) 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.
which is engineered to be resistant to insect pests. 12-13 february London hosts a global conference on the illegal trade in wildlife.
Himalayan heights pose no problem for beesalpine bumblebees can hover happily in pressure conditions equivalent to an altitude of 9, 000 metres higher than the peak of Mount everest.
Bumblebees are often found above 4, 000 metres and have been recorded foraging as high as 5, 600 metres.
But the physiological factors that might stop the insects reaching high altitudes are understood not well.
whether bumblebees vertical range was limited by aerodynamics and physiology. Working in the mountains of Sichuan, China,
the duo caught five male bumblebees (Bombus impetuosus) foraging at 3, 250 metres and placed them in a plexiglas chamber.
three could fly above 8, 000 metres; and two got to above 9, 000 metres.
Instead, the insects increased the angle through which they beat their wings.""They re essentially sweeping their wings through a wider arc,
000 metres would provide a formidable challenge for bumblebees. Such changes were simulated not in the flight chamber."
 If so, why do alpine bumblebees have that extra capacity for upward thrust? Dillon suspects that it is required for other tasks,
I had to stich myself up with a sewing needle and fishing line. Those things nearly killed
#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
Each hive contains an open source sensory kit The Smart Citizen Kit (SCK) which can transmit to an open data platform:
Smartcitizen. methese sensor enhanced hive designs are open and freely available online the data collected from each hive is published together with geolocations allowing for a further comparison and analysis of the hives.
If you're a professional beekeeper or hobbyist and handy with electronics you get a double-whammy:
a free design for a high-tech beehive that can monitor your bees'environment and a chance to contribute to citizen science.
Below is a closer look at the hives and you can find the source code for the hives at the project site.
Boing Boing o
#TECHNOLOGY MEETS TRADITION SPONSORED ARTICLE It s not often you get an assignment from Popular Science to film a whisky distillery in Scotland especially not one as steeped in tradition as Glenfiddich.
#Spain Considers Release Of Genetically Modified Olive Fruit Fliesa company involved in creating genetically modified mosquitos has another project nearing outdoor testing.
The U k.-based Oxitec has applied to release genetically modified olive fruit flies under netted olive trees in Spain the BBC reports.
The flies are a major pest to olive crops. The idea is that the flies all male will mate with wild olive fruit flies.
Any female flies produced from such a union will die as maggots while any male offspring will carry the deadly gene
just as their fathers did. Over time this should bring down local olive fruit fly population dramatically. In a study done in cages weekly releases of the Oxitec flies crashed the fly population.
The added genes are similar to the ones that appear in Oxitec's mosquitos which the company has tested in Brazil bringing down one town's dengue-fever-carrying mosquito population by 96 percent.
The new program is less about'does this work?''and more about the first operational roll out of this technology Oxitec cofounder Luke Alphey told the New Scientist in September.
Allowing genetically engineered insects to fly free is controversial. So far insects are the only genetically modified animals that companies have released into the wild.
U s. officials are considering allowing a company to sell genetically modified salmon that would be farmed in inland tanks.)
The BBC talked with Helen Wallace a spokeswoman from Genewatch an opposing group. The modified olive fruit flies may have other unwanted genetic traits such as pesticide resistance that they'll spread among wild flies Wallace said.
The group is concerned also about GM maggots living for some time in olives before their genes kill them off.
Oxitec officials say genetically modified olive fruit flies would reduce the need for pesticides which is good for the environment.
The deadly genes should only work in flies unlike pesticides which affect many insect species including ones people may be interested in protecting such as pollinators o
#What Sound Does A Fox Really Make? A music video from a Norwegian duo called Ylvis is primed to as the kids marketers say go viral
#Green Energy Scheme To Burn Beetle-Infested Trees For Electricityaldo Leopold described the burning of wood as re-releasing the sunshine the tree depended upon to grow.
Since the late 1990s Colorado has had to deal with unusual numbers of beetle-killed pine trees.
Mountain pine beetles are native to North america and normally infest some trees every year but warmer winters have meant their populations are now unusually high.
and time-intensive field work according to a new study of the pine processionary moth a pest that destroys pine and cedar trees.
The caterpillars make distinctive highly visible silk nests in the trees they live in so they are relatively easy to track from afar.
The researchers from France's National Institute of Agronomic Research found that in a region of 18000 square miles in France where the caterpillars had set up shop data collected by examining Google street view was 96 percent as accurate as traditional field
Nor would Street view be a good way to track all species. Evidence of the pine processionary moth's habitat is highly visible from tree-lined roads
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
America's honeybee population is dying. Scientists have suggested that this colony collapse disorder could be the result of long-term exposure to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids
For example honeybees or bumblebees can be used to carry natural pest killers like the fungus Beauveria bassiana
which controls populations of aphids whiteflies termites and more. Save the bees from disease and they can in turn save our food.
discovering that when dung beetles get lost they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky way.
Dung beetles Use the Milky way for Orientation Marie Dacke Emily Baird Marcus Byrne Clarke H. Scholtz Eric J. Warrant Current Biology epub January 24 2013.
The report looks at the so-called superbugs that modern American healthcare and farming practices have bred.
#Follow A Queen bee On Her Maiden Mating Flightqueen honeybees mate just once in their lives within weeks of emerging as an adult from the little honeycomb cells in
Their mating flights may be the only time they ever leave their hive. But at least they seem to make the most of it:
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.
And they used endoscopes the cameras doctors use during surgery to see inside hives. More than Honey is in theaters now in the U k. It's already had its run in the U s. showing in New york in June and in Los angeles in August.
if it would be possible to armor domestic queens so they could take over killer bee hives.
If simply giving her a little extra temporary armor would allow her to defeat the killer bee queen
and take over the killer bee hive e
#Are Crocodiles Secret Fruit-Lovers? Seed dispersal by animals is important for plants to help them occupy new areas of land.
Usually bugs birds or intrepid kittens do that job. Now we can add crocodiles to that list.
although not as well understood as for insects mammals birds and even in snakes. The recent study published in the Journal of Zoology shows that for crocodiles almost a quarter of the fruits consumed were of the âÂ#Âoefleshyã¢Â# kind.
Their wings mimic those of a fly flapping when pulled by a special ceramic that contracts
and insect resistance and add a boatload of money to the cost of growing them.
and we'll have ROBOT KILLER BEES everywhere. This idea is similar to the Pet Rock.
but leave behind so-called superbugs that are able survive a round of antibiotics. The low doses used to promote growth are especially prone to leaving superbugs behind.
Eventually the resistant microbes come out of the animals uhh other ends and from there may spread to crops as fertilizer get carried around by birds
and years of antibiotic use and you eventually breed large populations of superbugs. Getting farms to stop using antibiotics unnecessarily would be a major step toward slowing the evolution of superbugs.
The argument now is whether the FDA s new program actually does this. Critics worry that farms will continue to use antibiotics widely
but unless these veterinarians believe these uses are creating a public health problem they have no incentive to do thatã¢Â# says Steven Roach a program director for public health at the Food Animal Concerns Trust a farm animal welfare
#China's Cockroach Farms Are A Glimpse Into Our Protein Futureyou've heard the arguments.
Insects are cheap to grow easy on the environment and high in protein and minerals.
The United nations has been urging people in Western countries to eat insects for years. Well should that venerable organization succeed perhaps the resulting farms will look something like this.
China always the forefront of the future has been undergoing a cockroach farm boom the Los angeles times reports.
and the largest producer has estimated an 10 million insects in six farms. Cosmetics companies and traditional Chinese medicine manufacturers buy the insects for their protein and cellulose the Times reports.
Farmers also promote them as feed for fish and traditional livestock and as a treat for people.
and a video of cockroach farms and farmers including a photo of Shandong Insect Industry Association head Liu Yusheng tucking into a plate of fried cockroaches.
Male rhinoceros beetles grow huge unwieldy horns half the length of their body that they use to fight for females.
since his theory of evolution couldn't completely explain them (The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail
Aphids bees and ants can reproduce asexually. Virgin births sometimes occur among hammerhead sharks turkeys boa constrictors and komodo dragons.
since his theory of evolution couldn t completely explain them (âÂ#Âoethe sight of a feather in a peacock s tail
therefore peacocks that can maintain such a display basically say: Look at me. Even with diminished immunity I can maintain this beautiful exterior.
I see a host of new posters that got sucked into this dumb shit like mosquitoes who saw a light in the far off distance.
D49now who's the mosquito? If drilling to the center of the Earth were as easy is putting 5 tons in the space of the area of a teaspoon...
BRAIN PARASITES Flea and tick (bugs) killer too! Hi DE (food grade) enthusiasts lovers and researchers!
I wanted to title this Thank God For Fleas! but Corrie Ten Boom beat me to it!
If it wasn't for fleas I never would have been here to tell you that DE saved my life!!!
I couldn't find fleas so I Googled What rids mites...And webside after website came up talking about DE.
kills mites fleas bed bugs insects parasites<PARASITES! OMG!!!I am a groomer and breeder of expensive (show quality) Miniature schnauzers (my last sold for $1500. 00)
Why do doctors refuse to believe there is a thing called microorganisms and parasites (germs worms fungus bacteria yeast insects etc.
#What Eating Crickets Is Really Like The Future Food Salon describes itself as a celebration of food in an arts-soaked setting that explores with enthusiasm what we will be eating in the future.
which you eat bugs. Lots of bugs. I headed out to the far west side of Manhattan yesterday evening to one of the many airy modern vaguely industrial event spaces that seem to be all there is between 18th and 34th streets west of 10th avenue.
Given that I don't think anyone can actually live out there I think I've spent about as much time as anyone in that part of town;
But yesterday I was going to eat bugs not play with new cellphones. The event was cheerful and moderately drunk;
the bartender was pouring like completely full-to-the-brim glasses of wine possibly to counter any trepidation the guests had about eating toffee that was covered intentionally with bugs.
and do-gooders interested in promoting sustainable bug-eating (mostly from Austin Texas) and the guests were a nice mix of journalists photographers NYU students who had come out to see the panels that preceded the tasting
I was there for the bugs. The eating of insects as food is called sort of clinically and unappetizingly entomophagy.
It's not unusual outside of North american and Western europe; in Mexico for instance chapulines or grasshoppers are a favorite bar snack and taco filling.
But here eating bugs is limited pretty much to reality TV SHOWS. That could change as we're looking at a near-inevitable food crisis brought on by factory farming.
and others have been looking to alternatives from lab-grown meat to well bugs. Entomophagy has a lot going for it.
Bugs are high in protein so they're a good replacement for mammal or bird meat.
Many types of insects (like mealworms) don't even require water since they get enough from their food.
Insects are also easy to raise at home and don't take up much space. At the Future Food Salon I was shown a mockup of an in-house cricket enclosure designed to be placed on your counter next to your microwave
and toaster oven (pictured above). It worked pretty much like a tiny chicken coop--a cricket coop you might say.
Click through to the gallery for a seven-item hors d'oeuvres spin through the wonders of bug-eating.
As a vegetarian I'm very interested in entomophagy as odd as it sounds. I make no illusions of the massive amounts of insects that must be killed
when harvesting the plants that I consume daily especially given the raw amount that I consume (which would likely be proportionally higher than a non-vegetarian).*
insect mortality for vegetarians would make an interesting study) Of course the leading reservations that I have when it comes to the consumption of animal meat is the suffering of the animal
I would wish on my worst enemy nor wish on a reasonably simple insect. Do you have any information on how these insects are typically transitioned from living creature to food?
seaniumly Since many users and what appears to be Popsci ok with the use of marijuana with possible (hype) reasons of it being healthy just get you animal bug really high off marijuana (mellow) prior to killing it
so you do not have to feel bad about killing it and both enjoy the benefits of eating meat bug and the health aspects (hype) of the marijuana in the animal.
Bon appetite and enjoy! Seanlumly I attended the meetings was one of the speakers during the morning session on entomophagy as well as consumed crickets during the Future Food Salon tasting.
The crickets used in the tastings had been frozen during their processing. Freezing in arthropods is one of the most humane methods.
In a natural setting during change of seasons from autumn through winter insects are frozen which causes antifreeze chemicals to be produced (in those that do this)
but this process is triggered over a period of time measured in days and months but not if they are frozen quick in a freezer.
Freezing causes no pain in insects; their metabolism is slowed simply down until totally frozen. If frozen for 10
or 20 minutes or so the crickets wake up after thawing but for longer periods of time it is not a process that can be reversed.@
@seanlumly-all the bugs at this event came from us (World Ento) Every single bug was frozen slowly to death in their homes.
What types of insects do you carry? I am interested in trying something out at some point. ne peuvent pas profiter de mon repasevery year the North carolina Museum of Natural science holds a Bugfest (September 21 this year.
One of the biggest draws is their Cafã Â Insecta. Local restaurants and chefs (including myself) prepare dishes utilizing various insects.
We have done dishes like chirps and salsa (toasted cricket corn flour) and a cricket moon pie with mill worm filling.
I make a point to run the dish at my restaurant during the week before the event.
By far crickets have been the favorite bug of choice. As a chef I am willing to try any thing at least once.
I love crickets. They taste like toasted pistachios. Hopefully people will realize that a shrimp isn't any thing more than a sea roach
and will not scoff at a plate of land crawling snacks. Together with Elke Grenzer of the Culture of Cities Centre I host the Future Food Salons.
Crickets are a great gateway bug for people keen to try them. And we're very fortunate to have companies like World Ento to sell ready to cook crickets as well as Chapul
which makes tasty high protein bars from the crickets. Jakub Dzamba our featured speaker for the series is also working on cricket reactors (farms) that can sit on your kitchen counter.
We're hoping to have the prototypes in testing by the fall with a view to launching the product next spring.
If you are interested in inviting us to come to curate a Future Food Salon in your city festival
alimentaryinitiatives. combut you don't once mention what it is like to eat crickets?..what like CHICKEN I
and eats mostly fruit supplemented with insects. It lives in the high forest of Ecuador
Also note the FAO APHIS and FDA all acknowledge the risks involved with GMO's. Their adverse affects on environment have been shown
because it is highly effective at controlling Lepidoptera larvae caterpillars. It is during the larval stage
when most of the damage by European corn borer occurs. The protein is very selective generally not harming insects in other orders (such as beetles flies bees and wasps.
For this reason GMOS that have the Bt gene are compatible with biological control programs
because they harm insect predators and parasitoids much less than broad-spectrum insecticides. The Bt endotoxin is considered safe for humans other mammals fish birds and the environment because of its selectivity.
Other studies are beginning to discover certain insects that are adapting to GMO corn s inherent insecticide abilities.
and butterflies are also in decline. The bears without access to the fruit they'd normally be eating have to eat more meat
There's no known treatment for sick trees nor any pesticide that is able to kill sufficient numbers of the illness'carrier an insect called the Asian citrus psyllid to totally prevent the disease's spread.
Wildlife/insects in this newly created pond area move or die from drowning. As far as the release of carbon dioxide with the European/Colonial settlement of North america and the beaver trapping that occurred from the 1500's to the 1800's-give me a break.
It would indeed take 8 minutes for the Earth to leave its orbit and fly away into space.
Did cockroaches find lost knowledge? The Giant sequoia?<<B>Evolution favors life but this favoritism is certainly not species specific.</
With Many of us that fly in them. Father like son both Archimedes and his Father Phidias the Astronomer were well know to all wise men of their day that studied the Heavens Above.
guilty or not kings and queen's every leader! that know's the term opec!
guilty or not kings and queen's every leader! that know's the term opec!
and keep it in a vase for a few days but you can't exactly do the same with say a caterpillar leg.
Those veggies that were exposed to light-dark cycles were more resistant to insects and produced natural chemicals normally made for plant defense that may be healthful for humans.
The glucosinolates seemed to discourage caterpillars from munching on leaves. Plants grown in light-dark cycles that matched the caterpillars'got munched on less than plants grown in light-dark cycles that didn't match the caterpillars'.
'That's because the out-of-sync plants thought it was night when the insects thought it was day so the plants weren't making as much glucosinolates as they would during the day
but the insects were awake and eating away. The biologists then tried the same experiment but instead of using whole plants they used circular discs cut out from cabbage leaves.
It turned out that the discs even though they were cut off from the rest of the plant still made glucosinolates in day-night cycles
Caterpillars ate 20 percent more of out-of-sync cabbage leaves than they did of in-sync cabbage leaves Caterpillars also ate more of cabbage leaves that were kept in constant light
The hungry hungry caterpillar-repelling effect worked for about a week after the cabbage was harvested the biologists discovered.
It has all the colors of an oil puddle in the sun. Yet the real weirdos are our familiar yellow-and-black honeybees says U s. Geological Survey biologist Sam Droege.
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.
Click here to enter the gallerydroege considers honeybees weird because their habits differ from those of most native bees which tend to be solitary
The whole multi-year queen waggle dance hive honey etc. are absent from our native species he wrote to Popular Science in an email.
Only native bumblebees which comprise about 40 species in North america have a formal colonial social structure with workers and queens.
Honey-and bumblebees'social structures mean people are able to cultivate them in hives and drive them around to places that need them.
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.
and viruses that honeybees do and they don't have the same social order Droege says.
However they do require bumblebees to pollinate them. Domestic honeybees don't make the correct movements eggplant flowers need.
I apologize for the error. Bees are magical and bring life upon the Earth. I adore BEES!..
AND I FLY YA QUEEN! OZZY GET THE NOON KING! ROCK THEE 12 PM ROCKETSS!
AND GET ME QUEEN! OZZY! I KING YA OVER THE SUN! AND DONT LOOK BACK! JACK BARRAC!
#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 Washington team hopes to use the European sperm to fertilize American queen bees producing offspring that may be more resilient to colony collapse disorder the mysterious syndrome in which workers abandon a colony dooming it to die.
which may lead to healthier American insects. Beekeepers began reporting colony collapses in 2006 according to the U s. Department of agriculture.
Since then an average of 33 percent of human-managed hives in the U s. have died every year.
If hives continue to die at this rate pollinating would be come much more expensive driving up food costs in the U s. the U s. D. A. says.
Italian honeybees for example are quick to reproduce a boon for American farmers in warmer areas who want bees to pollinate early-blooming crops.
the killer bees now invading North america...I hope they're taking appropriate precautions c
#Raise Your Own Edible Bugs With This Decorative Kitchen Podthe U n. recently suggested (not for the first time) that we put a bit more crunchy insect protein into our diets.
Eating bugs could provide a sustainable source of snackage--they produce less greenhouse gas than cattle those four-legged methane-factories
and don't require as much farmland as animals. In fact you can raise insects right in your kitchen!
That's the goal of Lepsis a prototype countertop grasshopper breeder from designer Mansour Ourasanah in collaboration with Kitchenaid.
As a symbol of change the product is a constant remember of the importance of food its infinite diversity
and killing your next delicious grasshopper burger. So far it's just in the prototype phase
Even though growing and eating insects is pretty repulsive to many people in the developed world an attractive product like the Lepsis could help people to warm to the idea Inhabitat writes.
Inhabitat Instead of eating the bugs yourself you can get a chicken and feed the bugs to the chicken (they like them I don't) then you can eat the chicken eggs
and if you're feeling a bit choppy you can eat the chicken! Black soldier flies produce pretty great larvae.
They're sold commercially as Phoenix Worms. Chickens love'em! And you can grown them on kitchen scraps.
They also ward off houseflies for reasons I don't quite understand and they look like black wasps
so they scare the neighbors for a bonus! You can then use the chicken manure to fertilize duckweed ponds use the duckweed to feed tilapia filter the tilapia water thru a gravel growbed use the gravel growbed to grow vegetables
All better than eating bugs. Plain and simple. Insect consumption will not get going in America until the process
and product are hidden sufficiently from the consumer. The majority of Americans do not go to the grocer looking for a piece of raw cow-they are in search of'beef'(for example)
Likewise people do not want to prepare a bowl of bugs but with a little education and social conditioning they may slowly warm to the idea of processed insect'meat'as in small blocks of'meat'that don't actually look anything like bugs
which Americans are interested not in (except for to brag about as a culinary adventure at some trendy dive).
Insect consumption proponents. If you want to get a foothold in the North american market (I for one am rooting for you) then stop showing people pictures of bugs or even cleverly prepared bugs.
Instead begin by creating some nice euphemisms for insect meat (along the lines of pork
and beef) and look into creative ways of processing the raw material into consumer friendly and meal preparation friendly packaging (think tofu).
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