ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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Incest? Bad beehivour.
Bees
- Thread starter crunchy5
- Start date
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Rare bumblebees make comeback in Kent and Sussex
England's five rarest bumblebees have made a comeback in parts of Kent and Sussex, conservationists have said.
The five threatened species have spread their geographic range as a result of environmental schemes in Dungeness and Romney Marsh.
Measures to make the habitat more suitable include putting pollen and nectar-rich flower margins in fields.
Project leader Dr Nikki Gammans said she had not expected to see successful results so quickly.
The measures were introduced last year in a bid to bring the short-haired bumblebee back from New Zealand to the UK.
The species was last seen in the UK in 1988, but populations on the other side of the world have survived.
But the attempt to reintroduce the species failed when many of the insects died during hibernation.
Dr Gammans said by creating the right conditions for the short-haired bumblebee, the five threatened species had flourished.
She said the bumblebees had all increased their ranges in the South East after decades of decline.
"We hoped that we would begin to see results like this for these species but we really didn't expect to see it quite so quickly," she said.
The five species are the large garden bumblebee, the shrill carder bee, the shanked carder bee, the moss carder bee and the brown banded carder bee.
The partnership project is being run by Natural England, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the RSPB and Hymettus.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11472104
England's five rarest bumblebees have made a comeback in parts of Kent and Sussex, conservationists have said.
The five threatened species have spread their geographic range as a result of environmental schemes in Dungeness and Romney Marsh.
Measures to make the habitat more suitable include putting pollen and nectar-rich flower margins in fields.
Project leader Dr Nikki Gammans said she had not expected to see successful results so quickly.
The measures were introduced last year in a bid to bring the short-haired bumblebee back from New Zealand to the UK.
The species was last seen in the UK in 1988, but populations on the other side of the world have survived.
But the attempt to reintroduce the species failed when many of the insects died during hibernation.
Dr Gammans said by creating the right conditions for the short-haired bumblebee, the five threatened species had flourished.
She said the bumblebees had all increased their ranges in the South East after decades of decline.
"We hoped that we would begin to see results like this for these species but we really didn't expect to see it quite so quickly," she said.
The five species are the large garden bumblebee, the shrill carder bee, the shanked carder bee, the moss carder bee and the brown banded carder bee.
The partnership project is being run by Natural England, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the RSPB and Hymettus.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11472104
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2003
- Messages
- 278
Interesting article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html?_r=1
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: October 6, 2010
DENVER — It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?
Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.
Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.
A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.
Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.
Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course. World War II, perhaps the most profound example, ended in an atomic strike on Japan in 1945 largely on the shoulders of scientist-soldiers in the Manhattan Project. And a group of scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula has researched bee-related applications for the military in the past — developing, for example, a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines.
But researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own.
“Together we could look at things nobody else was looking at,” said Colin Henderson, an associate professor at the University of Montana’s College of Technology and a member of Dr. Bromenshenk’s “Bee Alert” team.
Human nature and bee nature were interconnected in how the puzzle pieces came together. Two brothers helped foster communication across disciplines. A chance meeting and a saved business card proved pivotal. Even learning how to mash dead bees for analysis — a skill not taught at West Point — became a factor.
One perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving it is that the bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction from the hive, then die alone and dispersed. That makes large numbers of bee autopsies — and yes, entomologists actually do those — problematic.
Dr. Bromenshenk’s team at the University of Montana and Montana State University in Bozeman, working with the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center northeast of Baltimore, said in their jointly written paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal.
“It’s chicken and egg in a sense — we don’t know which came first,” Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other’s destructive power. “They’re co-factors, that’s all we can say at the moment,” he said. “They’re both present in all these collapsed colonies.”
Research at the University of California, San Francisco, had already identified the fungus as part of the problem. And several RNA-based viruses had been detected as well. But the Army/Montana team, using a new software system developed by the military for analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-based virus, and established a linkage to the fungus, called N. ceranae.
“Our mission is to have detection capability to protect the people in the field from anything biological,” said Charles H. Wick, a microbiologist at Edgewood. Bees, Dr. Wick said, proved to be a perfect opportunity to see what the Army’s analytic software tool could do. “We brought it to bear on this bee question, which is how we field-tested it,” he said.
The Army software system — an advance itself in the growing field of protein research, or proteomics — is designed to test and identify biological agents in circumstances where commanders might have no idea what sort of threat they face. The system searches out the unique proteins in a sample, then identifies a virus or other microscopic life form based on the proteins it is known to contain. The power of that idea in military or bee defense is immense, researchers say, in that it allows them to use what they already know to find something they did not even know they were looking for.
But it took a family connection — through David Wick, Charles’s brother — to really connect the dots. When colony collapse became news a few years ago, Mr. Wick, a tech entrepreneur who moved to Montana in the 1990s for the outdoor lifestyle, saw a television interview with Dr. Bromenshenk about bees.
Mr. Wick knew of his brother’s work in Maryland, and remembered meeting Dr. Bromenshenk at a business conference. A retained business card and a telephone call put the Army and the Bee Alert team buzzing around the same blossom.
The first steps were awkward, partly because the Army lab was not used to testing bees, or more specifically, to extracting bee proteins. “I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”
The process eventually was refined. A mortar and pestle worked better than the desktop, and a coffee grinder worked best of all for making good bee paste.
Scientists in the project emphasize that their conclusions are not the final word. The pattern, they say, seems clear, but more research is needed to determine, for example, how further outbreaks might be prevented, and how much environmental factors like heat, cold or drought might play a role.
They said that combination attacks in nature, like the virus and fungus involved in bee deaths, are quite common, and that one answer in protecting bee colonies might be to focus on the fungus — controllable with antifungal agents — especially when the virus is detected.
Still unsolved is what makes the bees fly off into the wild yonder at the point of death. One theory, Dr. Bromenshenk said, is that the viral-fungal combination disrupts memory or navigating skills and the bees simply get lost. Another possibility, he said, is a kind of insect insanity.
In any event, the university’s bee operation itself proved vulnerable just last year, when nearly every bee disappeared over the course of the winter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html?_r=1
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: October 6, 2010
DENVER — It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?
Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.
Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.
A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.
Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.
Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course. World War II, perhaps the most profound example, ended in an atomic strike on Japan in 1945 largely on the shoulders of scientist-soldiers in the Manhattan Project. And a group of scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula has researched bee-related applications for the military in the past — developing, for example, a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines.
But researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own.
“Together we could look at things nobody else was looking at,” said Colin Henderson, an associate professor at the University of Montana’s College of Technology and a member of Dr. Bromenshenk’s “Bee Alert” team.
Human nature and bee nature were interconnected in how the puzzle pieces came together. Two brothers helped foster communication across disciplines. A chance meeting and a saved business card proved pivotal. Even learning how to mash dead bees for analysis — a skill not taught at West Point — became a factor.
One perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving it is that the bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction from the hive, then die alone and dispersed. That makes large numbers of bee autopsies — and yes, entomologists actually do those — problematic.
Dr. Bromenshenk’s team at the University of Montana and Montana State University in Bozeman, working with the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center northeast of Baltimore, said in their jointly written paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal.
“It’s chicken and egg in a sense — we don’t know which came first,” Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other’s destructive power. “They’re co-factors, that’s all we can say at the moment,” he said. “They’re both present in all these collapsed colonies.”
Research at the University of California, San Francisco, had already identified the fungus as part of the problem. And several RNA-based viruses had been detected as well. But the Army/Montana team, using a new software system developed by the military for analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-based virus, and established a linkage to the fungus, called N. ceranae.
“Our mission is to have detection capability to protect the people in the field from anything biological,” said Charles H. Wick, a microbiologist at Edgewood. Bees, Dr. Wick said, proved to be a perfect opportunity to see what the Army’s analytic software tool could do. “We brought it to bear on this bee question, which is how we field-tested it,” he said.
The Army software system — an advance itself in the growing field of protein research, or proteomics — is designed to test and identify biological agents in circumstances where commanders might have no idea what sort of threat they face. The system searches out the unique proteins in a sample, then identifies a virus or other microscopic life form based on the proteins it is known to contain. The power of that idea in military or bee defense is immense, researchers say, in that it allows them to use what they already know to find something they did not even know they were looking for.
But it took a family connection — through David Wick, Charles’s brother — to really connect the dots. When colony collapse became news a few years ago, Mr. Wick, a tech entrepreneur who moved to Montana in the 1990s for the outdoor lifestyle, saw a television interview with Dr. Bromenshenk about bees.
Mr. Wick knew of his brother’s work in Maryland, and remembered meeting Dr. Bromenshenk at a business conference. A retained business card and a telephone call put the Army and the Bee Alert team buzzing around the same blossom.
The first steps were awkward, partly because the Army lab was not used to testing bees, or more specifically, to extracting bee proteins. “I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”
The process eventually was refined. A mortar and pestle worked better than the desktop, and a coffee grinder worked best of all for making good bee paste.
Scientists in the project emphasize that their conclusions are not the final word. The pattern, they say, seems clear, but more research is needed to determine, for example, how further outbreaks might be prevented, and how much environmental factors like heat, cold or drought might play a role.
They said that combination attacks in nature, like the virus and fungus involved in bee deaths, are quite common, and that one answer in protecting bee colonies might be to focus on the fungus — controllable with antifungal agents — especially when the virus is detected.
Still unsolved is what makes the bees fly off into the wild yonder at the point of death. One theory, Dr. Bromenshenk said, is that the viral-fungal combination disrupts memory or navigating skills and the bees simply get lost. Another possibility, he said, is a kind of insect insanity.
In any event, the university’s bee operation itself proved vulnerable just last year, when nearly every bee disappeared over the course of the winter.
FelixAntonius
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2001
- Messages
- 1,181
The link to the paper on which the article is based, can be found here:-
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi ... ne.0013181
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi ... ne.0013181
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2003
- Messages
- 278
Oh dear!
In my previous post above, there may be a conspiracy...!
...read more at
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/bee_mystery_unsolved_lead_inve.html[/quote]
In my previous post above, there may be a conspiracy...!
...read more at
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/bee_mystery_unsolved_lead_inve.html[/quote]
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2006
- Messages
- 124
Bees like stripes!!
Bumblebees prefer stripes and red flowers, research suggests
Gardeners are being encouraged to grow striped flowers to encourage bumblebee populations, after research suggested the insects are most attracted to them.
Stripes on petal veins direct bumblebees to the flower's "central landing platform" and entrance to gather nectar and pollen.
Researchers also found that red flowers were also attractive to bees.
Bees play a key role in agriculture by pollinating crops.
The scientists say that growing especially inviting plants could be a way for people to help stem what has been called a "catastrophic" decline in UK bumblebee populations.
Stripes and spots
The research was to understand how pollinator decline can been halted, as a reduction in numbers can be "economically damaging and risks our food security", scientists say.
Professor Cathie Martin from John Innes Centre in Norwich said red and striped flowers were visited significantly more frequently than white or pink blooms. More flowers were visited per plant as well, she said.
Researchers from New Zealand also analysed how the stripy patterns were formed along the veins of the common snapdragon.
"Complex colour patterns such as spots and stripes are common in nature but the way they are formed is poorly understood," said Dr Kathy Schwinn of the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research.
"We found that one signal comes from the veins of the petals and one from the skin of the petals, the epidermis. Where these signals intersect, the production of red anthocyanin pigments is induced."
Anthocyanins are plant pigments which colour red, purple and blue fruits and flowers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11520117
Bumblebees prefer stripes and red flowers, research suggests
Gardeners are being encouraged to grow striped flowers to encourage bumblebee populations, after research suggested the insects are most attracted to them.
Stripes on petal veins direct bumblebees to the flower's "central landing platform" and entrance to gather nectar and pollen.
Researchers also found that red flowers were also attractive to bees.
Bees play a key role in agriculture by pollinating crops.
The scientists say that growing especially inviting plants could be a way for people to help stem what has been called a "catastrophic" decline in UK bumblebee populations.
Stripes and spots
The research was to understand how pollinator decline can been halted, as a reduction in numbers can be "economically damaging and risks our food security", scientists say.
Professor Cathie Martin from John Innes Centre in Norwich said red and striped flowers were visited significantly more frequently than white or pink blooms. More flowers were visited per plant as well, she said.
Researchers from New Zealand also analysed how the stripy patterns were formed along the veins of the common snapdragon.
"Complex colour patterns such as spots and stripes are common in nature but the way they are formed is poorly understood," said Dr Kathy Schwinn of the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research.
"We found that one signal comes from the veins of the petals and one from the skin of the petals, the epidermis. Where these signals intersect, the production of red anthocyanin pigments is induced."
Anthocyanins are plant pigments which colour red, purple and blue fruits and flowers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11520117
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
The New York bees that made red honey
Beekeepers in New York have been left with red honey after their bees feasted at a local cherry factory.
By Jon Swaine, New York 12:00AM GMT 02 Dec 2010 Comment
The bee enthusiasts, based around Red Hook, Brooklyn, were left confused after inspecting their hives to find a thick, scarlet substance that they compared to cough syrup.
One, who had the substance tested, found it contained Red Dye Number 40, a food colouring, which is also found in maraschino cherry juice.
It is thought that local bees enjoyed visits to the vats at the nearby Dell's Maraschino Cherries Company before returning to their hives. 8)
One of the keepers, Cerise Mayo – whose name translates to "Cherry" in French – told The New York Times: "I didn't want to believe it. I thought maybe it was coming from some kind of weird tree."
David Selig, another whose hives were affected, said of his bees: "When the sun is a bit down, they glow red in the evenings. They were slightly fluorescent." The owners of the company have hired Andrew Coté, the head of the New York City Beekeepers Association, to rid their factory of the insects.
"Bees will forage from any sweet liquid in their flight path for up to three miles," Mr Coté told the newspaper.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... honey.html
Beekeepers in New York have been left with red honey after their bees feasted at a local cherry factory.
By Jon Swaine, New York 12:00AM GMT 02 Dec 2010 Comment
The bee enthusiasts, based around Red Hook, Brooklyn, were left confused after inspecting their hives to find a thick, scarlet substance that they compared to cough syrup.
One, who had the substance tested, found it contained Red Dye Number 40, a food colouring, which is also found in maraschino cherry juice.
It is thought that local bees enjoyed visits to the vats at the nearby Dell's Maraschino Cherries Company before returning to their hives. 8)
One of the keepers, Cerise Mayo – whose name translates to "Cherry" in French – told The New York Times: "I didn't want to believe it. I thought maybe it was coming from some kind of weird tree."
David Selig, another whose hives were affected, said of his bees: "When the sun is a bit down, they glow red in the evenings. They were slightly fluorescent." The owners of the company have hired Andrew Coté, the head of the New York City Beekeepers Association, to rid their factory of the insects.
"Bees will forage from any sweet liquid in their flight path for up to three miles," Mr Coté told the newspaper.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... honey.html
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- Aug 10, 2005
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- 11,990
Is it going to be a man made apiageddon, after all?
:shock:
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
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- Eblana
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
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Globalisation and agriculture industry exacerbating bee decline, says UN
UN report says massing bees in huge hives to address 'colony collapse disorder' only helps pests and diseases breed
Fiona Harvey The Guardian, Thursday 10 March 2011
Globalisation is killing bees, as bee pests and diseases are being passed swiftly around the world thanks to the opening up of trade, says a UN study. Attempts to industrialise pollination are making the problem even worse, the authors found.
Unexplained bee deaths have become an increasing issue around the world in the past five years, a phenomenon labelled "colony collapse disorder". Bees in the US, Europe and Asia have been affected, though it is hard to gather reliable data on how many of them died. Some bee colonies die off naturally all the time, chiefly in winter, but the scale of the demise reported by beekeepers has prompted governments and scientists to examine why bees appear to be under threat, and in some cases to try to get around the problem by changing the ways bees are kept.
But attempts by the agricultural industry to halt the fall in bee numbers through breeding programmes and massing bees in huge hives are only exacerbating the problem, a UN official told the Guardian, because industrialised hives create the ideal breeding conditions for some of the very pests and fungal diseases seemingly responsible for many of the bee deaths. Moving the hives from farm to farm to encourage pollination then spreads the diseases further.
"We are creating the ideal conditions in the man-made hives that promote pests chemical contamination and other factors," the official said. "This is the irony and [it is] not just confined to bees – one thinks of natural forests versus plantations and monoculture crops [which are also more susceptible to disease]."
The UN Environment Programme concluded in the report – titled Global Bee Colony Disorders and Other Threats To Insect Pollinators – that "more than a dozen factors" were behind the bee deaths, including air pollution, new fast-spreading fungal diseases and varieties of parasites such as the varroa mite, as well as the loss of habitat for wild flowers in intensively farmed areas.
The increased use of pesticides, including broad spectrum and systemic pesticides, which are absorbed by plants and can be expressed in pollen and nectar, appears to be another important factor, according to the UN. It said that when some pesticides are allowed to combine, they form a potentially lethal cocktail that can damage bees' sense of direction and memory.
The scientists were unable to pinpoint which were the most important factors, suggesting instead that more research was needed. Last year a £10m British research project was launched to study the decline of bees.
Researchers are concerned that the loss in numbers of pollinators, given the growing global population, could lead to serious problems with food supply in the medium term. Of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world's food, more than 70 are pollinated by bees, contributing about $200bn a year to the global economy.
Achim Steiner, the executive director of UNEP, said: "The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century. Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less dependent on nature's services in a world of close to seven billion people".
The report suggested that as many as 20,000 flowering plant species upon which bees depend could go extinct, if conservation efforts failed. Air pollution is also making it harder for bees to find the plants – scents that could carry 800m in the 19th century may travel only about 200m today, which impairs bees' ability to find food.
Martin Smith, the president of the British Beekeepers Association, welcomed the UNEP report, and said: "The BBKA calls on the UK government not only to take action to protect existing habitats but to find the ways and means to create new habitats beneficial to bees and other pollinators. We urge increased planting of wild flower margins around agricultural fields and also stronger guidance to local authorities on increasing flowering trees and wild flower planting in towns and cities."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ee-decline
UN report says massing bees in huge hives to address 'colony collapse disorder' only helps pests and diseases breed
Fiona Harvey The Guardian, Thursday 10 March 2011
Globalisation is killing bees, as bee pests and diseases are being passed swiftly around the world thanks to the opening up of trade, says a UN study. Attempts to industrialise pollination are making the problem even worse, the authors found.
Unexplained bee deaths have become an increasing issue around the world in the past five years, a phenomenon labelled "colony collapse disorder". Bees in the US, Europe and Asia have been affected, though it is hard to gather reliable data on how many of them died. Some bee colonies die off naturally all the time, chiefly in winter, but the scale of the demise reported by beekeepers has prompted governments and scientists to examine why bees appear to be under threat, and in some cases to try to get around the problem by changing the ways bees are kept.
But attempts by the agricultural industry to halt the fall in bee numbers through breeding programmes and massing bees in huge hives are only exacerbating the problem, a UN official told the Guardian, because industrialised hives create the ideal breeding conditions for some of the very pests and fungal diseases seemingly responsible for many of the bee deaths. Moving the hives from farm to farm to encourage pollination then spreads the diseases further.
"We are creating the ideal conditions in the man-made hives that promote pests chemical contamination and other factors," the official said. "This is the irony and [it is] not just confined to bees – one thinks of natural forests versus plantations and monoculture crops [which are also more susceptible to disease]."
The UN Environment Programme concluded in the report – titled Global Bee Colony Disorders and Other Threats To Insect Pollinators – that "more than a dozen factors" were behind the bee deaths, including air pollution, new fast-spreading fungal diseases and varieties of parasites such as the varroa mite, as well as the loss of habitat for wild flowers in intensively farmed areas.
The increased use of pesticides, including broad spectrum and systemic pesticides, which are absorbed by plants and can be expressed in pollen and nectar, appears to be another important factor, according to the UN. It said that when some pesticides are allowed to combine, they form a potentially lethal cocktail that can damage bees' sense of direction and memory.
The scientists were unable to pinpoint which were the most important factors, suggesting instead that more research was needed. Last year a £10m British research project was launched to study the decline of bees.
Researchers are concerned that the loss in numbers of pollinators, given the growing global population, could lead to serious problems with food supply in the medium term. Of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world's food, more than 70 are pollinated by bees, contributing about $200bn a year to the global economy.
Achim Steiner, the executive director of UNEP, said: "The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century. Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less dependent on nature's services in a world of close to seven billion people".
The report suggested that as many as 20,000 flowering plant species upon which bees depend could go extinct, if conservation efforts failed. Air pollution is also making it harder for bees to find the plants – scents that could carry 800m in the 19th century may travel only about 200m today, which impairs bees' ability to find food.
Martin Smith, the president of the British Beekeepers Association, welcomed the UNEP report, and said: "The BBKA calls on the UK government not only to take action to protect existing habitats but to find the ways and means to create new habitats beneficial to bees and other pollinators. We urge increased planting of wild flower margins around agricultural fields and also stronger guidance to local authorities on increasing flowering trees and wild flower planting in towns and cities."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ee-decline
Analogue Boy
Bar 6
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2005
- Messages
- 13,547
Bargain of the week as I was looking around Sainsbury's supermarket and spotted Bee Hotels for just £3.99. I was thinking of making my own but these were cheaper than garden cane I was thinking of using so I bought two. Nice little boxes with instructions, fixtures and fittings. All that is needed is some moss or hamster bedding to put in the bottom.
I believe it's Mason bees that'll use these...and maybe wasps but's them's the risks you have to take to help keep the world pollinated.
I believe it's Mason bees that'll use these...and maybe wasps but's them's the risks you have to take to help keep the world pollinated.
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
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- 58,263
- Location
- Eblana
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
- Messages
- 58,263
- Location
- Eblana
Well this could go in jobsworths as well but its about bees really and a beekeeper who wouldn't let the system win.
FelixAntonius
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2001
- Messages
- 1,181
I wish we had an Act like that in the UK!!!!!!!
There's no compensation for the UK bee keeper, if bees need to be destroyed..........
There's no compensation for the UK bee keeper, if bees need to be destroyed..........
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Bees on a plane panic as two hives swarm business class cabin
Terrified airline passengers panicked when two hives of bees smuggled onto a plane for a flight across Russia escaped in mid-air and began swarming around the cabin.
By Kevin O'Flynn, Moscow
10:45AM BST 23 Aug 2011
The bees - sneaked on board in cardboard boxes - are understood to have become agitated in the pressurised cabin during the 10-hour Yakutia Airline flight to Moscow from Blagoveshchensk near Russia’s border with China.
The trafficker - who has not been named by the airline - claims an airport official at Blagoveshchensk had asked him to carry the boxes to Moscow where he would be met at the airport.
Official airport documents quoted a passenger as saying that the trafficker was “slightly drunk.”
Air hostesses eventually managed to seal the bees inside the wardrobe in the flight’s business section by sealing it with sticky tape.
But when the plane arrived at its next destination, Barcelona, a new crew discovered that the fumigation had not been completely successful with five bees still on the plane, Russian newspapers reported.
Now the carrier could be stung with a massive £100,000 bill for having the fumigate the Boeing 757 jet and to compensate for the delays caused to the plane’s ongoing journey to Spain.
The incident raises concerns about flight safety on Russian internal flights as well as the impunity of airport officials.
Baggage handlers in Blagoveshchensk told a Russian newspaper that a senior airport official could “carry on board anything he likes.”
A famous Russian circus act, the Zapashny brothers, asked if they could bring a caged white tiger cub into the cabin with them. The airport management did not immediately turn down the request and was still considering, Rossiskaya Gazeta reported last week.
In the 1990s, it was not unheard of for passengers to bring animals, in particular farm animals, into the cabin on internal flights when regulation was more lax than today. A famous Soviet film “Mimino” shows a helicopter pilot delivering sheep and a cow.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/trave ... cabin.html
Terrified airline passengers panicked when two hives of bees smuggled onto a plane for a flight across Russia escaped in mid-air and began swarming around the cabin.
By Kevin O'Flynn, Moscow
10:45AM BST 23 Aug 2011
The bees - sneaked on board in cardboard boxes - are understood to have become agitated in the pressurised cabin during the 10-hour Yakutia Airline flight to Moscow from Blagoveshchensk near Russia’s border with China.
The trafficker - who has not been named by the airline - claims an airport official at Blagoveshchensk had asked him to carry the boxes to Moscow where he would be met at the airport.
Official airport documents quoted a passenger as saying that the trafficker was “slightly drunk.”
Air hostesses eventually managed to seal the bees inside the wardrobe in the flight’s business section by sealing it with sticky tape.
But when the plane arrived at its next destination, Barcelona, a new crew discovered that the fumigation had not been completely successful with five bees still on the plane, Russian newspapers reported.
Now the carrier could be stung with a massive £100,000 bill for having the fumigate the Boeing 757 jet and to compensate for the delays caused to the plane’s ongoing journey to Spain.
The incident raises concerns about flight safety on Russian internal flights as well as the impunity of airport officials.
Baggage handlers in Blagoveshchensk told a Russian newspaper that a senior airport official could “carry on board anything he likes.”
A famous Russian circus act, the Zapashny brothers, asked if they could bring a caged white tiger cub into the cabin with them. The airport management did not immediately turn down the request and was still considering, Rossiskaya Gazeta reported last week.
In the 1990s, it was not unheard of for passengers to bring animals, in particular farm animals, into the cabin on internal flights when regulation was more lax than today. A famous Soviet film “Mimino” shows a helicopter pilot delivering sheep and a cow.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/trave ... cabin.html
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2009
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- 217
I watched a documentary about a year ago about some man who brought 12 queen bees from africas to america, its was thought the species would make more honey.
But some dopey worker removed the small vents which left the queens trapped and all the bees disppeared. The bees multiplied and many people have have had to call in specialists to remove massive hives from their lofts.
Seemed a waste throwing away all that honey.
But some dopey worker removed the small vents which left the queens trapped and all the bees disppeared. The bees multiplied and many people have have had to call in specialists to remove massive hives from their lofts.
Seemed a waste throwing away all that honey.
ramonmercado
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ramonmercado
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Honeybees tell hornet predators to buzz off
By Victoria Gill, Science reporter, BBC Nature
Asian honeybees signal to their enemies - bee-eating hornets - to let them know they have been spotted.
An international team of scientists watched the bees as they guarded the entrance to their hive.
The researchers described how the bees shook their abdomens when a hornet approached, a signal that triggered the hornet to retreat.
They published their findings in the journal Animal behaviour.
Researchers already knew of this "characteristic shaking signal", in which all the guards bees simultaneously vibrate their abdomens from side-to-side for a few seconds when a hornet approaches the colony.
In the wild, this produces a spectacular "Mexican wave" of vibrating bees.
This study, carried out on a small bee hive, revealed the hornets (Vespa velutina) responded directly to the bees' shaking signal.
Warned wasps would retreat from the colony and try to catch bees in flight instead.
To find this out, the researchers tethered live hornets to lengths of wire and held them at a variety of distances from the hive entrance.
The closer the tethered hornet was held to the hive, the more intensely the bee guards shook their bodies.
To confirm that the bees were specifically "talking to" the hornets with this signal, the team carried out the same tethering experiment with a harmless butterfly species (Papilio xuthus).
This insect is slightly larger than the hornet and has very similar yellow and black markings.
Despite the similarity, the bees did not respond to the butterflies, no matter how close they came to the hive.
The researchers say this is an example of insect prey communicating with their predators.
"Our study proved that it is a real signal that the predator responds to," lead researcher Dr Benjamin Oldroyd from the University of Sydney told BBC Nature.
This communication, he explained, benefits both the bees and the hornets.
"The bees can back up their signal by killing the hornet if it lands," the scientist explained.
By reacting to the bees' signal, the hornet avoids a rather grisly demise, as the research team described in their paper.
"If a hornet lands at the hive entrance," they wrote, "it is pounced on by the guards, which then form a dense ball of up to 500 bees around the hornet."
This kills the hornet with a combination of heat and suffocation.
Dr Stephen Martin, an expert in social insects from the University of Sheffield told BBC Nature that the bees' signal was a "classic co-evolution scenario".
"The [Asian honeybee] has co-evolved with the hornet and the two species are in this continuous arms race," he said.
Honeybee colonies, he explained, are a good food source for the wasps.
But as the bees have learned to defend themselves, the wasps "have had to change their approach to the bees".
"Rather than land on the colony, the wasps have to take the bees on the wing, which is much harder," Dr Martin explained.
Dr Oldroyd added: "Honey bees are a wonderful model organism for addressing fundamental questions in behaviour, social organisation, self-organising systems, evolution and genetics.
"This is just one more example of where honey bees have shed new light on an old question."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16981702
By Victoria Gill, Science reporter, BBC Nature
Asian honeybees signal to their enemies - bee-eating hornets - to let them know they have been spotted.
An international team of scientists watched the bees as they guarded the entrance to their hive.
The researchers described how the bees shook their abdomens when a hornet approached, a signal that triggered the hornet to retreat.
They published their findings in the journal Animal behaviour.
Researchers already knew of this "characteristic shaking signal", in which all the guards bees simultaneously vibrate their abdomens from side-to-side for a few seconds when a hornet approaches the colony.
In the wild, this produces a spectacular "Mexican wave" of vibrating bees.
This study, carried out on a small bee hive, revealed the hornets (Vespa velutina) responded directly to the bees' shaking signal.
Warned wasps would retreat from the colony and try to catch bees in flight instead.
To find this out, the researchers tethered live hornets to lengths of wire and held them at a variety of distances from the hive entrance.
The closer the tethered hornet was held to the hive, the more intensely the bee guards shook their bodies.
To confirm that the bees were specifically "talking to" the hornets with this signal, the team carried out the same tethering experiment with a harmless butterfly species (Papilio xuthus).
This insect is slightly larger than the hornet and has very similar yellow and black markings.
Despite the similarity, the bees did not respond to the butterflies, no matter how close they came to the hive.
The researchers say this is an example of insect prey communicating with their predators.
"Our study proved that it is a real signal that the predator responds to," lead researcher Dr Benjamin Oldroyd from the University of Sydney told BBC Nature.
This communication, he explained, benefits both the bees and the hornets.
"The bees can back up their signal by killing the hornet if it lands," the scientist explained.
By reacting to the bees' signal, the hornet avoids a rather grisly demise, as the research team described in their paper.
"If a hornet lands at the hive entrance," they wrote, "it is pounced on by the guards, which then form a dense ball of up to 500 bees around the hornet."
This kills the hornet with a combination of heat and suffocation.
Dr Stephen Martin, an expert in social insects from the University of Sheffield told BBC Nature that the bees' signal was a "classic co-evolution scenario".
"The [Asian honeybee] has co-evolved with the hornet and the two species are in this continuous arms race," he said.
Honeybee colonies, he explained, are a good food source for the wasps.
But as the bees have learned to defend themselves, the wasps "have had to change their approach to the bees".
"Rather than land on the colony, the wasps have to take the bees on the wing, which is much harder," Dr Martin explained.
Dr Oldroyd added: "Honey bees are a wonderful model organism for addressing fundamental questions in behaviour, social organisation, self-organising systems, evolution and genetics.
"This is just one more example of where honey bees have shed new light on an old question."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16981702
ramonmercado
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Do they tell them to buzz off away from my flower?
ramonmercado
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ramonmercado
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ramonmercado
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I knew that farmers would turn out to be the villains of the piece.
ramonmercado
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More on the hornets. Rather cruel towards hornets actually. How about inserting a BBC reporter into a bee hive instead?
ramonmercado
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More bad news. Full text atn link.
ramonmercado
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Mythopoeika
I am a meat popsicle
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- Inside a starship, watching puny humans from afar
I'm frankly surprised that progress in this area has been so slow.
Spudrick68
Justified & Ancient
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- 3,646
I'm not personally. I suspect there is too much money for companies who produce the sprays etc... Like we could have massively reduced our dependency on oil years ago I also suspect.
ramonmercado
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George Galloway has proposed an early day motion to repeal the laws of gravity.