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,
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
#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
#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,
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.
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.
but are supplied by honey farms in New york. If the bee population decreases due to pollution and contaminants,
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.
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.
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
#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.
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.
#Best Rx for Bees? Their Own Honey Honey contains chemicals that could help bees ward off parasites
and protect them from pesticide damage new research suggests. The findings published today (April 29) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest that the immune-boosting chemicals in honey could be a solution to colony-collapse disorder
which has decimated bee populations worldwide. The natural honey has components in it that help trigger defenses in the bees said Jay Evans a bee pathologist at the U s. Department of agriculture's Agricultural research service in Maryland who was involved not in the study.
Mysterious disappearance Honeybees have been disappearing mysteriously in a trend known as colony-collapse disorder. Though no one knows exactly what causes the dramatic die-off scientists think a range of factors including parasites
Beekeepers often feed bees to get them safely through the winter. Honey may be ideal but corn syrup is cheaper so most beekeepers feed bees artificial sweeteners Evans said.
On the Hunt: Honeybee Scouts Find Food To see whether honey provided any benefit to the bees May Berenbaum a researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
and her colleagues identified several chemicals in honey that could play a role in helping bees fight parasites and pesticides.
The researchers then took those chemicals added them to bee candy a combination of sucrose and powdered sugar and fed them to 15 worker bees.
Another group got bee candy without any special compounds added. The team then dissected the mid-gut
or small intestine of the bees to see which genes were activated. Bee immunity The bees that ate the honey chemicals showed activation in genes that are known to help bees fight parasites
and break down pesticides while those who ate the normal bee candy showed no such activation.
One particular chemical p-Coumaric acid in particular was tied to the gene activation. The findings suggest that honey isn't just providing bees with a quick source of fast food
but is also giving them compounds that keep them healthy. It also suggests a potential way to strengthen bee colonies.
P-Coumaric acid may ï nd use as an additive to honey substitutes to allow beekeepers to maintain colonies during food shortages without compromising the ability of their bees to defend themselves against the pesticides
and pathogens that currently bedevil beekeeping in the United states the researchers wrote in the paper.
That suggestion seems practical Evans said. I don't think we'll get beekeepers to go back to feeding their bees just honey.
But scientists should try supplementing the corn syrup with these compounds and hoping that replaces the good stuff in the honey Evans told Livescience.
Although this change alone may not prevent colony collapses anything that strengthens the bees could help Evans said.
so that he could watch the bees from his desk one story below. Howes spends about an hour weekly on the roof of the Manhattan office of the Natural resources Defense Council where he is the director of online communications.
because it lets him observe urban wildlife he said as he pointed out a swallow dipping down to snatch a bee with the Empire state Building looming just a couple of blocks away.
and while many bee enthusiasts appreciate this freedom to expand others worry that the city may eventually hit bee capacity
and run out of food sources for the bees. It takes one million flowers to produce enough nectar for one pound of honey said Andrew Cote founder of the New york city Beekeepers Association.
To supplement what the bees forage from parks and cracks in sidewalks many beekeepers provide their hives with bowls of sugar water.
But Cote said he would rather see bees feed on wild more nutritious sources of nectar
and trees but more bees Cote said. While not everyone in New york's beekeeping community agrees the better-informed beekeepers do agree he said.
For now Cote said he hopes that educating the public about beekeeping the NYCBA will help New yorkers deal with their bees responsibly.
Howes who took beekeeping lessons from Cote regularly changes his bees'bucket of drinking water a requirement of the health department
Keeping bees is an equalizer among people with different social and political views said Alex Batkin a poetry graduate student at Brooklyn College who recently joined a group that helps Cote check hives each week.
#Caffeine Gives Bees a Memory Boost Honeybees like tired office employees like their caffeine suggests a new study finding that bees are more likely to remember plants containing the java ingredient.
Bees that fed on caffeinated nectar were three times more likely to remember a flower's scent than bees fed sugar alone.
Remembering floral traits is difficult for bees to perform at a fast pace as they fly from flower to flower
and we have found that caffeine helps the bee remember where the flowers are study leader Geraldine Wright a neuroethologist at Newcastle University UK said in a statement.
Caffeine in nectarâ is likely to improve the bee's foraging prowess while providing the plant with a more faithful pollinator Wright added.
Fortunately for the bees the caffeine levels are below the threshold that they can taste
Next the researchers used a form of Pavlovian conditioning to test how the caffeine affected the bees'memory.
Bees have a reflex where they stick out their mouth parts when they encounter something sweet.
The scientists trained the bees to extend their mouths in response to a floral scent
or sugar containing different levels of added caffeine Caffeine had a strong effect on the bees'memory.
Even 24 hours later three times as many bees remembered the scent that was paired with a caffeine reward as the plain sugar.
Twice as many bees remembered the flowers'scent after three days. I think it's the first example of nature manipulating memory in an animal neuroscientist Serena Dudek of the National institutes of health who was involved not in the study told Livescience.
but as an advantage in getting bees to remember better. In mammals caffeine has been shown to affect circuits in the brain's memory center the hippocampus.
Wright and colleagues think the caffeine is affecting neurons in the bees'brains in a way that reinforces memories.
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