Thanks for including the links — what a wealth of information! Thank you so much! A problem in urban areas is the obsession with perfect lawns and flowerbeds. These require pesticides, mowing, etc. You can be fined for leaving an area natural. Planting bushes and leaving the underbrush undisturbed helps.
Yeah, that can be tough. As you say, leaving the unnatural areas in a hidden spot behind some bushes and such can help keep piece with the community and neighbors. You know, it really takes pressure off us to not have visually perfect gardens. Now we can boast that our plants are nibbled upon for the health and beauty of our planet. Thanks for keeping us informed. Enjoyed your little video of bee returning home!
Bumblebee - Wikipedia
Yes, celebrate the holes in your leaves! Thank you for speaking out and up for this very fundamental way to support plants: As a keeper of feral caught honey bees, I always emphasize in my presentations to the public that one of the most simple ways they can support diverse agriculture, soil protecting agriculture and avoid the fossil fuel chemical intensive Ag model is to vote with your dollars—buy organic produce. In general, these growers have ALL pollinators more in their purview as important to ecosystem supported models.
This aspect of how we all choose to eat is fundamental and rarely mentioned when discussing pollinator declines. Every decision that each of us makes daily for what to do — and what not to do — in all aspects of our daily consumption and production and disposal does make a difference, because everything in the web of life on our planet truly is connected.
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This is a great post. Lawson, I have been following the plight of all bees in general for several years now. I recently read that there have now been several species added to the endangered species list.
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This saddens me so much. I love this article and that you have written a book soon to released. The release date excited me because it is on my birthday! I would love To have a signed copy. Please let me know how it can get one? Thank you so much for this knowledge and insight into nature of the gems in our world.
Thanks so much for your note and excitement about bees and my book, Shawna! Soil is alive and provides life. Thanks, Susan — your point is well-taken.
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I appreciate your note, though, and will think about different ways to describe it next time. I thought most of the holes in the ground were ants or earth worms will look much closer this summer.
I see fewer bumble bees than when I was young, it worries me. I am trying to teach my grandkids not to have a freak out attack whenever they see bees or any insect, for that matter. Fear is ou biggest enemy, I think. And I, too, use to think those were all ant hills. I totally agree that unfounded fear is the problem, and fear is also heavily marketed by companies who profit off scaring people into spraying and tearing nature down. I would be interested to know what data can I read to support your claim that honey bees compete with native bees for floral resources, or is that an assumption?
Thanks for your question. Concerns about competition for limited resources are widespread among scientists, particularly in areas with natural habitat — but also in developments that border natural habitat. Here is a sampling:. From German researchers, on red mason bees and introduced honeybees: One thing the bee keepers I interviewed were very specific about was the facts of how we try to keep our landscapes neat and free of what many consider weeds, but in reality, are necessary for the abundance of our world, and in the process, we destroy much bee habitat.
I started thinking about how dandelions and many others we call weeds, are actually quite pretty, even beautiful. Those not involved in food production need to be re-taught in school how important some things are to bees survival and in the process, to ours. I totally agree with the beekeeper you interviewed. If we had more of everything, there would be a lot more to go around for sure.
Just having the flowers is not enough for the insects. As far as I can tell, the type of equipment that you use is of no more concern to the bees than is the color that you paint your boxes. To each their own! Each of these groups at times has healthy hives, and each experiences collapses. When nature is benevolent with abundant bloom, any damn fool can successfully keep bees; when times get tough, better beekeepers sell bees to those who are whining.
I choose to pay attention to the quiet beekeepers who sell bees and make honey year after year! I attribute success more to good stock and proper husbandry, rather than to any particular equipment, treatment, or philosophy. Believe me, if anything better had been invented, commercial beekeepers would have adopted it in a heartbeat! Use whatever you want—top bar hives a current fad with a window are a kick for the beginner who just wants to observe comb building closely.
In fact, a number of cheapskate beekeepers cut costs by making the bees draw foundationless combs. The only argument in those days was whether or not to prophylactically treat with antibiotics for AFB. The commercial migratory pollinators should be thought of as hard-working heroes, and a critical player in agricultural production. And as soon as you set up an apiary of a few dozen hives, you have created an unnaturally crowded situation—and are now engaged in a concentrated livestock operation.
Glad that I got that off my chest! Some may make the argument that by treating your bees that you are working against nature by propping up weak stock that should be allowed to die. The reality is that it serves no purpose whatsoever to allow colonies to unnecessarily die from varroa, and if you do so, you actually do a disservice to surrounding beekeepers, as their colonies will quickly pick up the mites from your collapsing hives.
The ensuing domino effect can wipe out all the hives in a neighborhood! The point to keep in mind is that selective breeding takes place at the genetic and epigenetic level, rather than at the worker bee level. Genetics are carried by the queens—there is absolutely no reason to allow the death of all those innocent workers in a potentially productive colony just to make your point. The only bees that need to die are the queen and drones; both are easy to intentionally kill at the appropriate time during swarming season.
Requeen with resistant stock, best obtained locally. The ultimate evolutionary result is exactly the same as if you had allowed mite-infested colonies to die, but you get honey in return rather than a bunch of deadouts. To me, good husbandry is all about keeping your colonies alive and healthy! I find it of great benefit to intentionally question my own thinking and assumptions, so as to avoid falling into comfortable complacency of thought and habit. If I have provoked you by challenging the common misconceptions above, then perhaps you may become a better beekeeper for it!
Beekeepers historically enjoy pettifogging over details of management, but such minutiae are of little import to beginners, who just want to learn how to keep a couple of hives of bees alive. Bees thrive on good forage, and get sick or die when forage is poor. The take home message is that colony health is nearly completely dependent upon good nutrition, with pollen being the most important source of critical nutrients notably protein.
The researchers measured the levels of Deformed Wing Virus in newly-emerged adult bees, and then kept them in cages, placing them under one of three protein feeding regimes—no protein, pollen substitute, or natural pollen. The results were eye-opening! DWV levels skyrocketed nearly x in the bees that did not receive protein, rose and then fell in those fed pollen supplement, and completely disappeared in the bees fed pollen.
These results hammer home the point as to how important it is for newly-emerged bees to have access to nutritious pollen. During the spring and summer, the average lifespan for adult workers not parasitized by varroa or nosema is about 36 days Harris —it is even shorter if they are parasitized. Honey bees evolved in the tropics, and can only survive in temperate regions if they have a warm, dry cavity in which to cluster and raise brood. Chilling stresses bees and shortens their lifespan and resistance to disease see Old Bees, Cold Bees, and Sick Bees 2.
Colonies benefit by being kept in full sun unless the temperature exceeds broodnest temperature. Hives in full sun have fewer problems with varroa, tracheal mite, nosema, chalkbrood, and small hive beetle, and winter better. I also find that colonies in full sun are much more amendable to being worked, and sting far less than those in the shade an important point for beginners.
Ideally, face the hive entrance toward the morning sun, and provide a winter entrance near the cluster so that they can quickly take advantage of flight opportunities. The type, size, shape, or color of the cavity makes little difference so long as it is dry and not drafty. The cluster naturally works up and down vertically to take advantage of heat convection, so bees in stacked hive bodies will likely produce more honey and winter better than those in horizontal hives.
Keep bees in tight boxes with good sun exposure. Make sure that there are always combs of honey available as fuel for keeping the cluster warm. My Sick Bees series has detailed how honey bees are in evolutionary flux as they evolve to deal with a host of recently introduced parasites, notably the varroa mite and its associated viruses.
Great progress has been made in the development of parasite-resistant stocks, notably the Russian and VSH strains developed by the ARS Baton Rouge Bee Lab—both of these strains are maintained without any treatments against parasites. There are also a number of beekeepers who are successfully breeding regionally-adapted parasite-resistant stocks I will be writing about this in the near future.
First prompted by what is done in aviation, I applied the laws of air resistance to insects, and I arrived, with Mr. Others say Swiss gas dynamicist Jacob Ackeret — did the calculations. The calculations that purported to show that bumblebees cannot fly are based upon a simplified linear treatment of oscillating aerofoils. The method assumes small amplitude oscillations without flow separation.
This ignores the effect of dynamic stall an airflow separation inducing a large vortex above the wing , which briefly produces several times the lift of the aerofoil in regular flight. More sophisticated aerodynamic analysis shows the bumblebee can fly because its wings encounter dynamic stall in every oscillation cycle. Additionally, John Maynard Smith , a noted biologist with a strong background in aeronautics, has pointed out that bumblebees would not be expected to sustain flight, as they would need to generate too much power given their tiny wing area.
However, in aerodynamics experiments with other insects, he found that viscosity at the scale of small insects meant even their small wings can move a very large volume of air relative to their size, and this reduces the power required to sustain flight by an order of magnitude. The orchestral interlude Flight of the Bumblebee was composed c. It represents the turning of Prince Guidon into a bumblebee so he can fly away to visit his father, Tsar Saltan, in the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan , [] although the music may reflect the flight of a bluebottle rather than a bumblebee.
This early attempt at " surround sound " was unsuccessful, and the music was excluded from the film's release. Or The Bumble Bee , under the pseudonym "T. Where Watts wrote "How skilfully she builds her cell!
47 thoughts on “How to Really Save the Bees”
How neat she spreads the wax! Bumblebees appear as characters, often eponymously, in children's books. The surname Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series — is an old name for bumblebee. Rowling said the name "seemed to suit the headmaster, because one of his passions is music and I imagined him walking around humming to himself".
Tolkien , in his poem Errantry , also used the name Dumbledor, but for a large bee-like creature. Al-Ghani ; Ben the Bumble Bee: How do bees make honey? Bumblebee is the name of a prominent character in the Transformers franchise. His name denotes his black-on-yellow vehicle paint job, directly referencing the bee genus because of its black and yellow stripes. Bumblebee is also the name of an automotive racing stripe that wraps around the grill instead of down the centre of the vehicle; it can be found mainly on Chevrolet Camaros which happens to be the Transformers Autobot's most popular vehicle mode.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the film, see Bumblebee film. For other uses, see Bumblebee disambiguation. For other uses, see Bombus disambiguation. List of bumblebee species. Characteristics of common wasps and bees. Bumblebee communication and nectar robbing. A bumblebee " nectar robbing " a flower. List of crop plants pollinated by bees. Flight of the Bumblebee. DNA analysis was used to estimate how many colonies these individuals came from.
Shorter Oxford English dictionary on historical principles. Transactions of the Philological Society 6: Retrieved 29 May Retrieved 25 May Archived from the original on 17 October Retrieved 28 May Molecular Biology and Evolution. Anthophila Provides Insights to Bee Evolution". Retrieved 20 February Bulletin of the Natural History Museum Entomology. Retrieved 30 May Archived from the original on 28 February Retrieved 23 February In South America, the world's largest bumblebee is at risk from imported rivals".
Bumblebees of the world". Retrieved 9 July Retrieved 12 February Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. University of California Press. Retrieved 14 February Journal of Experimental Biology. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Archived from the original on 22 September Retrieved 13 February Journal of Insect Conservation.
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Journal of Applied Ecology. Retrieved 5 January American Journal of Botany. Retrieved 18 February Retrieved 20 June Book of Insect Records. Retrieved 29 October Retrieved 19 April Jane Brockmann; Marc Naguib 30 January Advances in the Study of Behavior. Retrieved 6 January Journal of Comparative Physiology A. Once or many times? Archived from the original on 30 December Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Retrieved 19 February Vespidae , Hosts of Aphomia sociella L. Journal of the New York Entomological Society.
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. Pathogen spillover from commercial to wild populations". Pollinator pathogens, imported and distributed in bumblebee colonies". Journal of Applied Ecology: Retrieved 23 December Archived from the original on 19 February New research has emerged from the Universities of Dundee and St.
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Andrews which shows that accepted environmental levels of neonicotinoids impair bumblebee brain functionality and consequently negatively impact the performance of whole colonies. Retrieved 30 March Archived from the original on 24 December Retrieved 10 January The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
Retrieved 10 May The Guardian 18 May Retrieved 26 June Archived from the original on 16 February Retrieved 7 October It's also the kind of item that can come up in a cocktail party conversation when the subject turns to science or technology. Indeed, this myth has taken on a new life of its own as a piece of " urban folklore " on the Internet. Le Vol des Insectes. The conclusion was presumably based on the fact that the maximum possible lift produced by aircraft wings as small as a bumblebee's wings and traveling as slowly as a bee in flight would be much less than the weight of a bee.
Retrieved 9 April Retrieved 26 January A history of Russian music: Retrieved 3 April