinct.

"The loss of biodiversity has ramifications that reverberate throughout the food web," he said, likening each species to parts of an airplane, that hold the Earth together - until they don't.

"What rivet will we lose that we'll have catastrophic failure? I think the rivet will be losing the bees," he said. "More than one-third of our food supply is dependent on bees."

Related:

Magic Mycellum: The healing power of mushrooms (https://www.sott.net/article/315705-Magic-Mycellum-The-healing-power-of-mushrooms)



Solutions from the underground: How fungi can help heal humans & the planet (https://www.sott.net/article/317997-Solutions-from-the-underground-How-fungi-can-help-heal-humans-the-planet)



Fungi expert holds the patent that could destroy Monsanto and change agriculture forever (https://www.sott.net/article/297699-Fungi-expert-holds-the-patent-that-could-destroy-Monsanto-and-change-agriculture-forever)

[william r sanford72]

Some Humans Aint Human..

lB2E6RX7W44


Rock on...

[RunningDeer]

https://i.imgur.com/ixHQnJM.jpg


https://i.imgur.com/F5VZkI8.gif


Nursing a Wasp Back to Health
I found a wasp on the floor. Fed it some food and water
so it had enough energy to get back to work.

rxG_LtZVZ2c
♡

[Hervé]

France becomes first country in Europe to ban all five pesticides killing bees (http://expand-your-consciousness.com/france-becomes-first-country-europe-ban-five-pesticides-killing-bees/)

Expand Your Consciousness (http://expand-your-consciousness.com/france-becomes-first-country-europe-ban-five-pesticides-killing-bees/)
Sun, 16 Dec 2018 00:01 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s25/507042/large/bee_flower.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s25/507042/full/bee_flower.jpg)


France has taken a radical step towards protecting its dwindling bee population by becoming the first country in Europe to ban all five pesticides researchers believe are killing off the insects.1 The ban has been met with the applause of beekeepers and harsh criticism by farmers.

Neonicotinoid pesticides sometimes called "neonics," have been found to pose a risk to wild bees and honeybees according to assessments released by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in early 2018. EFSA's review of "a substantial amount of data" found that "in many cases bees foraging on the treated crop in the field as well as in its vicinity are likely to be exposed to harmful levels of the neonicotinoid pesticides. This is because pollen and nectar of the treated crop contain pesticide residues, and plants in the vicinity can also be contaminated by dust drifting away from the field."2

France's ban covers all five of the neonic pesticides used by farmers (clothianidin, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, thiacloprid, and acetamiprid). The ban covers use in agricultural fields as well as inside greenhouses. This move is more comprehensive than the European Union's late 2018 ban of three of the pesticides.1 These bans respond to evidence that pesticides are contributing to "colony collapse disorder," that has seen bee populations decline by 90% in some areas. Bee colonies also battle threats from mites, viruses, and fungi.1

Neonics get their name from their basic chemistry that is similar to nicotine. They are what's known as a systemic pesticide, often used as a seed treatment, that travels through a plant's vascular system, finding its way into all plant tissue, including nectar and pollen.3

According to the National Research Council: "about three-quarters of the more than 240,000 species of the world's flowering plants rely on pollinators - insects, birds, bats, and other animals - to various degrees to carry pollen from the male to the female parts of flowers for reproduction. Pollinators are vital to agriculture because most fruit, vegetable, seed crops and other crops that provide fiber, drugs, and fuel are pollinated by animals. Bee-pollinated forage and hay crops, such as alfalfa and clover, also are used to feed the animals that supply meat and dairy products."4

The Telegraph reports that the United Nations has warned that 40% of invertebrate pollinators, especially bees and butterflies, risk global extinction.1

Here's an excellent video on how pesticides are causing colony collapse in bees and the effect of chemicals from fracking:


JvZODBqERXc

What Can Home Gardeners Do To Avoid Neonicotinoids?
Researchers from Ohio State University suggest that while much attention focuses on agricultural use of pesticides, it is also important to reduce risk to pollinators in urban settings. This is especially true as the "interface between urban and rural environments become more ambiguous."5

A first line of defense on behalf of bees is to buy organic seeds. For home gardeners who use starter plants, it is important to find out if they have been treated with neonics. Ask the staff in the garden department of any place you buy starter plants whether they were treated with neonics. Home Depot pledged to phase out the use of neonics on the plants they sell by the end of 2018. Lowe's has pledged a similar ban by 2019.3

Michigan State University's agricultural extension service offers this advice: If you purchase perennials and flowering trees, remove the flowers during the first summer after planting. Also, when you bring home new plants, you can flush some neonicotinoid residue that is not tightly bound to organic matter in soil by running water into plant containers for ten minutes after the first water emerges through bottom holes. Avoid spraying insecticides in the yard and garden; never spray flower blossoms. Instead, use insecticidal soaps.6


References

1Samuel H. France Becomes First Country in Europe to Ban All Five Pesticides Killing Bees. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/31/france-first-ban-five-pesticides-killing-bees/) 31 August 2018. News Telegraph.

2EFAS (European Food Safety Authority). Q&A: Conclusions on Neonicotinoids 2018. (https://www.efsa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/news/180228-QA-Neonics.pdf) 28 February 2018.

3Oder T. Neonicotinoids: What home gardeners need to know (https://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/stories/neonicotinoids-what-home-gardeners-need-to-know). MNN. 15 August 2017.

4National Research Council. 2007. Status of Pollinators in North America (https://www.nap.edu/read/11761/chapter/2). Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

5Long EY, Krupke CH. Non-cultivated plants present a season-long route of pesticide exposure for honey bees. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895021/) Nature Communications. 2016 May 31;7:11629.

6Smitley D. Planting garden center flowers is good for bees and other beneficial insects (https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/planting_garden_center_flowers_is_good_for_bees_and_other_beneficial_insect). 25 June 2014. Michigan State University Extension.

Related:

Nature bites back: More unforeseen consequences of neonicotinoid pesticides (https://www.sott.net/article/334079-Nature-bites-back-More-unforeseen-consequences-of-neonicotinoid-pesticides)



Neonicotinoid pesticides blamed for butterfly decline in the UK (https://www.sott.net/article/307178-Neonicotinoid-pesticides-blamed-for-butterfly-decline-in-the-UK)



Study shows 70% of honey in Massachusetts contains at least one neonicotinoid pesticide (https://www.sott.net/article/301717-Study-shows-70-of-honey-in-Massachusetts-contains-at-least-one-neonicotinoid-pesticide)



Neonicotinoid insecticides linked to recent fall in farmland bird numbers (https://www.sott.net/article/281727-Neonicotinoid-insecticides-linked-to-recent-fall-in-farmland-bird-numbers)



Study strengthens link between neonicotinoids and collapse of honey bee colonies (https://www.sott.net/article/279526-Study-strengthens-link-between-neonicotinoids-and-collapse-of-honey-bee-colonies)

[Stephanie]

I don't bee-lieve it! World's biggest species of bee the size of a human THUMB that was believed to be extinct for 38 years is found on an island in Indonesia

Wildlife experts have found a single live female, which they photographed and filmed. The world's biggest bee has been found after it was thought that the species had become extinct.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6729989/Worlds-biggest-bee-missing-38-years-alive-Indonesia.html?ito=email_share_article-bottom

[RunningDeer]

I don't bee-lieve it! World's biggest species of bee the size of a human THUMB that was believed to be extinct for 38 years is found on an island in Indonesia

Wildlife experts have found a single live female, which they photographed and filmed. The world's biggest bee has been found after it was thought that the species had become extinct.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6729989/Worlds-biggest-bee-missing-38-years-alive-Indonesia.html?ito=email_share_article-bottom

Amazing! Thanks, Sstarss. Here's the vid from the article. It has 104,959 views in the first 24 hours.


World's Biggest Bee (1:34 minutes)
rPuhg58PXcs

[william r sanford72]

An Inside Look at How the Varroa Mite’s True Diet Was Discovered

By Samuel Ramsey, Ph.D., Ron Ochoa, Ph.D., Joe Mowery, Chris Pooley, Connor Gulbronson, Ph.D., and Gary Bauchan, Ph.D.

https://entomologytoday.org/2019/02/21/inside-look-how-varroa-mite-diet-discovered/

Varroa destructor, a mite that feeds on honey bees, is the greatest single driver of the global honey bee health decline. For years, scientists and bee keepers were told that the Varroa mite feeds on hemolymph (the bee’s blood) based on scientific research done long ago. However, for our research team led by Samuel Ramsey, Ph.D., this did not make sense, as the mite’s digestive system and mouthparts just did not seem like they were structured properly for blood feeding. Their closest evolutionary relatives were not blood feeders either. As pointed out by insect-rearing expert Allen Cohen, Ph.D., even their excrement was all wrong for them to be blood feeders.

So, how and on what exactly do these mites feed? Our discovery is documented in a paper published in late January in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ramsey, then a Ph.D. student of Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Ph.D., at the University of Maryland, College Park, began his inquiry with a simple question: Are Varroa mites feeding in only one spot? If the mites can feed anywhere on honey bees (Apis mellifera) like a tick can on a person, then they are likely feeding on a tissue available all over the bee’s body (like hemolymph). However, if the mites feed only in one spot, maybe they are feeding on a tissue specific to that location. Out of 104 observations, the mites on adult bees were only found underneath the abdominal plates of their host. Ramsey considered that this might be their feeding site but knew he would need some help to prove it.

This led Ramsey to the office of Ron Ochoa, Ph.D., research entomologist at the Systematic Entomology Lab and the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Unit (ECMU) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) in Beltsville, Maryland, and the leading mite expert at the USDA-ARS. In addition, to the idea that Varroa mites only feed on the hemolymph of developing larvae and pupae, researchers were questioning whether the mites feed on adult bees at all. Some had already concluded that feeding only occurs on immature bees because they were never seen feeding on adult bees and because we have long been referring to the life stage of mites found on adult bees as “phoretic,” a term that denotes a nonfeeding stage that uses another organism as a mode of transit.

Gary Bauchan, Ph.D., director of the ECMU, Ochoa, and Ramsey used liquid nitrogen to instantly freeze honey bees that had mites in the region Ramsey proposed feeding was occurring. The exact position of the mites on the honey bees was imaged in a low-temperature scanning electron microscope (LT-SEM). The frozen bees were then removed from the LT-SEM and the mites carefully detached from the bees. During this process, Ramsey monitored Ochoa’s exposure time to the liquid nitrogen to avoid burning himself while he removed the mites from the frozen bees—a manual process that had to be done in approximately 10 seconds. The bees were then returned to the LT-SEM and the location where the mite was located was imaged.

The mite presses itself so tightly to the soft membrane between the bee’s abdominal plates that it leaves a distinct impression of its legs and palps and a mouth-shaped wound in the membrane. Additionally, at this feeding site the ambulacra (foot pads) from the front legs remained stuck to the bees’ membrane, allowing us to quickly orient ourselves to the positioning of the mite’s body relative to the bee’s. We repeated this procedure 10 times to prove this was where the mites were feeding.

A longitudinal section via freeze fracture directly through the bee and its attached mite confirmed in detail that Varroa‘s relatively short mouthparts (200 microns) come to rest just inside of the bee, which is an area surrounded by fat body tissue and hemolymph, leaving us with the conclusion that the mites are feeding on adult bees. It further suggested to us that the mites could be feeding on a nutrient-dense organ called the fat body, which is analogous to the mammalian liver.

To determine if fat body was being consumed, the team had to get a closer look. Joe Mowery, support scientist at the ECMU, and Ramsey collected and prepared specimens by affixing the feeding mite onto the bee with cyanoacrylate glue prior to processing. Then, ultra-thin sections were obtained and studied using a transmission electron microscope (TEM). Clear evidence was discerned that mites were breaking down and removing fat body tissue via extra-oral digestion (and creating an entry point for colonies of microbes).

While observation and electron microscopy had produced clear evidence for fat body feeding, the research turned to Connor Gulbronson, Ph.D., Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education post-doctoral fellow with the USDA-ARS Floral and Nursery Plants Research Unit (located within the ECMU), and his expertise in fluorescence and confocal microscopy to determine if fat body is the primary tissue consumed. Ramsey generated a diet containing two fluorescent biostains to label the bee’s hemolymph (yellow) and fat body (red). Gulbronson developed protocols to bleach the exoskeletons of the mites, allowing the internal structures to be imaged.

The bees with their glowing innards were then exposed to hungry Varroa. The results were stunning. Gulbronson and Ramsey imaged mites with brilliantly red fluorescing digestive systems with very little discernible fluorescence in the yellow range. To be sure the biostains were staining the correct tissues, each bee was dissected and imaged as well for comparison with the fluorescence inside the mites. This work provided the clearest evidence yet that the mites were primarily consuming fat body tissue.

All facets of this project had lined up pointing to one conclusion, but Ramsey wanted to be sure that this tissue clearly consumed in adult bees was the same tissue consumed in developing larvae and pupae. To determine this relationship, Ramsey developed a novel in vitro rearing system, which mimicked the brood cells in which immature honey bees develop, and constructed decoy pupae to mimic the mite’s host. This allowed Ramsey and lab technicians Judith Joklik and David Lim to undertake the tedious task of feeding the mites diets composed of the different tissues of interest.

Mites fed exclusively honey bee hemolymph starved quickly and produced very few eggs, no different from the control group given no food at all. However, mites fed exclusively fat body survived substantially better than all other treatments and produced far more eggs. This was the first time anyone had was able to rear Varroa mites in vitro without directly feeding on bees. These discoveries provided the study with the very last line of evidence needed to say conclusively that Varroa are not blood-feeders but rather feed on fat.

Collectively, this multi-disciplinary approach of feeding assays, observational analysis, and various microscopy technologies generated a paradigm shift in our understanding of how, where, and what the Varroa mite obtains when parasitizing host honey bees. This research provides a path forward for the development of strategies to controlling this major pest of honey bees worldwide.

Read more and plenty of pics: https://entomologytoday.org/2019/02/21/inside-look-how-varroa-mite-diet-discovered/

Varroa destructor feeds primarily on honey bee fat body tissue and not hemolymph Research Paper and ref: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/5/1792

[william r sanford72]

Pollen Sleuths: Tracking Pesticides in Honey Bee Pollen to Their Source Plant

By Kimberly Stoner, Richard Cowles, and Brian Eitzer

More than 10 years after the appearance of Colony Collapse Disorder, people are still worried about honey bees, and for good reason. Beekeepers still lose a substantial portion of their honey bee colonies each year. A nationwide bee survey estimated annual loss at 40 percent for 2017-2018. Many factors are likely to be involved, but the one that we study as a team is exposure to pesticides.

We have been measuring honey bee (Apis mellifera) exposure to pesticides in pollen since 2007 by putting honey bee hives in different habitats, collecting pollen using a pollen trap, and then measuring pesticide residues in the pollen using high-pressure liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry.

A pollen trap is a clever device, invented by beekeepers, which forces each foraging worker bee returning to the hive to travel through a screen. The screen removes the pollen pellets from the bee’s pollen baskets on her hind legs, whereupon the pellets are collected onto a smaller-mesh screen. Ideally, the result is a collection of pollen pellets, of fairly uniform size, each representing the pollen collected on a single foraging trip by a worker bee.

In 2015, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection funded us to put hives at three large commercial ornamental plant nurseries for one growing season. At the time, consumers and environmental groups across the country were concerned that ornamental plants treated with neonicotinoid insecticides during production could pose risks by providing insecticidal nectar and pollen to bees visiting these plants later placed in landscapes.

In general we found neonicotinoids in the range of 1–4 parts per billion (ppb) in the pollen collected at the nurseries: not much different from those we found in other environments around Connecticut. However, the exception was a series of pollen samples collected at one nursery during the month of August. One sample contained 305 ppb of thiamethoxam and 31 ppb of clothianidin, and several other samples had 10–20 times the average found for these neonicotinoids. The results of our search for the source of this sample, using a novel combination of techniques, were reported Tuesday in Environmental Entomology.

What was the source of these exceptionally high pesticide residues? To investigate, we sorted the pollen pellets by color, and then tested the different color categories for pesticide residues. We sorted out 11 colors of pellets, discriminating the colors and naming them using Pantone standard colors used by interior designers. Three of the colors—”mahogany rose,” “warm sand,” and “almond buff”—had 1.5–2 times the concentrations of thiamethoxam and clothianidin compared to the bulk pollen, while the other colors—shades of yellow, green, and dark brown—had 5 percent or less of the neonicotinoid concentration found in the bulk pollen.

These samples were then analyzed by Andrea Nurse at the University of Maine, a palynologist—an expert in identifying pollen microscopically. She found a higher incidence of pollen from Spiraea in the color categories containing higher concentrations of neonicotinoids. We found that this association held up to statistical testing, and we also did the same analysis on another sample of bulk pollen, from the same hive a week later, and found that the “mahogany rose” pollen in this sample—only 4 percent of the bulk sample—was 94 percent Spiraea, and had 11 times the thiamethoxam and 15 times the clothianidin as the bulk sample.

Other researchers have tried palynology combined with pesticide residue testing to track pesticides to their plant sources but have not been successful in identifying a major plant source. Sorting the pollen pellets by color helped us narrow the potential sources, and working with an excellent palynologist and preparing the pollen to her specifications allowed us to be the first to identify a single plant genus as the source. We are now working again with Andrea Nurse and with a team at Penn State University to combine palynology with molecular methods to improve identification of pollen from ornamental plant nurseries.

We were able to confirm with the nursery staff that they had applied thiamethoxam to Spiraea (the clothianidin is a metabolite of thiamethoxam) on July 29 and August 12, just before and during the series of samples with high concentrations of these neonicotinoids. But the nursery used the same pesticide throughout the growing season, so why did it just turn up in these Spiraea samples from August? We don’t know the answer to that question.

Some possibilities are that there might be differences in how Spiraea moves these systemic pesticides into pollen, compared to the many other genera of plants at the nursery, or there might have been an accidental over-application. As usual, solving one mystery leaves more questions to answer.

Read more with Pics..https://entomologytoday.org/2019/02/14/pollen-sleuths-tracking-pesticides-in-honey-bee-pollen-to-their-source-plant/

Tracking Pesticide Residues to a Plant Genus Using Palynology in Pollen Trapped from Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) at Ornamental Plant Nurseries:

https://academic.oup.com/ee/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ee/nvz007/5310146

[william r sanford72]

Earning a bee’s wings

In hives, graduating to forager a requirement for social membership

By Talia Ogliore


https://vimeo.com/317352725

It is a classic coming-of-age story, in many ways.

A honey bee hatches and grows up deep inside a hive. Surrounded by 40,000 of her closest relatives, this dark and constantly buzzing place is all that she knows.

Only after she turns 21 days old does she leave the nest to look for pollen and nectar. For her, this is a moment of great risk, and great reward.

It’s also the moment at which she becomes recognizable to other bees, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis. A study in the journal eLife reports that honey bees (Apis mellifera) develop different scent profiles as they age, and the gatekeeper bees at the hive’s door respond differently to returning foragers than they do when they encounter younger bees who have never ventured out before.

This work offers new insight into one of the most important interactions in the lives of social insects: recognizing self and other.

Until this point, most bee researchers thought bees recognize and respond to a scent that is the homogenized scent of all of the members of their own colony.

That’s how it works for some ants and other insects, at least. But new work from the laboratory of Yehuda Ben-Shahar, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, shows that nestmate recognition instead depends on an innate developmental process that is associated with age-dependent division of labor.

The work was completed in collaboration with researchers from the lab of Joel Levine at the University of Toronto.

“It was always assumed that the way that honey bees acquire nestmate recognition cues, their cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles, is through these mechanisms where they rub up against each other, or transfer compounds between each other,” said Cassondra L. Vernier, a graduate student at Washington University and first author of the new study.

“You would expect, then, that even younger bees would have a very similar pheromonal profile as older bees. When in fact that is not what we saw,” she said.
Vernier compared the CHC profiles of bees on the day they were born and at 1 week, 2 weeks, and 3 weeks old. The 3-week-old bees had significantly different profiles than their younger siblings.

A 3-week-old foraging bee also has a very different job to support the hive than a younger bee — one who spends her time as a nurse caring for bee larvae and building the waxy honeycomb structures in the hive.

The researchers wanted to separate out whether the differences they saw were based on age alone, or were somehow tied to the older bees’ foraging activities. Bees that exit the hive to collect nectar encounter lots of scents on flowers and other surfaces they touch. They also are exposed to different environmental factors such as sunshine and rain that could affect their body coatings.

So Vernier also compared the CHC profiles of foraging-age bees that were held in the hive and not permitted to forage with bees that were able to venture out. These two groups were also significantly different.

“What we found is that it’s actually a combination of both — of being at the age for foraging, and actually performing the foraging activities,” said Ben-Shahar.

Guards are gatekeepers; specific triggers still unknown

Importantly, not every bee notices the difference in scent profiles. Guard bees are the only ones who care to identify outsiders.

“They sit in the entrance and they have a very specific posture,” Ben-Shahar said of the guards. “They’re very attentive. Their forelegs are usually raised, and they’re very alert. Still, it is hard to know who they are until they react to somebody.”

Place a 1-day-old, 1-week-old, or 2-week-old outsider on the stoop in front of a guard, and she is likely to be able to waltz on through. But it’s a different story after 3 weeks of age — when guards bite, sting and/or drag outsiders away from the door.

“Nestmate recognition is something that is very context-specific. It involves an interaction between very specific bees within the colony,” Ben-Shahar said. “Most bees are completely oblivious. Most colony members don’t produce the signal that tells anyone if they belong or not, and they don’t care about the signal. They don’t react to it.”

As an important caveat, the new study does not directly address the mechanism by which cue specificity is determined in bees. Which specific components of the honey bee CHC profile represent the nestmate recognition cue remains unknown.

“Something environmentally related is causing expression-level changes in the CHC profiles of the bees,” Vernier said. “That’s our model for now.”


The bees in this study were kept in two different locations: Tyson Research Center, the environmental field station for Washington University in St. Louis, and an amateur beekeeper’s private residence in University City, MO.

Funding for the project was provided by the National Science Foundation under grants NSF DGE-1143954, IOS-1322783, IOS-1707221 and IOS-1754264.

https://source.wustl.edu/2019/02/earning-a-bees-wings/

[william r sanford72]

usda..National Honey Report for January 30, 2019

www.ams.usda.gov/marketnews.htm

[william r sanford72]

Homage to life on earth..apiculture and sacred dance of honeybees.

https://gaiabees.com/

9aw-ZeJ2DUU


:sun:

[william r sanford72]

Took thee Tribe to see and hear these guys last night and found myself yelling/chanting with the singer..F**K! MONSANTO!! not afraid to admit it was a sweet release...and we all had a great time..The French Know how to Rock..

The Inspector Cluzo - WE THE PEOPLE OF THE SOIL...

_Fld8vjxCtA

:heart:
Rock On...

[william r sanford72]

When conditions are right, honey bees turn selfish

South African Cape bees turn the honey bee reputation for cooperation on its head.

Andrew Masterson reports.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/when-conditions-are-right-honey-bees-turn-selfish

A South African variant of the common honey bee (Apis mellifera) sometimes upends the defining cooperation and altruism of the species, exhibiting selfish behaviours and – in a development akin to a human revolution – subverting the dominance of the queen.

In a paper published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, researchers led by Denise Aumer of the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Germany discovered that outbreaks of selfishness among the South African honey bee subspecies (Apis mellifera capensis) are driven by a single mutation in a gene located on the bees’ chromosome one.

Axiomatically, genetic mutations that reduce the fitness of any species will be inevitably bred out of the reproductive line. The fact that this one persists is strong evidence that it delivers a survival benefit – which Aumer and colleagues, almost by accident, saw in action.

The subspecies – commonly known as the Cape honey bee – is vulnerable across its range. In an effort to bolster its chances of survival, the researchers captured a colony and transferred it to the northeast of the country, an area which boasts its own subspecies, known as Apis mellifera scutellate.

Research carried out a few years ago strongly suggested that the Cape bees would get on famously with their new neighbours.

In 2003, scientists led by fellow German bee researcher C. W. W. Pirk placed a colony of Cape bees next to that of another subspecies. They discovered that even though Cape bee workers were not related to the neighbouring colony – or to their own nest mates, for reasons that will become clear in a minute – they nevertheless patrolled and protected both.

This was mildly surprising, because Cape bees reproduce using a genetic trick thus far never seen in any other bee species.

Most species lay eggs through a genetic pathway known as arrhenotoky. As well as eggs laid by the queen, there are also some laid by workers, a proportion of which retain active ovaries. If raised, the worker offspring are inevitably male. Few, if any, however, reach adulthood, because they are identified by nest-patrolling workers and eliminated.

Apis mellifera capensis do things differently. They reproduce using a pathway called thelytoky – in which workers lay unfertilised eggs that inevitably develop into females. Thelytoky has only ever been observed in six species of ants.

The worker-produced females represent a strong potential survival advantage. If for any reason the colony queen is killed or damaged, they provide a viable breeding pool that effectively represents an end-run around the dominance of the matriarch.

It seems, however, that if the circumstances are right, they can also turn very nasty. Aumer and colleagues report that the Cape subspecies “can reverse to selfish behaviour by becoming social parasites”.

The transplanted colony, the researchers noted, did not enter into a mutually beneficial arrangement with the other subspecies, but instead produced an army of bee Amazons that went plundering their neighbours’ honey, dethroned the queen and took over the whole colony.

This outcome produced palpable benefits for the Cape bees, but was only bad news for the Apis mellifera scutellate.

To find out how the novel reproductive strategy arose, the researchers combed through the genomes of both subspecies. Eventually, they located a mutation in a gene called LOC409096, which they named Thelytoky (Th).

The mutation is the major driver for selfish bee behaviour, they note, and, perhaps surprisingly, is not a recessive but a dominant trait.

“Uncovering the genetic architecture underlying thelytoky is a big step towards understanding this mode of reproduction, not only in the Cape honeybee, but also in other insect species in general,” says co-author Eckart Stolle.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/when-conditions-are-right-honey-bees-turn-selfish

A Single SNP Turns a Social Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) Worker into a Selfish Parasite: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/36/3/516/5232789

[william r sanford72]

Dang Nabit...us leftys cant catch a break.:bigsmile:

Honeybees found to have rightward bias under certain circumstances

by Bob Yirka, Science X Network

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-honeybees-rightward-bias-circumstances.html

Entomologist Thomas O'Shea-Wheller with Louisiana State University has found that under certain circumstances, honeybees demonstrate a rightward bias.

In his paper published in the journal Biology Letters, he describes experiments he conducted with honeybees in his lab and what he found.

Prior research has shown that some animals have a directional bias, preferring to turn or stand in certain directions. Even some insects have been known to prefer to turn one way or another under certain circumstances—ants, for example, have been found to prefer turning left when they enter a cavity.

In this new effort, O'Shea-Wheller decided to find out if the same might be true for honeybees.

To find out if honeybees prefer to turn one way or the other when entering an open cavity, he set up two boxes in his lab. One box was open inside, the other had a maze of tunnels. Next, he ran trials, giving honeybees the opportunity to explore one or the other box and noting which way they turned when entering.

O'Shea-Wheller reports that out of 180 runs, the honeybees turned right 86 times, went straight ahead 59 times and turned left just 35 times. He noted also that the honeybees that chose to turn right made their decision faster than did the honeybees that chose to go straight ahead or turn left.

He suggests this indicates that the honeybees have an automatic-type response that pushes them toward right turns—but only under certain conditions. He found no such bias in honeybees entering the box that held the maze.

O'Shea-Wheller points out that honeybees are natural explorers—they seek out cavities in rocks and trees while looking for a new place to build a nest. Such new sites are chosen when a certain number of honeybees congregate in the same place. He suggests that having a natural inclination to turn a certain direction makes the possibility of achieving a quorum more likely than if they simply turned by chance.

He adds that having such an inclination might also promote social cohesion when the honeybees return to the hive with food and water. He notes that it is likely more than coincidence that honeybees have more odor receptors on their right antennae than on the left, and also better vision in their right eyes.

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-honeybees-rightward-bias-circumstances.html

[william r sanford72]

Bee with superior attributes registered

March 2nd 2019

Turkey registered a honey bee species after a decade-long rehabilitation effort to boost pine honey production.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/bee-with-superior-attributes-registered-141588

Chief breeding officer at the Aegean Agricultural Research Institute Üzeyir Karaca told Anadolu Agency on Feb. 28 the breeding began in 2008 to add superior attributes to honey making.

Named Efe, the bees’ ability to make honey increased in Turkish labs in the Aegean province of İzmir.

“Efe has better overwintering skills and its honey product is 25 or 35 percent higher than the bees in this area,” Karaca said.

Efe was registered in December 2018 by the Turkish Agriculture and Forestry Ministry.

Karaca said the bees formed 201 colonies and picked the best ones, adding they made 20 colonies including pure race bees for honey producers.

He said the species can do better overwintering, which means surviving winters, adding Efe can produce more pollen and royal jelly than the other types.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/bee-with-superior-attributes-registered-141588

[william r sanford72]

More to Irish bees than honey, hives and dancing

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/travel/ireland/more-to-irish-bees-than-honey-hives-and-dancing-1.3797863

Honeybees continue to thrive – but half of Ireland’s 100 other species of bees are in decline

Bees make honey.

That simple statement, which briefly had another life as the name of an almost-famous Irish pub rock band in the 1970s, is probably our first thought when it comes to these charismatic and fascinating insects.

But it’s not true. Or rather, it is not true of most of the 20,000 bee species in the world, nor of most of the 101 species found in Ireland. Most of our 21 bumblebee species do make honey, but not in quantities or forms that could be harvested by us.

Dozens more species of solitary bee collect pollen or, like cuckoos, leave their eggs to hatch and thrive in the pollen-stocked nests of other species. But they don’t make honey.

We also tend to think of bees as social animals, living in highly populated hives made up of thousands of female worker bees, some male drones, and a single queen, and periodically taking off in swarms to occupy new hives.

And we may be aware of particularly dramatic aspects of bee behaviour, like their ability to communicate the location of food sources to their hive-mates by ‘dancing’.

They move rhythmically in a manner that indicates distance, and at an angle to the sun, at that particular moment, that indicates direction.

It’s not surprising that we associate all these behaviours with bees, because they are characteristic of the most familiar bee we see in Ireland, Apis mellifera mellifera.

This is the aptly named honeybee, whose ubiquitous worker is striped black and amber, is only slightly furry, and a little over a centimetre long. It’s the only one of our bees that makes harvestable honey, lives in large colonies, and dances.

Humans in Ireland have had such a long and intimate relationship with this species that we now appear to have very few honeybees living truly in the wild.

Jane Stout, a bee expert who directs TCD’s Biodiversity Centre, and is deputy chair of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan, says that there are no reliable figures available for the number of wild hives. Whenever you see a honeybee anywhere in Ireland, then, it’s almost certainly from a hive owned by one of 3,700 beekeepers.

Economic importance

Our beekeepers come from a very old tradition. So old, in fact, that the Brehon laws dealt with the rights of beekeepers (and of their neighbours) in extraordinary detail. Until the spread of cane and beet sugar to northern Europe beginning three centuries ago, honey had huge economic importance as a sweetener, preservative and medicine, and the laws reflected that.

But the Brehon “Bee-judgments” showed a sensitivity to sharing the benefits of ‘ecosystem services’ that we might learn from today.

If you found a swarm in an open area around a neighbour’s house, and succeeded in transporting it to a hive of your own, you had to give three quarters of the produce to your neighbour. But if you found it in a tree, you could keep half of it.

And if you found it on common land, you just had to give one ninth of the honey to your local chieftain.

But since your bees, wherever you found them, were probably gathering nectar from land beyond your own, you usually had to give a small amount of honey to your four closest neighbours.

The Brehon laws also regarded the bees themselves as having a kind of legal status. Echoing a custom found in the Basque countryside until the 19th century, bees had to be informed of the death of their owners, and funeral sweets had to be left beside the hive.

In more recent times, the Irish Beekeepers Association was founded in 1881, and a decade later the Congested District Board very actively promoted beekeeping as a cottage industry to relieve poverty. The board developed the first standardised hive made in these islands, and a ‘CDB hive’ is still manufactured in Donegal today.

Many of today’s beekeepers are hobbyists rather than commercial producers, but it is often a consuming passion. TCD librarian Susie Bioletti initially wanted to keep bees at her Dublin home, but it was too small. She found an organic farmer, Kitty Heslin, who was happy to accommodate her hives on a beautiful site on Wicklow’s Calary Bog.

That means a weekly commute to check on the bees, often with a more experienced mentor, Maeve Clissman, who keeps bees in Enniskerry. Joining the three women on the farm recently, it’s clearly a social activity that also involves getting out in the open air in all seasons, and observing subtle changes in weather and plant growth as they affect the bees’ behaviour.

Production period
Bioletti says she was first motivated to keep bees by concern that our pollinators were declining, but says she is now also driven by a fascination with the honey-production process, and also by a relationship with the bees themselves, which the Brehon law makers might recognise.

“They are your babies,” she says. “When I’m in the city on a cold night, I keep wondering how they are doing.”

Observing how she is feeding the bees with sugar to sustain them during the winter – though never during the honey production period in the spring and summer – I describe them as “domesticated”.

Clissman gently corrects me.

“We don’t domesticate bees. They do exactly what they would do in nature. We just manage them.”

The behaviour and life-cycle of honeybees is so fascinating, and the challenge of producing good honey so engrossing, that it is easy to see why bee-keeping is becoming an increasingly popular pastime, and occupation.

Interestingly, though, Jane Stout expresses doubts as to whether its growth in Ireland is helping to save Ireland’s 100 other species of bees.

“Fifty per cent of our species are in decline,” she says, “and 30 per cent are threatened with extinction. The honeybees are certainly being looked after, they are still doing okay.

But our bumblebees and solitary bees are in trouble, and we need to do a lot more for them. It’s possible that the increase in bee-keeping may actually undermine other native bee populations, through competition for scarce resources.”

She is also sceptical of the notion, which has had quite a lot of traction in the media, that a single factor, the controversial neonicotinoid insecticides, is responsible for the dramatic declines we have seen in bees in Ireland and internationally.

“The ‘neonics’ are a problem, of course,” she says, “but they are just part of a lethal cocktail that is causing losses: herbicides, fungicides, invasive species, novel diseases and climate change. But above all, the problem is habitat loss and fragmentation, the loss of the plant populations that need bees to pollinate them, and that bees need for food.”

So the best thing you may be able to do for our native bees is probably to create spaces for native wildflowers, as Sylvia Thompson described on these pages recently. And if you want to get involved with the extraordinary life-cycles of these amazing insects, you could also become a bumblebee monitor, doing some citizen science for the National Biodiversity Data Centre and the Pollinator Plan (see panel).

Bee aware: routes to a world of insect wonder

‘The State of Ireland’s Bees’: very readable online booklet on our less familiar bees from the National Biodiversity Data Centre:

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/travel/ireland/environment-benefits-from-blooming-interest-in-native-flowers-1.3783043

The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan, including links to monitoring and recording opportunities, and posters on the life-cycles of solitary bees and bumblebees:

http://pollinators.ie/

Find information on a bee-keeping association near you:

https://irishbeekeeping.ie/

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/travel/ireland/more-to-irish-bees-than-honey-hives-and-dancing-1.3797863

[william r sanford72]

AFB/EFB Typing and Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus by Kirsty Stainton

National Honey Show

Published on Feb 19, 2019

A lecture given by Kirsty Stainton at the 2018 National Honey Show entitled "AFB/EFB typing and Chronic bee paralysis virus" The National Honey Show also gratefully acknowledge the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers for their support and Bee Diseases Insurance Ltd (BDI) for their sponsorship.

Kirsty will provide an overview of the genetic typing of American and European foulbrood, how to recognize symptoms of these diseases and how research into different "types" of EFB could help control this disease. Kirsty will also talk about Chronic bee paralysis virus and how to recognize the symptoms of CBPV, she will also give details on how new research might help us understand the potentially devastating effects of this virus

Kirsty Stainton is a senior scientist with Fera Science Ltd. She started her scientific career with a Ph.D. from Oxford University on the use of genetic modification for control of insect pests. Her post-doctoral research involved studying an insect bacterium called Wolbachia and its effects on the host. She joined Fera Science in 2016 where she has worked on research involving Asian hornets and honey bee viruses.

z0B9o4GHq7U

[william r sanford72]

Applying The Basics Of Honey Bee Biology by Clarence Collison

National Honey Show

Published on Jan 14, 2019

Presentation: "Applying The Basics Of Honey Bee Biology"

Understanding bee biology is the foundation of colony management. Virtually all bee activities are directly stimulated and coordinated to a large degree by pheromones. The distribution of pheromones within the colony by the workers has numerous impacts on bee biology i.e. rearing of queens, maintaining the worker caste and affecting foraging behaviour. Examining brood patterns can aid in determining the overall condition of the colony, quality of the queen, colony strength, healthiness of the bees and inclination to swarm. Observing basic bee behaviours will aid the beekeeper in making timely management decisions.

Profile: Clarence Collison

As part of my undergraduate degree program majoring in entomology, I took my first course in beekeeping in 1966 which stimulated my interest in bees. During my Master’s program, I studied nectar secretion and how it affects the activity of honey bees in the pollination of hybrid pickling cucumbers. This research area was continued during my PhD program and was concerned with the interrelationships of honey bee activity, foraging behaviour, climatic conditions and flowering in the pollination of pickling cucumbers.

Throughout my career at The Pennsylvania State University and Mississippi State University, I have served as an Extension beekeeping specialist, taught beekeeping, trained graduate students, written numerous beekeeping publications, published two books and conducted many educational programs for the beekeeping community. For several years I chaired the “Master Beekeeper” certification program of the Eastern Apicultural Society of North America. I write a monthly column “A Closer Look” and prior to that “Do You Know” for Bee Culture magazine.

pULjCfKX8_k

[william r sanford72]

Honey Bee Sociometry: Tracking Honey Bee Growth From Birth Until Death by Michael Smith

National Honey Show

Published on Jan 23, 2019

Sociometry is the description and analysis of the physical and numerical attributes of social insect colonies over their lifetimes. Sociometric data, such as worker number and nest size are essential for understanding how colonies develop, but these data are rarely collected. Even honey bees, the most intensively studied social insect, has never received a broad-scale sociometric study. In this talk, we will follow four colonies throughout their lives, from when the colonies began as swarms in 2012, to when they died in 2014. It’s amazing what you can learn just by watching. I promise this talk will be more than just me reading numbers from an excel spreadsheet.

Michael Smith is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology/University of Konstanz. His research focuses on movement patterns in honey bee colonies, and how individual bees detect the developmental state of their group. Michael first began beekeeping in 2005, while attending The United World College of the Atlantic, in St. Donats, Wales. He continued beekeeping during his undergraduate degree at Princeton, while also conducting honey bee research at Wellesley College with Heather Mattila. In 2017, Michael completed his PhD in Tom Seeley’s lab at Cornell University, where he studied growth, development, and reproductive investments in honey bee colonies.

90dS90NEV0Q

[william r sanford72]

How Does a Bee Detect Her Colony Size by Michael Smith

National Honey Show

Michael Smith is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology/University of Konstanz. His research focuses on movement patterns in honey bee colonies, and how individual bees detect the developmental state of their group. Michael first began beekeeping in 2005, while attending The United World College of the Atlantic, in St. Donats, Wales. He continued beekeeping during his undergraduate degree at Princeton, while also conducting honey bee research at Wellesley College with Heather Mattila. In 2017, Michael completed his PhD in Tom Seeley’s lab at Cornell University, where he studied growth, development, and reproductive investments in honey bee colonies.

JQLGlKu0EEI

[william r sanford72]

A Closer Look at Factors Affecting Queen Quality by Clarence Collison

National Honey Show

Published on Mar 6, 2019

The quality of the honey bee queen is directly related to the development and productivity of the colony. There are numerous factors that can affect queen quality. In recent times many beekeepers report that queens are superseded soon after they are introduced into a colony. We will review several factors that may be responsible for this decline in queen longevity and quality. In addition to looking at her basic biology, we will develop answers to two basic questions: 1) how can you determine if you have a good queen? And 2) What makes a good queen?

This will be the second presentation in the "mini programme".

PQ9OxDsTu6M

[william r sanford72]

What's Going Wrong With Our Queens? Roger Patterson

National Honey Show

Published on Mar 6, 2019

An overview of the current queen problems that are detailed Here with some suggested ways of dealing with them. Despite denial by some “experts”, many beekeepers worldwide are experiencing unexplained queen failures, queens “disappearing” and the supersedure of young queens during the summer. This could mean that colonies may swarm on supersedure cells, or if not dealt with, can be terminal for the colony. These problems have only recently appeared at a high level, since about the turn of the century. The problem is that newer beekeepers regularly see problems and don't understand they aren't natural.

There has been little research done and the best the beekeeper can do is recognise the symptoms and manage their bees accordingly. This presentation is regularly updated and gives examples of real cases.

This will be the first presentation in the "mini programme".

Roger Patterson started keeping bees in his native West Sussex in 1963. He is a practical beekeeper who has learnt a lot by observing bees and beekeepers. Roger has been a demonstrator at the Wisborough Green BKA teaching apiary for over 40 years and is currently the Apiary Manager, where there are normally more than 30 colonies for tuition. For about 15 years he had 130 colonies of his own, but is now down to around 25. In addition to writing, Roger speaks and demonstrates widely on the practical aspects of beekeeping, where he is usually seen with his well known border collie Nell. He owns and runs the Dave Cushman website, which is considered to be one of the world's most comprehensive beekeeping websites.

http://www.dave-cushman.net/

2wrW_04iJ_c

[william r sanford72]

How Honey Bee Workers Manage their Drone Comb by Michael Smith

National Honey Show

Premiered Feb 11, 2019

We all recognize (and some despise) drone comb in our honey bee colonies. But what do the bees actually do with their drone comb? It’s not just rearing drones continuously, I guarantee. This talk will be presented in two acts. The first act will look at how workers change the way they use their drone comb throughout the year. The second act will look at how colony-level uncertainty changes the way that workers invest in comb infrastructure. Both talks will connect back to the idea of reproductive investments, and how investment priorities change with the external environment, and internal conditions in the colony.

Michael Smith is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology/University of Konstanz. His research focuses on movement patterns in honey bee colonies, and how individual bees detect the developmental state of their group. Michael first began beekeeping in 2005, while attending The United World College of the Atlantic, in St. Donats, Wales. He continued beekeeping during his undergraduate degree at Princeton, while also conducting honey bee research at Wellesley College with Heather Mattila. In 2017, Michael completed his PhD in Tom Seeley’s lab at Cornell University, where he studied growth, development, and reproductive investments in honey bee colonies

bnnr8sXazRY

[william r sanford72]

The Great Awakening....

u94TP0LEPgY

Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

3D Printable Mason Bee House

Files for printing are available for free download here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:345...

Website: http://thebeevlog.com

m-Nyg04d8Aw

[william r sanford72]

Bees can learn the difference between European and Australian Indigenous art styles in a single afternoon

https://theconversation.com/bees-can-learn-the-difference-between-european-and-australian-indigenous-art-styles-in-a-single-afternoon-110494

We’ve known for a while that honey bees are smart cookies. They have excellent navigation skills, they communicate symbolically through dance, and they’re the only insects that have been shown to learn abstract concepts.

Honey bees might also add the title of art connoisseur to their box of tricks. In part one of ABC Catalyst’s The Great Australian Bee Challenge, we see honey bees learning to tell the difference between European and Australian Indigenous art in just one afternoon.

Does this mean honey bees are more cultured than we are?

Perhaps not, but the experiment certainly shows just how quickly honey bees can learn to process very complex information.

How the experiment worked

Bees were shown four different paintings by the French impressionist artist Claude Monet, and four paintings by Australian Indigenous artist Noŋgirrŋa Marawili.

At the centre of each of the paintings was placed a small blue dot. To make the difference between the artists meaningful to the honey bees, every time they landed on the blue dot on a Marawili painting they found a minute drop of sugar water. Every time they visited the blue dot on a Monet painting, however, they found a drop of dilute quinine. The quinine isn’t harmful, but it does taste bitter.

Having experienced each of the Monet and Marawili paintings the bees were given a test. They were shown paintings by the two artists that they had never seen before. Could they tell the difference between a Marawili and a Monet?

All the trained bees clearly directed their attention to the Marawili paintings.

This experiment was a recreation of a study first conducted by Dr Judith Reinhard’s team at the University of Queensland. In the original study, Reinhard was able to train bees to tell the difference between paintings by Monet and Picasso.

Bees are quick to learn

This kind of work does not show bees have a sense of artistic style, but it does show how good they are at learning and classifying visual information.

Different artists – be they Marawili, Monet or Picasso – tend to prefer different forms of composition and structure, different tones and different pallets in their art. We describe this as their distinctive style. These styles are recognisable to us, even if most of us would be hard pressed to describe exactly what makes a Marawili different from a Monet.

When the honey bees were trained on the paintings, every Monet they visited was a bitter experience, while every Marawili was sweet. This motivated the bees to learn whatever differences best distinguished the set of Marawili paintings from the set of Monets.

I_4G-3mFnRs

Bee colour vision is excellent, if different from ours. Bees can see ultraviolet wavelengths of light, but not red. Bees can pick up structure and edges in paintings by zipping quickly back and forth in front of them to detect abrupt changes in the brightness of an image.

In our experiment, bees could detect enough differences between the Marawili and Monet paintings to learn to tell them apart. The bees were not memorising the paintings; instead they were learning whatever information best distinguished a Monet from a Marawili. They could then maximise their collection of sugar, and avoid any bitter surprises.

Learning the visual differences between one set of Monet and Marawili paintings was enough for the bees to correctly choose between Monet and Marawili paintings they had never seen before.

Similarities between art and flowers

This experiment taps into a highly evolved honey bee skill. Bees did not evolve to differentiate between artists, but their survival depends on learning to tell which flowers are most likely to offer the best pollen and nectar they need to feed their hive.

Because of this, bees have evolved the ability to very quickly process complex and subtle visual information. These learning skills are on display when bees forage on flowers. Bees quickly learn to pick up on the subtlest distinction between fresh and older flowers, be it colour, odour or texture, which can betray the blooms that are most likely to contain a drop of nectar.

Honey bees break any stereotypes we may have that insects are dumb, instinct-driven animals. They have an intelligence that is very different from ours, but one that has evolved to be fit for the task of a bee doing what a bee has to do.

It is hard not to admire such clever and discriminating creatures.

visual of Paintings and Pics; https://theconversation.com/bees-can-learn-the-difference-between-european-and-australian-indigenous-art-styles-in-a-single-afternoon-110494

The Great Australian Bee Challenge; https://iview.abc.net.au/show/great-australian-bee-challenge

[william r sanford72]

How to complicate your life, and pass on your beekeeping knowledge, before you kick the bucket

A lecture given by Michael Smith at the 2018 National Honey Show entitled "How to complicate your life, and pass on your beekeeping knowledge, before you kick the bucket"

Beekeeping is a skill learned through direct mentorship. For new beekeepers, it can be hard to find experienced and knowledgeable mentors. For potential mentors, it can be hard to know whether it’s worth it to invest time in a potential mentee. Through high school, university, and graduate school, I’ve established beekeeping clubs using the “College Beekeeper” model, which allowed me to learn beekeeping, teach beekeeping, and recruit student researchers. In this talk, you’ll learn how to setup a beekeeping club at your local educational institution, how to keep it from taking over your life, and why mentoring new beekeepers is worth it. Remember, most of us will eventually die, so you might as well teach someone the beekeeping tricks you’ve learned.

25RpO0F80LA

[william r sanford72]

Examining Combs - What Do They Tell You by Clarence Collison

Examining the colony brood nest is an important aspect of colony management. Combs are the basic structural unit of the hive; used for reproduction, food storage and can serve as a disease reservoir. Examining brood patterns can aid in determining the overall condition of the colony, quality of the queen, colony strength, healthiness of the bees, and inclination to swarm.

Tk6OH0_ITv0

[william r sanford72]

:facepalm: Un-bee-lievable! Honey collector stuffs handfuls of bees in his MOUTH before shoving them down his shirt

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ing-shirt.html

Suk Mahammad Dalal, 32, stuffs more into his mouth, even when seemingly full

The keeper, from Chanramonipur village, West Bengal, works as honey collector

He says he has become immune to bee stings after his 16 years in the job

This is the startling moment that an Indian honey collector with no protective clothing stuffs bees into his mouth.

The footage shows Suk Mohammad, Dalal, 32, from Chanramonipur village, West Bengal, who has been collecting honey for 16 years.

He starts by putting his head through a hole in a hanging piece of bee-covered honey comb and then coolly takes a handful of the insects and stuffs them in his mouth.

Mr Dalal, who said he has become immune to bee stings, uses his fingers to push the bees further into his mouth, his face screwed up in concentration.

Even though his mouth is bulging with the number of bees in his mouth, he then grabs another handful from the honeycomb and finds space to push them in too.

After letting the bees sit in his mouth for several seconds, Mr Dalal then spits them out and cuts a portion of the hanging honeycomb away so that he can put droop the rest over his neck.

Amazingly, he takes things one step further by grabbing further handfuls of the hanging bees and dropping them down the front of his vest.

Before taking up his present job, Mr Dalal worked as a doctor's assistant in Kolkata, the state capital.

He said, 'Since I live in a village, I would often come across honeycombs containing good amount of honey.
One day while walking past, I thought what if I start collecting honey and sell them, I could easily make a living out of it. That is how it started.'

For The slightly disturbing Vid and Visual: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6807925/Honey-collector-stuffs-handfuls-bees-MOUTH-shoving-shirt.html

[william r sanford72]

Honey Integrity Task Force Forms to Ensure Highest Quality Across All Honey Products
Industry group is working on multiple fronts to protect honey purity

News provided by
Honey Integrity Task Force
Mar 12, 2019,

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/honey-integrity-task-force-forms-to-ensure-highest-quality-across-all-honey-products-300810520.html

PHOENIX, March 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Representatives from the entire U.S. honey industry have formed a working group and pledged to cooperate on a range of strategies designed to ensure the purity of honey in the United States.

The Honey Integrity Task Force is leading a comprehensive effort to reduce instances of economically motivated adulteration of honey reaching U.S. consumers, and to ensure that honey has the proper country of origin label.

The industry watchdog group includes beekeepers, importers, packers, producers and marketing cooperative members along with an organization that specializes in honey supply chain management.

Honey is one of nature's original products, and it is made by bees with no additives or preservatives of any kind. It is one of many food products that can be vulnerable to what is known as economically motivated adulteration, a term used when unscrupulous players within the honey supply chain use cheaper ingredients to lower their production costs and then sell the product as pure honey.

The Honey Integrity Task Force is now embarking on a number of initiatives designed to strengthen checkpoints in the honey production and supply chain so that consumers can have even greater confidence in the purity of honey products they are purchasing.

Expert opinion on adulteration prevention

In 2018, the Task Force commissioned a study on honey adulteration from UCLA professor Dr. Michael Roberts, a food fraud expert. Dr. Roberts made a series of recommendations to the group on additional steps the industry could take to police itself and minimize the chances that a product labeled as honey will be adulterated with sugar or syrup. Some of the initiatives being pursued now by the Task Force were the result of the recommendations in the Dr. Roberts report.

Food Chemicals Codex Honey testing standard

A Honey Expert Panel has been formed to support the Food Chemicals Codex (FCC) including members of the Task Force. The goal of the panel is to develop an international identity standard for honey, with an emphasis on the need for purity and country-of-origin testing, to be included in the FCC. The FCC is published by U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve global health through public standards and related programs.

Random Testing of Retail Honey on Shelves

The Task Force has committed to conducting independent tests of honey products sold in U.S. grocery stores. The group will work with independent labs to test for adulteration and plans to make the results of the tests public.

Submitted comments to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Working together as an industry voice, the Task Force submitted comments to the USDA for honey's Commercial Item Description (CID), which is a product description that concisely describes the most important characteristics of a commercial product. Having a Honey CID will help enforce the highest quality standards.

Met with Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

The Task Force met with CBP as well as Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to identify areas where collaboration could be most valuable, such as collecting global samples for their database and refining the definition of honey.

"It is encouraging to see the entire honey industry working together on the issues that affect us all. Consumers in the U.S. deserve to know that the honey they purchase is pure, and that they can trust the labeling on their favorite honey products.

We are committed to the purity and integrity of our industry's products, and we will do everything in our power to insure the integrity of our supply chain" said Christi Heintz, Director of the Honey Integrity Task Force.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
For Media Inquiries and Press Information:
Kylie Banks: Kylie.Banks@porternovelli.com,

[william r sanford72]

Pesticide Exposure Alters Gene Expression in Bumblebees

(Beyond Pesticides, March 13, 2019) A study on the impact of two neonicotinoid pesticides shows differential gene expression in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) after exposure. Considering the current worldwide plight of insects, the authors of point to the cutting edge research as both a reason and a methodology to more carefully examine the effects of pesticides.

https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2019/03/pesticide-exposure-alters-gene-expression-in-bumblebees/

“Caste- and pesticide-specific effects of neonicotinoid pesticide exposure on gene expression in bumblebees” was published in the journal Molecular Ecology in early March.

Researchers fed variable colonies with clothianidin or imidacloprid-laced sucrose. They analyzed gene expression in the heads of worker bumblebees and colony queens using RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), inspired by biomedical techniques. This approach allowed for new insight on what genes and pathways are affected by neonicotinoid exposure.

Study author Yannick Wurm, PhD, stated in a press release, “Our work demonstrates that the type of high-resolution molecular approach that has changed the way human diseases are researched and diagnosed, can also be applied to beneficial pollinators. This approach provides an unprecedented view of how bees are being affected by pesticides and works at large scale. It can fundamentally improve how we evaluate the toxicity of chemicals we put into nature.”

Clothianidin had a stronger impact on bumblebee colonies, changing the expression of 55 genes in worker bees and 17 genes in queens. The affected genes are involved in important biological processes such as mitochondrial function. Researchers noted with interest that there was almost no overlap between the genes that were impacted in queens versus workers. Comparatively, imidacloprid altered expression of only one gene in workers. The divergent effects of these two similar pesticides indicates distinct genetic mechanisms of toxicity.

Previous studies of neonicotinoids have found sublethal effects on bee learning and memory, cognition and problem solving, motor function, foraging performance, navigation abilities, and immune system – but have not delved deeply into the genetic process by which these deleterious effects occur.

“While newer pesticide evaluation aims to consider the impact on behaviour, our work demonstrates a highly sensitive approach that can dramatically improve how we evaluate the effects of pesticides,” says Dr. Wurm.

This study focuses on one type of bumblebee and finds diverse impacts, even within a colony. The novel finding highlights how little is known about the effects of pesticides on various insects. Lead author Joe Colgan, PhD, stated, “We examined the effects of two pesticides on one species of bumblebee. But hundreds of pesticides are authorised, and their effects are likely to substantially differ across the 200,000 pollinating insect species which also include other bees, wasps, flies, moths, and butterflies.”

The European Union banned the use of neonicotinoids in 2018, but these pesticides are still widely used in the U.S. and elsewhere. Beyond Pesticides holds the position that we must commit to complete transformation of our agricultural system if we hope to stave off the dire fate of total, devastating insect decline.

Beyond Pesticides is a resource for activists pushing to end pesticide use and adopt least-toxic, organic practices. Join the movement to end destructive pesticide use by engaging at the local, state and federal levels to transform our agricultural system. Our tools for change serves as a resource to help individuals organize their communities.

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

https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2019/03/pesticide-exposure-alters-gene-expression-in-bumblebees/

Sources: Queen Mary University of London, https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2019/se/improved-regulation-needed-as-pesticides-found-to-affect-genes-in-bees.html#

Pesticide Exposure Changes Bees’ Genes
https://www.ecowatch.com/pesticides-bees-genes-altered-2631023137.html

[william r sanford72]

Subterranean bee hive removal.

Jeff Horchoff Bees

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

It's not everyday that you come across a honey bee hive that is beneath the ground, but folks, that's exactly what I have for you today. In the 7 plus years that I have been wrangling bees, this is only the second one I have come across. Coincidentally, the tree company that removed this tree, Zeigler's Trees, was also the company that removed the first one that had bees beneath the ground. The only difference between the unique circumstances was this was an oak tree, and the first one was a pine tree. If you are interested in watching that video, I will include a link to it at the bottom of this description. The title of that video is " Honey bees in the ground. "

As you can imagine, getting to the hive was very difficult, but when you have a master tree cutter like Tony with you, it was just a matter of time before the hive was exposed enough to remove the comb and bees. I have to admit, whatever tree cutting knowledge I posses, I learned from Tony, but this one was WAY out of my league. Tony handles a chainsaw like a painter handles a brush, each movement of his hand yields the result he sees in his mind, the guy is an artist. Thank you Tony, no way could these bees have been saved if you were not there.

Another obstacle in the way of this removal was there was no nearby power source. Obviously, this meant I would not be able to use my bee vac to remove these bees. Fortunately, I had recently obtained a portable, battery operated bee vac, and I was going to be putting it to the test. I had used it on several other occasions as a secondary, clean up vac, but never before as the only vac on the job, and I have to say, it preformed fantastically. Not only did the vac vacuum over 6 pounds of bees, but not one was dead in the bucket 3 hours after they were removed from the tree, and the entire time, the battery never failed......very impressive. I will include a link to the web site, The Everything Bee Vacuum, at the bottom of the description as well. By the way, the name of the owner of the company that manufactures the vac, his name is Tony also.

" The Everything Bee Vacuum "
https://www.allmybees.com/

Cr9L1GWIcHs

[william r sanford72]

Bee wranglers have there work cut out...Unless your a Ghoul Wrangler also.;)

hAh2fUo9W3M


Rock on.

[william r sanford72]

Glandular System Of Honey Bees by Clarence Collison

A lecture given by Clarence Collison at the 2018 National Honey Show entitled "Glandular System Of Honey Bees"

Virtually all bee activities are directly stimulated and coordinated to a large degree by hormones and pheromones. Secretions of both endocrine and exocrine glands of queens and workers are tied directly to the division of labour within the worker caste, social organization and to factors that regulate colony development. These secretions are associated with bee behaviour, communication, regulation of bee development and metabolic processes, defence and brood nest establishment. We will examine various factors of the environment and nutrition that impact the production of chemicals associated with these glands and how they ultimately affect colony development and productivity.

fKDm1mTPVhg

[william r sanford72]

:facepalm:Pesticides Market Growth, Demand, SUpply, SWOT, Consumption to 2017-2025

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4211497#ixzz5idGkbyCE

Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/16/2019 -- Pesticides are chemicals that are used to control, destroy, and prevent the growth of pests and unwanted species of plants and animals. Herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides are collectively known as pesticides. Pesticides act as growth regulators in plants, defoliant for trees and plants, desiccant for fleas, prevents thinning of fruit.

Moreover, they prevent the premature falling of fruit. Pesticides are applied to crops before or after harvest to protect the commodity from deterioration during storage and transport. Application of pesticides provides better farm yield and storage and distribution of obtained output. They are also used on animals for controlling insects, arachnids, or other pest infestations.

The pesticide market is driven by the demand for bio-pesticides and adoption of herbicide-resistant crop by farmers. The global synthetic pesticides market has been witnessing extraordinary changes during the last decade due to the improved efficiency in utilization of pesticides.

Factors that drive the usage of synthetic pesticides are increasing demand for food, decrease in cultivable land increasing adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops, rising market share of bio pesticides, and the acceptance of new farming practices.

Major restraints for the utilization of synthetic pesticides include high R&D costs and extensive research required to generate new pesticides. Development of safe alternatives such as bio-farming is restraining the chemical pesticide market.

Read Report Overview on application, https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=34112In

the pesticide market is segmented into crop-based and non-crop-based. The crop-based segment is further sub-segmented into grains & cereals, oilseeds, and fruits and vegetables. The non-crop based segment is further sub-segmented into lawn & ornamental grass. Pesticides are also employed to control organisms such as bees, wasps, ants.

Pesticides are also employed to control organisms such as bees, wasps, ants. They protect animals from illnesses that are caused by parasites such as fleas. They are used to prevent sickness in humans that could be caused by moldy food or diseased produce as pesticides restricts the fungal growth.

Pesticides can also be utilized to clear roadside weeds, trees and bushes. They are also used to kill invasive weeds that damage the environment. Pesticides protect homes from pest infestations such as termites and mold.

They are employed in grocery stores and food storage facilities to manage rodents and insects that infest food such as grain.In terms of type, the pesticides market can be segmented into insecticides, herbicides, rodenticides, bactericides, fungicides, and larvicides. Insecticides kill insects by getting inside their bodies where they then act as poison.

Herbicides are used to kill the plants near the leaves, stems or roots of the plants. Rodenticides are used to in food to make poisonous baits which rodents eat.

Bactericides are used to kill bacteria. Bactericides are categorized into disinfectants, antiseptics, or antibiotics. Fungicide is a pesticide that controls fungal disease by preventing or killing the fungus. Larvicide is an insecticide that targets the larval life stage of an insect.Request Report Brochure

terms of geography, the pesticide market is further segmented into North America, Europe, Asihttps://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=34112Ina-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.

The pesticides market in Asia Pacific is anticipated to expand at a rapid pace during the forecast period, followed by Latin America. China, India, and Brazil are the key growth markets for all types of pesticides.

Asia Pacific is a prominent producer of rice, wheat, and vegetables. Hence, the requirement for pesticides is the high in the region, and crop-based pesticides are expected to drive the pesticide market in the region.

The market in Europe is estimated to expand in the near future, as farmers are focusing on agriculture, ultimately boosting the usage of pesticides for crops.Key players operating in the pesticides market are Syngenta AG, Bayer AG, The Dow Chemical Company, BASF SE, and Monsanto Company.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/pesticides-market-growth-demand-supply-swot-consumption-to-2017-2025-1173665.htm

Web: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

[william r sanford72]

Keynote: Warren Porter, PhD, GMO Crops & Pesticide Use

Overview and breakdown on thee effects..

-S3iFUz5tGY

[william r sanford72]

For Insect Ecologists, Some Rare Species Interactions Are a Sign of Things to Come

By Elsa Youngsteadt, Ph.D.

An ecosystem is much more than an inventory of its species. It’s a web of interactions. This insect nibbles the leaves of a plant; that one visits its flowers; both are potential prey for other insects, lizards, or bats. But this web is fraying.

The “insect apocalypse” has become a household (if hyperbolic) phrase, as more studies point to loss of insect species and populations, alongside the ongoing, less newsy, threats to plants and vertebrates. But interactions often disappear before their participating species do—an advance wave of extinctions that weakens the stability and function of an ecosystem even while the once-interacting species are still around to be counted.

This was the context I stepped into in 2016 when I took on a new project examining the reproductive ecology of three endangered plants, none of whose pollinators or seed dispersers were known.

One of them in particular—a slender, elegant inhabitant of wet meadows—seemed to be growing in isolation, failing to interact. Its little star-shaped yellow flowers would open, looking fresh and optimistic, then wither days later without having seen a single visitor. Was this normal?

Had a pollinator gone extinct? Had the plant become so rare that it was no longer able to attract the species that should have visited it? Interactions are far less inventoried than species themselves, and there was little evidence of what used to be.

In an era of insect decline, I wanted to know how other insect ecologists were grappling with rare interactions: What clever methods were they using to detect these uncommon or fleeting events? How should we go about conserving interactions—or using our knowledge of interactions to conserve the participating species?

These questions were central to a symposium in the 2017 annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America, and now a special collection in the Annals of the ESA representing six of those presentations.

Two of the studies in this collection add to the very basic reasons that rare interactions are worth the trouble it takes to study them. Cuckoo bumble bees are social parasites that never produce worker bees; they infiltrate colonies of other species and rely on their workforce.

One paper in the collection reviews what is known of these rarely encountered insects, arguing that they have much unrealized potential to reveal processes of coevolution between social parasites and hosts.

Another paper works with a rare pollination interaction in which flowers produce oils instead of the usual nectar, thereby attracting a small set of specialized, oil-collecting bees.

Only about 1 percent of flowering plants have made this switch, but the resulting specialized interactions make a nice, self-contained study system to ask some basic questions—in this case, how overlap in climatic requirements of plants and their pollinators drives the geographic distribution of the interaction itself.

If these kinds of interactions are to persist, conservation management is likely required. Biotic interactions are rarely incorporated into conservation plans, but a third paper makes a strong argument that they should be.

Using the American burying beetle and prairie mole cricket as case studies, the authors show that understanding a species’ competition, predation, and mating interactions can help us understand why it is rare and, potentially, contribute to its restoration.

Three papers take on pollination questions. One uses video surveillance to assemble remarkably complete interaction networks and show how plants just a few hundred meters apart can be visited by markedly different insects—emphasizing that it takes a lot of space to support the full range of interactions in which a species may participate.

Another takes on the pollination interactions of the Venus flytrap, a rare, fire-dependent species with a tiny home range in the Carolinas. And my own contribution to the collection looks at the pollination interactions of an endangered sumac—which, it turns out, has no trouble attracting insects; but, because the plant grows in isolated, single-sex patches, those pollinators often fail to deliver the goods to female flowers.

My little wet-meadow plant with the lonely yellow flowers remains a mystery, but working with the presenters and authors in this symposium and collection has been both sobering and a source of hope. Despite widespread changes in our global ecosystem, the majority of species do have the potential to persist if the worst threats are mitigated.

As technological advances improve our ability to detect rare interactions and we accumulate more evidence of their ecological and evolutionary significance, we will be better equipped to conserve even the rarest links in the rich web of interactions all around us.

Elsa Youngsteadt, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh

https://entomologytoday.org/2019/03/20/insect-ecologists-rare-species-interactions/

[william r sanford72]

Fish and Bees “Talk” with Help from Robot Translators

Robots integrated into groups of zebrafish and of one-day-old honey bees allow the two species to influence each other’s behavior.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/fish-and-bees-talk-with-help-from-robot-translators-65621

Mar 20, 2019
Jef Akst

A
robot interacting with young honey bees in Graz, Austria, exchanged information with a robot swimming with zebrafish in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the robots’ communication influenced the behavior of each animal group, according to a study published in Science Robotics today (March 20).

“It’s the first time that people are using this kind of technology to have two different species communicate with each other,” says Simon Garnier, a complex systems biologist at New Jersey Institute of Technology who did not participate in the study.

“It’s a proof of concept that you can have robots mediate interactions between distant groups.” He adds, however, that the specific applications of such a setup remain to be seen.

As robotics technology has advanced, biologists have sought to harness it, building robots that look and behave like animals. This has allowed researchers to control one side of social interactions in studies of animal behavior. Robots that successfully integrate into animal populations also provide scientists with a means to influence the groups’ behavior.

See “Send in the Bots”
https://www.the-scientist.com/features/send-in-the-bots-38638

“The next step, we were thinking . . . [is] adding features to the group that the animals cannot do because they don’t have the capabilities to do so,” José Halloy, a physicist at Paris Diderot University who has been working on developing robots to interact intelligently with animals for more than a decade, writes in an email. “The simple and striking thing is that robots can use telecommunication or the Internet and animals cannot do that.”

In the new work, Halloy teamed up with collaborators at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Graz in Austria, and elsewhere to have two different animal-robot societies interact via modern communications technology.

The researchers worked with two very different species that wouldn’t normally interact in nature—honey bees and zebrafish—and they housed the experimental animals more than 1,000 kilometers apart. “What we did is a bit extreme,” admits coauthor and EPFL engineer Frank Bonnet.

In 30-minute trials, the teams presented the animals with a collective choice. In the case of bees, that choice was which of two heat-emitting robots they would gather around, while the zebrafish, which shared their donut-shaped tank with a fish-like robot, would decide which direction to swim.

Both the robots in the bee colony and the fish robot interacted with the real animals as the experiments took place. The bee robots have infrared sensors that allow them to estimate density of nearby bees, and as more bees clustered, the robots produced more heat, enticing more bees to gather around.

The fish robot detects the location of the fish and itself with a camera filming the aquarium, and responds to changes in the real fish’s direction by following the majority, which in turn influences the group’s collective decision about which way to swim.

The researchers then linked the two robots via an internet connection. As the bees gravitated toward one robot or the other, that information could be transferred to the fish robot, which interpreted the news as more fish choosing a swimming direction—clockwise or counterclockwise.

Conversely, information on the swimming direction of the fish in the group could be transmitted from the fish robot to the bee robots, which interpreted the signal as more bees choosing a particular bot. “When we make the connection between the two setups, the robots act like translators,” says Bonnet.

Left to their own devices, zebrafish, while they generally swim as a group, don’t stay swimming in one direction; they frequently reverse course. But when the fish robot was receiving information from the bee robots, the fish would reach a consensus for several minutes or longer.

That’s because the young honey bees, when the robots in their colony were not receiving information from the fish robot, would after about 15 minutes settle with one of the two robots.

Conversely, the fish’s indecisive swimming patterns influenced the behavior of the honey bees. If the fish robot shared information with the bee colony, the bees continued to move back and forth between the two heaters for the entire 30-minute trial. If the communication was two way, the bees settled around one of the two bots in the enclosure, but it took about five minutes longer. This then led the fish to settle on a swimming direction.

HSvnmymhDSA

“It’s technically very impressive; I buy the argument that there has been some form of communication,” says Garnier. But he wonders how the technology will be used. “I’m not sure where it fits in terms of the science.”

Guy Theraulaz, who studies collective behavior at the Research Center on Animal Cognition at CNRS in Toulouse, France, agrees. “From a biological point of view, we don’t learn anything,” he notes, and from an engineering point of view, the key aspect of the experiment is the integration of the robots into animal societies, which had already been done. “They are selling something which is a little bit trivial,” he says.

The researchers argue that the proof-of-concept study points to new approaches for interrogating natural species interactions, just as robots have already been used to study within-species social behavior. “It allows us to do experiments with animals to build mathematical models of behaviors,” says Halloy.

Nicole Abaid, an engineer at Virginia Tech who was not involved in the work, could also see this type of work providing insight into how best to develop multi-agent robotics systems, such as robotic swarm, in which many small robots are deployed in unison for applications such as precision agriculture or search and rescue.

While most so-called distributed systems use many of one type of robot, engineers are starting to experiment with devices of different types—for example, a quadcopter and a ground vehicle, says

Abaid. “The idea that you could have an interspecies interaction in the application of robotics is super interesting.”

F. Bonnet et al., “Robots mediating interactions between animals for interspecies collective behaviors, Sci Robot, 4:eaau7897, 2019.
http://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/4/28/eaau7897

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/fish-and-bees-talk-with-help-from-robot-translators-65621

[william r sanford72]

What is a double screened dividing board, and how is it used?

Jeff Horchoff Bees

Published on Mar 15, 2019

This may sound crazy to many folks up north, but here in the deep south, we are getting ready to split our hives. With the early appearance of Spring, and the abundance of trees and plants in full bloom now, our hives are literally busting at the seams with bees and swarms are happening daily. The beginning process I use to split my hives, the placement of a double screened dividing board, will be the topic of discussion on this video.

There are countless ways a bee keeper can split a bee hive, and the process that I use is just one of many different styles of achieving the same end results. In this video I will explain what a double screened dividing board is, how it is installed, and the purpose of installing them.

Because our weather has turned warm so quickly, the bees have anticipated the arrival of an early nectar flow, and in many cases, have produced an abundance of swarm cells in the hive, adding to the task of installing our boards......those cell have got to go.

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

lxSzuDv2up4

[william r sanford72]

Checking bee boxes for emergency queen cell development.

Jeff Horchoff Bees

Published on Mar 22, 2019

On this video I am doing the next step in the process of splitting our hives here at the abbey and in the surrounding out yards. In last weeks video I discussed and showed what and how double screened dividing boards are and how they are placed into your bee boxes. The purpose of the insertion of the boards between our brood boxes is to encourage the development of emergency queen cells in the lower box while our queen now resides in the top box.

Ideally, we want to go back into our boxes 7 to 10 days after the board has been placed in our hive as this will be sufficient time to detect the emergency cell's development, and not enough time for the emergence of the new queen. Unfortunately, our weather was so bad, rain and cold weather, I was delayed, and could not get back to our hives for 12 days. I still figured even if the queen had emerged, it was not enough time for the bees to tear down the cells, and I would at least know there was a new queen in the box by seeing opened cells or chewed cells.

Out of the 60 plus hives that I have gone through already, I still have 40 plus to do, 2 hives did not develop emergency cells, 4 of the hives had queens that had already emerged, but all the rest, more than 60 hives, all had emergency cells in the bottom box. For the 2 hives that had not developed emergency cells, I simply placed a frame with new brood from the queen box into the the queenless box and the bees will then be able to draw out a emergency cell from an egg on the new frame.

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

433QYldBA_U

[william r sanford72]

Braids...

5Lhvxg7tNFQ


Rock on.

[william r sanford72]

Black-Orange-Black Color Pattern Found in 23 Families of Wasps, Bees, and Ants

By Andrew Porterfield

It’s no surprise that a class as diverse as Insecta should show an enormous diversity in body coloration. Camouflage, mate attraction, mimicry, repelling predators, and warning signs all are factors in the evolution of insect colors.

But one distinct pattern, black-orange-black, appears frequently in Lepidoptera (butterflies, moths) and Coleoptera (beetles) and even has been detected in wasps, bees, ants, and sawflies of Hymenoptera. The coloration is mostly seen as a black (or dark brown) head, orange mesosoma, and black metasoma. This pattern has not been extensively studied, either for its prevalence or the evolutionary reasons for its existence.

One of the first studies to determine the extent of the black-orange-black (BOB) pattern was recently conducted by Rebeca Mora, researcher in biology at the University of Costa Rica, and published last week in the Journal of Insect Science. By examining specimens of Hymenoptera from Costa Rica and Canada, Mora and her team found BOB coloration patterns in 23 Hymenoptera families and found variations in BOB patterns depending on the size of the insect, altitude, and taxa.

Mora and her colleagues looked at nearly 500,000 specimens in two museums in Costa Rica and 783,000 specimens at the Canadian National Collection of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The specimens represented collections of insects from around the world.

The researchers found 66 orange and black patterns, representing a striking degree of variation. There also was a distinct tendency of the BOB pattern to appear in species dwelling at altitudes below 2,000 meters. Other black-orange patterns were also seen, including a black head and mesosoma (and orange metasoma) everywhere except Indonesia and Malaysia; a black head and mesosoma with a mixed orange and black metasoma everywhere except tropical Africa and Austral-asia, and a black head with orange mesosoma and metasoma (except a black tip) in all regions studied.

Smaller insects also were more likely to exhibit the BOB pattern, especially in hymenopterans with a body length between three and 10 millimeters. In addition, the BOB pattern was seen in all regions, and not just the tropics, as previous studies have suggested. On the other hand, most of the unique patterns seen were in three areas: tropical Africa, Indonesia/Malaysia, and Austral-asia.

“We were surprised by how widespread this color pattern is among hymenopterans from all biogeographic regions,” says Mora. “We knew this color pattern is common in scelionids but did not realize how common it is in several other groups, such as evaniids. We were also surprised by how uncommon it is in chalcidoidea, nor did we expect so many variations on the basic BOB color pattern.”

It is not exactly clear why Hymenoptera (or other orders) exhibit the BOB pattern, though Mora suggests that the most likely reason is “aposematism,” or warning coloration. This same type of pattern has been studied in other insect orders and has been shown to be effective at warning off predators. Some species showing BOB might also be attempting to mimic ants.

“Compared with butterflies and beetles, there are relatively few studies of color patterns in Hymenoptera, and what few studies exist are mostly restricted to larger-sized species that sting,” says Mora. “The BOB color pattern is most common in smaller wasps, especially scelionid wasps. These small wasps are difficult to observe in the field and they are usually collected by trapping or sweeping with a net.”

The study underscored the need for more research on the taxonomy of hymenopterans, since most small species in the order have yet to receive scientific names and identity. “Only then can we determine what proportion of species have the BOB pattern,” says Mora.

Future research on the BOB pattern should come from several areas, she says, including studies on the physical and chemical properties of the insect cuticle, pigment chemistry, and biological functions of the color patterns.


For pics and visual aid: https://entomologytoday.org/2019/03/22/black-orange-black-color-pattern-23-families-wasps-bees-ants-hymenoptera/

Read More
“Widespread Occurrence of Black-Orange-Black Color Pattern in Hymenoptera ” https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/19/2/13/5372556

[william r sanford72]

Watch your Step..

Beware of sleeping queen bees underfoot this spring! Royal insects emerging from hibernation rest amongst dead leaves and grass, cutting edge tracking tech reveals

New research has shown that after hibernating they rest among dead leaves

It was thought that the queen bees dispersed in the spring to find new colonies

This is their way of conserving energy which gives them a much longer range

The findings showed that queen bumblebees spent an average of 10 to 20 minutes on the ground between brief flights lasting just 10 to 20 seconds

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6829767/Beware-sleeping-queen-bees-underfoot-spring.html

Harmonic radar tracking reveals random dispersal pattern of bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) queens after hibernation

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40355-6

Abstract

The dispersal of animals from their birth place has profound effects on the immediate survival and longer-term persistence of populations. Molecular studies have estimated that bumblebee colonies can be established many kilometers from their queens’ natal nest site. However, little is known about when and how queens disperse during their lifespan. One possible life stage when dispersal may occur, is directly after emerging from hibernation.

Here, harmonic radar tracking of artificially over-wintered Bombus terrestris queens shows that they spend most of their time resting on the ground with intermittent very short flights (duration and distance).

We corroborate these behaviors with observations of wild queen bees, which show similar prolonged resting periods between short flights, indicating that the behavior of our radar-monitored bees was not due to the attachment of transponders nor an artifact of the bees being commercially reared. Radar-monitored flights were not continuously directed away from the origin, suggesting that bees were not intentionally trying to disperse from their artificial emergence site.

Flights did not loop back to the origin suggesting bees were not trying to remember or get back to the original release site. Most individuals dispersed from the range of the harmonic radar within less than two days and did not return. Flight directions were not different from a uniform distribution and flight lengths followed an exponential distribution, both suggesting random dispersal. A random walk model based on our observed data estimates a positive net dispersal from the origin over many flights, indicating a biased random dispersal, and estimates the net displacement of queens to be within the range of those estimated in genetic studies.

We suggest that a distinct post-hibernation life history stage consisting mostly of rest with intermittent short flights and infrequent foraging fulfils the dual purpose of ovary development and dispersal prior to nest searching.

Scientific Reports
volume
9, Article number: 4651 (2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40355-6

[william r sanford72]

usda National Honey Report March 21st..2019.

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

[william r sanford72]

This One is for the Bees..Buzzing In The Light.

T85JAfMJ2vQ


Rock On..

[william r sanford72]

Yellowjackets: A Look at Opportunistic Raiders of Honey Bee Hives

By Edward Ricciuti

The boom in backyard beekeeping in recent years has been great news for at least one group of fellow hymenopterans: yellowjackets.

Honey bees are high on the menu of insects on which yellowjackets feed; besides killing and eating individual bees, yellowjackets also raid hives for larvae, pollen, and honey. More beekeepers means more bees to consume and hives to pillage.

To be sure, yellowjackets—a term used in North America for two genera of social wasps, Vespula and Dolichovespula—are not a leading (or even significant) cause of honey bee colony losses. But when yellowjackets do target honey bees, they hang around the entrance of a hive waiting to ambush and pick off individual bees as they come and go.

They quickly dismember a bee after killing it, eating some parts and carrying a portion back to feed their own larvae in their own nest. Beyond that, says Mark Creighton, master beekeeper and apiary inspector for the State of Connecticut, healthy hives are seldom seriously threatened by yellowjackets.

A similar opinion is voiced by author of the highly regarded book The Sting of the Wild, Justin O. Schmidt, Ph.D., of the Southwestern Biological Institute in Tucson, Arizona: “In North America,” he says, “yellowjacket predation on honey bees is not a major problem in most cases.”

That’s because honey bee (Apis mellifera) hives have a formidable defense. Worker bees assigned as guards fight off intruders with stings, and they will also cluster in a ball around individual yellowjackets and “cook” them to death with body heat, which has been recorded at more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. A dozen or so bees can do the trick on one yellowjacket.

If a hive weakens, on the other hand, all bets are off. Attacks by yellowjackets can go from a nuisance to a genuine problem and even lead to hive collapse, says Creighton. Yellowjackets easily sniff out chemicals that reveal weakness in a hive, upon which they trigger an all-out assault by chemically signaling for reinforcements. They then proceed in looting honey cells and killing bees, often including the queen.

qZs3pUA6owY

Many forces can weaken a hive, including chemical pollution, pesticides, and poor management. The increasing numbers of novice beekeepers, says Creighton, increase the likelihood of management mistakes, improving opportunities for rapacious yellowjackets.

To avoid mistakes, says Creighton, novice beekeepers should take an introductory course and learn from a mentor. He explains that beekeeping in North America has become more demanding since the 1990s, due to the tiny brown Varroa mite, which has spread almost worldwide from Asia. Its scientific name, Varroa destructor, is frighteningly appropriate because it feeds on bees and spreads viral disease that kills hives—worldwide, it is generally regarded as the worst of all bee parasites.

“The Varroa mite changed everything,” says Creighton.

A hive has a full menu for a hungry yellowjacket: adult bees and larvae for protein plus honey and pollen for carbohydrates. Hives and the bees living in them are particularly important later in the season because other prey insects and nectar sources are dwindling. “In mid-to-late fall when food is scarce and some honey bee colonies are weak, yellowjacketes might invade and do some serious damage.” says Schmidt.

Even if experts downplay damage caused by yellowjackets, the predators take plenty of flak for wrecking hives. Beekeeping organizations and state agricultural agencies churn out a flood of information on how to fight off the yellowjacket hordes. Countermeasures range from simply narrowing the entrance to the hive to prevent easy access by predators to a host of eradication tactics.

This concern seems to be a tad of overkill. “Overall,” says Schmidt, “yellowjackets are beneficial insects, and their benefit outweighs their harm to bee colonies.” Indeed, yellowjackets prey on a variety of grasshoppers, aphids, flies, and caterpillar pests. They may be at times a beekeeper’s bane but overall can be a boon for agriculture.

Part of the reason why yellowjackets have taken such a bad rap in this country, says Schmidt, is because of confusion involving yellowjackets and hornets, much of which is caused by local and common names given these insects.

Yellowjackets and hornets are both wasps in the family Vespidae. But they are by no means the same. “Yellowjacket” is a name given in North America to two groups of wasps, the genera Vespula and Dolichovespula. The latter in North America is represented by what most people call the “bald-faced” or “white-faced” hornet, although it really is not a hornet but rather a yellowjacket.

Hornets (genus Vespa), meanwhile, are not native to North America, although the European hornet (Vespa crabro) has been introduced there. In Europe and Asia, however, hornets are a serious problem to beekeepers. The notorious giant Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia), a beast two-and-a-half inches long, is a true plague of honeybee hives. It is spreading and could be a nightmare for beekeepers if introduced here.

Speaking of introductions: One of the most abundant, widespread, and aggressive of the wasps that North Americans call yellowjackets is, in fact, not native to North America but rather introduced from the Old World. In North America, it’s called it the “German yellowjacket” (Vespula germanica). In Europe, however, it is just a “wasp.” There is a good reason for scientific names.

Great Pics in the Link; https://entomologytoday.org/2019/03/28/yellowjackets-opportunistic-raiders-honey-bee-hives/

[william r sanford72]

Researchers decipher and codify the universal language of honey bees

by Virginia Tech

For Virginia Tech researchers Margaret Couvillon and Roger Schürch, the Tower of Babel origin myth—intended to explain the genesis of the world's many languages—holds great meaning.

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-decipher-codify-universal-language-honey.html

The two assistant professors and their teams have decoded the language of honey bees in such a way that will allow other scientists across the globe to interpret the insects' highly sophisticated and complex communications.

In a paper appearing in April's issue of Animal Behaviour, the researchers present an extraordinary foundational advance—a universal calibration, or for science fiction aficionados, a "babel fish," that translates honey bee communications across sub-species and landscapes.

By deciphering the instructive messages encoded in the insects' movements, called waggle dances, the teams hope to better understand the insects' preferred forages and the location of these food sources.

"Before we can feed pollinators, we need to know when and where they need food. We must decode waggle dances," said Schürch, the paper's lead author. "So, this is a fundamental first step."

The researchers analyzed the dances of 85 marked bees from three hives.

Honey bee transmissions, as it turns out, have echoing agricultural, environmental, and economic ramifications. The USDA estimates that one out of every three bites of food in the United States depends on honey bees and other pollinators. In monetary terms, insect pollinators support crop yields and agricultural ecosystems and are believed to contribute an estimated $24 billion to the U.S. economy annually.

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences team's work is part of a larger grant from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, a nonprofit established through bipartisan congressional support in the 2014 Farm Bill.

Couvillon and Schürch, along with fellow Department of Entomology assistant professor Sally Taylor and Megan O'Rourke, an assistant professor with the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, are examining pollinator behavior in different landscapes to determine where and when planting supplemental forage could have the most positive impact on pollinator nutrition and health.

Nearly six decades ago, Karl von Frisch, a Nobel-prize winning ethologist, discovered that the angle of the dancer's body relative to the vertical encodes the direction of the forage, and the distance to the food source is communicated by the duration of the bee's dance.

During the waggle dance, a successful forager returns to the hive and communicates the distance and direction from the hive to the food source by performing multiple, repeated figure-eight-like movements called waggle runs.

Because of the challenge and cost of creating an original duration-to-distance calibration, von Frisch's calibration model, which is based on averages rather than data on individual bees, has served as the gold standard in the bee research community.

Yet, according to Couvillon and Schürch, different bees conveying the same location can vary their waggle runs, and even individual bees repeating a run may alter their dance.

Moreover, bees are inspired to dance only when they have located particularly tantalizing food resources. Anomalies such as these, coupled with a greater understanding of bees' highly developed cognition, inspired the husband-and-wife duo to develop their own distance-duration calibration system six years ago with bees that were predominantly A. mellifera mellifera in Sussex, United Kingdom.

"We have collected this information from many bees in two different landscapes separated by an ocean and several years," said Couvillon. "However, there is still a lot we don't know about what the bees are feeding on. So, imagine decoding many dances and plotting them on a map to see where the bees are going.

We wanted to do this by season to provide a comprehensive look at what they are foraging and where. This way, we can also see when it's harder for them to find forage and when it's easier."

Team members spend months analyzing each dancer's movements to determine a distance-to-duration calibration.

After arriving at Virginia Tech in 2016, the couple sought to determine whether or not their system could be applied to A. mellifera ligustica, a different genetic subspecies in the United States, and across a very different landscape.

Guided by empirical knowledge and a new hypothesis, they also factored in noise—meaning dance variation among bees who visit the same location, but communicate this information a little differently—to improve model predictions.

"It takes a lot of time, effort, and expense to conduct this kind of study," said Couvillon. "We decode dances by hand."

Their meticulous calibration process requires that each bee is numbered and videotaped. Team members then spend months in front of computers analyzing each dancer's movements to determine a distance-to-duration calibration.

"What also makes our research different is that we trained many numbers of bees and followed them great distances," said Schürch. "You can train bees to go to a feeder and move it farther and farther away."

For the Virginia study, the researchers analyzed the dances of 85 marked bees from three hives. They then compared their system to a previously published calibration.

Their next step was to compare and then collate their data with all published calibration studies. In doing so, the team discovered that the individual noise, or variation between bees, was so high that the difference between location and sub-species was rendered biologically irrelevant.

"While there were differences among populations in how they communicate, it doesn't matter from the bees' perspective," said Schürch. "We cannot tell them apart in terms of how they translate this information. There is huge overlap. In effect, a bee from England would understand a bee from Virginia and would find a food source in the same way with a similar success rate."

By combining all of their calibration data, Couvillon and Schürch have made their work universal for other researchers, providing scientists around the world with a codex to decipher where bees are collecting food. Such knowledge stands not only to inform best practices for bee-friendly planting, but will be crucial to maintaining their populations.

"We think that this research can enable bees to be used as bio-indicators," said Couvillon. "The bees can tell us in high spatial and temporal resolution where forage is available and at what times of the year. So, if you want to build a mall for example, we would know if prime pollinator habitat would be destroyed. And, where bees forage, other species forage as well. Conservation efforts can follow."

Within the next few years, the researchers hope to further dismantle the Tower of Babel by automating the decoding process in order to make better and faster assessments of where bees go in real-time.

"We are a year-and-a-half removed from bee analysis. Imagine if you got it instantaneously," said Couvillon.

Read more..Animal Behaviour https://www.journals.elsevier.com/animal-behaviour/

:bigsmile:
Introducing... The Babel Fish.

YWqHkYtREAE

:flower:

[william r sanford72]

Adhesive Formed From Bee Spit and Flower Oil Could Form Basis of New Glues

1NXCR06T86E

Honey bees spend hours each day collecting pollen and packing it into tidy bundles attached to their hind legs.

But all of that hard work could instantly be undone during a sudden rainstorm were it not for two substances the insect uses to keep the pollen firmly stuck in place: bee spit and flower oil.

Now researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology are looking at that mixture of ingredients as a model for a bioinspired glue because of its unique adhesive properties and ability to remain sticky through a range of conditions.

“A bee encounters not just wet and humid environments but windy and dry surroundings as well, so its pollen pellet must counteract those variations in humidity while remaining adhered,” said J. Carson Meredith, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

“Being able to withstand those kinds of changes in humidity is still a challenge for synthetic adhesives.”

In a study published March 26 in the journal Nature Communications and sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the researchers described how those two natural liquids work together to protect the bee’s bounty as it travels back to its hive.

The first component of the glue is the bee’s own salivary secretions, which coat the pollen grains and allow them to stick together. The bees produce those sugary secretions, the main ingredient in honey, from nectar they drink from the flowers.

The second ingredient is a plant-based oil that coats the pollen grains called pollenkitt, which helps stabilize the adhesive properties of the nectar and protect it from the impact of too much or too little humidity.

“It works similarly to a layer of cooking oil covering a pool of syrup,” Meredith said. “The oil separates the syrup from the air and slows down drying considerably.”

The researchers tested the adhesive properties of the bee’s glue by separating the oil-based component from the sugar-based component and evaluating how sticky the nectar remained under various humidity conditions. As expected, as humidity increased and the nectar absorbed more water, its adhesive properties diminished.

The same effect was true when humidity decreased and the nectar dried out. Meanwhile, under similar conditions, nectar coated with the pollenkitt oil remained sticky despite changes in humidity.

“We believe you could take the essential concepts of this material and develop a novel adhesive with a water-barrier external oil layer that could better resist humidity changes in the same way,” Meredith said.

“Or potentially this concept would apply to controlling the working time of an adhesive, such as its ability to flow and time to dry or cure.”

The research team, which included Victor Breedveld, an associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, also examined dynamics of the bee adhesive.

“We wanted to know, if the pollen can stay so firmly attached to the bee’s hind legs, how do the bees manage to remove it when they return to the hive,” Meredith said.
The answer may lie in the adhesive’s a rate-sensitive response. In other words, the faster the force attempting to remove it, the more it would resist.

“This is a property of capillary adhesion, which we believe could be harnessed and tailored for specific applications, such as controlling motion in microscopic or nanoscale devices, in fields ranging from construction to medicine,” Meredith said.

This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant No. FA9550-10-1-0555. Any conclusions or recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsoring organizations.

http://www.rh.gatech.edu/news/619730/adhesive-formed-bee-spit-and-flower-oil-could-form-basis-new-glues

Humidity-tolerant rate-dependent capillary viscous adhesion of bee-collected pollen fluids; http://www.rh.gatech.edu/news/619730/adhesive-formed-bee-spit-and-flower-oil-could-form-basis-new-glues

[william r sanford72]

Nepal’s honey and beekeeping industry is about more than profit

The world has kept a close eye on bees for a long time, but it might be time for Nepal to check its own population to safeguard the country's future.

Thomas Heaton, LALITPUR

Mar 30, 2019-

http://bit.ly/2Oz0lbV

Honey is in Bal Krishna Upadhyay’s lifeblood. Upadhyay’s family has been keeping Asian honey bees for generations. But last year was a bleak winter. His normally prolific bees had no honey.

“There were no new larvae and the bees were feeble and died,” says the Jumla beekeeper.

His bees’ lack of production is not an anomaly in Jumla, as a majority of beekeepers from around the north-western Karnali region are struggling. Upadhyay, who is also treasurer of the Karnali Beekeepers’ Cooperative, estimates that the local bee population has dropped by 90 percent.

This phenomenon is not confined to Nepal--bees are dying all over the world. Colony collapse, a phenomenon where worker bees vacate a hive and leave behind the queen, has become more frequent. Climate change, destruction of ecosystems and pesticide use have all been cited as reasons but no clear consensus has emerged.

International organisations and governments have made concerted efforts to help save the bees, emphasising the importance of apiculture for the future of their nations’ rations and global agricultural health. A recent article in the journal Biological Conservation predicted a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems” because of the threats to insects—bees included. More than 40 percent of insect species, including honey bees, are in decline, says the paper.

Nepal’s burgeoning honey industry, and a growing government emphasis on sustainability, could bring about a decline in wild and domesticated bees, causing a ripple effect because bees pollinate 87 of the world’s most important food crops. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has estimated the total worth of crops requiring pollination is between $235 and $577 billion.

Nepal’s topographical, climatic and floral variety should spell heaven for bees. Five of the world’s seven species of honey bee and several subspecies can be found here. However, the realities of climate change, increased pesticide use, and the introduction of the western honeybee are posing problems for the local population.

The changing weather has definitely affected his bees, says Upadhyay. Bee numbers started plummeting as far back as June or July, following spells of mud-rain. With 20 traditional wooden hives dispersed between three locations, Upadhyay earned Rs 350,000 from honey the year before last, but he fears another bleak year ahead.

“We are all very pessimistic. I do not even have one kilogram of honey this year,” he says. “Even the elderly say they have never witnessed a situation like this before. They are suspicious that it could be a bad omen for all human life.”

Changing climates


In response to the beekeepers’ complaints, a team from the Ministry of Agricultural Development’s Beekeeping Division visited Jumla in January, concluding that it was the weather and a lack of plant diversity that were affecting the bees.

“The temperatures go down to -10 degrees at times, so open pastures are a problem. The bees have nothing to forage on,” says Tirtha Kumar Shrestha, senior bee expert at the Beekeeping Division. “In many of the hives that have 21 frames, only four or five were being used. There’s just a little bit of honey, and even smaller amounts of pollen. The bees need to eat more to produce, but there’s not enough.”

But Upadhyay disputes one half of Shrestha’s conclusion, saying there might be a lack of flowers and plants but that has always been the case.

“This is the ‘dry season’,” says Upadhyay. “There is only one shrub called dhatelo and there are not enough flowers. But that cannot be the only reason because the availability of flowers was the same last year and there was a good harvest.”

The Beekeeping Division sent perennial plants to the area in early February to see whether they could act as sustainable food sources for the bees, but it is too early to tell if that will have an effect.

The lack of honey is a symptom of the degradation of the bees’ environment, with deforestation, human interference and climate change affecting where they source their food, say experts. But higher altitude areas should not have these problems, says Upadhyay .

Changing weather patterns, especially, are affecting beekeepers, says Shiv Prasad Sharma, president of the Nepal Beekeepers’ Association. This winter has been particularly difficult as Jumla farmers have simply been unable to predict environmental patterns, he says.

Native chiuri trees, which beekeepers heavily rely on, are blooming up to a month later in the mountains. Queen bees, vital to the production of honey and the health of hives, are being affected too.

For Suroj Pokhrel, a former secretary with the Ministry of Agricultural Development, climate change and habitat loss are two of the largest threats to Nepal’s bees.

The changing environment is the main threat to the giant honey bee (Apis dorsata), which is much more widespread than its subspecies, the Himalayan giant honey bee (Apis dorsata laboriosa).

“Within a period of 15 years, the migratory territory of the apis dorsata has moved into the laboriosa’s by 300 metres. It’s pushing up and up because of climate change,” says Pokhrel.

Destruction of nesting sites, forests, pesticide use and the reduction of local flora in the Tarai pushed the giant honey bee to the verge of extinction in the 90s, Pokhrel wrote in one study.

Pests and harvests

Pesticide use in Nepal is relatively low, at approximately 167g per hectare, according to the Beekeeping Division. However, the Plant Protection Directorate previously told The Post pesticide use was rampant in commercial agriculture, which directly affected their wild and non-wild bee populations. When bees come in contact with most pesticides, they either die on the spot or return to their hives, contaminating entire colonies.

“Until now, our mountain areas have been safe from chemicals. But in some pockets, apple farmers have started using pesticides,” says Pokhrel.

Uma Partap, agriculture and beekeeping specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), agrees that pesticide use on cash crops, such as apples, does put bees at risk, but also argues that large-scale bee deaths are rare in Nepal.

“With proper training of both farmers and beekeepers, it is possible to save bees from the harmful impacts of pesticides and other agrochemicals,” says Partap.

In fact, ICIMOD points to the harvesting techniques of wild honey hunters that are affecting the population of giant Himalayan honey bees (apis dorsata laboriosa).

“Honey hunting during the honey flow season, and using appropriate methods, does not have any adverse impact on bee populations. But what honey hunters have been doing is harvesting the whole comb and all the colonies, forcing bees to leave the nesting site,” says Partap.

ICIMOD studied honey hunting practices in 2003 and found that several nesting sites had shrunk. Honey hunting was being used as a form of tourism, which was problematic because it led to out-of-season harvesting.

An invasive species

A less-studied but more prevalent problem for these bees, according to Pokhrel, is the ever-increasing amount of western honey bees (Apis mellifera).

Successfully introduced to Nepal in 1995, the number of western honey bee hives, prized for their honey-producing capacity, have multiplied quickly, infringing on the habitat of wild bees. Partap says western honey bees compete with—and sometimes interfere with—local species’ migratory patterns. And unlike the western honey bee, native species like the two giant honey bee species and the eastern honey bee (Apis cerana) maintain biodiversity better.

This is because Apis cerana and wild bees are not loyal to certain plants while foraging but the Apis mellifera return to forage the same plants over the course of a season. The introduction of Apis mellifera has led to the virtual disappearance of Apis cerana in the Tarai region, according to Partap.

The introduction of the western honey bee was certainly good for the economy and the livelihoods of many, but a zoning plan is crucial for wild, native bees, says Mahalaxmi Shrestha, owner of The Beekeeping Shop. Shrestha has worked with bees on several projects since 1992, and has run her bee products shop since 1996.

“We need wild bees to conserve the biodiversity of wild areas. There are some flowers that can only be pollinated by the Apis cerana,” says Shrestha. Biodiversity is crucial to the country’s food system, but is in serious decline, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

“If we continue with commercial beekeeping without any clear plans for indigenous bees, a time will come when the native bees will disappear,” says Shrestha.

One saving grace has been the fact that the western honey bee has not been successfully introduced above 800m, allowing native species to thrive in higher altitudes. Nepal thus has had a steady population of native honey bees at higher altitudes, compared to other countries around Asia.

In recognition of the harm that the Apis mellifera is causing, the Nepal government implemented a zoning plan in 2016, and enacted a policy to promote the native Apis cerana in the plains and the lower hills, says Partap.

Learning to speak bee

Nepal’s beekeeping woes are not just limited to changing climates and invasive species, beekeepers themselves need an education, says Anchara Bhattarai, agricultural extension officer for the Beekeeping Division.

Knowing bee behaviour, how they react to changes in temperature or other variables, and how to sustainably harvest honey have long been issues that need addressing, she says.

“Two years ago, there was a lot of training, but this past year we have only had hive making,” says Bhattarai.

This year, there will be two programmes on a smaller scale due to cuts in budget. The division regularly ran seminars and programmes to train beekeepers on everything from constructing hives to best beekeeping practices, but the division is now solely focused on policy.

Bhattarai says it is up to local bodies to provide the necessary training, and beekeepers must make their demand for education known. For the most part, educational issues concern the Apis mellifera, because the Apis cerana has been reared for such a long time.

“What training there is, is very limited,” says Prakash Adhikari, owner of Beyond the Bee, a company that sources and sells honey from small-scale beekeepers around Nepal. “The training doesn’t give them the right information so they don’t know what exactly is happening to their hives.”

This lack of education extends further than the beekeeping population, as farmers have historically resisted having hives on their farms despite overwhelming evidence regarding the benefits of their presence. Adhikari says there have been instances where farmers do not let beekeepers place their hives on their land, and in some cases, even destroyed colonies.

In some countries--in Europe, North America and the Pacific, according to FAO--farmers pay beekeepers to bring their hives to promote good crops.

But in Nepal, beekeepers who want to migrate their colonies to a denser floral area, such as another farmer’s plot of mustard or buckwheat, are charged up to Rs 25,000 or a cut of the beekeepers’ honey, according to Shrestha from the Beekeeping Division. Some farmers know their crops will benefit from the bees, but continue to charge the beekeepers regardless.

These views, however, are slowly changing. According to the Beekeeping Division, farmers themselves are picking up beekeeping to boost their harvest. Honey was identified as one of 19 major exportable items in the government’s 2010 Nepal Trade Integration Strategy. The expectation among farmers was that policy would follow suit but the country’s exports have remained minimal, indicating that few steps have been taken to boost honey exports.

Beekeeping is increasing in popularity, according to statistics from MoAD. According to the Beekeepers’ Association, there are currently 5,700 commercial beekeepers in Nepal, accounting for 55,000 hives. A hive is home to between 25,000 and 70,000 bees, depending on the species.

However, the number of hives, including those from non-commercial keepers, was 240,000 in the 2016/2017 fiscal year, nearly twice as many as 10 years ago; those hives produced 3,500 tonnes of honey, more than six times the yield from 10 years ago.

Commercially viable

The introduction of European Newtown and Langstroth hives, and the Apis mellifera bees, has meant an increase in production. The Apis mellifera is a larger bee, native to Europe, and produces more honey compared to Nepal’s smaller endemic species. Those species produce between 25 and 30 kg annually, as opposed the western bee, which produces up to 60kg annually. The latter’s honey is not worth as much by weight, however.

“It became a cash crop. People started trading their honey. Before, it was almost free, exchanging honey for food or just gifting it to friends and family,” says Adhikari.

Prices have risen accordingly.

In the 15 years he has been involved in beekeeping, and selling bee products, Adhikari says the average price of honey has risen from about Rs 65 per kg to Rs 900 for regular honey.

Honey prices have spiked as people were able to increase the harvest and its frequency, leading it to become a commercially viable business.

Former MoAD secretary Pokhrel contends that the industry still has room to grow, so long as people are properly educated on apiculture.

“No other country in the world has this kind of opportunity. We have the potential to grow our honey industry 100-fold,” says Pokhrel. “Geographically too, we are lucky that we can produce our honey throughout the year.”

But because the production of honey is done on such a small scale, for the most part, organisation, collection and quality is difficult to control. According to MoAD, Nepal exported just short of 378 tonnes of processed and unprocessed honey in the 2016/17 fiscal year, the majority of which went to China and India, at a value of over Rs 67 million.

“We were exporting our honey to Norway and South Korea, but the European Union developed a code banning our honey, the USA too,” says Pokhrel.

The EU’s code is strict, specifying Apis mellifera bees as the only possible producers for what it classifies as honey. The nature of production in Nepal also does not meet standards--the EU has not approved Nepal’s current residue monitoring programme.

“It’s difficult, because our farmers are small producers. We have to collect our honey from these farmers, who have never heard of the EU’s conditions,” says Pokhrel.

Any trace of pesticides or toxins, or elevated moisture content, can taint an entire batch and render it useless for export. Production volumes are not high enough either.

Shrestha of The Beekeeping Shop believes that once the government has approved laboratories for testing--according to foreign expectations--smaller businesses like hers would be able to flourish.

“The quality of our honey is really good. The only reason we’re not exporting is because of the RMP [residue monitoring programme],” she says.

That Nepali honey doesn’t meet specifications is just a misconception, says Shrestha. Rather, it hasn’t had the opportunity to penetrate the market because of narrow rules.

Used as natural remedies, pollen and propolis, or bee glue, are byproducts with good potential for export, while beeswax is an ingredient in many beauty products. Apitourism has also been signalled as a potential market.

Beekeeping Association President Sharma says being able to take a share of the EU’s honey imports—more than $516 million worth of honey from around the world in 2017, according to UN Comtrade--would change the lives of many.

But some disagree. ICIMOD’s Partap doubts that Nepal has the potential to produce enough honey for export while also satisfying its own domestic market.

“Selling honey within Nepal fetches farmers a very good price, which they cannot get in the international market,” she says. “Nepali beekeepers always talk of exporting honey to other countries, but there is an increasing and unmet demand for good quality honey at home itself.

Lekhnath Pant in Kathmandu and LP Devkota in Jumla contributed reporting

Pics In The Link: http://bit.ly/2Oz0lbV

[william r sanford72]

Road Trip: How Hive Transportation Puts Stress on Honey Bees

https://entomologytoday.org/2019/04/01/road-trip-hive-transportation-stress-honey-bees/

By Dacotah Melicher, Ph.D.

When we think about going on a road trip honey bees probably don’t come to mind, but bees spend a surprising amount of time on the nation’s highways. Most of our food production by weight consists of just a few species of wind-pollinated grains, but more than 80 percent of crop species, including almost all fruits and vegetables, require some kind of pollinator.

For this reason, transporting honey bees (Apis mellifera) to provide pollination for agriculture is big business. Commercial pollination services maintain thousands or even tens of thousands of hives that are available for rent, and they deliver by the truckload all over the country.

Growers have a narrow window to provide intensive pollination. Many pay commercial beekeepers to transport hives by truck to saturate their fields during the bloom.

Most crops bloom during a brief, seasonal period that may be as short as couple weeks, and they need intensive pollination during this time to be profitable. Commercial pollinators can pollinate crops all over the country by taking advantage of variation in growing seasons. Hives may be moved multiple times and several thousand miles per year.

Bees have received a lot of attention recently, and for good reason. They face challenges from parasites and pathogens while demand for pollination services increases annually.

The practice of transporting hives is monitored by state and federal agencies who release annual reports regarding the health, winter survival, and inventory of the nation’s honey bees. While some research focuses on transporting hives, we found very little work has been done specifically investigating the effects of the road trip on colony stress and survival.

A colony may see the sun set in North Dakota and rise in California. In the intervening time, bees are confined in their hives, loaded onto trucks, and transported long distances at highway speeds, sometimes through mountain passes on the way to the West Coast. Hives meant for pollination are often staged in bee yards until they are needed and are moved again.

In research published this week in Environmental Entomology, colleagues and I at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Edward T. Schafer Agricultural Research Center, in collaboration with North Dakota State University (NDSU), investigated transportation stress while bee hives are in transit to identify sources of stress that may affect survival and pollination ability.

Collaborators on the study included Elisabeth Wilson and Julia Bowsher at NDSU, George Yocum and Joseph Rinehart at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, and Steve Peterson at AgPollen LLC. Through our study, we found that colonies experienced cold stress during shipping, with smaller colonies especially vulnerable.

Honey bees are one of the few insect species that can thermoregulate much higher than ambient temperatures.

They do this through coordinated social behavior, and they have evolved to rely on stable, warm temperatures between 32-35 degrees Celsius (about 90-95 degrees Fahrenheit). Deviations from this range are stressful. Above this range a colony will quickly suffocate and die. Below this range, colonies often survive, at least for a time, but cold exposure in developing brood may cause developmental abnormalities.

Commercial pollinators favor increased airflow because the consequences of a hive that overheats are immediate and obvious. Our research found, however, that smaller colonies lost their ability to thermoregulate the hive, and some never recovered. Smaller colonies also experienced a significant loss of population and had much lower long-term survival. Large, robust colonies maintained hive temperature and experienced less population loss.

My colleagues and I measured changes in stress response before departure, immediately after arrival, and after a two-week recovery period, using gene expression as indicators. We found that genes associated with chill stress, immune function, defense response, and methylation increased after the hives were relocated, which all decreased after the recovery period.

According to the Bee Informed Partnership, there are around 2.67 million honey bee colonies in the United States.

Many of these colonies are used for agriculture, providing a vital service essential for a diverse and affordable food supply. There are many other potential sources of stress during transportation. While this study focused on cold stress, changes in barometric pressure, humidity, turbulent airflow, diesel exhaust, and vibration are also potential directions for research.

Small sources of stress may have large consequences, especially if they are persistent or repeated (like noisy neighbors or trying to sleep with a mosquito in the room). Stress during transportation can be reduced with new or updated management practices, and this may have the additional benefit of allowing honey bee colonies to survive other challenges.

Pics In The Link: https://entomologytoday.org/2019/04/01/road-trip-hive-transportation-stress-honey-bees/

Read More: Long-Distance Transportation Causes Temperature Stress in the Honey Bee, Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae)
https://academic.oup.com/ee/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ee/nvz027/5423020

[william r sanford72]

Saving bees, protecting forests and improving livelihoods

by Olivia Bailey,

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-bees-forests-livelihoods.html

Imagine you are standing in a beautiful mosaic of meadow and forest habitats – buzzing bees flying from flower to flower. You are in the Zarand landscape corridor in Romania. As well as having rich floral diversity, this landscape corridor provides an element of wilderness through which brown bears, grey wolves and Eurasian lynx can move between the Western and Southern Carpathian Mountains.

However, the Zarand landscape is under increasing threat from new developments and a shift away from small-scale agriculture. This puts local biodiversity and people's cultural heritage at risk of being lost. Together with Zarand Association, Fauna & Flora International (FFI) is working with local communities to protect their environment and promote sustainable agricultural practices and other rural business enterprises.

One way we are doing this is by promoting beekeeping, which encourages communities to value and preserve wildflower meadows and sustainably managed forests. This is because beekeepers rely on these habitats for bees to pollinate and produce honey from wild flowers and trees such as lime and acacia.

Beekeeping is already a traditional farming practice in the area with up to 60 beekeepers, but is in decline as young people are increasingly moving away from rural villages to earn higher incomes elsewhere. However, by coming together, beekeepers can strengthen their bargaining power and achieve better prices for their honey collectively than they could as individuals.

FFI supports the sale of their honey at a fair price so that farmers can earn an income based on the Fairtrade principle – which seeks to provide local farmers with more favourable prices and improved access to markets for sustainable agricultural products.

Alongside this, we have supported the creation of a unique Zarand brand, which farmers can use to differentiate their products. By marketing with this distinctive brand, farmers can showcase their pure and premium honey derived from the Zarand landscape, and sell their products at a higher price directly to shops and at fairs. This also helps consumers recognise that they are buying a traditionally produced, natural honey of a higher quality than many other products on sale.

The honey is produced in line with EU food safety standards, so while it is currently only on sale in Romania, we are planning to expand into other EU countries in the future. As the Zarand brand grows, we are hopeful that more farmers will join the initiative and therefore have a greater incentive to continue to manage the land in ways that also preserve the beautiful Zarand landscape corridor.

Community Facilitator for the project, Anca Barbu, said: "One of Zarand locals went to Arad and he saw the honey on a store shelf. He said that he knew about the plans of selling honey but he never believed that he will see the honey on a shelf store from Arad. Seeing the honey on that shelf made him believe that the natural beekeeping in the area has a chance to prosper."

Bee-burners to beekeepers

Across the globe on the island of Príncipe, in the Gulf of Guinea, we are supporting a local beekeeping cooperative with our partner Fundação Príncipe.

In Príncipe, honey is traditionally collected from wild colonies using a destructive method that involves burning the nest, and therefore killing most of the bees.

This method also carries the risk of uncontrolled fires spreading through the forest. The traditional collectors are known as "queimá vunvú" – which literally means "bee-burners" in the local forro dialect. Due to this destructive practice, wild bee colonies are reportedly harder to find and the honey collected is usually poor quality.

To address this problem, FFI and Fundação Príncipe are raising awareness of the importance of bees as pollinators and providing training to beekeepers for an alternative model of honey production that does not involve bee-burning in the forest.

Since 2017, thanks to government support, it has become illegal to burn bees to extract honey, and increasing regulations relating to the sale of honey are helping to prevent illegally extracted honey from entering the market.

FFI's Príncipe project manager, Laura Benitez, said: "This is an ambitious and exciting project based on three pillars – communities, beekeeping and forest conservation – each with its own challenges. The biggest challenge is to offer a sustainable alternative to honey production, changing people's mindsets and creating the technical skills to do so, to prove that it is possible to manage the forest in a way beneficial to both humans and bees.

"In the end what we are trying to achieve is nothing more than imitating the work of bees: using the forest as a resource in the most intelligent and productive way possible, feeding and providing our community and, through our work, returning some benefit to the planet. For bees the result of all this work is honey; for us the sweet result is a healthy environment with engaged communities having sustainable livelihoods."

Beekeeper Jaynilsa Vaz Lourenço said: "The project was very important to teach us how to do beekeeping and show that bees are important to make our honey and also our food. If we do not have bees, we will have no fruit. We depend on the bees."

Pics In Link: https://phys.org/news/2019-04-bees-forests-livelihoods.html

Explore further
Assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of stressors on bee health: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-mitigation-stressors-bee-health.html

[william r sanford72]

My Children loved swarm season..and would pester me non stop about when they would get to pound on the Pots to call in the bees...and sometimes it worked and it was like magic for them and me.

William.:flower:

Seriously? Using a crowbar to catch a swarm of bees?

Jeff Horchoff Bees

Published on Apr 5, 2019

I can already hear the rumblings of disbelief just from the title of this video, but I sate with all honesty, this method does call in a swarm. I have been trying to get this method videoed for 4 years now, but I never had my camera with me. I have called in at least 10 swarms over the 4 years, and each time I do it, I regret the fact that I did not get it on video, not this time.

The specific implement of noise maker is not of real importance. In the past I have used a pot and spoon, garbage can lid and a stick, two pieces of pipe, beating my hands on the side of a covered trailer, the crowbar and hive tool, but my favorite tool is a cow bell. It's easy to use and I keep it in the truck with me because I never know when I will need it.

I will say this, this method ONLY works when the bees are flying in the air. As the bees are flying, I start banging or clanging whatever I was able to find at the moment. Almost as soon as you start making noise, the bees will start tightening up their formation, and when they are in a pretty tight cluster, they will then light on something, or in this case, land on the box. Now, I will admit, this swarm was already hanging on a tree, and I did scope a bunch of them up with the bucket you see in the video, and dropped them in the box, but then main bunch took off, and I called them back using this method. So, during swarm season, I highly recommend you have ready access to some method of making a lot of noise whenever you see a swarm of bees in the air moving.

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

vHGxeewY03Y

[william r sanford72]

Mexico’s Alianza Maya Fights to Protect Bees

CANCUN, Mexico – Leydi Pech, a beekeeper in the Mexican state of Campeche, held out a handful of dead bees and said, “People are killing them by fumigating the air with toxic chemicals that are illegal in other countries.”

“Here, they are still using genetically modified (GM) crops, especially soybeans,” she said.

Pech told EFE that in 2018 more than 326 bee colonies died, mainly in the states of Yucatan and Quintana Roo, where 42,000 hectares (about 104,000 acres) have been planted with GM crops, according to a report from Mexico’s agriculture department.

Deforestation wipes out 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) of forest each year in the Yucatan Peninsula (divided among the states of Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo), which results in changes in the local climate and new pests.

Pech said that she and her fellow beekeepers in Hopelchen, Campeche, used to export their honey to Germany, but after they found GM material in the product, they turned to the judiciary.

Their effort forced the Mexican Supreme Court to ban GM soy crops, but people continue to break the law.

The situation led to the creation of the Mayan Alliance for Bees in the Yucatan Peninsula with the aim of reducing the use of pesticides, which harm bees; preventing deforestation, which reduces the space for beekeeping; and developing strategies that benefit beekeeping and sustainable agriculture in the area.

On the positive side of the ledger, the over 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) of jungle and more than 168,000 hectares (415,000 acres) of cropland provide plenty of pollen and nectar out of which the bees produce honey, which is 100 percent organic and commands premium prices on the world market.

In Calakmul, Campeche, the Union of Ecological Beekeeping Societies, formed by the producers of nine communal farms in a protected reserve, managed to keep their apiaries intact and sell their honey with an added value.

The president of the group, Anastasio Oliveros, told EFE that caring for the bees is fundamental and one of the strategies is to feed the insects their own honey, not syrups made from water and sugar.

The group also refuses to use pesticides and fertilizers, or any product that could harm the health of the bees or contaminate the pollen used and the honey produced, thus delivering a high-quality product.

The honey extracted from the hives is sent to a processing, distribution and packaging plant, where it is packaged in sanitized containers.

In 2017, Mexico was the world’s seventh largest honey producer with 57,000 tons, mainly from Campeche and Yucatan.

http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2477019&CategoryId=14091

[william r sanford72]

New Study: Pesticide OK'd by EPA as Safer Alternative to Bee-killing Neonicotinoids Is Harmful to Bees

April 12, 2019

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2019/flupyradifurone-harms-bees-04-12-2019.php

PORTLAND, Ore.— A new study has found that a pesticide approved by the Environmental Protection Agency as a safer alternative to harmful neonicotinoid products can disorient and kill bees.

Flupyradifurone — marketed under the trade name Sivanto — was touted as posing fewer risks to honeybees and other pollinators than neonicotinoid pesticides.
But the study, published this week, found that nearly 3 of every 4 honeybees fed “field-realistic” doses of flupyradifurone and a commonly used fungicide died.

Exposure to the pesticide cocktail also increased the frequency of abnormal behaviors, such as reduced coordination, hyperactivity and apathy. The study’s authors documented poor coordination in bees that they defined as “falling or stumbling while walking, walking in circles, walking and flying with erratic and irregular movements, and bees that flap their wings while upside down.”

“It’s more than a little ironic that the pesticide the EPA claims is safe for bees is just another toxic poison for them,” said Tara Cornelisse, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “We know escalating pesticide use is one of the main reasons more than 40 percent of the world’s insect species are on a track to extinction. We need to stop pretending we’re going to spray our way out of this crisis by swapping one pesticide for another.”

The Center for Biological Diversity and other conservation groups sued the EPA in 2015 over its initial approval of flupyradifurone, challenging the agency’s refusal to take common-sense measures to protect endangered species from this new and controversial pesticide. That case is in its initial stages at the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Late last year the maker of flupyradifurone, Bayer CropScience, requested that the EPA further expand the pesticide’s use to 300,000 acres of tobacco crops in states like Kentucky and North Carolina.

Flupyradifurone is a systemic pesticide with the same mode of action — and potential for harm — as neonicotinoid pesticides, a leading cause of pollinator declines. While the pesticide industry has touted flupyradifurone as a replacement for neonicotinoid pesticides, it poses many of the same risks to nontarget species as neonicotinoids.

But the study, published this week, found that nearly 3 of every 4 honeybees fed “field-realistic” doses of flupyradifurone and a commonly used fungicide died.

Exposure to the pesticide cocktail also increased the frequency of abnormal behaviors, such as reduced coordination, hyperactivity and apathy. The study’s authors documented poor coordination in bees that they defined as “falling or stumbling while walking, walking in circles, walking and flying with erratic and irregular movements, and bees that flap their wings while upside down.”

“It’s more than a little ironic that the pesticide the EPA claims is safe for bees is just another toxic poison for them,” said Tara Cornelisse, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “We know escalating pesticide use is one of the main reasons more than 40 percent of the world’s insect species are on a track to extinction. We need to stop pretending we’re going to spray our way out of this crisis by swapping one pesticide for another.”

The Center for Biological Diversity and other conservation groups sued the EPA in 2015 over its initial approval of flupyradifurone, challenging the agency’s refusal to take common-sense measures to protect endangered species from this new and controversial pesticide. That case is in its initial stages at the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Late last year the maker of flupyradifurone, Bayer CropScience, requested that the EPA further expand the pesticide’s use to 300,000 acres of tobacco crops in states like Kentucky and North Carolina.

Flupyradifurone is a systemic pesticide with the same mode of action — and potential for harm — as neonicotinoid pesticides, a leading cause of pollinator declines. While the pesticide industry has touted flupyradifurone as a replacement for neonicotinoid pesticides, it poses many of the same risks to nontarget species as neonicotinoids.
Flupyradifurone is used on a range of crops such as citrus fruits, avocado trees, squash, peas and other crops attractive to pollinators.

“Now that Canada and the European Union have concluded that neonics are incredibly dangerous to pollinators and other species and are phasing them out, the chemical industry is scrambling to popularize new, equally dangerous products to replace them,” said Cornelisse. “But the replacements pose the same risks.”

Flupyradifurone impairs learning, memory and affinity for nectar rewards in honeybees. It’s also highly water-soluble and decreases the viability of freshwater mussel larvae. It also negatively impacts aquatic mayfly larvae survival at levels comparable to neonicotinoid pesticides like imidacloprid and clothianidin.

The new study was published in journal in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences by researchers at the University of California, San Diego.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.4 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2019/flupyradifurone-harms-bees-04-12-2019.php

Lethal and sublethal synergistic effects of a new systemic pesticide, flupyradifurone (Sivanto®), on honeybees https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.0433

S. Tosi and J. C. Nieh

Published:10 April 2019

https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0433

Abstract

The honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) is an important pollinator and a model for pesticide effects on insect pollinators. The effects of agricultural pesticides on honeybee health have therefore raised concern. Bees can be exposed to multiple pesticides that may interact synergistically, amplifying their side effects. Attention has focused on neonicotinoid pesticides, but flupyradifurone (FPF) is a novel butenolide insecticide that is also systemic and a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) agonist. We therefore tested the lethal and sublethal toxic effects of FPF over different seasons and worker types, and the interaction of FPF with a common SBI fungicide, propiconazole. We provide the first demonstration of adverse synergistic effects on bee survival and behaviour (poor coordination, hyperactivity, apathy) even at FPF field-realistic doses (worst-case scenarios). Pesticide effects were significantly influenced by worker type and season. Foragers were consistently more susceptible to the pesticides (4-fold greater effect) than in-hive bees, and both worker types were more strongly affected by FPF in summer as compared with spring. Because risk assessment (RA) requires relatively limited tests that only marginally address bee behaviour and do not consider the influence of bee age and season, our results raise concerns about the safety of approved pesticides, including FPF. We suggest that pesticide RA also test for common chemical mixture synergies on behaviour and survival.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2019/pesticides-02-01-2019.php

[william r sanford72]

Notre Dame beekeeper waits to learn fate of his 18,000 bees

Saphora Smith and Richard Engel and Marc Smith and Jack Losh

PARIS - The beekeeper of Notre Dame Cathedral is in limbo waiting to hear the fate of his 18,000 bees after the devastating fire tore through the church.

Nicolas Géant is hoping that the bees, that live in hives on the roof of the sacristy, survived the inferno.

"If you look at the photos from the sky you see that everything is burnt, there are holes in the roof, but you can still see the three bee hives," Géant told NBC News Wednesday.

The 51-year-old beekeeper - who keeps bees across France and in California - has been unable to check on the colonies since the fire broke out Monday ravaging the world-famous cathedral.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/notre-dame-beekeeper-waits-to-learn-fate-of-his-18000-bees/ar-BBW2In7?ocid=spartanntp

[william r sanford72]

:thumbsup:From the mainstream news feed I glimpsed yesterday..the bee hives survived the Notre dame Fire.

William.:flower:

[william r sanford72]

Monster bee hive removal and relocation.

Jeff Horchoff Bees

Published on Apr 12, 2019

Things have pretty much settled down in our bee yards, as all of hives are now split, and I was finally able to do my first cut out of the year, and folks, what a cut out is was. This one was a monster! Over 6 feet long, at least 100 pounds of honey, and 40,000 plus bees in the hive. Fortunately, I did not have to tackle this monster on my own, with the quality help provided by one of club members, Mike, we were able to subdue this beast in only about 4 hours.

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

MCpdHFu4svI

[william r sanford72]

In "stunning decision" Bayer shareholders dump CEO over disastrous Monsanto purchase

1. Bayer board in emergency meeting after investors rebuke CEO
2. In "stunning decision" Bayer shareholders dump CEO over disastrous Monsanto purchase
---

1. Bayer board in emergency meeting after investors rebuke CEO

By Naomi Kresge and Tim Loh

Bloomberg, 26 April 2019

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-26/bayer-ceo-loses-key-vote-as-investors-reject-monsanto-strategy

* Baumann loses confidence vote in shock decision at rowdy AGM
* Investors question handling of $63 billion Monsanto takeover

Bayer AG’s supervisory board called an emergency meeting on Friday after Chief Executive Officer Werner Baumann lost a crucial confidence vote as investors questioned his handling of the $63 billion Monsanto deal and the wave of U.S. lawsuits that followed.

In a stunning development for the German drugs and chemicals company, about 55 percent of shareholders voted against absolving Baumann and other managers of responsibility for their actions in the takeover last year. Though the result isn’t legally binding, it throws his future into question and prompted an immediate supervisory board session. Similar rejections have cost German CEOs their jobs. ... [remainder of article available only on subscription]

2. In "stunning decision" Bayer shareholders dump CEO over disastrous Monsanto purchase

by Tyler Durden

Zero Hedge, 26 Apr 2019

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-26/stunning-decision-bayer-shareholders-dump-ceo-over-disastrous-monsanto-purchase

Bayer, also known as IG Farben back in the day, survived World War II (which it helped fund for Hitler's war effort while recruiting a an army of slave workers), but it may not survive the worst acquisition in its history: the disastrous $63 billion purchase of Monsanto in 2018, which also brought over the infamous carcinogenic weed-killer Roundup, and with it countless lawsuits and legal charges.

And while the future of the iconic company which brought "cough medicine" Heroin to the world remains in question, as it is slowly been buried under an avalanche of lawsuits emerging from Monsanto's legacy misdeeds which have slammed its stock to 7 year lows... that of its CEO appears to be now sealed.

Late on Friday, in what Bloomberg called a "stunning development" for the German drugs and chemicals company, a majority, or about 55% of shareholders, voted against absolving CEO Werner Baumann and other managers of responsibility for their actions in the Monsanto takeover last year. Though the result isn’t legally binding, it throws his future into question and prompted an immediate supervisory board session. Similar rejections have cost German CEOs their jobs.

“Mr. Baumann, what have you done with our stable company?,” said Joachim Kregel, a representative of German shareholders association SdK. In just two years, “the erstwhile pharma giant has mutated into a dwarf,” said Ingo Speich, chief of sustainability and corporate governance at Deka Investment.

Bayer Chairman Werner Wenning said the board is taking the vote “very seriously” and would “do everything to win back the trust of shareholders as quickly and completely as possible” adding that "we regret this exceedingly."

"Nevertheless, the voting results show that the stockholders’ meeting wanted to send a clear signal."

The vote, which took place at around 10 p.m. local time, capped a tumultuous meeting in Bonn, with investors berating Baumann, arguing with Wenning and demanding explanations for the erasure of some 35 billion euros ($39 billion) in market value since the deal. At the heart of the debate was whether Baumann, Wenning and other leaders properly assessed the legal risks of Roundup, the controversial weedkiller it acquired together with Monsanto, according to Bloomberg.

“The loss of a nonbinding confidence vote at Bayer’s annual meeting may hasten management changes and the eventual logical split of Crop Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals into separate companies,” said Bloomberg Intelligence’s Christopher Perrella.

The outcome of the vote was historic because before the ballot, Bayer said a majority of shareholders opting not to endorse its managers’ actions at such a meeting hasn’t happened "possibly for its entire history." Former Deutsche Bank AG co-CEO Anshu Jain stepped down in 2015 after a 61 percent approval vote from investors. In a separate motion, some 66% voted to clear Wenning and the rest of the supervisory board.

As a reminder, Bayer's headaches started last summer, shortly after Bayer completed the Monsanto takeover last June after years of wrangling with antitrust regulators. Then in August, a California jury found that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, caused a school groundskeeper’s cancer. Lawsuits have multiplied since then, totaling 13,400 U.S. cases by April 11. Bayer has vowed to fight in court and says there’s no scientific proof that glyphosate causes cancer.

In the meantime, Bayer's stock has tumbled about 40% from its mid-2018 level of about €100/share.
* * *
Earlier, Wenning and his protege Baumann sought to reassure stockholders even as hundreds of protesters outside erected the CEO’s effigy from bales of hay and shouted “shame on you.” Inside, investors demanded explanations, with one likening the company to “a pile of broken glass.”

“The supervisory board is convinced that the strategy of management, including the takeover of Monsanto, was the right path,” Wenning said. “We have the fullest trust that Bayer under the leadership of Mr. Baumann will be very successful.”

All that appeared to change just hours later following the shocking outcome of the shareholder vote. Moments after the vote to effectively remove Baumann, Bayer's supervisory board called an emergency meeting on Friday, whose outcome has yet to be determined but will likely cost the CEO his job.

https://mailchi.mp/gmwatch.org/in-stunning-decision-bayer-shareholders-dump-ceo-over-disastrous-monsanto-purchase?e=eb54924245

https://www.gmwatch.org/en/


Wont Get Fooled again..

BXrmQBPg2s0


Rock On..

[william r sanford72]

usda national honey prices for the month of april 2019..

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

[william r sanford72]

EPA proposes re-approving glyphosate, ignoring cancer risk

https://mailchi.mp/gmwatch.org/epa-proposes-re-approving-glyphosate-ignoring-cancer-risk?e=eb54924245

Relying heavily on confidential industry research, the US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to re-approve glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup.

EPA’s conclusion that glyphosate poses no risks to humans contradicts a 2015 World Health Organization analysis of the leading independent research that determined glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.

“American consumers have no reason to trust the EPA’s deeply flawed assessment of glyphosate’s safety,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “As with past EPA studies, the agency has relied heavily on confidential industry research that can’t be reviewed by independent scientists. This is an industry-friendly conclusion that’s simply not based on the best available science.”

In addition to the WHO’s conclusion, other U.S. federal agencies have acknowledged evidence of glyphosate’s link to cancer. This includes the EPA’s Office of Research and Development and the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The EPA assessment release today was conducted by the agency’s pesticide regulatory office, which has long had the reputation of reaching industry-friendly decisions.

“The EPA’s biased glyphosate assessment ignores its own guidelines for estimating cancer risks and falls short of the most basic standards of independent research,” said Donley. “Trump’s EPA lost no time in trying to hand Bayer a consolation prize following last week’s shareholder revolt over glyphosate. But it can’t erase glyphosate’s well-documented links to cancer.”

Within the past nine months, two juries have ordered Monsanto/Bayer to pay multimillion-dollar awards to glyphosate users suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which independent research has linked to glyphosate. A third trial is currently underway, and lawsuits involving roughly 13,000 people have been filed against the company for failing to warn consumers of the pesticide’s cancer risks.

Emails obtained in litigation brought against Monsanto by cancer victims and their families uncovered a disturbingly cozy relationship between the EPA and Monsanto on matters involving the glyphosate risk assessment.

In one example, when the US Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would be reviewing glyphosate’s safety, an EPA official assured Monsanto he would work to thwart the review, saying, “If I can kill this, I should get a medal.”

That Health and Human Services review was delayed for three years and only recently released.

In addition to evaluating the risks of glyphosate to human health, the EPA also analyzed risks to plants and animals and found that serious harms could result from using glyphosate, including exposure to spray drift that could harm the growth and reproduction of birds and mammals. It also found that exposure to small mammals exceeded by 10-fold the agency’s level of concern — the exposure level known to cause harm.

“In addition to the threats glyphosate poses to human health, glyphosate is a leading cause of the decline of the imperilled and iconic monarch butterfly,” said Donley. “The minor, industry-vetted restrictions the EPA has proposed are a far cry from what’s needed to bring these amazing creatures back from the brink.”

The EPA’s assessment found that field buffers up to 600 feet would be needed to prevent harm to milkweed, the sole host plant for monarch caterpillars. Yet the EPA’s interim approval does not contain any field buffers, and the minor spray-drift mitigation measures put in place were pre-approved by the pesticide industry.

Migratory monarch populations have declined by 80 percent in the past two decades, and their decline has been driven in large part by the surge in glyphosate use resulting from the widespread planting of corn and soybeans crops genetically engineered to tolerate glyphosate.

Glyphosate is a potent killer of milkweed. The dramatic surge in glyphosate use has virtually wiped out milkweed plants in the Midwest's corn and soybean fields. While monarch populations enjoyed a one-year spike due to ideal weather conditions in the 2018-2019 season, migratory monarchs continue to be gravely imperilled by glyphosate use.

Source: Center for Biological Diversity https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2019/glyphosate-04-30-2019.php

EPA: https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/proposed-interim-registration-review-decision-and-responses

https://www.gmwatch.org/en/

[william r sanford72]

Survey Shines Light on Beekeepers’ Efforts to Manage Varroa Mites

https://entomologytoday.org/2019/05/09/survey-beekeepers-efforts-manage-varroa-mites/

With the Varroa destructor mite a pernicious pest of managed honey bee colonies across North America, beekeepers have a variety of control methods to choose from to reduce the mites’ impact on their hives. Which ones do they most prefer?

To answer that question, researchers at the University of Maryland and the Bee Informed Partnership analyzed four years of data from surveys that asked beekeepers about their Varroa-management methods. Their findings, reported in a new study published in April in the Journal of Economic Entomology, highlight a wide variety of combinations of methods used and indicate a lack of any perceived “silver bullet” option for controlling Varroa mites.

Among the range of practices, though, some patterns emerged, says Ariela Haber, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland at the time it was conducted. (Haber is now a postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service.)

For instance, 89 percent of large-scale beekeepers (managing 50 or more colonies) said they use chemical varroacides, while 61 percent of small-scale beekeepers said they did. And, while about half of large-scale beekeepers said they use nonchemical methods (either exclusively or in combination with varroacides), about three-quarters of small-scale beekeepers said they use them.

Haber says these insights into use of Varroa-management methods “take into account important considerations such as affordability and logistical constraints associated with different practices. Thus, the findings can inform future experiments that directly test the efficacy of different Varroa management practices that beekeepers can realistically use.”

The survey data, which Haber analyzed with University of Maryland colleagues Nathalie Steinhauer and Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Ph.D., covered nearly 19,000 responses over a four-year period, asking beekeepers about their use Varroa-management methods among the bevy of options currently available:

Beekeepers were also asked about colony losses. Across all types of beekeeping operations, use of varroacides was associated with lower colony loss, with amitraz associated with better colony survival than all other varroacides. Meanwhile, among nonchemical methods, splitting colonies was associated with the lowest levels of colony loss, “although our results suggest that nonchemical practices have limited success as stand-alone controls,” the authors note in their report.

The survey did not ask about intensity of Varroa infestations or other factors that can influence colony survival, so Haber and colleagues stress that the results are only observational and shouldn’t be interpreted to infer causal links between Varroa-management methods and colony survival rates.

The primacy of chemical management methods, however, indicates the ongoing challenge beekeepers face in managing Varroa in their honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies.

Repeated use of varroacides has led to Varroa populations evolving resistance to at least two previously effective products.

“Even though evidence from our study and from other studies suggests that chemical treatments tend to be more effective than nonchemical practices for controlling Varroa, we should be cautious in interpreting the results of any varroacide efficacy study and in making recommendations to beekeepers, as it is unlikely that any chemical control will be effective in the long term,” Haber says.

More broadly, Haber says she sees the intensive operations of managed honey bee pollination services in agriculture as an environment with multiple factors contributing to honey bee colony losses, such as low-quality pollen diets in monoculture crops to high-density colonies. “This suggests that honey bee colonies in the U.S. will be vulnerable—to problems we have already seen as well as new, unforeseen problems—as long as we keep our current system in place,” she says.

Read More:

“Use of Chemical and Nonchemical Methods for the Control of Varroa destructor (Acari: Varroidae) and Associated Winter Colony Losses in U.S. Beekeeping Operations”
https://academic.oup.com/jee/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jee/toz088/5462560

https://entomologytoday.org/2019/05/09/survey-beekeepers-efforts-manage-varroa-mites/

[william r sanford72]

Honey Bees Make Honey ... and Bread? | Deep Look

Published on May 7, 2019

Honey bees make honey from nectar to fuel their flight – and our sweet tooth. But they also need pollen for protein. So they trap, brush and pack it into baskets on their legs to make a special food called bee bread.

Spring means honey bees flitting from flower to flower. This frantic insect activity is essential to growing foods like almonds, raspberries and apples. Bees move pollen, making it possible for plants to grow the fruit and seeds they need to reproduce.

But honey bees don’t just move pollen from plant to plant. They also keep a lot for themselves. They carry it around in neat little balls, one on each of their hind legs. Collecting, packing and making pollen into something they can eat is a tough, intricate job that’s essential to the colony’s well-being.

Older female adult bees collect pollen and mix it with nectar or honey as they go along, then carry it back to the hive and deposit it in cells next to the developing baby bees, called larvae. This stored pollen, known as bee bread, is the colony’s main source of protein.

“You don’t have bees flying along snacking on pollen as they’re collecting it,” said Mark Carroll, an entomologist at the US Department of Agriculture’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson. “This is the form of pollen that bees are eating.”

--- What is bee bread?
It’s the pollen that worker honey bees have collected, mixed with a little nectar or honey and stored within cells in the hive.

--- What is bee bread used for?
Bee bread is the main source of protein for adult bees and larvae. Young adult bees eat bee bread to make a liquid food similar to mammal’s milk that they feed to growing larvae; they also feed little bits of bee bread to older larvae.

--- How do honey bees use their pollen basket?
When a bee lands on a flower, it nibbles and licks off the pollen, which sticks to its head. It wipes the pollen off its eyes and antennae with a brush on each of its front legs, using them in tandem like windshield wipers. It also cleans the pollen off its mouth part, and as it does this, it mixes it with some saliva and a little nectar or honey that it carries around in a kind of stomach called a crop.

Then the bee uses brushes on its front, middle and hind legs to move the pollen, conveyor-belt style, front to middle to back. As it flies from bloom to bloom, the bee combs the pollen very quickly and moves it into baskets on its hind legs. Each pollen basket, called a corbicula, is a concave section of the hind leg covered by longish hairs that bend over and around the pollen.

https://www.kqed.org/science/1940898/honey-bees-make-honey-and-bread

sAKkjD3nEv0

[william r sanford72]

Call to bring criminal proceedings against regulators, corporations over illegal Bt brinjal

EXCERPT: Aruna Rodrigues paid for the [GMO detection] test [on suspected GMO Bt brinjal/eggplant] herself and says: “When this news about the cultivation of Bt brinjal came out in April – knowing our regulators bent of mind, intent, conflict of interest and undiluted support of the biotech industry, knowing they probably welcome this – I decided to get a definitive test done at an accredited lab. I paid for it of course. It is civil society that is keeping a watchful eye on the biosafety of India, not the government.”

Illegal Bt brinjal in India: A call to initiate criminal proceedings against regulators and corporations

By Colin Todhunter

RINF, May 12, 2019

http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/illegal-bt-brinjal-in-india-a-call-to-initiate-criminal-proceedings-against-regulators-and-corporations/

What is the point of central government orders and carefully thought out regulatory norms if government officials and regulators act with blatant disregard? This is precisely what we now see happening in India where genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are concerned.

India has the greatest brinjal germplasm in the world with 2,500 varieties, including wild species. Following news in April that (genetically engineered) Bt brinjal is being illegally cultivated in Haryana, prominent campaigner and environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues says:

“These varieties are now under threat of irreversible contamination (cross-pollination) because of cumulative acts over time of senseless and criminally irresponsible regulatory oversight. More properly expressed: a virtual vacuum in GMO regulation.”

The cultivation of Bt brinjal (aubergine/eggplant) contravenes the indefinite moratorium that currently exists on the commercial release of Bt brinjal in India.

The moratorium has been in place since 2010 following a unique four-month scientific enquiry and public hearings regarding field trial data and crop developer Mayhco’s application for the commercialisation of Bt brinjal. Back then, the decision to reject commercialisation was supported by advice that the then Minister Jairam Ramesh received from several renowned international scientists.

At the time, Ramesh’s decision to place a moratorium on Bt brinjal was founded on what he called “a cautious, precautionary principle-based approach.” The moratorium is still in place and has not been lifted. All the environmental and health hazards acknowledged at the time remain.

Legal notice issued

On 12 May 2019, Prashant Bhushan, public interest lawyer in the Supreme Court of India, issued a legal notice in a letter to Harsh Vardhan, Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The letter discusses the violation of the moratorium on the commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal. Given the gravity of the matter, the letter is also to be distributed to the prime minister, the minister of agriculture and all members of parliament.

The letter also includes a lab report: a definitive test carried out at accredited laboratory SGS in Ahmedabad, which states that the brinjal sample from Haryana sent to it tested positive for a plant GMO: the test confirms that the brinjal in question is genetically modified.

Aruna Rodrigues paid for the test herself and says:

“When this news about the cultivation of Bt brinjal came out in April – knowing our regulators bent of mind, intent, conflict of interest and undiluted support of the biotech industry, knowing they probably welcome this – I decided to get a definitive test done at an accredited lab. I paid for it of course. It is civil society that is keeping a watchful eye on the biosafety of India, not the government.”

She adds that the planting of Bt brinjal in Haryana is an egregious violation of a central government order:

“This is not only an illegal planting of a GMO food that has not been approved, but a gross violation of an active central government indefinite order. This raises the violation to a different level and order of magnitude. It is the most serious breach of India’s biosafety, brinjal genetic diversity and therefore biosecurity of India.”

In a similar vein, Prashant Bhushan’s letter discusses blatant regulatory malfeasance regarding Bt cotton, herbicide-tolerant cotton seeds (now also illegally available in the country) and the illegal import of other GM seeds of various food crops. He also informs the minister in some detail about the issues surrounding Bt Brinjal and the reasons for the moratorium in 2010. Bt cotton is India’s only legal GM crop (a Mahyco-Monsanto venture): that too involved a strategy of illegally cultivate then approve. It’s an industry tactic.

Bhushan notes:

“ln the fourteen years since the filing of a PIL (Aruna Rodrigues v Union of lndia) for a moratorium on GMOs in 2005, there has been a disregard for the most basic norms governing the regulation of GlVlOs in lndia.”

Further on in his letter, he states:

“l am constrained to say that we are looking at a collective failure of our regulatory bodies and connected institutions, with the final blame falling squarely on the apex regulator, the GEAC (Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee) in your Ministry, the body solely responsible for all environmental releases of GMOs. The illegal planting of Bt brinjal demonstrates the vacuum that exists in the oversight of GMOs in lndia.”

Bhushan makes it clear that the current situation represents the most dire and unconscionable violation of lndia’s constitutional safeguards of its biosecurity and biosafety with potentially irreversible consequences:

“These matters justify criminal proceedings being initiated against individuals and corporations that have participated in and facilitated the illegal sale and cultivation of Bt brinjal. ln the event of any contamination, the GEAC/others may be in contempt of the supreme court’s order of “No contamination”. Any delay on the part of your ministry in taking swift and strict action to stop the spread of Bt brinjal may not only be illegal but constitute contempt as well.”

Source of seeds

So, just where did these Bt Brinjal seeds come from?

In a report in the Hindustan Times (12 May), it is stated that the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) says it had not stored any GM seeds from the field trials conducted prior to the moratorium in 2010. Mahyco and the two universities (Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and University of Agricultural Sciences in Karnataka) involved in the trials were in possession of the seeds.

The newspaper reports that minutes of GEAC meetings held in February and May of 2010 reveal the committee decided that NBPGR would store Bt brinjal seeds from all three seed developers and take affidavits from the company and institutions confirming that all seed stock has been deposited with NBPGR. But this was never done.

Bt brinjal has been grown in Bangladesh since 2013. The seeds could have come from there or might be old seeds that were supposed to be deposited with NBPGR. Further ‘event identification’ (involving an analysis of the construct of the genetically modified organism) tests might be able to determine the original source.

In a letter (11 May) to Minister Harsh Vardhan, the Coalition for a GM Free India stated:

“For any illegal cultivation of Bt Brinjal found in India, the crop/event developer should be held responsible… and it is clear that Mahyco and the two state agriculture universities have to be investigated immediately.”

Of course, as Prashant Bhushan implies, it’s not just the crop developers who should eventually have their day in court.

The GMO biotech sector has not been able to mount a convincing argument for the introduction of GM crops in India, whether it has involved Bt brinjal in 2010 or the ongoing case in the Supreme Court concerning GM mustard. Aruna Rodrigues’s many submissions to the Supreme Court have shown that the crop developer’s field trials and the overall case for GM mustard have failed to establish a need for this crop and are based on scientific fraud and unremitting regulatory delinquency.

But the push for GM continues unabated because Indian agriculture presents a potentially massive cash cow for the industry. It’s a case of any which way, as Kavitha Kuruganti, convener of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, notes:

“The biotech industry’s strategy of ‘leak illegal seeds first, contaminate and spread the cultivation and present a fait accompli’ for obtaining approval is well known.”

It’s exactly what happened with Bt cotton in India.

Read Prashant Bhushan’s letter here. http://rinf.com/alt-news/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/scan12052019094356.pdf

https://www.gmwatch.org/en/

[william r sanford72]

Giant Honeybees Use Shimmering “Mexican Waves” to Repel Invaders

By Spooky

The giant honeybees of East Asia can build impressive open nests measuring a few meters across. The fact that they are always exposed makes them vulnerable to predators, particularly large wasps and hornets that love nothing more than invading hives and stealing grubs. Luckily, the bees have a secret weapon that is as visually mesmerizing as it is effective.

Called shimmering, the unique defensive strategy of giant honeybees involves large numbers of workers raising their rear-ends by ninety degrees and shaking them in unison, creating an effect similar to the well-known Mexican waves seen at stadiums across the world. How hundreds of bees are capable of communicating and producing this highly coordinated response to threats remains unknown, but after 15 years of studying the behavior in the wild, scientists are now convinced that shimmering is a defense mechanism.

Naturalists have long assumed that the Mexican wave-like patterns observed on living “bee curtains” in the forests of East Asia were meant to keep predators at bay, but the first conclusive proof came a decade ago, when a team of researchers led by Gerald Kastberger from the University of Graz, in Austria, published a study after 15 years of observing giant honeybees in India and Nepal.

After analyzing videos of shimmering colonies of giant honeybees, Kasterberger and his colleagues concluded that there two types of shimmering – small-scale ones that only involved under a dozen bees and large-scale ones that covered the entire surface of the hive. Small scale shimmering occurred frequently, while the large-scale ones only happened when there were wasps nearby.

8bNKU8GRYmU

Scientists noted that the intensity and frequency of the shimmering increased the closer predators got to the giant honeybee hive, and that the moment it began, nearby wasps or hornets halted their attack and fled. The more bees took part in the mesmerizing Mexican waves, the faster the predators retreated.

While it’s still not clear how the shimmering of giant honeybees affects invading wasps, in his study Gerald Kastberger suggests that small-scale waves confuses attackers, making it difficult for them to focus on any one bee, while large-scale shimmering actually threaten them.

gxltqK8ZW1s

Interestingly, large-scale shimmering was observed only when wasps or hornets breached a 50cm safe-zone around the honeybee’s hive. They could hover outside this perimeter without triggering the defense mechanism, but as soon as they crossed it, the Mexican waves began.

Shimmering seems to be used solely as a defense against wasps and hornets, while larger threats trigger a different response. For example, in one experiment, giant bees deployed hundreds of defenders when a kite appeared within 20 meters of the bee’s hive.

vll_2xH_SQY

Shimmering is not full-proof, but if any wasp or hornet decides to land on the hive, giant honeybees have another trick up their sleeve. It’s called “snow balling” and it involves a group of bees surrounding the intruder and vibrating their wing muscles in unison. This heats the bees’ bodies to 45C, a temperature that is harmless to them but lethal to wasps. Basically, they cook the intruder alive.

https://www.odditycentral.com/animals/giant-honeybees-use-shimmering-mexican-waves-to-repel-invaders.html

[Star Tsar]

Cross pollination!


Canadian Space Agency

Honey in Microgravity

Published 14th May 2019

CSA astronaut David Saint-Jacques takes advantage of microgravity to play with honey!

Say3pUbllSA

[william r sanford72]

Taj Mahal - Queen Bee..

sjTEkhXgu_4


:flower:
Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

Look how fast a swarm can draw new comb.

Jeff Horchoff Bees
https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

I know this episode is going to make a lot of folks out there happy, Wreck It Ralph is in the house. On this adventure we head over to Slidell, La, about 35 miles from the abbey, to what is suppose to be a swarm that has only recently moved in. The homeowner told us the bees had been here no more than 2 weeks, but after seeing the hive for ourselves and how far along in development it was, my estimation is more like 5 weeks. Still, in that short period of time, these bees were able to construct over 13 full sections of comb. It just goes to show how the early swarms can really explode, and it's all due to the fact that the queen is an old queen and not newly mated.

We've got some fantastic swarm pictures once again, some repeat wranglers, and some wranglers who have caught their very first swarm ever. Whatever category you may fit in, I'd love to post your swarm on one of my videos. All you have to do is get a shot of the swarm with your face in the frame along with your name, city, and state, and I'll take it from there. Remember, by sending me your picture you are giving me permission to use it on my video. Again, thanks to all who have send their pictures in.

Two more things, the home where Ralph and I wrangled these bees was one I went to last year and had removed another swarm that had moved in. If you'd like to check out that video and compare the removals, the link to the video is: https://youtu.be/Rj08H80nJDM

And finally, the queen capture was quite an experience, but rest assured, she was captured and is doing great along with all her daughters.....and sons. God's peace to all!

Mr. Ed

tMBZi7HfKFY

[william r sanford72]

Honey proteome: Novel allergens and venom-like proteins

Published: May 17, 2019

Author: Steve Down

Channels: Proteomics & Genomics / Proteomics

https://www.separationsnow.com/details/ezine/16ac6565bc7/Honey-proteome-Novel-allergens-and-venom-like-proteins.html?tzcheck=1

Pharmacological honey

Honey is a multifaceted product, being an important food as well as having a range of medical applications. It has been used as an antimicrobial agent and a treatment for respiratory tract diseases and has potential for treating burns and wounds and as an antitumour agent. The widespread use of honey in ancient medicine is well documented but its place in modern practice is limited due to the lack of scientific evidence.

The pharmacological properties are probably related to the proteins present in honey but broad knowledge of the honey proteome is incomplete, say scientists from Czechia. Tomas Erban and colleagues from the Crop Research Institute and Charles University, Prague, argued that the published studies provide only a partial picture of the protein complement. In a new comprehensive study, they examined the proteins in 13 different honeys, noting the differences and similarities and identifying a number of proteins in honey for the first time.

Multiple honey analyses

The honeys all came from authenticated sources and were classified as: linden (3); acacia (2); buckwheat; sunflower; eucalyptus; black forest; floral; apple tree; wild bees (from a house roof in Prague); a “honey of the year”. After dissolution in water, they were purified by gel filtration which removed salts, sugars, pollen particles and other low-molecular-weight compounds. The residue was subjected to classical protein reduction and alkylation before the addition of trypsin to digest the proteins present in the extract.

The peptides that were produced were analysed by LC/MS in a label-free mode and their identities were used to determine which proteins were originally present. Following three LC/MS runs on each of the honeys, a total of 119 proteins were identified, reducing to 71 when a filter for the presence of at least three positive results was applied.

The researchers took great care to ensure that the same amount of total protein was analysed each time to simplify data interpretation and comparison. As a result, they were able to show that the honeys all had a relatively stable proportion of the proteins, despite the fact that some, notably the eucalyptus and buckwheat honeys, had about ten times more total protein than the others. The most variable proteome was that of the eucalyptus honey, possibly because it was of Spanish origin whereas the remaining twelve were all from Czechia.
Expanded proteome

Some of the proteins were reported for the first time in honey. They included venom-related proteins, known allergens, proteins related to royal jelly, and serine proteases and their inhibitors. Yet, despite the greater number of proteins found compared with published work, the team could not match their results for some proteins to the reported profiles.

The presence of the venom-related proteins is important in terms of honey allergies. The detection of antimicrobial proteins, including the newly found hymenoptaecin that was found in three honeys, sheds more light on the understanding of this function. The roles of other proteins, such as the proteases and protease inhibitors were less clear.

A functional analysis of the proteins revealed that defence response is one of the most important processes. Others include carbohydrate metabolism, innate immune response and the metabolism of organic substrates.

The results can be used to gain more insight into the functional properties of honey and the molecular mechanisms behind them. In addition, they could be used in honey authentication by identifying the presence or absence of certain proteins for a particular honey.

Related Links

Erban, T., Shcherbachenko, E., Talacko, P. et al. (2019). The Unique Protein Composition of Honey Revealed by Comprehensive Proteomic Analysis: Allergens, Venom-like Proteins, Antibacterial Properties, Royal Jelly Proteins, Serine Proteases, and Their Inhibitors. Journal of Natural Products online https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.jnatprod.8b00968#

https://www.separationsnow.com/details/ezine/16ac6565bc7/Honey-proteome-Novel-allergens-and-venom-like-proteins.html?tzcheck=1

[Star Tsar]

Oh so much I didn't know!

8_jDWIRhFF4

[william r sanford72]

RFID Tracking: Where It Fits in an Entomologist’s Toolbox

By Sebastian Shepherd, Ph.D.

https://entomologytoday.org/2019/05/22/radio-frequency-identification-rfid-tracking-entomologist-toolbox/

For thousands of years, humans have tried to track insects. Honey gatherers tried to track bees to locate the golden sweet rewards of a bee hive. Antiquated methods of detecting the movements of bees sound just like the ancestral wildlife tracking used by big-game and large-mammal experts. Bees were tracked by looking for droppings on leaves. Bees were also tagged with natural products to make them easier to see—such as ochre, blades of grass, and even the hairs of an ox—and then “pursued” by honey hunters. Not a particularly easy occupation!

These methods were so difficult that some honey hunters relied on other animals such as the greater honeyguide bird, Indicator indicator (right), to lead them to bee hives.

It took centuries for other innovations such as numbered paper tags that could be stuck to bees. Even these, in most cases, just help identify a queen bee, but sometimes entomologists might use number tags to tell individual forager bees apart. This might require many painstaking days in a bee suit counting and timing the flights of different individual bees among all the buzz and commotion of a hot summer afternoon. In other areas of entomology, insects could be painted with colorful powders or glowing ultraviolet dyes. All in all, though, these methods require patience, a very keen eye, and a lot of time and energy.

Fast-forward to 21st-century science, and if you look at the range of behavioral tracking technologies in wildlife ecology, we’ve really moved on. Radio telemetry allows you to track the specific movements of individuals over large landscapes, and innovations such as the global positioning system (GPS) means that remote animal tracking is at the scale of medium-Earth-orbit satellites.

Radio frequency identification tracking, commonly known as RFID, is revolutionizing what is possible in entomology, but what is it about this technology used in retail inventory, package tracking, and contactless credit cards that is useful for studying insects?

But there’s a problem when you try to apply this technology to insects. Unfortunately, a lot of these modern-day innovations require a battery-powered transmitter to track the animal you want to record. Easy enough when you want to monitor a 12,000-pound minke whale, but what kind of transmitter can a 0.00025-pound bee carry?

Luckily, some ingenious entomologists have been working on these problems, and our abilities to track insects in the field are getting better by the day. For example, in radio telemetry batteries now exist that are small enough to track the complete pattern of movement of an individual insect. However, these trackers are still too big to fit on all but the largest of insects. For example, the movement ecology of large insects like beetles and crickets has been studied with radio telemetry.

Another method of insect tracking is harmonic radar. Requiring no batteries, this overcomes the weight problems; however, with no power source to produce a unique signal, the main drawback of this method is that it is difficult to distinguish individuals that are tagged at the same time, and this method can be susceptible to signal interference. When implemented well, harmonic radar has been used to study the complete flight paths of a range of insects, including bumble bees and moths (to name a couple).

In my own entomological research on honey bees (Apis mellifera) I want to distinguish many individuals at once, and I want the tags to be lightweight. This is where RFID can fit in for me and for many other entomologists.

RFID is kind of like a license plate for insects. RFID does not allow me to track the full movement trace of an individual over time, but rather it will record whenever an individual passes by the location of an RFID reader. Using the same kind of technology that is used in credit cards and the packaging industry, I attach tags with unique identifiers to the bee that I’m trying to track. I then place RFID readers in locations where I might expect the bee to go, such as the entrance to a hive or a sugar feeder. Every time a bee with a tag arrives in proximity to the reader, it records the tag, with a timestamp, so I know when that individual came by.

As a result, whereas with harmonic radar and radio telemetry I’d get data like GPS navigation, a descript track of exactly where that individual travelled in space, RFID is like a highway toll-pass or license-plate reader. It knows which individual is which, where and when each one arrived, and thus how long it took that individual to go between each gate but not exactly what the individual did between the gates.

This makes RFID perfect for tracking bees (and other insects which live in colonies), because I know the location they will come and go from (the hive). I can tell what time a bee left and returned to a colony, the frequency of trips made per day, and even time spent at certain locations.

This kind of technology has been implemented to understand the impacts of pesticides on bee foraging, mating biology of honey bee queens, and how fungal infections affect honey bee flight behavior, just to name a few studies. In my own research, I use RFID technology to investigate how the foraging behavior of honey bees is affected by a variety of environmental stressors.

But honey bees aren’t the limit of RFID technology. This technology works well in tracking other insects in colonies such as bumble bees and ants, and it has even been suggested for use in insects such as mole crickets and billbugs. One of the key challenges of RFID technology is “predicting” where the individual you’re tracking will be so that you can set up the RFID readers to detect your study insect. But, if you can do this, you have a setup that lets you remotely track the locations and movement of hundreds of individuals, for as long as you power the setup and as long as the tag stays on.

So, in a modern entomologist’s toolbox, RFID is an incredible technology, which is now commercially available and can provide versatile data for the right study questions.

Sebastian Shepherd, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Entomology at Purdue University.

Pics in the link..https://entomologytoday.org/2019/05/22/radio-frequency-identification-rfid-tracking-entomologist-toolbox/

[Star Tsar]

Honey Bees Make Honey ... and Bread?

sAKkjD3nEv0

[Stephanie]

Happy, happy birthday, dearest William!
May your year be wonderful.

A million “thank you’s“ for all you share.

⭐️⭐️🐝🐝⭐️⭐️

[william r sanford72]

How a Honey Bee’s Waggle is Inspiring Aerospace Design

By Leslie Mertz, Ph.D.

The next time you see a bee land on a flower, watch how busy its abdomen is. It scrunches up, it lengthens, and it curls this way and that with amazing flexibility.

A group of engineers at Tsinghua University in Beijing has now found that a quite surprising mechanism is involved in that movement, and this mechanism could possibly help in the design of rocket nose cones that need to morph into different shapes to accommodate the aerodynamics, mobility, and flight control required to punch through and re-enter the atmosphere. The findings are reported in a new study published in May in the Journal of Insect Science.

The engineers focused on honey bees (Apis mellifera), which have very lively abdominal movements that are showcased during the waggle dance they perform to communicate with other members of their hive about the location of a prime flower patch.

To figure out how the insects move, the engineers carefully dissected honey bees and viewed microstructures of their abdomens using a scanning electron microscope, and they also used a high-speed camera to record the wiggles of additional living honeybees, according to study co-author Shaoze Yan, Ph.D., of Tsinghua University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

With those observations, the engineers identified something unexpected: six “lateral connection structures” that look rather like the hydraulic shocks on a car and that extend and contract. One end of each of the six lateral connection structures, which are made of muscle, attaches to the flexible upper exoskeletal plate (the tergum) of an abdominal segment, and the other end attaches to the flexible lower exoskeletal plate (the sternum).

The six lateral connection structures move independently of one another, Yan says, and because of the location of their connection points on the two plates, they allow for extensive and quite pliable movement of the tergum and sternum, therefore giving the abdomen its impressive scope of movement.

Engineers may recognize the arrangement and functioning of lateral connection structures as “the Stewart platform,” which is commonly used in flight simulators to imitate the change of attitude and speed of an aircraft, Yan says.

“Most flight simulators adopt the Stewart platform as the kinematic mechanism, which is composed of a moving platform linked to a fixed base through six extensible legs. The simulation cockpit is installed on the platform, [and] the coordinated motions of the six extensible legs can drive the platform and make the cockpit simulate the movement of the aircraft,” he says.

Once the engineers saw the lateral connection structures, they realized they had discovered an equivalent Stewart platform structure in insects. “We were very excited!” Yan says. According to their paper, this type of structure and mechanism is rarely seen in animals and has never previously been reported as regulating and controlling physiological activities. Yan adds, “We believe that it is the result of natural evolution adapting to the needs of the honey bee abdomen.”

This finding combines with the group’s earlier study revealing the role of folded intersegmental membranes in abdominal deformation in bees and its yet-to-be-published research indicating that abdominal muscles also function as linear actuators to control coordinated movement of adjacent abdominal segments.

(Engineers would describe this as a parallel mechanism.)

Although the research group studied only honey bees, Yan believes other insects’ abdomens may move in the same way. “This model may be [able] to elucidate the abdominal deformation mechanism of butterflies, dragonflies, and drosophilae, since the abdomens of these three insects have similar physiological structures,” he says.

In yet another example of bioinspiration, the group is now applying their understanding of honey bee abdomens to the design of aerospace nose cones. “As mechanical engineers, we generally consider that the motion ability of machine—or animal—is determined by its body structure, [and] we have designed a morphing nose cone for the aerospace vehicle after optimizing the honey bee abdominal deformation mechanism,” Yan says. “Next, we will develop a physical prototype and carry out a series of experiments to verify its morphing ability.”

Pics and Vid in the link https://entomologytoday.org/2019/06/11/how-a-honey-bees-waggle-is-inspiring-aerospace-design/

Read More
“Kinematics of Stewart Platform Explains Three-Dimensional Movement of Honeybee’s Abdominal Structure ”
https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/19/3/4/5489276

Leslie Mertz, Ph.D., teaches summer field-biology courses, writes about science, and runs an educational insect-identification website, http://www.knowyourinsects.org/ She resides in northern Michigan.

[william r sanford72]

usda National Honey prices for the month of may 2019.

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

[ThePythonicCow]

Stewart platform
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_platform

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Hexapod_general_Anim.gif

[william r sanford72]

Charles Henry Turner, the Zoologist who first demonstrated that insects can hear and learn

Etsey Atisu | Staff Writer

Charles Henry Turner was still at the prime of his career as an Animal Behaviorist when he provided an evidential demonstration on how insects can hear and learn.
He was the first to demonstrate that honey bees have color vision and distinguish patterns.

Born February 3, 1867, to Thomas and Addie Campbell Turner, a custodian in a church and nurse respectively, this prolific African American Zoologist, scholar and passionate educator, made significant contributions to the fields of zoology, entomology, and psychology.

Charles Henry Turner was blessed to have had parents who were avid readers, passing down the knowledge of the hundreds of books they owned to their son to learn and discover more about the world around him.

As a young boy, Turner was fascinated by insects and was curious about their behaviors. After graduating as class valedictorian from Gaines High School, he enrolled in the University of Cincinnati in 1886.

Turner married Leontine Troy in 1887. The couple had three children during the marriage: Henry, Darwin, and Louisa Mae. While at the University of Cincinnati, Turner majored in biology and went on to earn his B.S. (1891) and M.S. (1892) degrees. In doing so, he became the first African American to earn a graduate degree from the University of Cincinnati.

After reportedly contacting Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute about potential teaching opportunities, Turner landed a position as a professor at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia. He also served as chair of the Department of Science and Agriculture at the college from 1893 to 1905. During his time in Atlanta, his wife, Leontine, passed away (1895).

Turner continued to pursue education and earned a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1907. He became the university’s first African American recipient of such an advanced degree. That same year, he married Lillian Porter and taught biology and chemistry at Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Atlanta. The couple later moved to St. Louis, Missouri, after Turner acquired a position at Sumner High School, where he continued to teach African American students from 1908 to 1922.

As part of his many works over a period of thirty years, he published widely on discoveries in his field of scientific study as well as on civil rights and education. In total, he authored over seventy articles. In addition, during the early decades of the twentieth century, he served as a civil rights leader in St. Louis, Missouri’s African American community.

His later experiments with honey bees contributed to a better understanding of invertebrate animal behavior. These studies established that bees see in color and recognize patterns. His two papers on these studies, Experiments on Color Vision of the Honey Bee and Experiments on Pattern-Vision of the Honey Bee, appeared in Biological Bulletin in 1910 and 1911 respectively.

Unfortunately, Turner’s contributions to the study of honey bee behavior were not cited by his contemporaries, such as Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch, who published works concerning honey bee communication several years later.

Turner conducted many other experiments and published papers that elucidated insect phenomenon such as hearing in moths, insects that play dead, and learning in cockroaches. Additionally, he published studies on bird and crustacean brain anatomy and is credited with discovering a new species of invertebrate.

Throughout his life, Charles Henry Turner was an advocate for civil rights and argued that racism could be conquered through education. He published papers on the subject in 1897 and 1902.

Turner retired from Summer High School in 1922 due to failing health. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he lived with his son Darwin until his death on February 14, 1923.

https://face2faceafrica.com/article/charles-henry-turner-the-zoologist-who-first-demonstrated-that-insects-can-hear-and-learn

[william r sanford72]

Wily wasps as vital to species’ survival as busy bees

Damien Enright

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/lifestyle/outdoorsandgarden/wily-wasps-as-vital-to-species-survival-as-busy-bees-929683.html

This week, ‘bees’ is the buzz word in our belated race to conserve important fellow creatures on this planet. All are important, of course, and the more we investigate them and learn about them, the more we appreciate their roles. All and every one of the Earth’s inhabitants, we now realise, has a role.

However, we often remain old fashioned in our thinking and believe this creature and that plant to be noxious, deserving suppression or eradication wherever seen. Yes, it may threaten us but it almost certainly contributes to the lifecycle of something else which, in the miraculous chain of life, protects us.
Wasps are an example. They are universally vilified.

They steal honey from hives, they attack honey bees and cut them in half and fly off with their abdomens to feed their own larvae, leaving the bees still alive, now only head and thorax with no stomach and no hope of survival.

Meanwhile, the excised abdomen is chewed and wrapped in small packages and fed to the killer’s young in the nurseries, which are paper-like nests sometimes reaching the size of footballs. Wasps do not have hives. Once, through my own carelessness, I almost lost my life to a drinking party of wasps accumulated in the dregs in a beer glass of a summer’s day. I quaffed the dregs without looking and, but for the reaction of my gullet instantly spitting them onto the grass, would have expired as their stings swelled my tender larynx and blocked the passage of air.

Wasps are primarily predators, hunters, and consumers of other insects. Some prey are benevolent species such as honey bees. However, the majority belong to the vast populations of plant-eating pests. Thus, their predation also reduces the need for toxic pesticides which poison the land. Without the protection of wasps in the insect food chains, global agriculture would be as susceptible to voracious swarms as were the crops of Egypt to plagues of locusts in biblical times. Indeed, they sometimes still are.

Wasps, like bees, provide their services at no cost. Despite their negative image, they contribute enormously, ecologically and economically, to global food security. While we hear that pollination by bees contributes more than a €100bn a year to the global economy, the works of wasps, both in predation and pollination is often, unfortunately, overlooked.

Hornets are the largest of our Irish wasp species. Fierce-looking insects, they attack smaller wasps’ nests, kill the adults and carry off the larvae to feed their own. They also attack bee hives also, but bees can fight back. Swarming over the aggressor, they turn up their thermostats. The hornet, in their midst, can’t survive the heat and is, literally, cooked to death.

Wasps survive wherever there is vegetation on the planet. About 120,000 species have been identified, and biologists believe there may be the same number yet to be discovered. Contrast this with a mere 5,400 species of mammals. Like bees, wasps also feed on nectar and pollinate plants and flowers.

Many wasps are specialists, living in symbiotic relationships with specific plants. An intriguing example is found in fig wasps. Without them, figs, calculated to be key providers in the diet of 1,274 species of tropical mammals and birds, wouldn’t survive. Together, fig wasps and figs have evolved over 60m years. Extinction of the wasps would annihilate the tropical fauna ecosystems.

It has been discovered that wasp stings may be invaluable for treatments of cancer in humans

Chemicals found in the venom of one tropical species identifies and destroys certain cancer cells. Ironically, some specialist companies still advertise wasp extermination services. As our warming atmosphere melts away life-sustaining chains of nature, exterminating any species would seem imprudent. Every link is vital to the chain.

Meanwhile, we have had an exceptionally beautiful spring, with every plant celebrating it. There is so much to admire.

In the hedgerows, whitethorns are decked out like brides at weddings, the landscape breathtaking in the sheer volume of blossom, and the field boundaries lines of white against the green of grass. On country lanes, the tall foxgloves stand guards of honour for the whitethorn brides. Valerian bursts from city walls in Cork and, any day now, red-headed montbretia will be flowering everywhere.

On Springwatch, the excellent BBC programme airing four nights a week, I recently learned flowers can hear. It seems when a bee passes, humming as it goes, the flowers within earshot produce a sudden burst of nectar to attract them. So, the flowers are like the old-fashioned girls we see outside saloons in the Gold Rush, splashing on more perfume to lure the passer-by in.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/lifestyle/outdoorsandgarden/wily-wasps-as-vital-to-species-survival-as-busy-bees-929683.html

[william r sanford72]

Respite from Bee news leads me into the strange world we live in...learning something new.

The Incredibly Bizarre Story Of Cicadas & Fungi..

mSmD43tS9O0

[william r sanford72]

Musical Intermission From Howling Wolf and Cactus...to the present Cover.

Evil...

RDehbNb4Q1Y

Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

The Key to Bodacious Blueberries Is a Bumper Crop of Bees

To attract them, though, it helps to have forest nearby.

by Jonathan Carey June 18, 2019

Across the Southeast United States, rabbiteye blueberry farming is big business. A staple of Southern agriculture, these firm, frosty blue orbs are relatively easy to grow and have few natural pests, making them ideal for commercial purposes. The key to big, fast-maturing berries is in the pollination—when they’re amply pollinated, the burst improves. One creature is an expert at creating these most desirable berries, and their love for blueberry flowers runs so deep it’s in their name: southeastern blueberry bees.

Rabbiteye blueberries get their name from their ripening process, as they turn pink before they go blue, and recall the eyes of white rabbits. Various types of these berries are grown commercially in a number of Southern states, but the ones from Mississippi and Louisiana really stand out. There, more than 70 percent of flowers bear fruit, compared with 10 to 30 percent in some other places. When researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture set out to investigate why berries grow so well there, they looked to the pollinators. Their findings were published recently in the Journal of Economic Entomology.

“We looked at multiple species of bees to see which did the best job of pollinating rabbiteye blueberries,” says Robert Danka, coauthor of the study, in a statement. The researchers tested managed honeybees, native bumblebees, southeastern blueberry bees (also native), and carpenter bees over a three-year period. It turns out, as you might expect, that southeastern blueberry bees really, really love rabbiteye bushes. The team found that only southeastern blueberry bees and honeybees resulted in an increase of flowering fruits, with blueberry bees as the best pollinators by far.

When native southeastern blueberry bees land on a flowering blueberry bush, they attach themselves to the flower and begin vibrating their flight muscles rapidly, shaking pollen free from the flower’s anther. This process is known as buzz pollination, and it is extremely useful on rabbiteye blueberry flowers because of their shape. This process also causes pollen to cling to the bee’s body, and on to the next flower. Bumblebees are capable of buzz pollination, too, but there aren’t enough of them around in the key period of early spring.

Many large-scale producers have honeybees brought in to supplement the natural pollination, they aren’t all that reliable. They have a tendency to leave fields for other plants, according to the research. Southeastern blueberry bees, however, have a clear preference for their namesake. These insects are ground-nesting solitary bees, meaning they don’t form colonies or hives, and they are particularly fond of shade and leaf litter. Blair Sampson, another coauthor of the study, says that growers wishing to increase their output should consider cultivating blueberry bee–friendly woodlands near their fields.

Such changes won’t improve yields overnight. According to the study, southeastern blueberry bees had variable populations each year, depending on weather conditions. So for now, researchers suggest that large commercial operations will still need to add non-native honeybees to their crops. But perhaps, over time, the lure of producing the juiciest rabbiteye blueberries money can buy will lead to an increase in forest cover as well.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/rabbiteye-blueberry-and-bees

[william r sanford72]

Disrupting one gene could be first step toward treating honey bee parasite nosema ceranae

by Kim Kaplan, Agricultural Research Service

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-disrupting-gene-honey-bee-parasite.html

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have taken the first step towards a weapon against the major honey bee parasite Nosema ceranae.

There is currently no treatment for this parasite.

The scientists found that feeding honey bees a small amount of an interfering RNA compound (RNAi) could disrupt the reproduction of N. cerana by as much as 90 percent in the laboratory study, according to a study recently published in Insect Molecular Biology.

This RNAi compound targets a single N. ceranae gene called Dicer, explained Jay Evans, research leader of the ARS Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, who headed the study.

"Dicer is a critical part of Nosema ceranae's machinery for defeating honey bees' immune responses to infestation by these parasites. It also encodes an essential protein in N. ceranae's reproduction. So, it could be a double-barreled, practical route for attacking N. ceranae. Even better, RNAi against Dicer is specific to the parasite and will not interfere with the health of the honey bees," Evans said.

In earlier studies, the lab had looked at attacking N. ceranea genes that encodes for proteins that make N. ceranae a better parasite such as a polar tube protein that is important in the invasion of bee cells by the parasite.

"But by striking at a single gene that affects N. ceranae reproduction and the ability of this parasite to counter honey bee immunity, I think we may have found an even better—an excellent avenue of attack," Evans added.

But this is just the first step toward a possible treatment. The researchers need to prove the concept in the field and beekeepers' apiaries.

Nosema ceranae is widespread problem of honey bees, although the impacts on colony health remain unclear. The best measure of the damage of Nosema comes from Europe where this parasite has been linked to long-term colony declines in Spain.

A chemical treatment had been available, but it was taken off the market due to production challenges.

More information: Q. Huang et al. Dicer regulates Nosema ceranae proliferation in honeybees, Insect Molecular Biology (2018).

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/imb.12534

[william r sanford72]

Bayer purchased Monsanto with European taxpayers’ money

https://mailchi.mp/gmwatch.org/bayer-purchased-monsanto-with-european-taxpayers-money?e=eb54924245

According to an article in the German press by the journalist and author Gaby Weber, Germany’s central bank – the Bundesbank – helped finance Bayer’s takeover of Monsanto with European taxpayers’ money.

Three years ago, Bayer CEO Werner Baumann launched his bid to buy Monsanto. He promised it would make Bayer a global player and provide huge dividends for shareholders. According to Weber, greed prevented a prudent risk analysis. As a result, says Weber, Bayer’s stock is now in the doldrums, there are astronomical claims for damages coming from the US, and Bayer is threatened with takeover or bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, the buck stops not with Bayer’s shareholders or its managers, says Weber, but with the taxpayer. In the face of impending bankruptcy, the German government will probably step in - as it did in the banking crisis.

The Bundesbank will also incur considerable losses in such a situation because it was the Bundesbank that financed a large part of the purchase of Monsanto, via a programme of the European Central Bank (ECB), which gets its money from European taxpayers.

A spokesman for the ECB, William Lelieveldt, has confirmed to Weber that the Bayer bonds were purchased under the ECB’s asset purchasing programme. But Weber says Lelieveldt wouldn’t disclose the exact amount or the interest rate.

Weber says, Lelieveldt claimed that "risk management considerations" were employed. But Lelieveldt did not spell out what exactly these were. The bonds are in the portfolio of the Bundesbank. Weber’s applications for the risk assessment are pending in Brussels and in Frankfurt. He says if he’s denied the information, he will seek legal remedies.

Weber also has a lawsuit against Bayer AG to force the company to publish its due diligence report. His case will be heard on 12 September before the Higher Regional Court of Cologne.

Bayer, which promises "higher standards of transparency", paid $62 billion for Monsanto. A quarter of that is said to have come from equity, from sales of company shares to BASF, which the US Securities and Exchange Commission had demanded, and from the sale of materials manufacturer Covestro. In addition, Bayer had issued new shares through a capital increase and engaged Bank of America, Crédit Suisse and Haus Rothschild for the remainder.

The Bundesbank’s head, Weidmann, has applied for the position of ECB president. But, according to Weber, having given European taxpayers' money to Monsanto’s shareholders, his chances of getting the top job are falling along with Bayer’s stock.

https://mailchi.mp/gmwatch.org/bayer-purchased-monsanto-with-european-taxpayers-money?e=eb54924245

Original article In german https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Kauf-von-Monsanto-mit-Steuergeldern-finanziert-4453665.html

https://www.gmwatch.org/en/

[william r sanford72]

Big data and innovations for healthy bees

By CORDIS

Big data, an interactive platform and six different technological innovations are the core of the recently started Horizon 2020 project B-GOOD (b-good-project.eu/) in its 4-year mission to pave the way toward healthy and sustainable beekeeping across the European Union.

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-big-healthy-bees.html

In close cooperation with the EU Bee Partnership, the project aims to develop a EU-wide bee health and management data platform, which will enable sharing of knowledge between scientists, beekeepers and other actors in the area.

To ensure interoperability and the establishment of the platform as a centralised EU bee data hub and support beekeepers in maintaining honey bees healthy, the European Food Safety Authority—EFSA's Health Status Index (HSI) will be further extended and operationalized.

This will be done for example by selection of key health indicators, creation of user-friendly protocols, development of novel tools to monitor health parameters giving attention for the honeybee gene pool.

B-GOOD's platform will utilise and further expand the open source BEEP system (beep.nl/home-english) comprised of a monitoring device and the already functional user-friendly application for digital beekeeping logbooks.

The ultimate goal is to supply beekeepers with a decision-making tool that will provide comprehensive analysis and advice based on the flow of data from the beehives and their environment, including landscape composition and resource availability, agricultural practices and climate.

To achieve this the project will rely on and expand EFSA's honey bee simulation model ApisRAM, and apply machine learning to provide linkage between bee health and environmental and management context.

While also incorporating legacy data, what makes the platform truly unique is that it will be collecting real-time data related to colony health, based on 6 different monitoring tools developed within B-GOOD. These include the use of:

accelerometers to produce long term statistics based on—a range of honeybee vibrations;

gas and spatially resolved temperature measurements, quantitative physiological activity and brood;

automated bee counters providing outside-hive mortality rates, pollen flow, drone/worker discrimination;

sensors to detect pesticide residues;

devices to detect honey bee viruses of high health relevance;

analytical tool for genetic imprint.

"Our dynamic bee health and management data platform will allow us to identify correlative relationships among factors impacting the HSI, assess the risk of emerging pests and predators, and enable beekeepers' to develop adaptive management strategies that account for local and EU-wide issues," comments project coordinator Prof. Dirk de Graaf, Ghent University, Belgium.

Another key factor to play a role in B-GOOD's future guidance to sustainable beekeeping will be the better understanding of its socio-economics, particularly within local value chains and its relationship with bee health and the human-ecosystem equilibrium of the beekeeping sector.

Explore further https://phys.org/news/2018-08-mitigation-stressors-bee-health.html

B-GOOD http://b-good-project.eu/

[william r sanford72]

Hold on..whats going on?

WHY? - The Barely Blur (Buzzsession)

Lng06m4VSHI

rock on.

[william r sanford72]

Honeybees infect wild bumblebees—through shared flowers

by University of Vermont

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-honeybees-infect-wild-bumblebeesthrough.html

Many species of wild bumblebees are in decline—and new research shows that diseases spread by domestic honeybees may be a major culprit.

Several of the viruses associated with bumblebees' trouble are moving from managed bees in apiaries to nearby populations of wild bumblebees—"and we show this spillover is likely occurring through flowers that both kinds of bees share," says Samantha Alger, a scientist at the University of Vermont who led the new research.

"Many wild pollinators are in trouble and this finding could help us protect bumblebees," she says. "This has implications for how we manage domestic bees and where we locate them."

The first-of-its-kind study was published June 26 in the journal PLOS ONE.

Virus hunters

Around the globe, the importance of wild pollinators has been gaining attention as diseases and declines in managed honeybees threaten key crops. Less well understood is that many of the threats to honeybees (Apis mellifera)—including land degradation, certain pesticides, and diseases—also threaten native bees, such as the rusty patched bumblebee, recently listed under the Endangered Species Act; it has declined by nearly 90% but was once an excellent pollinator of cranberries, plums, apples and other agricultural plants.

The research team—three scientists from the University of Vermont and one from the University of Florida—explored 19 sites across Vermont.

They discovered that two well-know RNA viruses found in honeybees—deformed wing virus and black queen cell virus—were higher in bumblebees collected less than 300 meters from commercial beehives. The scientists also discovered that active infections of the deformed wing virus were higher near these commercial apiaries but no deformed wing virus was found in the bumblebees they collected where foraging honeybees and apiaries were absent.

Most impressive, the team detected viruses on 19% of the flowers they sampled from sites near apiaries. "I thought this was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. What are the chances that you're going to pick a flower and find a bee virus on it?" says Alger. "Finding this many was surprising." In contrast, the scientists didn't detect any bee viruses on flowers sampled more than one kilometer from commercial beehives.

The UVM scientists—including Alger and co-author Alex Burnham, a doctoral student—and other bee experts have for some years suspected that RNA viruses might move from honeybees to bumblebees through shared flowers. But—with the exception of one small study in a single apiary—the degree to which these viruses can be "horizontally transmitted," the scientists write, with flowers as the bridge, has not been examined until now.

Taken together, these results strongly suggest that "viruses in managed honeybees are spilling over to wild bumblebee populations and that flowers are an important route," says Alison Brody, a professor in UVM's Department of Biology, and senior author on the new PLOS study. "Careful monitoring and treating of diseased honeybee colonies could protect wild bees from these viruses as well as other pathogens or parasites."

Just like chicken?

Alger—an expert beekeeper and researcher in UVM's Department of Plant & Soil Science and Gund Institute for Environment—is deeply concerned about the long-distance transport of large numbers of honeybees for commercial pollination.

"Big operators put hives on flatbed trucks and move them to California to pollinate almonds and then onto Texas for another crop," she says—carrying their diseases wherever they go. And between bouts of work on monoculture farm fields, commercial bees are often taken to more pristine natural habitats "to rest and recover, where there is diverse, better forage," says Alger.

"This research suggests that we might want to keep apiaries outside of areas where there are vulnerable pollinator species, like the rusty patched bumblebees," Alger says, "especially because we have so much more to learn about what these viruses are actually doing to bumblebees."

Honeybees are an important part of modern agriculture, but "they're non-native. They're livestock animals," Alger says. "A huge misconception in the public is that honeybees serve as the iconic image for pollinator conservation. That's ridiculous. It's like making chickens the iconic image of bird conservation."

More information: Alger SA, Burnham PA, Boncristiani HF, Brody AK (2019) RNA virus spillover from managed honeybees (Apis mellifera) to wild bumblebees (Bombus spp.). PLOS ONE (2019). DOI:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217822

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-honeybee-mite-bumblebee-virus.html

[william r sanford72]

Joy as an Act of Resistance.

Idles G.r.e.a.t..

3CzNOD7ukMA


Rock on..

[william r sanford72]

Thomas Seeleys Magnus Opus is out..very readable..

The Lives Of Bees: What Were Honeybees Like Before Human Cultivation?

GrrlScientist Contributor

https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2019/06/30/the-lives-of-bees-what-were-honeybees-like-before-human-cultivation/#5f1230051788

This gorgeous and noteworthy book provides a very different view of honey bees and how they live in the wild and offers important lessons for saving the world’s managed bee colonies

We have never known what we were doing
because we have never known what we were undoing.
We cannot know what we are doing until we know
what nature would be doing if we were doing nothing.”

-- Wendell Berry, “Preserving wildness: An essay” (1987).

A variety of bee species have been managed by humans over thousands of years to provide a ready supply of honey and, much later, pollination services for a diversity of food crops. But the most common and widespread of these are honey bees, Apis mellifera.

The American Beekeeping Federation estimates that honey bee pollination services are worth as much as $20 billion to US food crop production alone, and the National Honey Board valued the 2013 honey crop at over $300 million. Obviously, honey bees are economically important, but unlike domesticated animals, honey bees are not solely dependent upon people to survive. Even today, honey bees are quite capable of living in the wild, free from human interference.

What were the lives of wild honey bees like before humans began intensively managing them and moving them all over the world? Surprisingly, we know little about this. After a career of fieldwork and research into wild honey bees, Thomas Seeley, a distinguished professor of biology at Cornell University, provides insights in his quintessential book, The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild (Princeton University Press, 2019: Amazon US / Amazon UK).

Not only does he celebrate the fascinating lives of honey bees, but he argues that by keeping honey bees in a way that respects their needs, we can reduce the frequency of disease outbreaks that they are prone to, and reduce the chances that these diseases may spread amongst native wild bee species and seriously harm them, too.

This interesting and readable book is both a personal account and a scholarly magnum opus as Professor Seeley recounts his studies of honey bees.

Professor Seeley relies extensively on his lifelong investigations into wild bees -- a passion that began when he was 11 years old -- and uses rigorous scientific research to develop eleven chapters covering a number of important cultural, historical and natural history topics, including wild honey bee nests, colony reproduction, colony defense, food collection, temperature control and the annual cycle of wild honey bees.

I was particularly interested to learn that Professor Seeley thinks honey bees are not truly domesticated, especially in the way that dogs, cattle and maize are domesticated. “As a rule,” Professor Seeley writes, “the process of domestication produces organisms with traits that enable them to thrive in environments managed by humans but cause them to struggle in the wild” (Seeley 79).

Instead, Professor Seeley argues that honey bees are semi-domesticated, and reminds his readers that throughout recorded history, humans have domesticated animals by manipulating their environments and by changing their genes. On one hand, we have managed to manipulate honey bees’ environment through the nearly universal adoption of artificial beehives designed to enhance honey production, but we’ve not changed honey bee genes very much.

Although Professor Seeley does note decisive successes in selectively breeding honey bees for hygienic behaviors that improve resistance to devastating diseases such as American foulbrood, chalkbrood, and tracheal and Varroa mites, and also to enhance alfalfa pollination behaviors, he notes that “there is no evidence that artificial selection has altered in any general way the behavior of honey bees” (Seeley 91).

He further points out that there are no distinct breeds of honey bees, indicating “that, in many (perhaps most), places, the genetics of honey bees is shaped far more by natural selection for traits that boost the genetic success of colonies on their own than by artificial selection for traits that can boost the profits from colonies owned by beekeepers. This explains why it is that honey bees do not need our manufactured hives, and instead are still perfectly at home in a hollow tree” (Seeley 93).

But the crux of Professor Seeley’s book is the final chapter, Darwinian Beekeeping. In this chapter, Professor Seeley summarises and reviews important differences in living conditions between wild and managed colonies that he detailed in this book. He argues that typical beekeeping practices are often stressful to the bees, and thus, can cause disease.

In this chapter, Professor Seeley lists 14 ways that responsible beekeepers can change their practices to improve the overall health -- and the lives -- of their bees, so these insects can continue to pollinate our food crops and manufacture the honey that so many of us love.

Not only is this scholarly book accessible and well-written, but Princeton did a superb job producing it. It’s printed on heavy paper that will provide bibliophiles with intense pleasure to touch, to hold, and to read. The book features full-color photographs and graphics embedded throughout.

The diagrams, charts and tables are placed within the text where they most effectively complement the discussion of various topics.

At the end of the book, there is a section filled with considerable notes for each chapter, followed by an exhaustive list of references that will be very useful to scientists and to beekeepers in particular.

Although the casual reader might suffer information overload (or alternatively, they may discover a new passion), The Lives of Bees will be highly-prized and often referenced by scientists, beekeepers and students of bees, and will fascinate anyone who wishes to learn more about the lives of these amazing insects.

Thomas Seeley has published 4 other books, 1 newspaper article, and over 175 scholarly publications. He received the Gold Medal for the Best Science Book, (The Wisdom of the Hive, 1998), was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt’s Senior Scientist Prize in 2001 and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that same year.

In 2017 he was awarded fellowship to American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1997, a new species of bee, Neocorynurella seeleyi, was named after him.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2019/06/30/the-lives-of-bees-what-were-honeybees-like-before-human-cultivation/#5f1230051788

[william r sanford72]

Unbelievable catch from 20 feet in the air!

It's not every day that I come across an external hive that needs to be removed, and I am always excited at the opportunity to remove one, but as you can tell by the thumbnail, this one was located in a somewhat precarious location and up in the air about 20 feet. Not only that, there were large shrubs around the home that made using an extension ladder impossible. Oh, and have I ever mentioned that I don't like working up high? Well, I don't. The solution, rent a lift, work smart, and avoid an emergency room visit, or worst yet, a visit to the mortuary.

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

o_Srrrf-JDc

[william r sanford72]

“Modified” – A film about GMOs and corruption of the food supply for profit

EXCERPT: "The industry will often say these are the most regulated crops in history… I’m not an expert on the law in many other countries. But I am an expert on the laws in the United States and I can tell you… they are virtually unregulated.”

Off-Guardian, 30 Jun 2019
https://off-guardian.org/2019/06/30/review-modified-a-film-about-gmos-corruption-of-the-food-supply-for-profit/

* Colin Todhunter reviews the award winning documentary from Canadian film-maker Aube Giroux

Parts of the documentary Modified are spent at the kitchen table. But it’s not really a tale about wonderful recipes or the preparation of food.

Ultimately, it’s a story of capitalism, money and power and how our most basic rights are being eroded by unscrupulous commercial interests.

The film centres on its maker, Aube Giroux, who resides in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her interest in food and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was inspired by her mother, Jali, who also appears throughout.

Aube says that when her parents bought their first house her mother immediately got rid of the lawn and planted a huge garden where she grew all kinds of heirloom vegetables, berries, flowers, legumes and garlic.

“She wanted me and my sister to grow up knowing the story behind the food that we ate, so our backyard was basically our grocery store,” says Aube.

During the film, we are treated not only to various outdoor scenes of the Giroux’s food garden (their ‘grocery store’) but also to Aube and her mother’s passion for preparing homemade culinary delights.

The ‘backyard’ is the grocery store and much of Giroux family life revolves around the kitchen and the joy of healthy, nutritious food.

When GMOs first began appearing in food, Aube says that what bothered her mother was that some of the world’s largest chemical companies were patenting these new genetically engineered seeds and controlling the seed market.

In the film, Aube explains, “Farmers who grow GMOs have to sign technology license agreements promising never to save or replant the patented seeds. My mom didn’t think it was a good idea to allow corporations to engineer and then patent the seeds that we rely on for food. She believed that seeds belong in the hands of people.”

As the GMO issue became prominent, Aube became more interested in the subject. It took her 10 years to complete the film, which is about her personal journey of discovery into the world of GMOs.

The film depicts a world that is familiar to many of us; a place where agritech industry science and money talk, politicians and officials are all too eager to listen and the public interest becomes a secondary concern.

In 2001, Canada’s top scientific body, The Royal Society, released a scathing report that found major problems with the way GMOs were being regulated.

The report made 53 recommendations to the government for fixing the regulatory system and bringing it in line with peer-reviewed science and the precautionary principle, which says new technologies should not be approved when there is uncertainty about their long-term safety.

To date, only three of these recommendations have been implemented.

Throughout the film, we see Aube making numerous phone calls, unsuccessfully trying to arrange an interview to discuss these issues with Health Canada, the department of the government of Canada that is responsible for national public health.

Meanwhile, various people are interviewed as the story unfolds. We are told about the subverting of regulatory agencies in the US when GMOs first appeared on the scene in the early 1990s: the Food and Drug Administration ignored the warnings of its own scientists, while Monsanto flexed its political muscle to compromise the agency by manoeuvring its own people into positions of influence.

One respondent says:

"We’ve had a number of people from Monsanto, many from Dupont, who have actually been in top positions at the USDA and the FDA over the last 20 years, making darn sure that when those agencies did come out with any pseudo-regulation, that it was what these industries wanted.

"The industry will often say these are the most regulated crops in history… I’m not an expert on the law in many other countries. But I am an expert on the laws in the United States and I can tell you… they are virtually unregulated.”

Aube takes time to find out about genetic engineering and talks to molecular biologists. She is shown how the process of genetic modification in the lab works.

One scientist says:

"In genetics, we have a phrase called pleiotropic effects. It means that there are other effects in the plant that are unintended but are a consequence of what you’ve done. I wouldn’t be surprised if something came up somewhere along the line that we hadn’t anticipated that’s going to be a problem.”

And that’s very revealing: if you are altering the genetic core of the national (and global) food supply in a way that would not have occurred without human intervention, you had better be pretty sure about the consequences. Many illnesses can take decades to show up in a population.

This is one reason why Aube Giroux focuses on the need for the mandatory labelling of GM food in Canada. Some 64 countries have already implemented such a policy and most Canadians want GM food to be labelled too.

However, across North America labelling has been fiercely resisted by the industry. As the film highlights, it’s an industry that has key politicians in its back pocket and has spent millions resisting effective labelling.

In the film, we hear from someone from the agri/biotech industry say that labelling would send out the wrong message; it would amount to fearmongering; it would confuse the public; it would raise food prices; and you can eat organic if you don’t want GMOs. To those involved in the GMO debate and the food movement, these industry talking points are all too familiar.

Signalling the presence of GMOs in food through labelling is about the public’s right to know what they are eating. But the film makes clear there are other reasons for labelling too. To ensure that these products are environmentally safe and safe for human health, you need to monitor them in the marketplace. If you have new allergic responses emerging is it a consequence of GMOs?

There’s no way of telling if there is no labelling.

Moreover, the industry knows many would not purchase GM food if people were given any choice on the matter. That’s why it has spent so much money and invested so much effort to prevent it.

During the film, we also hear from an Iowa farmer, who says GM is all about patented seeds and money. He says there’s incredible wealth and power to be had from gaining ownership of the plants that feed humanity. And it has become a sorry tale for those at the sharp end: farmers are now on a financially lucrative (for industry) chemical-biotech treadmill as problems with the technology and its associated chemicals mount: industry rolls out even stronger chemicals and newer GM traits to overcome the failures of previous rollouts.

But to divert attention from the fact that GM has ‘failed to yield’ and deliver on industry promises, the film notes that the industry churns out rhetoric, appealing to emotion rather than fact, about saving the world and feeding the hungry to help legitimize the need for GM seeds and associated (health- and environment-damaging) chemical inputs.

In an interview posted on the film’s website, Aube says that genetic engineering is an important technology but “should only take place if the benefits truly outweigh the risks, if rigorous adequate regulatory systems are in place and if full transparency, full disclosure and the precautionary principle are the pillars on which our food policies are based.”

Health Canada has always claimed to have had a science-based GMO regulatory system. But the Royal Society’s report showed that GMO approvals are based on industry studies that have little scientific merit since they aren’t peer-reviewed.

For all her attempts, Aube failed to get an interview with Health Canada. Near the end of the film, we see her on the phone to the agency once again. She says:

"Well I guess I find it extremely concerning and puzzling that Health Canada is not willing to speak with me… you guys are our public taxpayer-funded agency in this country that regulates GMOs, and so you’re accountable to Canadians, and you have a responsibility to answer questions.”

Given this lack of response and the agency’s overall track record on GMOs, it is pertinent to ask just whose interests does Health Canada ultimately serve.

When Aube Giroux started this project, it was meant to be a film about food. But she notes that it gradually became a film about democracy: who gets to decide our food policies; is it the people we elect to represent us, or is it corporations and their heavily financed lobbyists?

Aube is a skilful filmmaker and storyteller. She draws the viewer into her life and introduces us to some inspiring characters, especially her mother, Jali, who passed away during the making of the film. Jali has a key part in the documentary, which had started out as a joint venture between Aube and her mother.

By interweaving personal lives with broader political issues, Modified becomes a compelling documentary. On one level, it’s deeply personal. On another, it is deeply disturbing given what corporations are doing to food without our consent – and often – without our knowledge.

For those who watch the film, especially those coming to the issue for the first time, it should at the very least raise concerns about what is happening to food, why it is happening and what can be done about it. The film might be set in Canada, but the genetic engineering of our food supply by conglomerates with global reach transcends borders and affects us all.

Whether we reside in North America, Europe, India or elsewhere, the push is on to co-opt governments and subvert regulatory bodies by an industry which regards GM as a multi-billion cash cow – regardless of the consequences.

Modified won the 2019 James Beard Foundation award for best documentary and is currently available on DVD at modifiedthefilm.com. It is due to be released on digital streaming platforms this summer.

https://mailchi.mp/gmwatch.org/modified-a-film-about-gmos-and-corruption-of-the-food-supply-for-profit?e=eb54924245

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

MODIFIED Trailer

tjZtlRReje8

[william r sanford72]

Honeybees – nature conservation with genetic engineering?

In February 2019, the first paper on using CRISPR technology to produce pesticide-resistant honeybees was published in South Korea. Ostensibly, this is intended to "protect" the bees from insecticides. This is further not just a one-off case: more and more stakeholders are interested in promoting genetically engineered organisms to "protect" endangered species. Ultimately, it means that wild populations might be replaced by genetically "optimised" organisms.

https://www.testbiotech.org/node/2383

One goal of the Korean research, written as an MSc thesis, was to make honeybees resistant to the insecticide spinosad. It cannot be concluded from the thesis whether this was successfully accomplished or not. Another paper published by US scientists in 2019, shows how the CRISPR/Cas nuclease can be used to investigate and manipulate the development of honey bee queens. This paper also discusses the possibilities of producing pesticide-resistant honey bee colonies.

“The problems in the conservation of species cannot be solved by replacing them with genetically engineered organisms. If we want to protect honeybees, we have to encourage the protection of wild populations and their ecosystems,” said Christoph Then for Testbiotech. “Given the complex biology of bee colonies and their manifold interactions with the environment, such interventions on the level of the genome cannot be justified. We have to set effective limits to genetic engineering applications.”

Most recently, the number of projects aiming to intervene in ecosystems via genetic engineering has increased strongly. For example, the release of chestnut trees with blight resistance is being discussed in the US.

Furthermore, there are plans to manipulate insects and rodents via gene drives in a way that whole populations could become extinct. In the near future, mosquitoes could be infected with a transgenic fungus that produces an insecticidal toxin to prevent malaria. The use of insects to broadly spread genetically engineered viruses in the environment is also under discussion. Some of these applications are also discussed in a recent report of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), also commented by Testbiotech.

There is a general problem with these applications: if genetically engineered organisms persist and propagate in the environment, the biological characteristics of their offspring can be quite different from those originally intended. In addition, their reaction to environmental impacts cannot be predicted. Christoph Then said: “In regard to the precautionary principle, it is important that releases cannot be allowed if there are no effective methods available to prevent the uncontrolled spread of the genetically engineered organisms. We have to make such standards mandatory by including them in regulation.”

Testbiotech comment on the IUCN report:

https://www.testbiotech.org/content/testbiotech-comment-iucn-report-conservation-synthetic-biology

Source: Testbiotech https://www.testbiotech.org/en/press-release/honey-bees-nature-conservation-genetic-engineering

Website: http://www.gmwatch.org

[Star Tsar]

William, Light-Worker Bees check this out not a Hymenopteran (https://www.britannica.com/animal/hymenopteran) BUT beautiful never the less!

DVdhqicy8MQ

[william r sanford72]

Glyphosate: The European Controversy – A review of civil society struggles and regulatory failures

I. Introduction

Getting a pesticide banned often takes a long time, even if the evidence of its negative effects on health and the environment is strong and well-documented.

Typically, such negative effects become obvious when the pesticide is widely used in large parts of the world. By that point, however, it is particularly difficult to achieve a ban on such a pesticide due to the powerful economic interests at stake.

A prime example from the past of the protracted effort required to ban a pesticide is the case of the insecticide DDT, which was finally banned for agricultural use in various countries in the 1970s. A prime example from the present, meanwhile, is the herbicide glyphosate.

Glyphosate was first marketed in the mid-1970s and is currently the most widely used pesticide in the world with an annual global use of more than 800,000 tons.

1 A large share of glyphosate is marketed as a ‘package’ together with genetically modified seeds of glyphosate-resistant crops. Yet, even in countries without genetically modified crops, e.g., Germany, glyphosate is used extensively.

In Germany, the annual use is above 5,000 tons,2 representing approximately 12 per cent of the total amount of pesticides used in the country per year, while the remaining 88 per cent is divided between 250 different other compounds.

Although the focus of this paper is on glyphosate in the European Union (EU), it should be kept in mind that in South America, glyphosate use per hectare is at least four times higher than in Europe.3 At the same time, pesticide regulation is much weaker in South America compared with the EU.

The current European pesticide regulation – Regulation (EC) 1107/20094 – is commonly considered to be one of the most stringent regulations in the world. It resulted from a decade-long legislative evolution, accompanied by civil society struggles for better protection of the environment and human health. The EU pesticide regulation has three special features:

it recommends a precautionary approach be used in cases of scientific uncertainty;

it requires that knowledge from existing scientific literature be considered in addition to studies submitted by industry actors; and

it applies the so-called ‘hazard-based’ approach to certain health concerns, meaning that if a pesticide is knowingly or probably carcinogenic, mutagenic or harmful to the unborn child, it cannot be approved for marketing on principle, rendering any ‘risk assessment’ superfluous.5

The European pesticide regulation requires that each pesticide undergo review and reapproval every 10–15 years, taking into consideration new scientific knowledge. For glyphosate, this process lasted from May 2012 to November 2017.

It started when the Glyphosate Task Force, a consortium of 26 chemical companies led by Monsanto, submitted their dossier for the reapproval of glyphosate to the reporting member state (RMS). The RMS (Germany) was responsible for preparing the Renewal Assessment Report (RAR), which forms the basis of a two-step decision-making process.

First, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and its (anonymous) experts, recruited from an approved pool of representatives from all EU member states, draw a conclusion on whether the pesticide in question can be recommended for reapproval.

This is done after a public consultation on the RAR (in the case of glyphosate, performed in April/May 2014) and a peer review of the RAR performed by the experts. Thereafter, the Standing Committee for Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF), a committee of the Directorate General for Health and Food Safety of the European Commission (DG SANTE), decides on the reapproval of the pesticide.

This paper analyses the regulatory background for a ban on the pesticide glyphosate as well as the EU authorities’ breach of their own rules and civil society’s struggle against this breach.

It reviews the legal basis for prohibiting pesticides classified as ‘probable human carcinogens’ in the EU and shows how relevant EU authorities violated their own rules to keep glyphosate on the market. The article concludes with an assessment of civil society’s successes and disappointments in claiming the human right to health as related to glyphosate.

II. The Glyphosate Struggle

In essence, the struggle to ban glyphosate is about realizing the human right to ‘the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’ by protecting people from exposure to dangerous substances through their food or environment.

6 A multitude of actors have a stake in this struggle, including public servants, legislators, the chemical industry, the agriculture industry (both conventional and organic), civil society, journalists, lawyers, prosecutors and judges.

In contrast to other situations in which only civil society is at loggerheads with profit-seeking corporations, the quarrel over glyphosate has a unique feature: a controversy between authorities.

Although the EU regulatory authorities sided with industry in the opinion that glyphosate is harmless, a highly esteemed agency of the World Health Organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), classified glyphosate as a ‘probable human carcinogen’.

This became a main point of reference for glyphosate critics and had a significant impact on the pesticide’s EU reapproval process.

While scientific reports on health and environmental problems caused by glyphosate frequently mention birth defects,

7 detrimental effects on biodiversity,8 and chronic kidney failure,9 the most important and best-documented effect is that of being a probable human carcinogen.

10 In March 2015, IARC announced its classification of glyphosate as a category 2a hazard on its scale of carcinogenicity, identical to category 1B in the EU system, further fuelling the existing public controversy over its safety and creating a serious obstacle for the pesticide’s ongoing European reapproval process.

11 According to EU regulation 1107/2009, category 1B (presumed human hazard, based on evidence from animal studies) represents a cut-off criterion that prohibits the marketing of such a pesticide in principle.

Following the announcement, industry actors boldly tried to discredit the IARC findings by calling their assessment ‘junk science’, while EU authorities confused the public by blurring the debate about ‘risk’ and ‘hazard’ (note: carcinogenicity category 1B makes a risk assessment superfluous).

A growing number of scientific publications criticized the EU authorities’ regulatory failure concerning glyphosate12 and parliamentary hearings were convened on the topic in Berlin and Brussels. Meanwhile, a multi-layered civil society campaign challenged the EU authorities’ position.

In summer 2015, under pressure from IARC’s findings, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) re-evaluated its own carcinogenicity assessment and had to admit that it had initially ‘relied on the statistical evaluation provided with the [industry-produced] study reports’ instead of making its own judgement.

13 In its original assessment, BfR had only acknowledged the increased incidence of one tumour type in a single study, which it considered an ‘outlier’ because no further increases seemed to exist in other studies.

After a re-evaluation of its own database, however, using IARC’s preferred statistical method, BfR had to acknowledge that there were altogether 11 significantly increased tumour incidences in seven out of 12 studies instead of only one in a single study. Surprisingly, this result did not change the EU authorities’ general conclusion that glyphosate lacks carcinogenic potential.

They dismissed all of BfR’s significant findings based on a ‘weight of evidence’ approach that, if applied properly according to the rules laid down in guidance documents, is a legitimate scientific procedure.

However, the authorities’ use of these rules as a benchmark for EFSA’s assessment was heavily flawed,14 a fact that was criticized as early as September 2015.

15 Consequently, an Austrian non-governmental organization (NGO), Global2000, together with other NGOs, filed a criminal complaint alleging scientific fraud against Monsanto, BfR and EFSA.16 Regrettably, the case was not taken up by the legal authorities in the end, but it did serve as a tool for raising public awareness around this issue.

Concerning the reapproval of glyphosate, on 12 November 2015, EFSA published its conclusion stating that ‘glyphosate did not present genotoxic potential and no evidence of carcinogenicity was observed in rats or mice’.17 For industry actors, this was the ticket they had been waiting for, as it set them up to get the envisioned 15-year reapproval of glyphosate in the EU. From there, however, the ride did not go as smoothly as industry actors, BfR and EFSA had hoped.

The European Commission’s proposal for a 15-year reapproval of glyphosate still needed the endorsement of SCoPAFF. However, between 8 March and 24 June 2016, SCoPAFF failed on three different occasions to reach a qualified majority on the issue.

18 Thereafter, DG SANTE of the European Commission could have made the decision on its own, but instead opted to extend the existing approval until the end of 2017, as a safety assessment of glyphosate by another European authority, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), was still pending.

ECHA’s task was to perform a hazard assessment according to Regulation (EC) 1272/2008.19 On 15 June 2017, based on a similarly flawed ‘weight of evidence’ approach, ECHA announced the same conclusion as EFSA: that glyphosate does not pose a carcinogenic or mutagenic hazard.20 This opinion was met with the same critique by NGOs as that voiced earlier in relation to EFSA’s conclusion and triggered a fierce exchange of open letters between ECHA and the NGOs.

21 Towards the end of glyphosate’s 18-month extension period, SCoPAFF was again charged with making the decision about the pesticide’s future in the EU. In contrast to 2016, when SCoPAFF considered a proposal for the 15-year reapproval of glyphosate, on 27 November 2017, the decision finally taken by the body’s appeal committee was to reauthorize glyphosate for a five-year period only.

22 Although the NGOs did not achieve their goal of banning glyphosate entirely in the EU, the significant reduction of its reapproval period to only five years still marks an important achievement. As a result, countries like France announced they would ‘phase-out’ glyphosate over the next few years.

III. Assessment and Conclusion

Banning glyphosate in the EU would contribute to protecting the human right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and would send an important signal to other countries where the herbicide’s use is even more prevalent.

Despite not achieving such a ban on glyphosate, however, the reduction of its potential 15-year EU reapproval to a much shorter re-authorization period of only five years still amounts to an important success. This outcome did not come about by itself, but was the result of a multi-faceted, Europe-wide campaign that can provide valuable lessons for similar efforts in the future.

While some campaign activities directly targeted corporations, such as the October 2016 Monsanto Tribunal held in Den Haag23 and the criminal complaint mentioned earlier in this piece, most activities targeted the relevant EU authorities’ insufficient transparency and lack of compliance with their own rules and guidance documents.

IARC’s 2015 report classifying glyphosate as a ‘probable human carcinogen’ and numerous NGO reports analysing various aspects of the EU authorities’ failures and collusion with corporations were important points of reference for the campaign.

24 Several parliamentary hearings were conducted at the national and the European level, and an inquiry committee of the European Parliament did its work in 2018 looking into possible flaws to avoid them during the next reapproval process for glyphosate.

Over the course of the campaign, such efforts were amplified by significant media coverage and a successful European Citizens Initiative that handed in more than one million validated signatures to the European Commission on 23 October 2017.

Overall, it was the manifold and coordinated nature of civil society action that led to the campaign’s substantial, even if incomplete, success in the case of this ‘system-relevant’ pesticide.

While it is probably fair to say that civil society’s efforts would have been less successful without IARC’s competing and authoritative hazard assessment of glyphosate, the Agency’s report would likely have been filed without much fanfare or impact had it not been for the ‘sounding board’ of civil society.

Moreover, when assessing the role of civil society, it is important to recognize that it was not just the high number of NGOs participating in this campaign that made it so effective, but also the diversity of NGOs involved and acting in a coordinated and complementary fashion.

This included:

NGO networks with large memberships in different countries (e.g., Friends of the Earth) being able to fund expert opinions (e.g., on the BfR’s plagiarism) and pay for lawyers (e.g., when filing the criminal complaint against BfR, EFSA and Monsanto);

NGOs with offices in Brussels and other European capitals being well-positioned to convince parliamentarians and the media of the appropriateness of their stance;

NGOs with sufficient expertise to participate in and sometimes even drive the scientific debate; and

NGOs specialized in online campaigns, capable of mobilizing many citizens.

Notably, attempts to hold EU authorities directly accountable for dismissing their own standards in favour of industry preferences were unsuccessful.

It was not legal decisions against the authorities, but public pressure that enabled the campaign’s partial victory over commercial interests, for the benefit of human rights. Although accountability could not be legally enforced, the ‘glyphosate battle’ still shows the importance of clear, binding criteria as a reference for directing public pressure at companies and regulatory authorities alike.

In relation to glyphosate’s reapproval, EU authorities either ignored or distorted recommendations and requirements laid down in their own guidance documents. This represents a ‘soft form’ of impunity compared with the situation in the Global South, where regulations similar to those in the EU often do not exist.

Creating sufficient political pressure to enforce respect for laws, regulations and, ultimately, human rights, is an important issue in both parts of the world. Logically, access to highly visible media facilitates the creation of this political pressure. In the case of glyphosate in the EU, this was achieved in large part thanks to a broad coalition of actors supporting clearly defined demands.

The joint and coordinated action of diverse NGOs enabled a ‘non-linear’ amplification of their impact and offers a promising example to others of how to promote a common cause.

Ref and sources..https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-human-rights-journal/article/glyphosate-the-european-controversy-a-review-of-civil-society-struggles-and-regulatory-failures/0A379F207A17CC7B18D2CC9079EAB29C/core-reader#

[ulli]

https://scontent.fsyq1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/66487691_1915862688515371_4526434400820264960_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_eui2=AeEsyAD8QwmBFFv_3AxGgFMu3oq4ncBJjlygEqVGQOIpIrjF1mgncs1MYXZT7rG6Q7IflVgOvpnY0EEoqf4lAd_dAMC GhHyYv9kKNs5OExt3kQ&_nc_oc=AQmIYycxdLCHzkbLrLyV5IkM6x-3jgD_mG8hzJtFweO0VOl2ERZJSbweqfI1Bs-tdFQ&_nc_ht=scontent.fsyq1-1.fna&oh=3166b165b093c2c9e9a3f1945ffbba8d&oe=5DEEBCDD

close-up of a bee’s eye

[Star Tsar]

Bees take over Michigan Music Festival!

p4mTVSEsewo

[ulli]

Flowers can hear bees and make sweeter nectar when bees are nearby.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2189875-flowers-hear-bees-and-make-sweeter-nectar-when-theyre-buzzing-nearby/?utm_medium=SOC&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0w4qbBVkldVq5SmsJPtzU4l6RxnBsaf_BipH4MNffXieaCskDNtQdj_j4#Echobox=1562758977

https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/08143922/m1g04x.jpg

[william r sanford72]

You Can Thank Insects for Many Human Inventions

By Eric R. Eaton

Insects are beneficial in more ways than simply as pollinators of crops, decomposers of decaying organic matter, controllers of agricultural pests, and food for other wildlife. They also inspire new inventions or improvements to existing ones through unique anatomical features and behaviors strikingly similar to our own. Even in this digital age, we continue to extract ideas and materials from insects and their relatives.

https://entomologytoday.org/2019/07/16/you-can-thank-insects-for-many-human-inventions/

Insects Did It First

In the new edition of our book Insects Did It First (Xlibris, 2018), coauthor Gregory S. Paulson, Ph.D., and I explore many insect-initiated inventions, from antifreeze and chemical weapons to navigation and communication. There is even an insect, in its nymph stage, that possesses cog-like “gears” that allow it to jump farther, more efficiently.

Thanks to observations of vespid wasps, we have the modern pulp and paper industry, which began in 1719 due to the persistence of French naturalist and physicist Antoine Ferchault Réaumer. More recently, the chainsaw got an upgrade when Joe Cox of Portland, Oregon, watched the wood-boring larva of Trichocnemis spiculatus (sometimes known as the “ponderous borer”) and noticed that the insect’s opposable mandibles were highly effective in gnawing through wood.

Cox devised a new saw chain with “right” and “left” cutting teeth. He began manufacturing the new design in 1947 in the basement of his home. Oregon Sawchain Corporation eventually became Omark Industries, an international company.

Still Learning After All These Years

Surely, in this technological age, insects have nothing more to teach us. Not so. Sometimes we recognize the achievements of insect evolution after we have accidentally duplicated them with our own devices. The insect equivalents of radar and sonar help moths, mantids, and other arthropods detect and avoid bats. We have learned that dung-rolling scarab beetles navigate by celestial objects, the ancient predecessor to GPS.

The emerging science of biomimicry creates robotic insects, or in some cases allows a human to “operate” a live insect as if it were a robot, capitalizing on the acute senses of the invertebrates that humans have long since lost. Studying the eyes and brains of dragonflies has led to new algorithms for visual tracking that are 20 times faster than previous generations of such software.

Beyond A Utilitarian View

The challenge of today may be to avoid a strictly utilitarian view of other organisms, whereby a species is expendable if it cannot demonstrate economic value that can be measured in dollars.

The idea that insects can provide us with new chemicals for medicines and manufacturing (“bioprospecting”) is a powerful argument for invertebrate conservation. So is biomimicry, but that has led us to attempt to replace pollinating insects with microdrones. Walmart filed an application for a patent on miniature drones on March 8, 2018, citing evidence of declines in bee populations and the need to supplement the pollination services provided by insects.

Japanese scientists had previously built drones for the cross-pollination of lilies, but videos of the machines in action exposed how clumsy they are compared to the direct and delicate maneuvers of bees. Considering that insects have been on the planet for millions of years longer than Homo sapiens, perhaps it is time to realize that there are some things that cannot be improved upon.

Proceeding With Caution and Respect

Replacing bees and other insects with machines cheapens our humanity in other ways, too. There is no substitute for interactions with other living organisms, though we seem hell-bent on trying to substitute them anyway. Our knowledge of how insects interact with other species, including our own, is woefully inadequate. Entomology’s greatest redeeming quality is its potential for discovery, and the blossoming fields of citizen science and science communication allow anyone to have an impact on our collective knowledge.

Observations have led to a better understanding of the geographic distribution of different species, led to the discovery of new species, and documented previously unknown behaviors and relationships thanks to videos taken on cell phones. All of this can be shared instantly through social media and online platforms.

We should be grateful to insects and related arthropods for their inspiration and complexity, and we should continue to learn from them. We must do so, however, with a degree of reverence, rather than an overriding desire for monetary windfalls.

https://entomologytoday.org/2019/07/16/you-can-thank-insects-for-many-human-inventions/

link to said book above with a overview

Insects Did It First
By Gregory S. Paulson and Eric R. Eaton

This is a fascinating account of more than eighty insect “firsts.” Velcro, bungee jumping, air-conditioning, and chemical warfare are a few of the firsts covered in this book authored by two professional entomologists. The text is illustrated with humorous anthropomorphized insects. It is written for a general audience but is of special interest to teachers and entomologists.

https://www.xlibris.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001208950

[Star Tsar]

The liqour that could save our Bees

p6b6jg6kx0o

[Star Tsar]

LjpIijRirUs

[william r sanford72]

National Honey Show..

Feb 3 2020.

Varroa Resistance Characters and Selection Protocols (Part 1 of 4) Ralph Büchler

KwuR3uMkMF0

Ralph Büchler

Working with honey bees since his youth, Büchler studied agriculture and biology at Bonn University and finished his PhD in bee science. In 1990 he moved to the bee institute in Kirchhain which is one of the larger German training and research centres for beekeeping. Since 1997, he is leading the institute with its about 20 coworkers. Honey bee selection, disease resistance and alternative varroa treatment concepts are in the focus of Büchler´s research activities. He has participated in many national and international research projects like Smartbees, Coloss, Fitbee and is recently coordinating an EU study on varroa resistant stock and a national selection project on SMR. Büchler acts as the scientific adviser for the breeder association “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Toleranzzucht”. He is author of hundreds of papers, book contributions and scientific films.

Varroa Resistance Characters and Selection Protocols

Apis cerana as the natural host of Varroa destructor has developed effective resistance behaviors to cope with Varroa infestations without serious losses. And also from Apis mellifera several resistant populations are known by now which show interesting differences compared to susceptible populations. The mainly responsible characters of those resistant populations will be described.

Together with the experience from different breeding programs a description of relevant characters and suitable testing protocols with regard to selective breeding will be given. Recent data on mite population development, hygiene behaviour, suppressed mite reproduction (SMR) and brood recapping (REC) will allow for a closer evaluation of the long term potential of resistant honey bees in European apiculture.

[william r sanford72]

A lecture given by John Chambers at the 2019 National Honey Show entitled "Basic Honey Bee Genetics for Beekeepers"

Basic Honey Bee Genetics For Beekeepers

Trust honey bees to flaunt basic genetics as taught at school! They follow more complex rules that we have thwarted for the last 150 years. To improve our national stock, we must collectively act in sympathy with the biological realities of honey bee genetics. This presentation starts by considering what a breed is, before revealing something astonishing about breeds of honey bee. Then, Gregor Mendel’s failure to improve his honey bees is contrasted with his landmark work with the common pea.

The rest of the lecture provides insight into why he failed. In turn it considers quantitative trait loci; haplodiploidy and sex determination; genetic recombination, polyandry and the benefits of intra-colony genetic diversity; the fates of fatal, maladaptive, neutral and beneficial genes; the perils of inbreeding depression; the ecological headache of outbreeding depression; the importance of selection pressure; and what we might infer from genetic bottlenecks.

All these genetic considerations (and a few more besides) should concern and fascinate us all. By the end of this presentation, it should be clear why it is so damaging to import honey bee stock and how we can improve our local stock quickly, simply and optimally, using an augmented “bees know best” policy.

w-pAQt6pFhM

John Chambers

For John, beekeeping represents escape from everyday pressures. Inside his apiary, he is at peace and connects differently with the world. Town noises recede as a multisensory symphony of natural rhythms comes to the fore. He enjoys the passing seasons; the cawing of the high-flying resident crows who have become his friends; the hedgehogs; the mice; and the toads.

He loves the botanical chaos of the untended borders and the teeming biodiversity of the neglected and increasingly bumpy lawn. In the middle of all this are his many honey bee colonies which get darker and easier to handle with every generation of locally-reared queen. Nothing beats lying in long grass on a summer’s day, gazing up at the sky and watching one’s bees flying in their thousands as they go about their activities, completely unbeknown to people passing by on the other side of a simple brick wall.

[william r sanford72]

Medicinal Honey - a Sweet Solution against Superbugs?

A lecture given by Shona Blair at the 2019 National Honey Show entitled "Medicinal Honey - a Sweet Solution against Superbugs?"

Honey really is liquid gold, and people have always held it in high regard. It has been a prized food and a powerful medicine for many different cultures throughout history.

However, its medicinal use largely fell from favour in the 1940s with the introduction of modern antibiotic drugs. Unfortunately, the misuse of these lifesaving drugs means that today we face a shortage of effective treatments for infections, because there is a huge global increase in the number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria – or ‘superbugs’.

Our urgent need for other treatment options, has led to a renewed interest in complex, natural products with antimicrobial activity, like honey.

One of the most exciting things about the antimicrobial activity of honey is that it works against a very wide range of microbes that cause infections, even antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Apart from its ability to stop superbugs in their tracks, honey also encourages wound healing and stimulates our immune response, and has additional therapeutic qualities, including anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, and prebiotic (i.e. boosting gut health) properties.

YPd2jGsFs6I

Shona Blair

Dr Shona Blair is a microbiologist who has been studying the medicinal properties of honey for 20 years, pioneering this research in Australia. Shona was awarded her PhD in 2004 from the University of Sydney. She has since led many projects focusing on the wound healing and antimicrobial properties of honey, particularly against antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’, and the effects of eating honey on human gut health.

Shona has been an invited keynote speaker at numerous scientific, medical and beekeeping conferences in Australia, Brazil, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea and the USA. She has published her research findings in the scientific and popular press including microbiology and wound care journals, as well as popular beekeeping and health magazines.

Since her student days, Shona has been involved in the Australian beekeeping industry and she has actively worked to raise awareness of the importance of honey bees, beekeeping and medicinal honey. She held the role of inaugural CEO of the Wheen Bee Foundation (2013 – 2014), established to raise awareness of the importance of bees for food security. In 2013, she joined the Executive Council of the NSW Apiarists’

Association, where she works with commercial beekeepers to help tackle some of the issues faced by the industry. She received the prestigious Keith McIlvride Memorial Award in 2017 in recognition of her services to the industry.

[william r sanford72]

National Honey Show.. How Bees Fly..wonderful lecture given by Simon Rees

How Honey Bees Fly

In this lecture you will learn about the honey bee’s flight equipment – wings, engines, fuel and flight control. We will also look at the mechanics - at an introductory level - of honey bee flight. The lecture will contain videos and demonstrations to aid understanding. By the end you will have a good understanding of how bees fly.

9UKo3NKuLkk

Simon Rees

Simon is a hobby beekeeper and has been keeping bees since 1995. Simon was born in Cardiff, Wales. Simon started keeping bees in Twickenham, Middlesex in 1995 after completing the Twickenham & Thames Valley BKA beginners' course. On moving to Dublin in 1996 he established an apiary in the garden. He currently has 2 apiaries in Co. Wicklow. Simon has completed the FIBKA (Federation of Irish Beekeeping Associations) preliminary, intermediate, senior and lecturer's certificates since moving to Ireland. Simon has a keen interest in lecturing, particularly on the science side of beekeeping. Simon is a former Chair and Honey Show Secretary of the Co. Dublin Beekeepers' Association. He set up and helps manage the Facebook group ‘Beekeepers of Ireland’ (open to beekeepers everywhere) which has over 3000 members. Simon lives in Dublin with his wife Eimear.

[william r sanford72]

This lecture is a great over view and brief history of modern bee keeping boxs/methods. The langstroth hive and how it came to bee...

Langstroth: How Much Credit Does He Deserve?

A lecture given by Simon Rees at the 2019 National Honey Show entitled "Langstroth: How Much Credit Does He Deserve?"

ZGz_zq5e4ic

[william r sanford72]

usda national Honey report for the month of Jan.2020

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

[william r sanford72]

:heart:Bees and Plants - the Best of Friends..

A lecture given by Mary Montaut at the 2019 National Honey Show entitled "Bees and Plants - the Best of Friends"

Bees & Plants: the Best of Friends

The theme of this presentation is the mutualism between bees and plants. The aim will be to give you some simple principles on which you can make your gardening choices so that you will be benefitting the bees and other pollinators in your own patch, whether that be your garden, or an allotment, or just a window-box. There will be plenty of examples from my own garden, but also I will have regard for the different conditions of climate and soil, and I hope to encourage listeners to understand how best to cherish the pollinators in their own particular micro-climate.

MV9-ZNFbOq0

Mary Montaut

Mary Montaut is the Editor of The Irish Beekeeper (An Beachaire). She has been keeping bees in Bray, Co. Wicklow, for about twenty years and regards herself as an Eternal Beginner, because there is always so much to find out and understand about bees. She also edits the Irish Garden Plant Society journal, which seems to complement her passion for bees. Her interest in honey bees has gradually extended to include all sorts of pollinators, and she is on the Steering Committee of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan, representing the Federation of Irish Beekeepers’ Associations. However, she is the first to confess that she is more of an Eternal Student in both of these fields than any kind of specialist - always eager to learn and read more about the wonderful relationship between plants and bees.

[Stephanie]

The Artwork Of Bees Can Be Absolutely Stunning
February 6, 2020

Have you ever seen honeycomb as beautiful as this?

heart shaped bee honeycomb
Credit: @nationaltrust / Facebook

It's what happens if you leave it to the bees and do not put frames in the box.

This particular heart-shaped honeycomb was constructed by bees at Bodiam Castle in Robertsbridge, United Kingdom.

And these shapes are certainly not random! They are specifically built that way to regulate airflow inside the colony to maintain an ideal temperature.

According to Arnia Remote Hive Monitoring: "Brood nest temperature is of extreme importance to the colony and is controlled with utmost precision. Honey bees maintain the temperature of the brood nest between 32°C and optimally 35°C so that the brood develops normally."

If the temperature of the hive is too high or too low, the bees make adjustments.

"When the temperature in the nest is too high the bees ventilate by fanning the hot air out of the nest or use evaporative cooling mechanisms, ARHM says. "When the temperature is too low bees generate metabolic heat by contracting and relaxing their flight muscles."

Bees are amazing!

[Bluegreen]

http://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/heart-shaped-honeycomb-thumbnail.jpg

:star:

[Stephanie]

http://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/heart-shaped-honeycomb-thumbnail.jpg

:star:

Oh thank you, dearest Bluegreen!
:bearhug:

[william r sanford72]

The Principles of Bee Improvement...

A lecture given by Jo Widdicombe at the 2019 National Honey Show entitled "The Principles of Bee Improvement" The lecture is sponsored by Bee Improvement & Bee Breeders Association.

The Principles of Bee Improvement

The talk will explain how I have gone about improving the quality of my bees by selecting from the stock in my area. After trying queens of various types I quickly got disillusioned with the results, at best short-term relief, and set about finding a more sustainable way to improve my bees. By simple methods we can maintain genetic diversity within the population and produce a hardy, locally adapted bee with qualities that can be built on year on year.

6p0zjZDgCJY

Jo Widdicombe

Jo worked as a bee inspector for 5 years and now runs over 100 colonies, with the help of an apprentice, producing honey, queens and nucs for sale. Author of the book, "The Principles of Bee Improvement" which explains how to select and improve the quality of our bees from local stock rather than resorting to imported queens. Jo is currently President of BIBBA.

[Karen (Geophyz)]

I am happy to say my honey bees are thriving this year. I uses a no chemical approach to my land and I can tell the difference. I noticed a wild group in a tree last week. I sat and watched them for a very long time. I find their droning very relaxing. I am surprised to find them active so early in the spring but I welcome them. My garden welcomes them.

[william r sanford72]

made me smile..bee safe..bee gratefull.

Seriously, how many bee wranglers does it take to remove one bee hive?

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

dqw6k18drIw

Have you ever heard of JP the Beeman? What about Schawee? Or what about the Mississippi bee man the 628 Dirt Rooster? Well, if any of these names mean anything to you, there's a pretty good chance you are going to enjoy this video. Why? Well, we all got together to make this video. That's right, the 4 of us managed to arrange our schedules to be at the same place at the same time to wrangle bees, and talk about a fun adventure.

When JP called me and asked if I'd be interested in giving him and Schawee a hand on a removal in Slidell, I jumped at the opportunity. Though we have been friends for several years, we had yet to do a collaboration video, and I had been wanting to do it for years. I was so pumped about doing the removal with them I called the Rooster and told him all about it, but he told me he had something scheduled for that time and would not be able to be there. Being the good sport I am, I proceeded to rub it in his face about how I was going to be working with JP and Schawee and he wasn't. As it turned out, he and JP had it worked out that I was not suppose to know the Rooster was going to be there as well.They did a great job of keeping the secret. When the Rooster showed up, I was in complete disbelief. Yep, they got me good.

So it took 4 bee wranglers to handle this removal, but we got the job done. The bees were gentle, and there were a gang of swarm cells on the comb that Schawee proceeded to pick off like grapes. There were at least 5 queens that emerged as we were there, and there's lots of footage on that thanks to Good Time Charlie who was doing all the videoing.

So, get ready for a few laughs and see for yourself how these Southern boys wrangle bees. God's peace to all.

https://www.studiobeeproductions.com/

[Franny]

🐝:flower:🐝:flower:🐝 Bump! 🐝:flower:🐝:flower:🐝

Cross reference with this thread on the custom of telling the bees...

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?112636-The-Adorable-Custom-of---Telling-The-Bees--

[Bluegreen]

The Latest in Airport Jobs: Beekeeper

Beehives create green spaces where you’d least expect them, such as Wright-Patterson AFB and other airports, both military and commercial.

Ben Shertzer, wildlife administrator at Pittsburgh International Airport, has hustled deer off the airfield, removed ducks from the airport’s retention basin, and escorted wayward raccoons from various terminal buildings. But in August 2012, when thousands of honeybees landed on the winglets of a Delta aircraft headed to New York, interrupting refueling and baggage loading, he turned to master beekeeper Steve Repasky and said, “This one’s all you. I’ll stay in the truck.”


http://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/rt94x-W8VjNI2J21m3xyR0ApSsw=/fit-in/1072x0/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/c6/6a/c66a6037-bab2-44f9-9ca6-4e556c61c7e0/02d_am2021_pittsburghairportdeltaflight_live.jpg


It was the fourth swarm Shertzer had confronted in the last few months. In May, roughly 15,000 bees had obscured a light on Taxiway-C, delaying a flight. At that point, Shertzer began Googling nearby beekeepers. He found Repasky, of Meadow Sweet Apiaries, and hired him as a contractor.

The airport’s beekeeping program recently won the 2020 Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence. Eventually, Shertzer hopes to place signs within the terminal educating passengers about their efforts. The program is so important to the airport that the bees are even considered in the airport’s planning process for new construction ...

Published April 2021 by Rebecca Maksel – Air & Space Magazine
https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/buzz-around-airports-180977301/

[Bluegreen]

https://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AKedOLRALt0_uICBj6OdOWj15jjf-EA1D6kTjEw4bPcSbQ=s38-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj

What You'd See If You Could Walk Into a Beehive

What does it feel like to be a bee? You're always busy storing nectar, busy producing honey, busy buzzing around, bizzy doin dis, busy busy as a bee, buzz buzz buzz and its just becuzz ... sounds exciting, huh! Let's head on a journey toward the heart and soul of any bee colony - a beehive! You'll get to see how things work there with your own eyes: if it's dark inside a beehive, how many worker bees live there and what the Queen is bizzy doing. Are you ready?

Published 15th September 2021 (8:02) Animated

cIwSy1N9BvQ
What's Inside a Beehive?


http://i.pinimg.com/236x/b8/7d/1b/b87d1b5f20825016e43cc2f0c521b769--hello-dolly-big-hair.jpg

[bluestflame]

busy planting bee friendly plants and pondweed in plastic ponds so the bees can rehydrate without drowning ( saw a blue banded bee the other day in the backyard so was a bit of a buzz ;) )

[Bluegreen]

Physics – The Birds & The Bees – Sincerely, Albert Einstein

In 2019, a group of RMIT researchers were in the midst of publishing a series of grand discoveries about how bees use their brains, when they got an unexpected surprise from Albert Einstein.

Led by Scarlett Howard as part of her PhD, the team had shown that, despite their small size, bees could understand the concept of zero, and even perform simple arithmetic. “We were actually able to show that they could discriminate numbers above 4, so they could do things like 4 versus 5, which is a very hard discrimination to make,” says Howard, now a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin University.

The research caught the attention of the media and was shared worldwide. Shortly after, Howard’s supervisor, Adrian Dyer, received a message from a widow on the other side of the globe. “A lady in the UK heard about it and wrote to me directly, because I was the corresponding author, and said ‘I have a very unusual letter in my possession, which was written by Albert Einstein to my late husband’,” says Dyer.

The lady – Judith Davys, wife of Glyn Davys, who lived from 1925 to 2011 – said that the letter discussed the same themes Dyer and Howard were now investigating. She asked Dyer if he’d like to examine it.

“Of course I was quite interested.”


http://menafn.com/updates/pr/2021-05/12/TC_a8706ff0-b_Image_In_Body.jpg

Published 3rd May 2021 by Ellen Phiddian – Cosmos Magazine
https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/birds-and-bees-sincerely-albert-einstein/

[mozo33]

Physics – The Birds & The Bees – Sincerely, Albert Einstein

In 2019, a group of RMIT researchers were in the midst of publishing a series of grand discoveries about how bees use their brains, when they got an unexpected surprise from Albert Einstein.

Led by Scarlett Howard as part of her PhD, the team had shown that, despite their small size, bees could understand the concept of zero, and even perform simple arithmetic. “We were actually able to show that they could discriminate numbers above 4, so they could do things like 4 versus 5, which is a very hard discrimination to make,” says Howard, now a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin University.

The research caught the attention of the media and was shared worldwide. Shortly after, Howard’s supervisor, Adrian Dyer, received a message from a widow on the other side of the globe. “A lady in the UK heard about it and wrote to me directly, because I was the corresponding author, and said ‘I have a very unusual letter in my possession, which was written by Albert Einstein to my late husband’,” says Dyer.

The lady – Judith Davys, wife of Glyn Davys, who lived from 1925 to 2011 – said that the letter discussed the same themes Dyer and Howard were now investigating. She asked Dyer if he’d like to examine it.

“Of course I was quite interested.”


http://menafn.com/updates/pr/2021-05/12/TC_a8706ff0-b_Image_In_Body.jpg

Published 3rd May 2021 by Ellen Phiddian – Cosmos Magazine
https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/birds-and-bees-sincerely-albert-einstein/


the natural mind is of little use in understanding what it can not nail down, as in give a name/measurement to ...

here Albert eludes to this

“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.” Albert Einstein

[Bill Ryan]

Bumping this important thread with a concise 3 minute interview. What's happening to bees is an extremely critical issue.

Bee expert warns Tucker Carlson about the extinction of bees


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiX8l-TBy0s