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
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 University of Maryland/Bee Informed Partnership informs us that Beekeepers across the United States lost 33 percent of their honey bee colonies during the year spanning April 2016 to April 2017, according to the latest preliminary results of an annual nationwide survey. Rates of both winter loss and summer loss — and consequently, total annual … More Nation’s Beekeepers Lost 33 Percent of Bees in 2016-17
Bees have much better vision than was previously known, offering new insights into the lives of honey bees, and new opportunities for translating this knowledge into fields such as robot vision, outlines a new study. This is a western honey bee, also known as a European honey bee (Apis mellifera). Researchers at Lund University, Sweden, … More Honey bees have sharper eyesight than we thought
Increasing the diversity of pollinator species can dramatically increase cotton production, according to a new study from the University of Texas at Austin. In South Texas alone, this could boost cotton production by up to 18 percent, yielding an increase in annual revenue of more than $1.1 million. Bee hovers over cotton flower in South … More Supporting pollinators could have big payoff for Texas cotton farmers
Pollinators affect 35 percent of the world’s food crop production, increasing the output of 87 of the leading crops worldwide, finds a study co-authored by a UC Berkeley conservation biologist. The study is the first global estimate of food crop production that is reliant upon animal pollination. It comes one week after a National Research … More Pollinators Help One-third Of The World’s Food Crop Production
An up-close and personal look at bees, by our friends at PBS. Ever wondered about how bees live? All of this and more is answered in this excerpted PBS’s bee documentary. If we’re going to actually save these critters, we’d best get to know them for more than their sting! Everything you’d want to know … More The life and times of a bee
Save The Bees Concert 