#Bee foraging chronically impaired by pesticide exposure: Studya study co-authored by a University of Guelph scientist that involved fitting bumblebees with tiny radio frequency tags shows long-term exposure to a neonicotinoid pesticide hampers bees'ability
to forage for pollen. The research by Nigel Raine a professor in Guelph's School of Environmental sciences and Richard Gill of Imperial College London was published today in The british Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology.
The study shows how long-term pesticide exposure affects individual bees'day-to-day behaviour including pollen collection and
Bees have to learn many things about their environment including how to collect pollen from flowers said Raine who holds the Rebanks Family Chair in Pollinator Conservation a Canadian first.
Exposure to this neonicotinoid pesticide seems to prevent bees from being able to learn these essential skills.
The researchers monitored bee activity using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags similar to those used by courier firms to track parcels.
They tracked when individual bees left and returned to the colony how much pollen they collected and from which flowers.
Bees from untreated colonies got better at collecting pollen as they learned to forage. But bees exposed to neonicotinoid insecticides became less successful over time at collecting pollen.
Neonicotinoid-treated colonies even sent out more foragers to try to compensate for lack of pollen from individual bees.
Besides collecting less pollen said Raine the flower preferences of neonicotinoid-exposed bees were different to those of foraging bees from untreated colonies.
Raine and Gill studied the effects of two pesticides--imidacloprid one of three neonicotinoid pesticides currently banned for use on crops attractive to bees by the European commission
and pyrethroid (lambda cyhalothrin)--used alone or together on the behaviour of individual bumblebees from 40 colonies over four weeks.
Although pesticide exposure has been implicated as a possible cause for bee decline until now we had limited understanding of the risk these chemicals pose especially how it affects natural foraging behaviour Raine said.
If pesticides are affecting the normal behaviour of individual bees this could have serious knock-on consequences for the growth
and solitary bees to risk assessments that currently cover only honeybees. Bumblebees may be much more sensitive to pesticide impacts as their colonies contain a few hundred workers at most compared to tens of thousands in a honeybee colony Raine said.
#Why whispers among bees sometimes evolve into shoutslet's say you're a bee and you've spotted a new and particularly lucrative source of nectar and pollen.
But some species of bees in Brazil do the exact opposite. Shouts in their food-recruitment signals warn would-be competitors that their prime source of food will be defended fiercely
Lichtenberg says her discovery of this counterintuitive method of communication by bees suggests that eavesdroppers can alter the evolution of animal signals in ways that were thought previously not possible.
To Nieh whose research has focused on the evolution of communication strategies among bees eavesdropping is part of the information web the signals and cues that surround animals and play a key role in shaping ecosystems.
In the case of bees and other pollinators he says a network of signals and cues shapes pollination informing animals about where
'In this stingless bee system with aggressive colonies jockeying for limited resources more conspicuous food-recruitment signals indicate a higher likelihood that a resource will be harder to wrest away.
Lichtenberg's study focused on stingless bees--including two from the genus Trigona that recruit nestmates to food sources with chemically distinct pheromones--that compete with one another for similar food sources.
or battling with T. spinipes bees which show high levels of aggression toward intruders but the risks and energy costs to the eavesdroppers apparently aren't worth the trouble.
The researchers supported this hypothesis by modeling eavesdropping bees'decision-making using a type of model from economics.
and the bees accompanying her have wasted essentially energy. For attacks between colonies of the same species there is also a risk that the conflict will escalate to physical interactions in
which large numbers of bees may die. Our study is one of the first to investigate what drives the behavior of eavesdroppers collecting information from competitors within the same trophic level which use the same food resources as the eavesdropper she adds.
This is particularly important for animals such as the bees I studied because their movements determine plant pollination.
and bee species. However observed benefits concentrate on arable fields says TUM's Prof. Kurt-JÃ rgen HÃ lsbergen.
Organic farming benefited the four taxonomic groups of plants earthworms spiders and bees --which were sampled as surrogates for the multitude of creatures living on farmland--in different ways.
In general more species of plants and bees were found on organic than on nonorganic fields but not more species of spiders and earthworms.
It's also nontoxic allowing the honey to be edible for human consumption. Our bacteria produce a volatile chemical that's dispersed through the air
In honeybees no negative effects were found in toxicity trials exposing bees to the bacteria in the air or in their honey.
and blueberries and has begun keeping bees for honey. I liked the idea of growing something
#Bees can be more important than fertilizera lack of bees and other wild insects to pollinate crop plants can reduce harvest yields more drastically than a lack of fertilizer
Together with students and colleagues at the University of California Berkeley Alexandra Klein manipulated almond trees by preventing bees from pollinating blossoms with the help of cages allowing the bees to pollinate the blossoms
The yield of the trees pollinated by bees was roughly 200 percent higher than that of self-pollinatedtrees.
#Flowers polarization patterns help bees find foodbees use their ability to'see'polarized light when foraging for food researchers based at the University of Bristol have discovered.
This is the first time bees have been found to use this ability for something other than navigation. Like many other insect pollinators bees find their way around by using a polarization sensitive area in their eyes to'see'skylight polarization patterns.
However while other insects are known to use such sensitivity to identify appropriate habitats locate suitable sites to lay their eggs
and find food a non-navigation function for polarization vision has never been identified in bees--until now.
However the bees could only discriminate between the two targets when the targets were viewed from below.
Around 53 per cent of flower species face downwards and thus their polarization patterns are presented in such a way as to be visually accessible to the region of the bee's eye
Light reflected from downward facing flowers also has the potential to contrast with skylight polarization patterns potentially helping the bee to detect
and bees have been shown to be able to use a wide range of floral cues including colour shape texture certain chemical compounds
Our findings suggest polarisation vision may provide sensory access to an additional floral cue for bees.
#Parasites fail to halt European bumblebee invasion of the UKA species of bee from Europe that has stronger resistance to parasite infections than native bumblebees has spread across the UK according to new research at Royal Holloway
Despite the bees having low genetic diversity and high levels of a nematode parasite that usually castrates other species 25 per cent of the queens were able to produce offspring.
Scientists believe the spread of tree bumblebees could have both positive and negative impacts on native bees.
Bees are essential to our food chain and the populations of our native bumblebees have declined in recent decades.
While these findings show promising signs for bee populations in the UK we still don't know
Further research should focus on how our native bees are affected and the pollination services that this new species provides.
#Could spiders be the key to saving our bees? A novel bio-pesticide created using spider venom
Feeding acute and chronic doses to honeybees--beyond the levels they would ever experience in the field--the team found it had only a very slight effect on the bees'survival and no measurable effect at all on their learning and memory.
Publishing their findings today in the academic journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B the authors say the insect-specific compound has huge potential as an environmentally-benign'bee-safe'bio-pesticide and an alternative to the chemical neonicotinoid pesticides
because bees that cannot learn will not be able to find food and return to their hives.
During the study the bees were exposed to varying concentrations of the spider/snowdrop bio-pesticide over a period of seven days.
and memory in bees so it's vital that any pesticide targeting them does not interfere with this process explains Erich.
which suggests the highly selective spider-venom toxin does not interact with the calcium channels in the bee.
which highlighted the damaging effect of neonicotinoids on bees'ability to learn and remember and subsequently communicate to their hive mates.
There is now substantial evidence linking neonicotinoid pesticides to poor performance and survival in bees and
and introduce bee-safe alternatives. Professor Gatehouse adds: There isn't going to be one silver bullet.
or Honey Sunshine Kizer says. Original Cheeriosâ can also be jazzed up with some vanilla extract and cinnamon or PB2Â a natural dried peanut butter powder that can make plain Cheerios taste a lot more like their peanut butter variety without all the added sugar.
and let the wildflowers grow can be very beneficial to bees. In the past two decades the European union has spent â1 billion on agri-environment schemes which aim to improve the rural landscape health
and are required for all EU-member states says Margaret Couvillon of the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at the University of Sussex.
and decoded the waggle dances of bees in three hives over a two-year period. Bees dance to tell their fellow bees where to find the good stuff:
the best nectar and pollen. The angle of their dances conveys information about the direction of resources
In all the researchers eavesdropped on 5484 dances to find that the best forage within the 94 km2 of mixed urban-rural landscape included in the study--as far as bees
More broadly High Level agri-environment schemes were the best places for bees. The researchers were surprised to find that Organic Entry Level agri-environment schemes were frequented the least by bees.
According to Couvillon it may be that the regular mowing required initially to discourage certain plants from growing in those plots might leave few wildflowers for bees.
The study shows that honeybees can serve as bioindicators to monitor large land areas and provide information relevant to better environmental management the researchers say.
Cold impairs gender selectionas in bees wasps and ants the gender determination of Trichogramma parasitoids is called haplodiploid that is fertilized eggs produce female offspring
Bee species and their search for the flowering plantsthe timing has been choreographed beautifully by nature. Rising spring temperatures prompt many bee species to begin their search for the flowering plants they depend on for food--and
which they propagate through pollination. But what would happen if this vital mutually beneficial relationship goes out of synch due to climate change?
In one troubling scenario the pollinating bees may respond strongly to climate warming and emerge earlier in the growing season
Such a mismatch in timing could severely impact both bees and plants and the productivity of many agricultural crops.
and the ecological role of bees after majoring in environmental studies and ecology at the University of Tennessee.
I find bees really interesting and there are a lot of good questions that haven't been asked she says.
Looking at areas relatively close to NJIT that might be suitable as research sites Devan found that Morristown national historical park at Jockey Hollow has a substantial bee community--including cavity-nesting bees that forage among various flowering trees as well the understory plants beneath the trees.
Unlike social bee species such as honey bees cavity-nesting bees lead solitary lives in the wild pollinating many types of flowering trees as they search for food.
when the bees emerge in the spring and the trees leaf Out in addition Morristown is part of the Northeast Temperate Network (NETN) established by the U s. National park service to monitor ecological conditions in 12 parks located in seven northeastern states as well as six
We realized that Morristown could give us a really nice model system for looking at how bees
He explains that the primary experimental focus is on the bees since their activity is influenced mainly by temperature
And the cavity-nesting bees at Morristown are especially sensitive to spring temperature changes. Out and about earlyto enlist the Morristown bees in their work the researchers place nesting boxes they have built near 28 NETN forest-monitoring plots in the park.
Adult bees create the nests. The nests have several cells with an egg in each one that metamorphosizes--like butterflies do--through the summer.
By fall they are adults in their cocoons where they overwinter. The initial phase of the program that Bunker and Devan have initiated with the help of other NJIT colleagues
and students involves waking the bees from winter dormancy earlier than usual during the spring by gently warming the boxes.
which include affixing micro-tags to the backs of the bees while they are still dormant in their cocoons.
A video camera placed at each nest will allow building a database of the bees'response to manipulated changes in their natural schedule
The tags on the bees a special variant of the widely used Quick Response QR code will make it possible to monitor individual bees using computer-assisted image recognition
Physical examination of pollen in the nests also is expected to yield information about the food sources the bees visit
At large and foraging for food before their normal sources are available bees may not be able to adapt.
Or bees may adapt by feeding on different plants that flower earlier. While this could be a positive sign that bees are adaptable it also may mean they are feeding on less nutritious plants
which could have a deleterious impact on bee populations. For the solitary cavity-nesting bees starting to forage earlier
because they are out of synch with the flowering of their food sources could keep them away from their nests for longer periods.
This too presents a potential threat. It may give flies wasps and other predators greater opportunities to attack undefended eggs and larvae.
The data that Bunker and Devan anticipate collecting over the next few years could confirm a disturbing possibility--that the critical relationship between temperature-sensitive bees
Yet they may find that pollinators such as the bees at Morristown can adapt in ways that do not seriously undermine their role in pollination and by implication in agricultural production.
Whatever the research reveals it will shed additional light on the relationship between bees and plants--and on one of the most important connections that humans have with nature.
#How orchid bees find their personal scent, attract matesa fragrant perfume has brought many a man and many a woman together.
Orchid bees too appear to rely on scent when it comes to choosing a partner. In the course of their lives the males compile a species-specific bouquet that they store in the pockets on their hind legs.
Compiling the ideal scent takes a bee's entire lifetimea male bee's complete perfume is made up of 20 to 40 characteristic components on average.
because they had had not yet the chance to collect as many scents as older bees. This is evident in the data gathered by Tamara Pokorny
The scientist from the Department of Animal Ecology Evolution and Biodiversity also found out that bees are aware of
Even if an attractive scent is available in abundance the bees stop picking it up. Each orchid bee species prefers a different type of treewhen releasing their bouquet orchid bees select a tree trunk as the centre of their territory.
The choice is made not randomly as Tamara Pokorny knows. Together with a student team she analysed the favourite trees of several orchid bee species in Costa rica.
The smaller species preferred branches or trunks with a smaller diameter larger species those with a larger diameter.
Getting energy for exhausting flightsthe Bochum biologist also studies the orchid bees'flight performance. The small insects do actually fly over distances of 50 kilometres.
By moving their proboscises in a certain manner the bees appear to concentrate the sugar solution that they are drinking.
Orchids eucalyptus and fecesorchid bees live in Central and South america and live up to three months on average. Members of different species are interested in different scents.
#Bee biodiversity boosts crop yieldsresearch from North carolina State university shows that blueberries produce more seeds and larger berries if they are visited by more diverse bee species allowing farmers to harvest significantly more pounds of fruit per acre.
We wanted to understand the functional role of diversity says Dr. Hannah Burrack an associate professor of entomology at NC State
And we found that there is a quantifiable benefit of having a lot of different types of bees pollinating a crop.
Within the blueberry fields the researchers identified five distinct groups of bee species: honey bees bumble bees southeastern blueberry bees carpenter bees
and a functionally similar collection of species that they termed small native bees. The researchers found that for each group above one farmers saw an increase of $311 worth of yield per acre.
For example if two bee groups pollinated a field the boost would be $311 per acre;
for three bee groups the boost would be $622 per acre and so on. For North carolina blueberries as a whole we calculate the benefit of each group to be approximately $1. 42 million worth of yield each year Burrack says.
We think the benefit stems from differences in behavior between bee groups in part depending on the weather explains Dr. David Tarpy an associate professor of entomology at NC State
and co-author of the paper. For example southeastern blueberry bees work well regardless of inclement weather
whereas honey bees only perform at their best on calm warm sunny days. This can make a big difference
since blueberries bloom in March and April in North carolina Burrack says. That means the weather can swing from great to awful as we saw this year.
There is some research showing that having native flowering plants near blueberry fields can increase native bee populations over time
but the researchers are now planning to see what role crop management can play in fostering bee diversity at crop sites.
#Link between insecticides and collapse of honey bee colonies strengthenedtwo widely used neonicotinoids--a class of insecticide--appear to significantly harm honey bee colonies over the winter particularly during colder winters according to a new study
and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in which bees abandon their hives over the winter and eventually die.
Further although other studies have suggested that CCD-related mortality in honey bee colonies may come from bees'reduced resistance to mites
or parasites as a result of exposure to pesticides the new study found that bees in the hives exhibiting CCD had almost identical levels of pathogen infestation as a group of control hives most
This finding suggests that the neonicotinoids are causing some other kind of biological mechanism in bees that in turn leads to CCD.
We demonstrated again in this study that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for triggering CCD in honey bee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival of winter said lead author Chensheng (Alex) Lu associate professor of environmental exposure
Since 2006 there have been significant losses of honey bees from CCD. Pinpointing the cause is crucial to mitigating this problem
since bees are prime pollinators of roughly one-third of all crops worldwide. Experts have considered a number of possible causes including pathogen infestation beekeeping practices and pesticide exposure.
Recent findings including a 2012 study by Lu and colleagues suggest that CCD is related specifically to neonicotinoids
which may impair bees'neurological functions. Imidacloprid and clothianidin both belong to this group. Lu and his co-authors from the Worcester County Beekeepers Association studied the health of 18 bee colonies in three locations in central Massachusetts from October 2012 through April 2013.
At each location the researchers separated six colonies into three groups--one treated with imidacloprid one with clothianidin and one untreated.
There was a steady decline in the size of all the bee colonies through the beginning of winter--typical among hives during the colder months in New england.
Beginning in January 2013 bee populations in the control colonies began to increase as expected but populations in the neonicotinoid-treated hives continued to decline.
Only one of the control colonies was lost--thousands of dead bees were found inside the hive--with what appeared to be symptoms of a common intestinal parasite called Nosema ceranae.
While the 12 pesticide-treated hives in the current study experienced a 50%CCD mortality rate the authors noted that in their 2012 study bees in pesticide-treated hives had a much higher CCD mortality rate--94%.
%That earlier bee die off occurred during the particularly cold and prolonged winter of 2010-2011 in central Massachusetts leading the authors to speculate that colder temperatures in combination with neonicotinoids may play a role in the severity of CCD.
Hopefully we can reverse the continuing trend of honey bee loss. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Harvard School of Public health.
A report published in ACS'Journal of Proteome Research presents new data that link the amounts of certain neuropeptides in these notorious bees'brains with their jobs inside and outside the hive.
which include bees ants sawflies and wasps. One of the starkest examples of this division of labor is the development of castes
Bee researchers had observed already that honeybees including Africanized Apis mellifera better known as killer bees divide tasks by age.
whether peptides in the brain were associated with the bees'shifting duties. They found that the amounts of two substances varied by time
#Crocodile tears please thirsty butterflies and beesthe butterfly (Dryas iulia) and the bee (Centris sp.
Tear-drinking lachryphagous behavior in bees had only recently been observed by biologists. He remembered a 2012 report of a solitary bee sipping the tears of a yellow-spotted river turtle in Ecuador's Yasunã National park
. But how common is this behavior? Back at the field station he did a little research.
and some bees doing this said de la Rosa. A search of the scientific literature produced a detailed study of bees drinking human tears in Thailand as well as the remembered October 2012 Trails
and Tribulations story about the Ecuadorian bee and the river turtle by Olivier Dangles and JÃ rã'me Casas in ESA's Frontiers.
This experience reminds us that the world still has many surprises for ecologists de la Rosa said.
#Bees stick to known safety zones, learn to avoid dangerbumblebees can distinguish between safe and dangerous environments
and are attracted to land on flowers popular with other bees when exposed to perilous situations according to new research from Queen Mary University of London.
The study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that past experience of predation causes bumblebees to join other bees already safely feeding on flowers.
when bees find themselves in these predator-infested environments they locate safe places to eat by joining other bees that are already safely feeding on flowers.
The scientists trained bees to differentiate between safe and dangerous environments: when bees landed on a flower associated with danger foam pincers would trap the bee
and prevent it from foraging. This simulates an attack by a crab spider a predator that lurks on flowers to catch pollinators
but in dangerous environments the bees specifically flew to flowers that were occupied by other bees.
The authors suggest that bees use information from other bees to help them to avoid these dangerous situations.
Bees normally spread themselves out among flowers to minimise competition but when danger lurks they dine together to seek safety in numbers commented co-author Professor Lars Chittka from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical sciences.
Kenyan beekeepers believe that bee populations have been experiencing declines in recent years but our results suggest that the common causes for colony losses in the United states
and Europe--parasites pathogens and pesticides--do not seem to be affecting Kenyan bees at least not yet said Christina Grozinger professor of entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research Penn State.
which the bees get all their food may be the more important factor driving these declines.
This is the first comprehensive survey of bee health in East Africa where we have examined diseases genetics
and the environment to better understand what factors are most important in bee health in this region said Grozinger.
We suspect the seemingly greater tolerance of African bees to these pests over the western bees is a combination of genes and environment.
and viruses the researchers recommend that beekeepers in East Africa maintain healthy bee populations by protecting vital nesting habitat
and the native flowering plant diversity that the bees depend on for food. In addition the researchers suggest that beekeepers use pesticides sparingly.
This research is important because it confirms the resilience of African bees despite the heavy presence of recently introduced Varroa mites
and it suggests that the approach to manage these pests should not follow the application of pesticides as has been done in the western world said Muli.
and as landscape degradation increases due to increased urbanization farming and climate change we expect to see the combination of all these factors negatively impact the bees in the future Grozinger said.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011