For decades scientists knew that bees took on new jobs as they aged but a team of researchers recently discovered that chemical tags attached to the bees'DNA play an important role in determining their career paths.
The tags which are frequently methyl groups control gene expression which in turn affects how an organism behaves.
Foraging bees for instance could become nurses if the hive requires it. Humans also carry epigenetic tags that may affect their behavior Scientists found methyl groups attached to a stress-hormone-receptor gene in child-abuse victims who committed suicide.
If these chemical cues can be changed in bees scientists may find new treatments for people with psychological trauma mood disorders and learning disabilities too.
Flowering Season To exploit the increase in available food young bees that would normally become nurses immediately develop into foragers a switch reflected by changes in their epigenetic tags.
Swarming Effect When a queen gets old she flees the hive with a swarm of mostly nurse bees leaving the colony and its larvae to her successor.
Some foragers and free-agent bees will then shift to nursing. In a lab experiment after half of a hive's population was taken away only 10 percent of foragers became nurses.
or infirm nurse bees secrete a royal jelly high in fatty acids and protein and feed it to a few larvae.
Nurse Most female bees begin their lives as nurses who care for the queen and larvae.
Forager When most nurse bees turn two to three weeks old the gene expression in their brains changes
A nurse bee starts with a few DNA tags 1. More tags turn it into a forager 2. Tag removal reverts the bee to a nurse role 3. Tags:
The mechanism for inducing epigenetic changes in bees is understood not well but scientists suspect that pheromones exuded by the forager bees might play a role.
Genes: Epigenetic tags such as methyl groups determine how much of a gene is expressed or whether the gene is expressed at all.
A protein produced in a nurse bee will look different and serve a different function than one produced in a forager.
That bee research could have an impact on the treatment of depression (see conclusion in printed article)
and that bees are disappearing is not just alarming but critical to our survival as a species. Fascinating stuff-it would be interesting to understand more about this foragers are programmed to be frail issue as it seems to contradict the young bees that would normally become nurses immediately develop into foragers in the flowering season.
Frailness as they define it seems to be induced and independent of age.@@cinenabon-please be more precise in
if you want to perpetuate the'bees are disappearing'idea. The bees referred to in the research in Arizona were likely (for several reasons) to be only a single species of honey bee...
and sure although domestic honey bees and their keepers have issues there are actually around 20000 species of bees on the planet 90%of them are solitary and not social.
The discussions about bees dying mostly relates to lazy media perceptions of honey bees being the only (key
and important) species. In actual fact if you read the Garibaldi study published in Science on March 29 2013 Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance there is strong evidence to suggest that the media
perceptions of a strong correlation between the survival of humans and honey bee is simply false.
Instead of perpetuating the myth about the importance of honey bees we need to speak out about and'campaign for solitary bees'(LMGTFY
#Building A Better Bed bug Trap An old folk remedy involving hairy bean leaves strewn around the bedroom may have a new life as a modern bed bug trap according to new research from the University of California Irvine
and bean leaves similar trichomes on other plants are known to capture ants aphids bees flies
#Something Is Killing Up to Half Of America's Bees There's some kind of environmental issue/plague/apocalypse killing America's honeybees
Bees don't just make honey remember but pollinate a ton of what we eat--as much as a fourth of it.
New york times The most viable hypothesis is that mobile phones bandwidth is disorienting and killing Bees. And is developed a world phenomenon not just NA.
No bees on Mars just sayin...It is GMO crops watch the documentary on Netflix
Capitalism is a failure Marxism is the outcome capitalism has lead to this democracy becoming a corptocracy. telegraph Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee and many others just google ithailey.
and begin raising native and gentle solitary bees. We just had an online conference that you can view at:
and with Monsanto having purchased the Dept of agriculture the bees are dead already. We will be a full welfare nation soon dependent for our base food needs.
and the bee's accumulate them further. im surprised no one notices. I think it is a pity that one thing is mentioned never.
Bees live in symbioses with plants. So they must evolve together with the plants. However plants are selected now
(or modified) by humans and not bees anymore. We don't select new plants how much they benefit the bees.
The bees have no voting rights when the farmer selects his seeds. On the long term this will lead to worsen relation between the bees and the plants.
It might that this is already happening. Lucas K. âÂ#Âoeif the bee disappeared off the face of the earth man would only have four years left to live.
âÂ# âÂ#ÂALBERT Einsteinthere's a long article Colony collapse disorder on wikipedia that is definitely worth reading if you're interested in this subject.
That awkward moment when some random joe badbot tells scientists to google it because apparently one's google Ph d means a lot more than a University Ph. dreally we could probably find a way to artificially pollinate plants.
what is killing the bees which are very adaptable is also killing other bugs and animals then the statement âÂ#Âoe...
If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth man would only have four years left to live...
It was first report was in the American Bee Journal in 1918 not 2005 as the source article suggests.
Some Bee trivia you may or may not know.;)Bee (mythology) en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Bee %28mythology%29bee-keeping www. reshafim. org. il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/beekeeping. htmthe
First Beekeepers ferrebeekeeper. wordpress. com/2012/05/18/the-first-beekeepers/Scientists? Huh the scientists debate on popsci forum that is how you reason?
well technically research and associative patterns have showed a strong correlation between bees being affected and negative sources of non-iodizing radiation (the correct term to use)
and mapping their frequencies and power outputs one is able to see a correlation within a set radius of bee populations affected by theses sources of non-iodizing radiation.
or none RF radiation would be places of high bee population. I wonder if this has been looked at to give validity to the above theory.
There won't be anything definitive regarding the bee die till it is already over there are interests at stake
when the bees go too. In fact many of the plants where you would expect to see bees in the past will be history
when the bees are history. It will not surprise me to learn that this has been planned and is a long time coming in the corporate world-it coming to a head just slightly after the establishment of a highly secure seed vault in the northern oceans
and with the growing use of (forced use of) GM seeds that are owned strictly corporate.
Yes when the bees die there will really be very few avenues for people to feed themselves that won't be controlled corporate.
It goes without saying that a bee die off will make the ledge that we have been moving onto that much narrower-a misstep in any direction will have dire consequences-even for the extremely wealthy.
when the bees population started it's decline and compare it with the pesticides that gained market share since that time.
Honey has some impurities in it (bacteria pollen other bee-related things) but it is otherwise the same.
$0 Thomas Hudson an engineer and bee keeper in Portland Oregon wanted to log his insects'comings
Infrared sensors that detect bee movement flank the ends of each tunnel and count entries and exits.
Keep track of bees is fun; nothing better than a honey bee to do list. The thermal flash light appears to be warm additions to the home do-it-yourselfer for maintain domestic efficiency.
The Bee counter is amazing. The bike clock is cool but seems a lil unfinished witht he paint job being undone.
Hey though Greg De Gouviea lives in my town and he is known for his Half assed work character.
#Bees Make A Big Stink To Protect Flowersimagine you're a bee. Buzz buzz you're looking for flowers.
Now as you might imagine there are competing bees afoot--naturally you're not the only species looking for pollen and nectar.
You might imagine that with competing bees--eavesdroppers--around it is best to communicate quietly.
A new study found that in the presence of competitors several species of stingless bees make a big stink about the location of their food (somewhat literally:
the bees signal its location with loads of smelly pheromones. Perhaps counterintuitively they found this actually helped both themselves and their competitors for this reason:
or flower they tend to defend it heavily against other bees. So by making their flower-claim clear the species signals that they have found it
On the other hand food sources with fewer pheromones were visited readily by competing bees. Until now it was thought that eavesdroppers select against conspicuous signals for example by more easily finding
Many species of stingless bees by the way also produce honey and the craft of rearing and producing the sugary treat from these animals is an ancient one (called meliponiculture) practiced for example by the Maya to this day t
#Obama Starts Task force To Prevent Bee Deaths The task force will have to come up with a strategy within six months to reverse this decline.
The initiative doesn't only focus on bees but also addresses other pollinators like butterflies. The Federal government will also work to restore the Monarch butterfly migration using research
and honey bees the statement said. What's going on with bees? As the White house noted the decline is blamed on various factors from a lack of good habitat to exposure to certain pesticides to mite infestations and viruses.
Part of the total $50 million is slated to enhance research as to a cause for the bee deaths.
Some environmental groups said that Obama didn't go far enough and should have done specifically some about neonicotinoid pesticides
which have been linked to bee deaths. The administration should prevent the release and use of these toxic pesticides until determined safe Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica told the AP P
To attempt to use this technology at this current stage of understanding would be more naã Â ve than our use of DDT in the 1950s the National Honey Bee Advisory board said in comments submitted to the E. P. A. before the meeting
But until recently inventors lacked the aerodynamics expertise to turn diagrams into mechanical versions of something as quotidian as a fly or a bee.
And the stubby wings of bees and other insects lift far more weight than can be explained using conventional steady-state aerodynamics principles.
or buzz of a bee says Jayant Ratti Techject s president. A flapping-wing drone utilizing resonance generates significant improvements in energy efficiency creating optimal lift with minimal effort.
#How Honey Bees Point Their Way To Foodhoney bees can give each other directions using polarized light as a landmark to find potential food.
which the honey bees perform to inform others about where to find food is actually based on the patterns of polarized light.
Researchers have explored previously how bees'eyes see the polarized light and use it to navigate
With this study scientists at the University of Queensland have found that the so-called waggle dance bees perform translates that polarized light map of the sky into the movement that guides others.
Fellow honey bees will then follow the polarized light as dictated by the waggles. Since the polarization of light indicates
when the honey bee returns to perform the dance on the vertical face of the honeycomb the axis of the dance indicates in which direction relative to the light the food source lies.
Building on previous studies that have examined how waggle dances can be altered by illuminating the hive with artificially polarized light these experiments demonstrate that foraging bees can sense
And beyond giving a better understanding of how honey bees find their way the study may also help to shed more light on how the tiny bee brain works. w
or the honey bees that produce mangrove honey rely on one or the other. Both provide valuable ecosystem services buffering floods storing atmospheric carbon and building soils.
and females were produced in honey bee colonies. He knew that the difference between queen and worker bees--both females--emerged from the different quality and quantity of food.
The authors studied 14 natural sequence variants of the complementary sex determining switch (csd gene) for 76 genotypes of honey bees.
First honey bees are ideal study subjects because they have one gene locus responsible for sex determination.
In addition Hunt and Page found that the honey bees'high recombination rate--the process by which genetic material is mixed physically during sexual reproduction--is the highest of any known animal studied
which then lead to functional changes in the bees--the switch that determines the shift from female to not female said Page.
and vegetable crops rely on pollination by bees and other insect species--and the future of many of those species is uncertain.
Widespread concerns over the fate of honey bees and other pollinators have led to increased efforts to understand which species are the most effective pollinators
when one bee visits one flower. Second is abundance which measures the number of each type of bee observed in a study area.
Third is inclement weather behavior which tracks how active a bee species is during cool cloudy and/or windy weather.
Fourth is visitation rate or the number of flowers that a bee visits while foraging and the amount of time it spends at each flower.
The perfect bee would produce a lot of seeds and visit a lot of flowers even in poor weather--and there would be a lot of them Burrack says.
But as far as we know the perfect bee doesn't exist. The researchers conducted a pilot study using their comprehensive approach to assess the pollination performance of various bee species on economically important highbush blueberry crops in North carolina.
They found that small native bees had extremely high single-visit efficiency rates and were active during inclement weather.
However small native bees did not have high abundance nor appear to have high visitation rates This highlights the importance of incorporating multiple metrics says Dr. David Tarpy an associate professor of entomology at NC State
and co-author of the paper. Because researchers looking only at visitation rates or abundance may think the small native species are unimportant
when they actually appear to be important pollinators for blueberry growers. The paper Multiple Criteria for Evaluating Pollinator Performance in Highbush Blueberry (Ericales:
#Himalayan flowers shed light on climate changeflower color in some parts of the world including The himalayas has evolved to attract bees as pollinators research has shown for the first time.
and RMIT University have investigated the evolution of flower colors due to the bee's color vision.
Associate professor Adrian Dyer of Monash and RMIT said previous studies had shown that flower color evolved to attract bees as pollinators in temperate environments
Using computer models to examine flower colors as bees would see them the team addressed how pollinator vision had shaped flower evolution.
and alpine (3000-4100m) regions showed evidence of having evolved color spectral signatures to enhance discrimination by bee pollinators.
but it appears that in The himalayas several bee species are also active at high altitude
and these insects have been such effective pollinators that they have led to the evolution of distinctive bee-friendly colors Dr Shrestha said.
While'bee colors'were prevalent at all elevations flower colors in high altitude zones were more diverse
#Battle against bee blood eating Acarimexico is one of the top five bee producing countries worldwide and the second in exportation.
which feeds on hemolymph of the bees. Currently the control methods employed are of synthetic origin
besides is not rare to find traces of it in the bee wax and honey.
or bee wax if generating appropriately. Miguel Arechavaleta Velasco head of research at INIFAP explains that Varroa is an acari that feed on bee hemolymph;
like a tick it produces a disease in the colony called varroasis that can kill entire hives being the main problem that beekeepers face worldwide.
The researcher specialized in bee genetics points out that the developed technology was published recently on INIFAP we are in process of validation using field tests with beekeepers
but covered with spikes that can entangle with the hairs on bees'legs or adhere to surfaces via Van der waals forces at nanometer-scale distances Sandhage explained.
#Queen bees honesty is the best policy for reproduction signalsqueen bees convey honest signals to worker bees about their reproductive status
and quality according to an international team of researchers who say their findings may help to explain why honey bee populations are declining.
However this study demonstrates that queen honey bees are conveying a lot of nuanced information through their pheromones.
and disease-resistant stocks of honey bees Niã o said. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Penn State.
#Sex determiner gene of honey bee more complicated than thoughtbee colonies consist of a queen bee lots of female worker bees and some male drones.
The gene that determines the sex of the bees is much more complex than has been assumed up until now
Male honey bees (Apis mellifera) hatch from unfertilized eggs and females from fertilized ones. In these fertilized eggs the condition of the complementary sex determiner (csd) gene is of crucial significance for the creation of female workers.
The vitality of a bee population depends on amongst other things the genetic diversity of sex determining alleles.
His research foci include the social insects honey bees bumble bees and stingless bees the unique biology
and distribution of the bee species Braunsapis puangensis in the Suva area of Fiji and examine its association with the invasive creeping daisy Sphagneticola trilobata.
The paper suggests that the invasive creeping daisy could in fact have a positive influence on a wild bee pollinator species
honey bees and solitary bees. One species of solitary bee Braunsapis puangensis was locally abundant on patches of S. trilobata in the Laucala Bay area of Suva.
This bee species is probably of Indian origin and was carried most likely to Fiji by anthropogenic means.
There is growing concern regarding the global decline of honey bee populations and the implications of this demise for the pollination of crops.
In the future we may rely on other insect species to perform crop pollination services including naturally-occurring native
or introduced species of bees comments one of the authors of the paper Dr Simon Hodge from Lincoln University in New zealand.
and discomfort but for those with a bee venom allergy the consequences can be devastating:
In a paper to be published online Oct 24 in Immunity the researchers show that mice injected with a small dose of bee venom were later resistant to a potentially lethal dose of the same venom.
To find out whether adaptive immune responses could help mice resist bee venom Marichal and Starkl first injected mice with a low dose of venom equivalent to one or two stings.
In all three groups of mutant mice pre-immunization with a low dose of bee venom did not confer protection against a lethal dose suggesting that the protection depends on Ige signaling and mast cell activation.
if the animal encountered a whole nest of bees or in the event of a snakebite said Stephen Galli MD professor and chair of pathology and the co-senior author of the study.
#Bees underwent massive extinctions when dinosaurs didfor the first time ever scientists have documented a widespread extinction of bees that occurred 65 million years ago concurrent with the massive event that wiped out land dinosaurs and many flowering plants.
Their findings published this week in the journal PLOS ONE could shed light on the current decline in bee species. Lead author Sandra Rehan an assistant professor of biological sciences at UNH worked with colleagues Michael Schwarz at Australia
's Flinders University and Remko Leys at the South australia Museum to model a mass extinction in bee group Xylocopinae or carpenter bees at the end of the Cretaceous and beginning of the Paleogene eras known as the K-T boundary.
Previous studies have suggested a widespread extinction among flowering plants at the K-T boundary and it's long been assumed that the bees who depended upon those plants would have met the same fate.
Yet unlike the dinosaurs there is a relatively poor fossil record of bees says Rehan making the confirmation of such an extinction difficult.
Rehan and colleagues overcame the lack of fossil evidence for bees with a technique called molecular phylogenetics.
Analyzing DNA sequences of four tribes of 230 species of carpenter bees from every continent except Antarctica for insight into evolutionary relationships the researchers began to see patterns consistent with a mass extinction.
Combining fossil records with the DNA analysis the researchers could introduce time into the equation learning not only how the bees are related
The data told us something major was happening in four different groups of bees at the same time says Rehan of UNH's College of Life sciences and Agriculture.
While much of Rehan's work involves behavioral observation of bees native to the northeast of North america this research taps the computer-heavy bioinformatics side of her research assembling genomic data to elucidate similarities and differences among the various species
Marrying observations from the field with genomic data she says paints a fuller picture of these bees'behaviors over time.
Indeed the findings of this study have important implications for today's concern about the loss in diversity of bees a pivotal species for agriculture and biodiversity.
The article First evidence for a massive extinction event affecting bees close to the K-T boundary was published in the Oct 23 2013 edition of PLOS ONE.
The bees don't distinguish among half and full sisters and nobody knows why for sure. So this is an example of a veil of ignorance Queller said.
It works to the advantage of the colony because if the bees can't tell half and full sisters they'll be out foraging rather than loitering near the queen cells to make sure a full sister becomes the next queen he said.
The bees apparently recognize one another by means of distinctive hydrocarbons in their cuticles or exoskeleton.
But within the colony the hydrocarbons rub off on other bees and on nest material as the bees feed groom
and move about so that the hydrocarbons get mixed together creating a general colony odor. The question said Queller is:
#and the beesare our favourite garden flowers attractive to hungry visitors such as bees and butterflies to feed on?
pollinators such as bees and butterflies are in decline globally with one of the main causes being the loss of flowers especially in the countryside.
As popular support for wildlife continues to grow gardeners are increasingly looking for ways to help bees
as it is known to be attractive to bees and also four dahlias. All the plants studied had to be popular garden plants be widely
and his Phd student Mihail Gaburzov was that garden flowers attractive to the human eye vary enormously (approx 100-fold) in their attractiveness to insects meaning that the best plants for bees
Bees (87 per cent) and hoverflies (nine per cent) were the most frequent visitors with butterflies and moths just two per cent and all other insects also two per cent.
The researchers observed clear differences in the mix of bee and insect types attracted by different varieties indicating that careful plant choice can
But our study clearly shows that planting pollinator-friendly flowers is a no-cost win-win solution to help the bees.
The plants attractive to bees are just as cheap easy to grow and as pretty as those that are less attractive to insects.#
#oehelping bees in your garden is a no-brainer. Flowers that attract bees are just as easy to grow
and just as pretty and cost no more. Plant the right flowers and the bees will come.#
#Mihail Garbuzov says:##oewe basically counted bees and other insects visiting flowers in bloom to determine the most attractive.
Anyone can do this in their own garden or park or even when shopping for plants in a garden centre.#
#1#Quantifying variation among garden plants in attractiveness to bees and other flower-visiting insects Functional Ecology (October 2013.
which the researchers decoded the honey bee communication dances had shown that summer is the most challenging season for bees to find flowers
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