Fungicides are among the top contaminants of honey bee hives and can interfere with the bees’ ability to metabolize other pesticides. Credit: Photo by L. Brian Stauffer When given the choice, honey bee foragers prefer to collect sugar syrup laced with the fungicide chlorothalonil over sugar syrup alone, researchers report in the journal Scientific Reports. … More Agricultural fungicide attracts honey bees
A team of ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialists has demonstrated that eating honey after swallowing a button battery has the potential to reduce serious injuries in small children. Based on findings in laboratory animals, the research suggests that this common household product may significantly reduce morbidity and mortality from highly caustic batteries. “Button batteries … More Ingesting honey after swallowing button battery reduces injury and improves outcomes
Patagonia may lose its only native bumblebee species due to invasions by alien bee species sanctioned by government policy. In a paper published today in Journal of Applied Ecology, Marcelo Aizen from the Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Argentina, and colleagues from four countries draw attention to the severe conservation, economic and political consequences of intentional species … More Uncoordinated trade policies aid alien bee invasions
Research by scientists at Saint Louis University’s Bernhardt/Meier Laboratory engaged in a study of Missouri bees and wildflowers has been published in the online Journal of Pollination Ecology. Peter Bernhardt, Ph.D., a professor of biology at SLU and research associate at the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust in Sydney, New … More Bees prefer warm violets in cool forests, scientists discover
When given the choice, honey bee foragers prefer to collect sugar syrup laced with the fungicide chlorothalonil over sugar syrup alone, researchers report in the journal Scientific Reports. The puzzling finding comes on the heels of other studies linking fungicides to declines in honey bee and wild bee populations. One recent study, for example, found parallels … More Agricultural fungicide attracts honey bees
Coles and Woolworths are abandoning an insecticide product which contains a controversial ingredient that has been linked to harming bee populations essential for pollination, The New Daily can reveal. More than 30,000 Australians have signed a petition, launched by global consumer group SumOfUs, calling on Australian retailers to stop selling insecticides containing neonicotinoids, including Yates Confidor which has been … More Woolworths and Coles cave in to pressure to abandon product accused of killing bees
First US wild bee map reveals 139 ‘trouble zone’ counties The first-ever study to map U.S. wild bees suggests they are disappearing in the country’s most important farmlands — from California’s Central Valley to the Midwest’s corn belt and the Mississippi River valley. A new study of wild bees identifies 139 counties in key agricultural … More Bee decline threatens US crop production
New research from a team of Florida State University scientists and their collaborators is helping to explain the link between a changing global climate and a dramatic decline in bumble bee populations worldwide. This is Bombus bifarius, one of the three species of bumble bee studied by the Ogilvie and her team. Credit: Jane Ogilvie … More A stinging report: Climate change a major threat to bumble bees
he honey bee gut is colonized by specialized bacteria that help digest components of the floral pollen diet and produce molecules that likely promote bee health. In a study publishing 12 December in the open access journal PLOS Biology, a group of researchers led by Philipp Engel at the University of Lausanne and ETH Zürich, Switzerland, … More How honey bee gut bacteria help to digest their pollen-rich diet
The tiny pollinators are useful sentinels of what’s going on in an ecosystem, and might just be environmentalists’ best asset. An apiarist tends to beehives at Hastings Urban Farm in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. (Courtesy M. Amini) By Rachel Kaufman It’s a sunny day, and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighborhood is buzzing. Commuters are commuting, delivery trucks are delivering, … More Can Honeybees Monitor Pollution?
Save The Bees Concert 