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Bees

So we now know how to create killer bees. Excellent.
 
Some bees have developed a way to avoid drowning by using their wings to create waves they can "surf" to safety.
Astonishing Footage Shows Bees Have Learned to 'Surf' to Avoid Drowning

It's a hot day. A bee buzzes over for a drink at a nearby pond, but oh no! Her wings just made contact with the water's surface; now she's stuck, and aerodynamics is no longer an option. Is it certain death?

According to scientists' best estimates, the bee has only minutes before gravity threatens to pull her into the depths.But that's plenty of time – given a unique biolocomotion strategy bee kind appears to have evolved.

In a new study, researchers at Caltech have identified a handy survival tactic honeybees (Apis mellifera) can use to escape exactly this kind of soggy predicament: propelling themselves through the water by using their wings to generate a wave – a behaviour that's never before been documented in insects.

"The motion of the bee's wings creates a wave that its body is able to ride forward," says bio-mechanics engineer Morteza Gharib.

"It hydrofoils, or surfs, toward safety."
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SOURCE (With Video): https://www.sciencealert.com/bees-c...ives-but-they-can-surf-on-waves-made-by-wings
 
Eh? Why would police and firefighters respond to reports of a single bee sting?

A swarm of nearly 40,000 bees attacked police responding to a single bee sting report

They were responding to a report of a single bee sting. But their problem was about to get a whole lot worse. A group of firefighters and police that were responding to a bee sting were attacked Thursday afternoon by a swarm of nearly 40,000 Africanized bees. Three of the first responders were rushed to the hospital, while the others quickly shut down the block.

"I've been with the fire department 18 years now and responded to several bee incidents," Pasadena Fire Department Public Information Officer Lisa Derderian told CNN. "But never to this magnitude."

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/21/us/bee-sting-attacked-california-trnd/index.html
 
FelixAntonius said:
"Eh? Why would police and firefighters respond to reports of a single bee sting?"

'Cos it's California!!!!

But seriously possibly because they are Africanized bees, who are very aggressive, more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee
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But do they respond to every reported bee sting (won't all be by Africanized bees) and what exactly are the police going to do? Shoot the bees?
 
Her's a very interesting write up of a recent study.

Short version:
  • Humans are one of very few animals known to be able to recognise objects across senses.
  • Bumblebees were able to recognise objects by sight that they'd only previously felt.
  • Bumblebees can create mental imagery, which has been considered a 'building block of consciousness'.
Humans are one of very few animals known to be able to recognise objects across senses.

For instance, if we know what a jar of honey looks like we could probably find it by touch alone from the top shelf of the pantry.

Scientists think this ability — called cross-modal object recognition — exists at least partly because we are able to imagine the object in our brain, a skill that is a "building block" of consciousness.

But now a team of scientists believe they have evidence bumblebees can also create mental imagery, they report in the journal Science.

The tiny insects are able to recognise objects by sight that they've only previously felt, and vice versa, according to study co-author Cwyn Solvi from the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Macquarie University.

"Many have thought that bees' small brains simply react to stimuli and output motor behaviours without any internal representations of the world," Dr Solvi said.

The question now is whether we have underestimated the intelligence of bees, or overestimated how complex a brain needs to be to perform cross-modal recognition.

Full Article:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2020-02-21/bumblebee-objects-across-senses/11981304
 
We've been intendiing to start keeping bees for some time now. Plans were put on hold because of circumstances, y'know, but things have recently changed and we're looking into it again.

Anyway... there are now wild bees making a nest in my shed. I'm so excited! Is this a sign from Beeland?
 
New research suggests bumblebees bite plants to stimulate earlier blooming and more expedient access to pollen.
Bumblebees Bite Plants to Force Them to Flower (Seriously)

The behavior could be an evolutionary adaptation that lets bees forage more easily

Bumblebees are a resourceful bunch: when pollen is scarce and plants near the nest are not yet flowering, workers have developed a way to force them to bloom. Research published on Thursday in Science shows that the insects puncture the plants’ leaves, which causes them to flower, on average, 30 days earlier than they otherwise would. How the technique evolved and why the plants respond to bumblebee bites by blooming remain unclear. But researchers say the discovery of a new behavior in such a familiar creature is remarkable. ...

[The] ... team placed pollen-deprived bumblebees together with tomato and mustard plants in mesh cages. The bees soon cut several holes in the leaves of each plant using their mandibles and proboscises. As a test, the researchers tried to replicate the bumblebee damage in additional plants with forceps and a razor. Both sets of plants with injured leaves bloomed faster, but the ones punctured by the bees flowered weeks earlier than those cut by the scientists, suggesting that chemicals in the insects’ saliva may be involved as well.

Next, the researchers moved out of the laboratory to see whether bumblebees would continue to damage nonflowering plants near their nest even if blooming plants were available farther away. They did so. ...

The findings suggest the bees’ behavior is an adaptation that maximizes pollen-foraging efficiency, but they do not definitively confirm that hypothesis ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bumblebees-bite-plants-to-force-them-to-flower-seriously/
 
We have wild bees nesting in an outbuilding. Yesterday they played a trick on me.

I noticed some bees on the wall outside so I stealthily moseyed over to photograph and video them.

They were still until I was close, when they all suddenly took off and swarmed round me. I ran off down the path swearing.

Bastards. But we love them!
 
Tooting & Quacking Queens

Scientists using highly sensitive vibration detectors have decoded honeybee queens' "tooting and quacking" duets in the hive.

Worker bees make new queens by sealing eggs inside special cells with wax and feeding them royal jelly.

The queens quack when ready to emerge - but if two are free at the same time, they will fight to the death.

So when one hatches, its quacks turn to toots, telling the workers to keep the others - still quacking - captive.

"It has been assumed that the queens were talking to other queens - possibly sizing one another up vocally to see who is strongest.

"But we now have proof for the alternative explanation."

Tooting, the researchers found, is a queen moving around the colony - announcing her presence to the workers.

The quacking is from queens that are ready to come out but are still captive inside their cells.

The queens are not talking to each other, explained Dr Bencsik, "it's communication between the queen and the worker bees - an entire society of tens of thousands of bees trying to release one queen at a time.

"Quacking queens are purposefully kept captive by the worker bees - they will not release the quacking queens because they can hear the tooting.

"When the tooting stops, that means the queen would have swarmed [split the colony and set out to find a new nest] and this triggers the colony to release a new queen."

Dr Bencsik said bee society was "absolutely splendid" to observe.

"All decisions are group decisions," he said.

"It's the worker bees that decide if they want a new queen or not."
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Audiofile at link.
 
Are there any flowers that bees can forage from that lead to a poisonous honey?
 
The main naturally occurring human toxins that survive to pollute honey are grayanotoxins. These compounds are found in various rhododendrons and other plants within the Ericaceae family (heath; heather).

Honey polluted with grayanotoxins is called "mad honey", and it's actively sought in some places for its intoxicating effects. Grayanotoxin poisoning is rarely fatal in humans, but it's more commonly fatal in farm animals and pets.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404272/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayanotoxin#Mad_honey_disease
 
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Never tasted a honey I like, wife likes it but me I think it's horrible,
like bees though, but wouldn't want to eat one.
:)
 
Frideswide said:
Are there any flowers that bees can forage from that lead to a poisonous honey?
Click to expand...

Don't wait for the bees, get a jar of honey and simply mix in your preferred toxin, thujone is a good start.:thought:
 
'Our' wild bees spent a lot of time on our rhododendron bush. Perhaps I won't plunder their nest when they leave after all!

t'other day I had a plumber over* to look at some outside pipes that I've been sternly warned by Techy not to touch. Again. After last time.

As Steve is very tall his face was level with the opening to the bees' nest. I said 'Oh sorry, forgot to warn you about the bees! I hope you're not afraid of them!'

He isn't, but he told me a story about a wasp attack. As a lad he went on a rural treasure hunt in France or somewhere with the Scouts.
He somehow disturbed a wasps' nest and was suddenly covered in them.
His quick thinking mates ripped all this clothes off and sprayed him with a fire extinguisher!

This might have saved him as he was stung all over and had to go to hospital. The only part of him that could be injected with the necessary treatment was a small parch on his bum. I imagine he didn't mind too much at that point!

So a few fat bumblebees didn't worry Steve. In fact when I joked that they were buzzing around his head saying 'What are you doing here, getting in our way?' he turned to them and said 'Listen bees, I have to do my job, y'know!'

Looking forward to Steve's next visit when he will fix my pipes (ooer missis) and be paid in cash and handsomely tipped, and hopefully not be bothered by the bees.


*Obligatory soundtrack in case @Heckler is reading: bow chikka wow wow bow chikka wow wow
 
My brother had a colony of bees under the wheel arch (passenger side) of his pick-up truck for about a week or so. He habitually parked next to a white concrete kerb post when he visited mother everyday for lunch and the bees went foraging whilst he was away. One day he had to leave early to pick up mum's prescription and many of the bees didn't make it back to the truck in time. Fortunately he returned in the afternoon with the medicine and the bees were swarming all over the white post - and then rejoined the colony when he'd parked up.
 
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