and other Superbugs Even more health benefits from honey are being identified. The Guardian reports that Welsh scientists are collecting honey to help identify new antibacterial drugs.
The idea is not necessarily to use the honey itself, although the article notes that this is a common enough practice,
but rather to identify the plants that bees have been feeding on, and then isolate compounds that may be used to develop new drugs.
Its an urgent problem#Long-term, the research aims to point a way towards creating drugs through the plants rather than the honey itself.
Les Baillie professor of microbiology at Cardiff University, sees tackling bugs such as MRSA with new plant-based products as an urgent matter.
Roxanne Quimby and Burt Shavitz, Burts Bees Burt Shavitz was selling honey off the back of his pickup truck
Burts Bees now sells more than 100 skin and hair-care items, but it has quit making the candles that got the business started.
Bees#An estimated 400-600 fatalities a year. Elephants#An estimated 300-500 fatalities a year.
#Explosives and Pesticides Can Be detected by Using Bee Venom MIT scientists discover that bee venom can detect explosives and some pesticides.
Scientists from MIT have discovered that by coating carbon nanotubes in bee venom, they can create ultra-sensitive detectors for explosives such as TNT,
This means that bees and their stingers could become important to making better environmental sensors.
and fellow chemical engineers coated one-atom-thick tubes of carbon with protein fragments found in bee venom,
This is certainly a novel approach for using the proteins found in bee venom. It seems there are a number of potential uses for the poison,
Oh honey, quick! Get the camera!..I think Ill sleep here...As with most giraffes, they never really know what their role in life is...
and wildlife. 2. Contamination of Non-GE Crops Alfalfa plants are pollinated by bees, most of which can travel
Pesticides are making honey bees far more susceptible to disease, according to new research than links a new group of chemicals to the recent collapse in the bee population.
The US research, revealed in a new film about the disappearance of bees, found even tiny doses of neonicotinoids made the insects more susceptible to disease.
Already the beekeeping community is divided over the use of pesticides and the study has added to calls for a ban in Britain.
Globally the honey bee population has fallen in recent years, prompting fears for food security as the insect is vital for pollinating many major crops.
However UK scientists insisted that the decline of bees is due to a number of factors, such as disease or a lack of suitable food sources in the countryside,
and nectar and this is affecting bees. Research carried out by scientists at the US Department of agricultures Bee Research Laboratory,
revealed in new film The Strange Disappearance of the Bees, exposed two groups of bees to the common insect disease nosema.
The group that was exposed also to small doses of neonicotinoids were more likely to die.
Matt Shardlow, of insect charity Buglife, said most bee deaths in the UK are caused by disease.
which have shown that these chemicals could be the cause of the decline of bees and other wild pollinators,
However Norman Carreck, Scientific Director of the International Bee Research Association, said there is not enough evidence to link pesticides directly with the decline in bees.
approved by the Government, have proved that neonicotinoids do not harm bees and other insects if applied properly.
researchers reported Monday in a study confirming that the agriculturally important bees are being affected worldwide.
In recent years, experts have documented a disappearance of bees in what is called widely colony collapse disorder,
Cameron said#although smaller bees can accomplish the same effect if enough cluster on a single flower.
Pollinators such as bees and bats often have specific tongue lengths and pollination behaviors that have evolved
They have types of honey here you won t see anyplace else in the world, #he said.
a breakfast of goat s milk, wine, sage tea or coffee, honey and bread. Lunch was almost always beans (lentils, garbanzos), potatoes, greens (fennel, dandelion or a spinachlike green called horta) and whatever seasonal vegetables their garden produced;
For breakfast, she served local yogurt and honey from the 90-year-old beekeeper next door.
It is nontoxic to bees, ladybugs and other beneficial insects and therefore unique to agriculture and conventional pesticides.
#Use of common pesticide, Imidacloprid, linked to Bee Colony Collapse Imidacloprid is in a lot of commonly used products.
which adult bees abandon their hives. The study will appear in the June issue of the Bulletin of Insectology.
The significance of bees to agriculture cannot be underestimated##says Lu. And it apparently doesn t take much of the pesticide to affect the bees.
Our experiment included pesticide amounts below what is normally present in the environment.##Pinpointing the cause of the problem is crucial
because bees#beyond producing honey#are prime pollinators of roughly one-third of the crop species in the U s,
Bees can be exposed in two ways: through nectar from plants or through high-fructose corn syrup beekeepers use to feed their bees.
Since most U s.-grown corn has been treated with imidacloprid, it s also found in corn syrup.)In the summer of 2010, the researchers conducted an in situ study in Worcester County,
Over a 23-week period, they monitored bees in four different bee yards; each yard had treated four hives with different levels of imidacloprid
all the bees were alive. But after 23 weeks, 15 out of 16 of the imidacloprid-treated hives#94%#had died.
and young bees, with few dead bees nearby. When other conditions cause hive collapse#such as disease
or pests#many dead bees are typically found inside and outside the affected hives. Strikingly, said Lu,
what is used typically in crops or in areas where bees forage. Scientists, policymakers, farmers, and beekeepers, alarmed at the sudden losses of between 30%and 90%of honeybee colonies since 2006, have posed numerous theories as to the cause of the collapse,
such as pests, disease, pesticides, migratory beekeeping, or some combination of these factors. In situ Replication of Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder,#Chensheng Lu, Kenneth M. Warchol, Richard A. Callahan, Bulletin of Insectology, June 2012 LINK Share Thissubscribedel
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#Bees Self-Medicate when infected with some pathogens When faced with pathogenic fungi, bees line their hives with more propolis the waxy,
yellow substance seen here. Research from North carolina State university shows that honey bees self-medicate #when their colony is infected with a harmful fungus,
bringing in increased amounts of antifungal plant resins to ward off the pathogen The colony is willing to expend the energy
and effort of its worker bees to collect these resins, #says Dr. Michael Simone-Finstrom, a postdoctoral research scholar in NC State s Department of Entomology and lead author of a paper describing the research.
So clearly this behavior has evolved because the benefit to the colony exceeds the cost.##Wild honey bees normally line their hives with propolis,
a mixture of plant resins and wax that has antifungal and antibacterial properties. Domesticated honey bees also use propolis,
to fill in cracks in their hives. However, researchers found that, when faced with a fungal threat,
bees bring in significantly more propolis#45 percent more, on average. The bees also physically removed infected larvae that had been parasitized by the fungus
and were being used to create fungal spores. Researchers know propolis is an effective antifungal agent because they lined some hives with a propolis extract
And apparently bees can sometimes distinguish harmful fungi from harmless ones since colonies did not bring in increased amounts of propolis
Honey bee colonies infected with pathogenic bacteria did not bring in significantly more propolis #despite the fact that the propolis also has antibacterial properties.
#There may be a lesson here for domestic beekeepers. Historically, U s. beekeepers preferred colonies that used less of this resin,
because it is sticky and can be difficult to work with, #Simone-Finstrom says. Now we know that this is a characteristic worth promoting,
because it seems to offer the bees some natural defense.##LINK (Credit: Image courtesy of North carolina State university) Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati o
research on novelty-seeking honey bees indicates Some honey bees, too, are more likely than others to seek adventure.
Some honey bees, too, are more likely than others to seek adventure. The brains of these novelty-seeking bees exhibit distinct patterns of gene activity in molecular pathways known to be associated with thrill-seeking in humans,
researchers report The findings offer a new window on the inner life of the honey bee hive,
which once was viewed as a highly regimented colony of seemingly interchangeable workers taking on a few specific roles (nurse or forager,
Now it appears that individual honey bees actually differ in their desire or willingness to perform particular tasks,
These differences may be due, in part, to variability in the bees personalities, he said. In humans, differences in novelty-seeking are a component of personality,
#Robinson and his colleagues studied two behaviors that looked like novelty-seeking in honey bees:
When a colony of bees outgrows its living quarters, the hive divides and the swarm must find a suitable new home.
At this moment of crisis, a few intrepid bees#less than 5 percent of the swarm#take off to hunt for a hive.
These bees, called nest scouts, are on average 3. 4 times more likely than their peers to also become food scouts, the researchers found.
Not only do certain bees exhibit signs of novelty-seeking, he said, but their willingness or eagerness to go the extra mile#can be vital to the life of the hive.
The researchers wanted to determine the molecular basis for these differences in honey bee behavior.
#The researchers found thousands of distinct differences in gene activity in the brains of scouting and non-scouting bees.
the researchers subjected groups of bees to treatments that would increase or inhibit these chemicals in the brain.
Two treatments (with glutamate and octopamine) increased scouting in bees that had scouted not before. Blocking dopamine signaling decreased scouting behavior, the researchers found.
(and the amount of sweeteners and other garbage they usually contain) with buying a large tub of plain yogurt and mixing in honey, nuts, preserves,
but are supplied by honey farms in New york. If the bee population decreases due to pollution and contaminants,
and make it hard to source local honeys, #she said. She added that shipping in fresh water would raise the cost of production
Similarly, honey was guarded by bees and therefore was a treat, not a dietary staple. 6 Easy Ways to Eat More Fruits & Veggies Today, added sugar,
A pile of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile of bees ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect in colony collapse disorder a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U s. honeybee populations,
which are needed to pollinate many important crops. This new potential culprit is a bizarre and potentially devastating parasitic fly that has been taking over the bodies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in Northern California.
John Hafernik a biology professor at San francisco State university, had collected some belly-up bees from the ground underneath lights around the University s biology building.
But being absentminded an professor, #he noted in a prepared statement, I left them in a vial on my desk
there were all these fly pupae surrounding the bees, #he said. A fly (Apocephalus borealis) had inserted its eggs into the bees,
using their bodies as a home for its developing larvae. And the invaders had led somehow the bees from their hives to their deaths.
A detailed description of the newly documented relationship was published online Tuesday in PLOS ONE. The team performed a genetic analysis of the fly
Read more about colony collapse disorder in our feature Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees.#
#And with the discovery that this parasitic fly has been quietly killing bees in at least three areas,
Parasitic fly larva emerging from a dead bee s neck. Courtesy of John Hafernik The parasitic fly lays eggs in a bee s abdomen.
Several days later, the parasitized bee bumbles out of the hives often at night on a solo mission to nowhere.
These bees often fly toward light and wind up unable to control their own bodies. After a bee dies, as many as 13 fly larvae crawl out from the bee s neck.
The bees behavior seems similar to that of ants that are parasitized and then decapitated from within by other fly larvae from the Apocephalus genus
. When we observed the bees for some time the ones that were alive we found that they walked in circles, often with no sense of direction,#Andrew Core,
a graduate student who works with Hafernik and a co-author on the new paper, said in a prepared statement,
describing them as behaving something like a zombie.#(#Read about other parasites that turn their hosts into zombies in the article Zombie Creatures.#
#Bees from affected hives and the parasitizing flies and their larvae curiously also contained genetic traces of Nosema ceranae, another parasite,
The research team plans to track bees with radio tags and video cameras to see whether infected bees are leaving the hive willingly
or getting kicked out in the middle of the night and where the flies are finding the bees in which they lay their eggs.
We assume it s while the bees are out foraging because we don t see the flies hanging around the bee hives#Hafernik said.
But it s still a bit of a black hole in terms of where it s actually happening.##Most of the parasitized bees found so far have been foraging worker bees,
but even if other groups of bees within a hive are not becoming infected, a decline in the number of foragers in a hive could have a large impact on a hive as a whole.
Models of colony dynamics suggest that significant loss of foragers could cause rapid population decline and colony collapse,
#the researchers noted in their paper. Hafernik and his colleagues hope that the simple way they made their discovery will enable professional and amateur beekeepers to collect vital samples of bees that leave the hive at night#with a light trap
for instance and keep them around for a week or so to observe for any signs of emerging larvae.
Pinpointing the extent of this strange bee behavior could be key to stemming colony collapse disorder by possibly allowing keepers to isolate affected populations.
Over the years the Impact Lab s Top 10 Photo series have seen bee by over 1 million people in every country in the world.
The scientists also couldn t find this kind of transfer in experiments with mice and bees.#
But bees (as my brother can attest to), wasps and ants are popular too, accounting for a whopping 14%global insect consumption.
Eating bees is well worth being proud of. Also, I m a pescatarian so#)So, would you eat insects
Beekeeping for hobby & profit Anderson County Public library: Seed lending library Reading camp for struggling first grade readers ipad and e-Reader/Kindle classes Civil war re-enactment bivouac on back lawn, Dessert contest, scarecrow
#Robobees will pollinate crops instead of real bees As soon as 10 years from now these Robobees could artificially pollinate a field of crops.
The situation is so dire that in late June the White house gave a new task force just 180 days to devise a coping strategy to protect bees and other pollinators.
replacing bees. While there s no perfect solution, modern technology offers hope. Last year, Harvard university researchers led by engineering professor Robert Wood introduced the first Robobees,
bee-size robots with the ability to lift off the ground and hover midair when tethered to a power supply.
A Bee-Placement? The researchers believe that as soon as 10 years from now these Robobees could artificially pollinate a field of crops,
what s at stake, noting that the loss of bees and other speciesrequires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems,
even if many bees fail. Although Wood wrote that CCD and the threat it poses to agriculture were part of the original inspiration for creating a robotic bee,
the devices aren meant t to replace natural pollinators forever. We still need to focus on efforts to save these vital creatures.
Harvard s Kevin Ma spoke to Business Insider about the team s progress in building the bee-size robot since publishing its Science paper last year.
Last month, Greenpeace released a short video that imagines a future in which swarms of robotic bees have been deployed to save our planet after the real insects go extinct.
Will robot bees eventually be able to operate like honeybee hives to pollinate commercial crops? Ma:
They wouldn t have to collect nectar like real bees. They would just be transmitting pollen.
or swarms of bees have become known as swarmbots. How long will it be before we see the newspaper headline that reads:
#Scientists attach tiny sensors to bees to study decline in colonies Honey bee with sensor.
Scientists in Australia have devised a way to pinpoint the causes of the global die off of bees that pollinate a third of the world s crops:
Attach tiny sensors to 5, 000 honey bees, and follow where they fly. The sensors, each measuring 2. 5 millimeters by 2. 5 millimeters (0. 1 inch by 0. 1 inch),
contain radio frequency identification chips that broadcast each bee s location in real-time. The data is beamed to a server,
Over the past decade, millions of bees have died as entire beehives have turned suddenly into tombs, a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD.
Some studies indicating that a class of agricultural pesticides called neonicotinoids are responsible for bee deaths.
But none of those studies have involved tracking bees behavior in real time in the real world. That s where scientists at Australia s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) come in.
If the sensor-equipped bees transmit data indicating that they have changed their behavior, say, by flying a circuitous path to and from the beehive,
Researchers suspect that some pesticides may interfere with bees ability to orient themselves as they fly and forage.
as bees are social insects that communicate the location of pollen to other bees in the beehive.
If the bee sensors indicate that s happening, scientists can immediately go to the bees location
and investigate whether the crops and wildflowers in the area contain pesticides, and if so, how much.
The 5, 000 bees are being released in the Australian island state of Tasmania. If we can model their movements
So how do you attach a sensor to a bee? Put them in a refrigerator.
and the bees then wake up and return to their hives. The sensors appear to have no impact on the bee s ability to fly
and carry out its normal duties, de Souza said. The project will be watched closely in the rest of the world,
particularly in Europe where a recent study found that demand for pollination is fast outstripping the supply of bees.
and other pollutants along with the homogenization of the bees'diet as farmers increasingly use hives to pollinate monoculture (one crop) fields —
eating just one kind of food is not good for most animals including bees.</</p><p>The combined effects of these stressors are thought to dampen the bees'immune systems making them more susceptible to disease and literally collapse.</
</p><p>The chytrid fungus(<em>Batrachochytium dendrobatidis</em>)— which infects frogs and other amphibians by way of their skin —
#Ancient Bees May have Been Wiped out with the Dinosaurs The ancestors of modern carpenter bees may have vanished from Earth roughly 65 million years ago around the same time the dinosaurs were wiped out a new study finds.
Peering back into the lineages of the bees the scientists noticed something unusual with all four groups beginning roughly 65 million years ago at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods.
Rehan and her colleagues did not study possible relationships between the bee and dinosaur extinctions but said the similar timings act as secondary support for both theories.
To understand where in time evolutionary changes were happening the researchers used fossils of other types of bees as reference points.
We used fossils of other lineages of bees to make inferences and calibrate time Rehan explained.
The new research suggests the bee extinction lasted about 10 million years she added. The findings should generate great interest in the field said John Ascher assistant professor in the department of biological sciences at the National University of Singapore
Still the findings could shed some light on the declines that are being observed in current bee populations Rehan said.
Bees have gone through hard times and negative effects have occurred Rehan said. We can maybe learn from the past
After analyzing the structure of these grains the researchers suggested that the associated plants werepollinated by insects most likely beetles as bees did not evolve until about 100 million years later.
However about 60 percent of this pollen came from plants that are pollinated by insects such as bees suggesting they may inadvertently have hitched along in a bee product such as beeswax instead of getting intentionally added to the medicine.
'When bees are forced to interact with only their left antennas they have trouble bee-having:
Just as humans shake with their right hands bees also greet each other by predominantly using their right antennas.
when pairs ofâ bees interact solely with their right antennas they approach each other and begin interacting more quickly
so that their stingers and mandibles are pointed at the other bees the study found. Favoring the right
The findings suggest that bees prefer to use their right antennas in social situations to better relate to one another
They then placed pairs of bees into a small container and filmed their interactions. Surprisingly bees with only their right antenna behaved almost identically to those with both antennas intact the researchers found.
Both groups were more likely to behave aggressively toward bees from another colony for example. But bees with only the left antenna appeared unable to distinguish between bees from their own colony and those from an unfamiliar one according to the study.
Remarkable abilities This is just the latest finding to hint at the remarkable abilities of honeybees
which have brains that contain only 960000 neurons (compared with about 86 billion neurons in an average human brain).
The study suggests that the bees'brains are wired asymmetrically as are human brains. Until quite recently neuroscientists believed that brain asymmetry
 The result is interesting as it provides provocative information to suggest that there might be lateralization in the bee brain as there is in vertebrate brains said Gene Robinson a researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who wasn't involved in the study.
and Bees Get Depressed (New world Library 2013). The views expressed are those of the author
#Bees Get a Buzz from Flowers'Electrical Fields Everyone knows that bees buzz around flowers in their quest for nectar.
And scientists have known for years that bees'flapping wings create a positive electrical charge of up to 200 volts as they flit from flower to flower according to a news release.
But can the bees detect flowers'electrical charge? While animals like sharks are known to sense electrical fields nobody had ever found that an insect could do the same Scientificamerican reports.
To test the bees'sensitivity researchers filled a room with artificial flowers: Half of the flowers were charged electrically
The bees quickly learned to visit only the electrically charged flowers and to not waste their energy visiting flowers with no electrical charge.
But when the electrical charges were switched off the bees once again visited flowers randomly suggesting that they had been reacting to the electrical charges.
Bees and flowers of course co-evolved with a longstanding symbiotic relationship: The bees depend on flowers for nectar
which they use to produce honey and flowers need bees to help pollinate other flowers.
Flowers use various means to attract bees and other pollinators. In addition to their electrical charge and alluring fragrance flowers display bright colors and research has found that bees see colors three times faster than humans.
But bees busy as they famously are don't have time to waste visiting pretty flowers
whose nectar has just been taken by another insect. The last thing a flower wants is to attract a bee
and then fail to provide nectar said Daniel Robert co-author of the study in a statement.
Bees are good learners and would soon lose interest in such an unrewarding flower So flowers the researchers confirmed emit a different electrical signal after their nectar has been harvested.
They found that petunias became slightly more positively charged after a bee visited them according to Scientificamerican.
That revised electrical charge acts as a kind of No Vacancy sign to other bees which learn to trust the signals that the flowers emit.
This is a magnificent interaction where you have an animal and a plant and they both want this to go as well as possible study co-author Gregory Sutton told NPR.
The flowers are trying to make themselves look as different as possible. This is to establish the flower's brand.
How do bees sense an electrical charge? Researchers aren't sure but they suspect the fuzzy hairs on bees'bodies bristle up under an electrostatic force just like human hair in front of a television screen.
Other scientists are excited about the possible implications this research may have for other nectar-gathering insects such as hoverflies and moths.
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