</a p><p></p><p>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.
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/27722-caffeine-gives-bees-memory-boost. html target=blank>Caffeine Gives Bees a Memory Boost</a p><p></p
It used to be thought that the pollinating insects such as bees and wasps evolved at about the same time as the angiosperms.
While the oldest bee fossil was trapped in its amber prison only about 80 million years ago evidence has been found that bee
and Bees Get Depressed (New world Library 2013). The views expressed are those of the author
For instance bees collect plant resins with antifungal and antimicrobial properties and bring it back to their hives to help them fight infection.
this has made likely bees more prone to infection de Roode said. These medicines could also possibly be used to fight infection in humans or other animals.
One chemical in bee resin has been shown to have inhibitory effects against HIV-1 de Roode said.
#EU to Ban Certain Pesticides to Help Bees Bee populations are declining rapidly in Europe as they are in North america.
Some research suggests that neonicotinoid chemicals in pesticides could be partly to blame for the decline of bees.
They will now only be allowed for use on plants that aren't attractive to pollinators like bees the BBC reported.
Pollinators like bees fertilize about one-third of crops worldwide scientists estimate. In the United states the number of colonies has been reduced by about 50 percent in the last year alone according to news reports.
In my new book Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed (New world Library 2013) I updated many of those essays more than 100 showcasing the fascinating cognitive abilities of other animals as well as their empathy compassion grief humor joy and love.
and bees get depressed just like people do. Melissa Bateson of Newcastle University and her colleagues have shown
When similar behavior is observed in vertebrates it's explained as having an emotional basis. The bees also showed altered levels of neurochemicals (dopamine serotonin
and Bees Get Depressed (New world Library 2013). This essay is adapted from one that appeared in Bekoff's column Animal Emotions in Psychology Today.
but you can create a counterfeit product that looks very similar using sugar instead of bees David Bell director of Protium (manufacturer of the isotope ratio-meter) told Wired UK.
One such natural alternative is bee honey which has long been known to have antibacterial activity.
or nutrition though the search is complicated by the dozens of different chemical types that may be combining to contaminate the pollen bees collect for their hives.
So academic researchers from the University of Maryland and federal scientists from the Department of agriculture decided to collect pollen from seven major types of crops along the East Coast where CCD has been especially destructive where bees had been in serious decline
and fed the pollen to healthy bees. The collected pollen contained an average of nine types of pesticides
According to the study which appeared in the open-access journal PLOS One the researchers discovered healthy bees that ate the fungicides which are supposedly harmless to bees were actually three times more likely to become infected with a parasite that's known to cause CCD than bees
The study also indicated that there may not be a single cause of the collapse of bee colonies in North america the deaths may result from the impact of a complex web of chemicals spanning different types and classes of pesticides and fungicides.
and weren't expected to have an impact on healthy bees. Since the study has shown that bees eating such fungicides are much more likely to become infected with a deadly parasite USDA may need to change the way it regulates the use of those chemicals around crops
and the bee colonies that pollinate them and the agency may need to change the way it advises farmers and beekeepers about the fungicides'risks.
Likewise if CCD is linked to other components of the complex array of anthropogenic chemicals in pollen it will become even more difficult to protect bee colonies not to mention the other forms of life subjected to those chemicals as they spread through the food web and the broader environment.
To make things even more complicated in the recent study the researchers found that healthy bees they sampled had foraged mostly from weeds
and wildflowers not crops meaning that bees across North america are likely much more exposed to pesticides than previously thought.
More research is needed about how honey bees are exposed to pesticides outside the field in which they are placed the authors wrote in PLOS One.
We detected 35 different pesticides in the sample pollen and found high fungicide loads they added Our results highlight a need for research on sublethal effects of fungicides
and other chemicals that bees in an agricultural setting are exposed to. CCD isn't just about the bees food crops
and agriculture economies are affected too. Because bee populations are so low in the United states for example the surviving colonies are working overtime to pollinate crops in California and elsewhere.
More than $30 billion worth of crops in the United states could be seriously at risk if the continuing die off of honeybees were to reach critical levels.
when bees are known to be pollinating but those regulations don't apply to the chemicals used to kill fungus on the crops as those substances were thought to be harmless to bees.
But there is one finding from the study that beekeepers should consider right away: simply looking at the types of chemicals used on crops may simply not be enough.
not only pesticide regimens of the fields in which they are placing their bees but also spray programs near those fields that may contribute to pesticide drift onto weeds the authors wrote.
The bees in our study collected pollen from diverse sources often failing to collect any pollen from the target crop.
and increasing evidence that pesticide blends harm bees the authors wrote there is a pressing need for further research on the mechanisms underlying pesticide-pesticide and pesticide-disease synergistic effects on honey
bee health. A version of this column appeared as Bee Colony Collapses Are More Complex Than We Thought on the blog At the Edge by Jeff Nesbit on U s. News & World Report.
His most recent Op-Ed was titled Can You Calculate the Impact of Cheating in Sports?.
Engineers in the U k. and China have taken a step forward by showing that the cells actually start off as circles molded by the shape of a bee's body and then flow into a hexagonal pattern seconds later.
People have speculated always how bees have formed these honeycombs said Bhushan Karihaloo an engineer at Cardiff University in the U k
some people believed the bees had an uncanny ability to measure angles. But it's actually much more mundane. 10 Amazing Things You Didn't Know About Animals Honeycomb up close Using a honeycomb grown at a research facility in Beijing the researchers were able to carefully ward off the bees
and photograph the bare honeycomb seconds after formation providing the first clear evidence that cells naturally start as circles.
By heating the cells the bees cause the wax to become molten and flow like lava.
The team still does not know exactly how the bees go about heating each cell and explored the mechanics of two plausible scenarios:
One in which the bees focus their heat only at points where neighboring cells touch (a total of six points per cell) and another in
which the bees heat the entire cell all at once. My own feeling is that nature tries to minimize energy spent and from that point of view
But on the other hand from the perspective of the bees they might just want to warm the whole thing
Building like bees The team calculated the amount of time each scenario should take and found that circular cells should morph into hexagons within six seconds
In their future work the researchers hope these time constraints will help them assess which mechanism the bees use.
Juergen Tautz a bee biologist in Germany who was involved not in the study does not believe that bees can direct their heat to specific points in a cell
We are more familiar with traditional reproduction as practiced by the birds and the bees. Code of Life:
#How to Land Safely on a Vertical surface, Bee-Style (Op-Ed) This article was published originally atâ The Conversation.
Nonetheless bees land perfectly without the benefits of humanlike cognition complex instrumentation and stereoscopic (3d) vision.
When landing on a horizontal surface honey bees use something called optic flow to determine their speed.
Optic flow allows bees (and us) to determine how quickly we are moving by the speed at
The same is true for a flying bee. But bees often need to land on vertical surfaces such as flower petals
in order to obtain pollen or nectar. How do they determine their speed when this type of optic flow is not available to them?
Baird and her colleagues trained free-flying bees to land on an experimental apparatus composed of a vertically oriented circular perspex disc with a tube in the middle connected to a sugar feeder.
Once the bees landed on the tube they could crawl through it to access the feeder.
The researchers videotaped the bees approaching the apparatus and analysed the speed and trajectory of the flight and landing.
They found that the closer the bee got to the target the slower she flew.
Bees slowed down at a more or less constant speed but only when presented with the checkerboard and concentric circle patterns.
When they approached the pie-slice pattern the bees didn t slow down until they almost hit the disc.
and concentric ring patterns appeared (to the bee) to expand as she approached the disc
Baird and her colleagues suspected that bees used the apparent expanding image to calibrate their speed by maintaining a constant speed of approach;
To test whether the bees were using the rate of apparent expansion of the image to calibrate their speeds the researchers used a familiar optical illusion.
Once Baird and colleagues determined that bees presented with a disc displaying a stationary spiral behaved as they did presented
and concentric ring patterns they proceeded to measure the bees approach speeds to rotating spirals.
When the spiral appeared to expand the bees slowed their approach as if they perceived that they were closer to the target than they were in reality.
When the spiral appeared to contract the bees sped up their approach; as if they perceived they were further away just as the researchers predicted.
Despite this Matrix-like disruption to the bees perception the bees managed to land on the vertical surface of the disc without crashing presumably
Bees use their perceived rate of expansion of the image of their landing surface in order to modulate their speed of approach allowing them to land safely on vertical surfaces.
Because Baird and colleagues investigated bee flight and landing one day we may be able to land remotely piloted aircraft on uneven vertical surfaces such as part of a collapsed building allowing us to locate potential survivors.
when he disturbed a pile of wood that contained a hive of the notoriously aggressive bees;
eight people have been killed by the bees since 1990 the Waco Tribune reports. You can't believe how bad they are.
me want to get out of this business Allen Miller owner of Bees Be gone who later destroyed the hive told the Tribune.
In a hive of ordinary European bees about 10 percent will attack if the hive is threatened
but with African bees all of them attack you. Eight to 10 stings per pound of body weight are considered lethal according to the Texas Agricultural extension Service.
In 1956 Warwick Kerr a honeybee geneticist with the University of SãO Paulo Brazil imported African bees (Apis mellifera scutellata) to study.
But a handful of the African bees escaped into the wild where they interbred with native bees to produce bees with traits primarily derived from their dominant African forbearers (traits of the more docile native bees tended to be recessive
Nature's 10 Biggest Pests The bees spread rapidly from Brazil and are now found throughout South and Central america.
If attacked run Though the bees aren't predatory they become very aggressive when defending their hive and minor disturbances like a lawn mower or a moving car even as far away as 100 feet (30 meters) can trigger an attack.
Old tires junk piles building eaves cement blocks upturned flower pots and even empty soda cans have been occupied by the bees according to the U s. Department of agriculture.
In the event of a bee attack victims are advised to run as fast as they can toward an enclosed area like a car or building;
even though some bees will follow most will be shut out. Protect your face and head as much as possible from stings by covering your head with a shirt or jacket.
And do not jump into water (such as a swimming pool) to escape the bees they will wait at the surface for their victim to come up for air according to Texas A&m University.
Rainfall over 55 inches distributed evenly throughout the year is almost a complete barrier to Africanized honey bee spread entomologist Josã D. Villa of the Honey Bee Breeding Genetics
While attacks by the bees remain very rare Miller told KCENTV. com that he's seen at least five cases of Africanized hives in the past month more than he usually sees all year.
They could hold the key to solving the problem of bee colony collapse disorder a deadly syndrome that's wiping out native bee populations throughout North america and Europe.
'Torres has witnessed also bees drinking turtle tears. Bees appear to annoy the turtles more than the butterflies perhaps due to their buzzing wings he said.
 The lack of salt in the region has driven other animals to exhibit unusual behaviors.
Bees buzz at just the right frequency to release pollen from tomatoes and other flowering plants.
#Surprisingly Simple Logic Explains Amazing Bee Abilities Bumblebees and Pavlov's dogs have something in common:
A new study finds that bees use simple logical steps to learn from other bees which flowers hold the sweetest nectar.
Scientists have observed long that bees copy other bees when learning the best spots to forage.
Just by watching another bee forage through a screen a bumblebee could go on to pick the sweetest flowers on its own Dawson said.
It was such a complex behavior for a little bee to perform and that's why we thought there might be something a lot more simple behind
Learning to bee Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov became famous in the early 1900s for discovering that dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell they associated with food.
and her colleagues thought that bees might be taking a similar series of logical steps.
To test the idea they first showed bees a scene: six feeding platforms three of which were occupied by model bees that looked
as if they were foraging. The platforms were colorless and could only be distinguished by whether or not a bee was hanging around.
Next the bees got to visit these platforms themselves. In some cases the model bees were marking platforms filled with sweet sugar water.
In other cases the model bees were perched on platforms filled with quinine the ingredient that makes tonic water bitter.
This taught the bees to associate their comrades with either a sweet reward or a bitter taste.
Logical leaps Next the same bees observed another foraging area through a screen. This time they saw six colored flowers either three orange and three green or three blue and three yellow.
All flowers of one color were occupied by model bees. After 10 minutes the researchers removed the model bees
and swapped around the placement of each color. They then let the trained bees into the foraging area
and watched what they did. Those bees that had learned previously that other bees were linked with sweets made a beeline to the color where the model bees had been.
Unsurprisingly the bees that had learned that other bees spent time around bitter quinine avoided the colors previously occupied by model bees.
Bees that hadn't gone through the initial training task tried each color equally. The study indicates that a complex behavior that we've seen in bees is actually just a result of associations Dawson said.
Lots of animals from sea slugs up to primates learn by copying she said and the researchers hope to learn
if the same simple logical leaps are behind this ability. The study is detailed today (April 4) in the journal Current Biology.
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitterâ and Google+.+Follow us@livescience Facebookâ & Google+.+Original article on Livescience. com e
#Sweet Disguise: Chocolate-Covered Elephant Ivory Seized in Macau Ivory poachers go to sometimes-absurd lengths to smuggle prized pieces of elephant tusks across borders.
since colony collapse disorder has decimated local bee populations. No use crying over it the white powder that blanketed a New zealand highway
#What Bees Don't Know Can Help Them: Measuring Insect Indecision (Op-Ed) This article was published originally atâ The Conversation.
Last week my colleague Andrew Barron and I published results investigating uncertainty monitoring in honey bees and found that bees avoided difficult tasks that they lacked the information to solve.
First we built a test apparatus with two chambers that bees could fly into and drink from one of two targets.
If the bees landed on the target located above a black bar they would find sucrose a rewarding sugary solution.
As you d expect bees became rather good at determining which target was situated above the black bar.
But we then made things a bit harder for the bees. We varied the difficulty of the tests by placing the targets closer to the black bar.
Bees were allowed also to fly from the first chamber to the second without picking a target
If bees were capable of monitoring their uncertainty they should opt out of the more difficult trials.
Bees opted out more often on trials where the targets were closer to the black bars.
On some trials bees would be able to opt out but on other trials they would not
If bees were monitoring their uncertainty they would be expected to do better on difficult tests when they had the ability to opt out.
When forced to make a decision bees had to guess if they weren t sure of the answer.
Bees picked the correct target more often when they could opt out. These results are similar to those found with primates.
So it seems that bees have the ability to monitor their uncertainty right? Well maybe.
Although opting out was not directly rewarding bees could have associated opting out with avoidance of punishment (drinking a bitter solution)
The associative explanation would have to assume that bees could tell the difference between difficult and easy trials and weight them differently.
It may be just as simple for a bee (or any other animal) brain to compute uncertainty as it would be to classify and associate outcomes.
Whether an insect monitors uncertainty or only appears to honey bees are able to selectively avoid making decisions
Bees and other insects show little interest in the pawpaw flower so hand-pollination is required sometimes.)
A thick golden liquid produced by industrious bees honey is made using the nectar of flowering plants
But how do bees make honey? Nectar a  sugary liquid is extracted from flowers using a bee's long tube-shaped tongue
and stored in its extra stomach or crop. While sloshing around in the crop the nectar mixes with enzymes that transform its chemical composition
When a honeybee returns to the hive it passes the nectar to another bee by regurgitating the liquid into the other bee's mouth.
To get all that extra water out of their honey bees set to work fanning the honeycomb with their wings in an effort to speed up the process of evaporation.
When most of the water has evaporated from the honeycomb the bee seals the comb with a secretion of liquid from its abdomen which eventually hardens into beeswax.
Away from air and water honey can be stored indefinitely providing bees with the perfect food source for cold winter months.
But bees aren't the only ones with a sweet tooth. Humans bears badgers and other animals have long been raiding the winter stores of their winged friends to harvest honey.
Honey's color taste aroma and texture vary greatly depending on the type of flower a bee frequents.
Clover honey for example differs greatly from the honey harvested from bees that frequent a lavender field.
#What is the'Birds and the Bees'?'The phrase the birds and the bees is a metaphor for explaining the mechanics of reproduction to younger children relying on imagery of bees pollinating
and eggs hatching to substitute for a more technical explanation of sexual intercourse. It is a way of deflecting the inevitable question that every parent dreads:
and bees reproduce. The connection between human sexuality and eggs and pollination is vague which can cause some confusion among curious children.
Though there are some variations the story typically involves bees pollinating flowers symbolizing male fertilization and the birds laying eggs
How Bees Do it There are quite a few allusions to the phrase in literature and song. One of the early references to this bird and bees as a euphemism for reproduction is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1825 poem oework Without Hope:
   All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair    The bees are stirring birds are on the wing   Â
And Winter slumbering in the open air    Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
Another commonly cited use of the phrase is American naturalist John Burroughs 1875 set of essays Birds and Bees Sharp Eyes and other Papers.
and bees in a section of the publication The Story of Life which was widely distributed between 1893 and 1930.
and bees gathering honey from the flowers. Related: Animal Sex: How Birds Do it A more direct reference can be found in Cole porter's lyrics to the 1928 song Let's Do it.
And that's why birds do it bees do it    Even educated fleas do it    Let's do it let's fall in love The phrase also appeared in a 1939 issue of the Freeport Journal Standard:
he knows about the birds and the bees. In consequence French films are made on a basis of artistic understanding that does not hamper the story.
A more modern reference to the phrase occurred on The Simpsons. The episode includes a scene has 10-year-old Bart Simpson remarking to his friend Milhouse The sun is out birds are singing bees are trying to have sex with them as is my understanding..
Not all flowers produce nectar and bees avoid those that don't by learning to recognize the odors of nectar-bearing flowers.
whether nitrogen oxides a group of highly reactive gases released by diesel combustion are capable of altering floral odors to an extent that would dampen a bee's ability to recognize desirable flowers.
The team then introduced the bee groups into the test chambers to determine how the contamination affected smell recognition which they gauged based on
whether the bees extended their proboscis the strawlike mouthpart they use to suck up nectar within 10 seconds of exposure to the odor in the study chambers.
If the bee did not extend its proboscis then it was presumed to have lost the ability to recognize the smell.
The team found that bees were much less likely to extend their proboscis within 10 seconds in the contaminated chamber than the uncontaminated chamber.
A bee has far poorer recognition of an altered floral mix said study co-author Tracey Newman.
The bee needs to learn the unadulterated version and if the bee has learned it it will then struggle with the version that has been altered chemically.
Though the researchers focused on the effects of nitrogen oxide gases on floral odors other highly reactive contaminants such as naturally occurring ozone gas
and bees new research reveals. The insects likely rely on croc tears for salt. The discovery was made
and filmed butterflies and bees fluttering about the corners of the eyes of a spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus) a crocodilian that can reach up to 8. 2 feet (2. 5 meters) long that was basking on the riverbank.
These new findings support a 2012 report of a bee sipping the tears of a yellow-spotted river turtle in Ecuador's Yasunã National park. Similar findings were seen with butterflies drinking the tears of yellow-spotted river
and the bee de la Rosa said. However I've seen these bees approach river turtles
and the turtles are not as tolerant or pleased shaking their heads and eventually even jumping back on the water.
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