Job swapping makes its mark on honeybee DNASUBTLE differences in the DNA of honeybees are reflected in the bees'roles within the hive.
Although genetically identical, the bees soon take on the specific roles of queen or worker. These roles are defined not just by behavioural differences,
Once a bee is a queen or worker, they fulfil that role for life the change is irreversible.
and Gro Amdam of Arizona State university in Tempe, the researchers coaxed forager bees back into nursing roles by removing all the nurses from the hive
Gene Robinson, a bee researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was involved not in the research,
If the link between behaviour and methylation patterns"is true in a bee, it is likely to also be true in us,
Perhaps bees can be used to figure out how it could be done
Cell structure gives African fruit its iridescent huethe hue is caused not by pigment, but by light reflecting off tightly coiled cellulose in the fruit's cell walls.
low doses of pesticides have subtle effects on individual bees and can seriously harm colonies.
Reports spark row over bee-bothering insecticidesthree reports by Europe s food safety body have stoked controversy over the possible links between the use of neonicotinoid insecticides and declining bee populations.
A number of scientific studies have linked neonicotinoids to adverse effects on bee colonies (see Nature video)
but some researchers believe that the drop in bee numbers seen in the United states, Europe and elsewhere is attributable to a combination of factors.
The reports conclude that these chemicals should be used only on crops that are not attractive to honey bees,
Dust and plant sap contaminated with the chemicals may also pose a risk to bees,
In the United kingdom, for example, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (Defra) has commissioned field studies on the impact of the insecticides on bees.
The chemical company pins most of the blame for bee declines on parasitic Varroa mites
Sure enough, when the bees landed, the flowers became a little more positively charged. Finally, the team released bumblebees into an arena with artificial flowers, half of which were carried positively charged
Over time, the bees increasingly visited the rewarding charged flowers. But when the researchers turned off the electrical charge on the flowers
and re-released the trained bees, the insects visited rewarding flowers only about half of the time,
That suggested that the bees were detecting the electric fields and using them to guide their activities,
Some experts suggest that the study has implications for insects other than bees.""If you think about it,
accurately reflect what is happening to bees in the field. Neonicotinoids, which poison insects by binding to receptors in their nervous systems
and pollen may be harming bees too by disrupting their ability to gather pollen, return to their hives
and reproduce1-6 (see The buzz over bee health). The past year has seen a raft of papers about the effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees.
Scientists are debating their real-world significance. 20 april 2012: Honeybees in French fields exposed to thiamethoxam show impaired homing back to hives1.
imidacloprid and thiamethoxam should not be used where they might end up in crops that attract bees, such as oilseed rape and maize.
because many of the lab studies that have shown harm may have fed bees unrealistically high doses of neonicotinoids.
what doses bees actually encounter in the field.""Everyone is focused on hazard, he says.""We know there is hazard there.
However, David Goulson, a bee researcher at the University of Sussex, UK, thinks that most of the major studies have used realistic doses
they could play a part by making bees more susceptible to the parasitic mite Varroa destructor and the parasitic fungus Nosema apis,
although there might be"rare effects of neonicotinoids on bees in the field, these do not occur under normal circumstances.
Neuroscientist Christopher Connolly of the University of Dundee, UK, who has studied the effect of neonicotinoids in bee brains,
and that thiamethoxam was detected in two of the three bee groups tested, even though it was used not in the experiment.
"This debate has focused very heavily on bees. Perhaps we re missing a slightly bigger picture,
Pesticide ban In an effort to protect bees, the European commission has announced that a two-year ban on the use of three common pesticides on crops will begin on 1 december.
Scientists argue over whether neonicotinoids damage bee populations. See Nature 496 408 (2013) and go. nature. com/apvdlf for more.
Its publication on 14 june in The Journal of Applied Ecology comes soon after the European commission's April announcement of a two-year ban on three commonly used neonicotinoids over concerns that they are killing bees.
The very strong focus on bees has blinded perhaps people to the broader implications, Goulson says. Both papers demonstrate the importance of conducting ecosystem assessments after pesticide use,
owing to concerns that the chemical is contributing to the drastic decline in Europe s bee population.
Losing a single pollinator species harms plantsremoving even a single bee species from an ecosystem has serious effects on plant reproduction,
 Wild bee populations are declining severely in the United kingdom and the United States2, possibly because of pesticide use,
With help from volunteers, they then painstakingly caught the bees belonging to this group with nets
They also carefully caught bees as they were pollinating the flowering plant Delphinium barbeyi (a type of larkspur) and anaesthetised them
the other bee species were less fussy as shown by the broader variety of pollen they were carrying.
The number of bees carrying at least two types of pollen increased by 17.5%.%The fact that bees became less picky could be of concern,
because plants can only be fertilized by pollen from their own species. Indeed, the researchers found that after their bee-removal operation,
fewer flowers received their own type of pollen. As a result, each flower produced one-third fewer seeds on average."
Memmott says that it would also be interesting to see what removing bees does to other plants,
as well as to pollinators other than bees. Brosi says that his work adds weight to the argument that society should be more active in protecting pollinators.
How honeycombs can build themselvesthe perfect hexagonal array of bees honeycombs, admired for millennia as an example of natural pattern formation,
owes more to simple physical forces than to the skill of bees, according to a new study.
and his co-workers say that bees simply make cells that are circular in cross section and are packed together like a layer of bubbles.
which appears in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface1, the wax, softened by the heat of the bees bodies,
who contended that the bees had"a certain geometrical forethought. But in the seventeenth century, the Danish mathematician Erasmus Bartholin suggested that the insects need no such forethought.
He said that hexagons would result automatically from the pressure of each bee trying to make its cell as large as possible,
The idea that the bees might first make circular cells, which become hexagonal subsequently, was proposed by Charles darwin.
It might seem like there is not much left for the bees to do once they ve made the circular cells.
"if the bee s internal temperature is enough to melt wax, the temperature of the hive will always be close to the melting point,
But Karihaloo explains that not all the bees act as'heaters'.'The ambient temperature inside the comb is just 25o C,
and potentially harmful effects on pollinating insects such as bees. A study in New zealand now shows that the chemical can also change how native and invasive ants interact.
000 in grants for research to reduce the risks of pesticides, especially to bees. Scientists at Pennsylvania State university in University Park received funding to study alternatives to treating seeds with neonicotinoids,
a class of pesticide linked to declines in bee populations (see Nature 496,408; 2013). ) At Louisiana State university in Baton rouge, researchers will assess the long-term risks to bees from chemicals used in large-scale mosquito-abatement programmes.
Novartis woes The Japanese health ministry filed a criminal complaint on 9 Â January against Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis,
the bees'adaptable flight might help them to escape predators elsewhere, the authors suggest.""My first reaction was Wow,
The bees flew at simulated altitudes"much higher than I would have expected, he says. But it s a very convincing piece of work.
and a fall in oxygen levels would push the limits of the bees'metabolic systems. But the physiological factors that might stop the insects reaching high altitudes are understood not well.
Once the bees began to fly upwards, the pressure inside the chamber was reduced using a hand pump to simulate altitude increases in 500-metre intervals.
All five bees could hover at air pressures equivalent to elevations of 7 400 metres; three could fly above 8, 000 metres;
To work out how the bees did it, Dillon and Dudley analysed video footage taken from directly above the flight chamber.
They observed that the bees did not alter the frequency of their wing beats. Instead, the insects increased the angle through
However, that does not mean that bees could actually fly up Everest. Temperatures fall as altitude increases and the chill above 5,
"Unless there is some unknown reason why bees want to be at 8, 000 metres, then this extra capacity has to be for something else,
Many people thought bees were ugly and useless. We're now finding out that bees are important to the health of millions of plants
and that mass killing them via pesticides isn't good. Sharks are considered ugly by many people yet many are against finning them.
#An Open-source Hive To Save The Bees You may have heard by now: bees are dropping like flies continuing to die at unprecedented rates
and the reason why is still a bit of a mystery. So to give them a leg up the group Open Tech Forever has developed a beehive that can track the health of bees
and is giving the code away to anyone who wants it. From the project site:
The Open source Beehives project is a collaborative response to the threat faced by bee populations in industrialised nations around the world.
The project proposes to design hives that can support bee colonies in a sustainable way to monitor
a free design for a high-tech beehive that can monitor your bees'environment and a chance to contribute to citizen science.
This isn't the first attempt to enlist new technology to solve the bee crisis
since the Bee Crisis is something that needs a solution soon. Below is a closer look at the hives
#Pollinating Bees Are The Pesticide Deliverymen Of The Futurehere's another reason to pay attention to dwindling bee populations:
Bees might be the organic pesticide spreaders of the future. While they go to work pollinating our crops bees could simultaneously bring natural microbial pest control agents to help those crops stave off disease.
Using a technique called bee vectoring researchers force bees to walk through a pesticide before they can exit their hives coating them in a fungus bacterium
or virus that will then be delivered in small amounts to the plants they already pollinate.
That is if we can get enough bees to do it. America's honeybee population is dying.
but CBC News writes that the type of organic pesticides used in bee vectoring are not harmful to the bee (or us for that matter).
Save the bees from disease and they can in turn save our food. CBC News w
One additional worry is that a weakening and eventual reversal in the field would disorient all those species that rely on geomagnetism for navigation including bees salmon turtles whales bacteria and pigeons.
Even more creatures such as bees and some bacteria use a sense of magnetism for finding their way around their local territories for a north/south
We now know what's been killing off the bees but what about that family that died after eating that new Winderbread whole wheat bread?
More than Honey a recent documentary about the death of domestic honeybee hives around the world includes the amazing bees'-eye video of this flight above.
They shot other bee scenes in the documentary showing the insects moving around in their hives or feeding at flowers at 70 frames per second to show each bee's minute movements.
A Bee's Knees calls for gin lemon and honey syrup. A Margarita mixes tequila lime and orange liqueur.
#How Robo-Bees Could Save America's Crops Something is killing off up to half of America's bees--terrible news for bees
Fewer bees not only means less honey it means less food. Researchers at Harvard are working on a partial solution--tiny drones the size of bees (not to be confused with drone bees the mostly useless males of a bee colony.
The drones are designed flying robots to be small enough to pollinate a flower (they weigh just 80 milligrams.
This enables the robo-bees to flap 100 times a second--fast enough to float in the air as a regular bee would.
The robo-bees aren't ready for prime time yet. Because they're so tiny they can't fit a battery pack for power.
The bees will need also some sort of computer so they can guide themselves in flight. Right now there's no onboard guidance mechanism--again they just don't have the real estate. Still:
robot bees! Robot bees! That's pretty great. Totally crazy to think that technology can be as efficient as the natural bee in pollination.
Sure use inefficient technological bees in pollinating GMO crops with temporary pesticide herbicide and insect resistance and add a boatload of money to the cost of growing them.
Let's concentrate on saving biodiversity and not replacing it with technological dead end solutions!!!jesus what a stupid fucking crock of shit.
Next they'll hybridize with African robot bees and we'll have ROBOT KILLER BEES everywhere.
This idea is similar to the Pet Rock. Utter nonsense! until I saw the check of $7004 I did not believe that my friends brother could actualie making money in their spare time online..
How about NOT killing the bees in the first place? Put a fuel cell in them m
#Is Red Bull Downplaying Research On The Harms Of Mixing Alcohol And Energy Drinks? Step away from the Jà ¤gerbomb.
Activated stem cells not plasma activated but real trophin and peptide based activation are the bees knees
Aphids bees and ants can reproduce asexually. Virgin births sometimes occur among hammerhead sharks turkeys boa constrictors and komodo dragons.
the disappearance of bees; the arrival of unprecedented hundred mile per hour straight line wind storms called âÂ#Âoesuper derechosã¢Â#Â;
In nature animals which use the field could be confused mightily-birds bees and some fish all use the field for navigation.
Did you happen to notice how all the bees are dieing? We eat those pesticides as well.
The protein is very selective generally not harming insects in other orders (such as beetles flies bees and wasps.
and using the country for its genetic experiments regardless of the consequences to the indigenous living organisms nearby. has tried not anyone yet to connect the colony collapse disorder a k a. the dying bees. i mean the phenomenon has been observed
since the 1800's but never been on this magnitude of disappearances observed in the past decade. it was not just the pesticides. it may perhaps be a simple case of the bees starving
because the genetic material of the food they collect--the nectar--may have already been contaminated heavily from contact with GMO material that has escaped from dedicated-GMO farms. bee larvae do feed on honey
preventing proper development from larvae to adult in bees leading to population loss. just a possibility worth going into.
The elk are eating so many berries including the entire berry shrubs that animals that rely on the shrubs like bees
#10 Spectacular Bees Native To The U s. The Augochloropsis anonyma looks like a weird bee. It's got that familiar bee shape tilted abdomen oblong eyes
but its body fuzz is white instead of yellow; its eyes are white; and its skin is iridescent jade-aqua-blue-purple.
The Augochloropsis is one of 4000 bee species native to the U s. Honeybees on the other hand are more recent settlers that European farmers brought to America in the 1600s.
Surveys done in the past few years have found that both types of bees contribute to pollinating U s. crops with native bees playing an especially important role for American plants such as pumpkins blueberries and tomatoes.
because their habits differ from those of most native bees which tend to be solitary
They're especially important in industrial farmlands such as those in central California where there's little habitat left for native bees.
however may be pollinated partly or mostly by native bees. In 2009 researchers studied 11 apple farms in New york state and found 81 species of native bees.
Small farms could depend entirely on native bees though larger farms required honeybees. The natives may be especially effective at pollinating foods native to The americas including cherries and cranberries.
Another major difference between native and honeybees is that the natives don't suffer from colony collapse disorder a mysterious condition that's killed off on average one-third of domestic honeybee colonies every year since 2006.
That's because native bees don't suffer from the same pests and viruses that honeybees do
Nevertheless native bees may be threatened by pesticide residues but that hasn't been studied well Droege says. The U s. Geological Survey has set up a program to capture and record bee species all over the continent.
The survey will ramp up this winter to include 50 collection sites. Droege hopes to collect enough data to know
whether native bee populations are rising or falling. In the meanwhile he and his collectors have gotten great photos of Augochloropsis and other weird natives.
This article originally listed eggplant as an example of a plant that's native to The americas and better pollinated by native bee.
Bees are magical and bring life upon the Earth. I adore BEES!..I am not secretly ease dropping on you.
I am microscopically'analyzing'your communication and saving it for further'analysis'on the premise you might be a terrorist.
I would see to it that bees were kept on that farm and I would use all of the honey for the sole purpose of feeding the bees in winter time.
The honey substitutes that are being fed to bees weakens their immune system making migrating pollination services unreliable and expensive.
Seeing to it that bees are kept always on site at all times will help both the farmers and the bees.
There is a world wide decline of bee's. o one knows why and no one has a clue how to slow
or stop the decline. A professor at Texas A&m has been studying bees for 30 years
and has documented the losses of hundreds of types of bees. We might be able to live without bees
but it will be a very bleak world. It would be more useful to dedicate resources to the bees than some of the other government programs.
The Minneapolis-based advertising agency I work for Clarity Coverdale Fury is in the midst of a campaign called Buzz Karma to donate 500000 bees to rural families in third world countries via Heifer International.
With each like or share of our video located at www. Buzzkarma2013. com our donation increases.
Families are given training along with the bees so they can have a sustainable source of income.
It's a really easy way to do good without much effort t
#Many retired men enjoy tinkering in the garage to fill the hours working on an old Jaguar XKSS say
#European Bee Sperm bank Will Improve U s. Bee Gene Poolhere's a new idea for protecting the declining honeybee population in the U s. One team of scientists is importing European honeybee semen for fun
The team based at Washington state University has imported bee semen from subspecies that live in Italy Georgia and the eastern Alps.
so it's not that European bees are more resistant to the problem. An injection of European sperm will diversify the American bee gene pool however
which may lead to healthier American insects. Beekeepers began reporting colony collapses in 2006 according to the U s. Department of agriculture.
Crops from almonds to berries to broccoli to onions all depend on bee pollination. In addition to breeding colony collapse-resistant bees the Washington researchers hope to breed new bees with other traits American farmers from different regions want.
Italian honeybees for example are quick to reproduce a boon for American farmers in warmer areas who want bees to pollinate early-blooming crops.
Farmers in cooler states on the other hand want bees that wait longer to reproduce past when they might be threatened by a late frost.
And what they can't use now the researchers will freeze for later in a bee sperm bank.
The sperm bank brings unique genetic diversity to America's bees. Since 1922 when scientists discovered a parasite was likely causing large bee die offs in England the U s. has restricted the import of live bees from overseas.
For decades the bans protected U s. bees from the 1922 parasite but they made the U s. bee gene pool small.
To expand their ability to breed healthier bees the Washington team members got a special permit from the U s. D. A. in 2008 to import the semen they want.
The semen is screened for viruses before it comes into the U s. That means of course that the task of collecting bee semen falls upon the U s. team's colleagues overseas.
I would totally do it but there's this whole ban thingã¢Â# so I guess you're going to have to sorry about that.)
To do the deed researchers press gently on a mature drone's abdomen which pushes semen out.
To improve the breed someone bred African bees with South american bees. The disastrous result: the killer bees now invading North america...
@uldissprogis Wrong there are multiple endangered species on this list in the United states. Including the Franklin Bee located in Oregon
But it's good for bees as well --and vitally important to their well-being as it turns out.
Honey contributes a detoxifying effect that can protect bees from pesticides. For American agriculture bees are valuable not for their honey
but for their pollination services--without them you wouldn't have almonds blueberries tomatoes and a long list of other crucial crops.
For this reason bees are hired often out by the hive to pollinate farmers'fields. That means they are exposed to a wide range of pesticides meant to ward off other insects.
Researchers are making headway in mapping the genes that help bees overcome these obstacles including
They're present in honey something commercial bees don't get to keep--their food supply is taken for human use
and bees are feed sweet substitutes like corn syrup. Wenfu Mao and colleagues found three compounds in honey that increase the expression of a gene that helps bees metabolize pesticides.
The most important chemical is called something p-coumaric acid which is found in pollen cells. By eating honey which contains pollen the bees are exposed to a compound that basically boosts their ability to break down dangerous chemicals.
So honey substitutes like high-fructose corn syrup may compromise their health. Scientists knew pollen ingestion helps bee health
but they haven't been sure why. This study pinpoints one crucial reason. After comprehensive testing and development p-coumaric acid may à   nd use as an additive to honey substitutes to allow beekeepers to maintain colonies during food shortages the authors write without compromising the ability
of their bees to defend themselves against the pesticides and pathogens that currently bedevil beekeeping in the United states. The paper is in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth man would only have four years left to live...
But even if he never really said it BEES ARE FREAKING IMPORTANT! Thank you. Same here kormiko.
Here's my take on why Northam bee colonies are dying off: in a word Monsanto and genetically-altered organisms (GMO.
What I find amazing is the fact that people believe that they can take away the food bees have created for themselves
and think that it wouldn't harm the bees in any way. Speaking of Monsanto.
We're feeding bees high fructose corn syrup? Who are the geniuses who know this already
but can't figure out what's wrong with bees these days? Does anyone even eat honey?
Wrong hypothesis. In reality bees are rebelling because beekeepers are keeping 95%of their productive efforts.
Would you be busy as a bee if someone taxed your at the 95%level?
is that while honey may be good for the bees and their immunity...the corn syrup they are forced to eat en route to their next pollination gig...
Do bees really eat that much honey that people need to replace it with sugar? Sugar is not food geniuses?
Once the bees have malnutrition ANYTHING could kill them easily. how bout we get one hive that only has gmo flowers
That nature might not be able to adapt to these crops in time for evolution to allow bees to process the crud they are being forced to collect all day into honey.
As of today we've still introduced no'fix'so the clock is still counting down to a world with very few bees.
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