bees
dr. dolittle | September 30, 2016 By Uroš Novina from Semič, Slovenia - Bee close up, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50974889
A new study was designed to test whether bees can experience some kind of primordial "emotions". In the study bees were trained to associate a tunnel marked with a blue flower with a sugar water treat at its end. In contrast, a green flower meant no reward at the end of the tunnel. However, when bees were exposed to flowers with both hues, they either chose not to enter the tunnel or took a long time to choose to enter. But, when half of the bees were given a sugar water…
gregladen | August 26, 2016Using executive power, Governor Mark Dayton, recognized as one of the best governors in the US, has laid out protections for pollinators in Minnesota.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is ordered to implement recently developed recommendations related to neonicotinoid pesticides. Potential users must demonstrate a real need for the products, and use them properly. This and other state agencies will coordinate and develop a Pollinator Protection Team to develop and implement statewide goals, and keep track of things. The Governor created a Committee on Pollinator Protection to advise…
dr. dolittle | March 16, 2016 Image of honeybee By Fir0002 (Own work) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph found that the use of certain pesticides impacts wildflower pollination by bees. According to a quote by study author Nigel Raine, published in CBCNews, the use of neonicotinoid-type pesticides "modify the way in which information flows through the nervous system."
The research team found that bees gather pollen more frequently, but less efficiently, when exposed to the pesticide compared to bees…
milhayser | February 23, 2014Researchers observed tiny voids forming in silicon used for solar panels; these voids provide physical evidence of the Staebler-Wronski effect, "which reduces the solar cell efficiency by up to 15 percent within the first 1000 hours."
Using an online avatar with a skin color other than your own makes you less racist in real life; playing a hero makes you less cruel, and playing a villain less benevolent.
Old mouse muscles exhibit "elevated levels of activity in a biological cascade called the p38 MAP kinase pathway" which prevents stem cells from dividing and repairing muscle damage. By…
stoat | July 13, 2013I thought this was "vipers bugloss" but I'm no longer at all convinced by that. Even in the unwarped version. But this is an odd one. See how the stem has become flat, and the flower head all congested? I'd be interested to know what sort of oddity or gall this is, and also the True Name of the plant. Its a common weed or flower, depending on your viewpoint.
Here is a pic showing the stem from the side, so you can see how flat its become. For comparison, here's a normal one, with free bumblebee:
Here's the whole clump, with free beehive:
The warped one is on the lefthand side. Here's…
stoat | July 7, 2013I go away for a week and the bees go mad.
I don't mean so mad that they put their honey in a pot for me - only that they seem to have filled up the hive to the top, probably with rape. And this despite them being a new swarm, in place only since late May. That's 13 kg of honey (err, with wax mixed in of course, since the frames in the top super were foundationless, because I was in a hurry. They did not put their own comb neatly in rows).
Also while we were away the houseleeks have come out into full flower, even better than last year.
That one is unadjusted, but not really true colour.…
stoat | May 26, 2013 My personal ones, that is. Around the start of April, on about the first sunny day of the year, I wandered down the garden to see the bees, who had been very very quiet. And when I saw none, I went closer, and tapped, and breathed into the entrance, and put my ear to the side, and heard nothing. So I took the top off, and found them dead, which was sad. As you see from the pic (and from this one) they hadn't just disappeared - this was no colony-collapse-syndrome stuff - they'd just died in-place. I put it down to starvation - it was a long cold spring. I thought I'd left them enough stores…
dr. dolittle | November 7, 2012I know what I'm doing tonight! I just heard about a special called "What Are Animals Thinking" that will be airing tonight on NOVA ScienceNOW. To check local listings, click here.
Watch What Are Animals Thinking? Preview on PBS. See more from NOVA scienceNOW.
stoat | September 15, 2012 It is early autumn, so an old man's thoughts turn to his bees. Sadly neglected again, I wonder what they are up to? Have they produced a good honey harvest or - more likely given the rather unfortunate summer here - have they just survived? Happily I have some Apistan all saved up, and its, harumph, only a few months past its best-before date, so that'll be fine.
This is going to be a long tedious post, since it occurs to me I've never done a proper one showing all the steps, and it might be fun. Its also a diary entry for my future reference. The first pix shows the hive as I found it -…
stoat | June 13, 2012 The peace of Sunday afternoon was disturbed when a friends children called to say, very politely, that err there was a swarm of bees in their garden and might they be mine? Possibly, I said, though you can't pin it on me guv, but I'll come and look anyway. If you're not used to looking at swarms of bees, its the dark blob just to the left of the point of the loppers, and the little specks in the sky to the left again are bees. For some faint idea of how heroic I'm being see how high the ladder is - bees delight in swarming into inaccessible locations.
What I'm doing in the pic is cutting…
sastyk | September 28, 2011
As our first beekeeping summer winds down, Eric (the neurotic beekeeper) harvested a very small amount of comb honey to eat with our own apples for the new year. There's a victory there - the bees have done very well, building up to a healthy population with plenty of honey for them and us. The real trick, of course, will be seeing them through the winter, but we're pleased with the first experience and thus far our signs look good.
One of the things that allowing Eric to be the primary farmer on the beekeeping project has revealed is a fundamental difference in our approaches. Eric likes…
stoat | September 3, 2011I speak personally, I should add, not of the world in general. I can't find my spring post - maybe I didn't do one - but I recall only taking about 4-5 frames off, which is pretty poor by spring standards - I normally expect a couple of supers. Two days ago (I mention this because I put in the Apistan, so I need to remember to take it out 6 weeks later) I opened up the hive to discover that the top super could be trivially lifted off, which is a bad sign, since a light super is an empty super. The next one down was a bit better, but mostly only because they had glued it down the fiends. In…
sastyk | July 1, 2011The always-wonderful Matron of Husbandry has a lovely post about pasture diversity and grass-feeding that did better (and purtier - she always has lots of great pix) something I've been meaning to do - ie, explore what you learn from grass farming that no one else teaches. For all the books I've read about grazing, I don't learn nearly as much by simply watching my animals and my pastures. I suspect this is true for everyone.
I think the single best thing I have learned from rotational grazing is I didn't know what I thought I knew about grass and cows. Namely what I think looks good is…
kcollins | May 27, 2011Bees represent some of the most resilient, adaptable and enterprising insects on earth. Not only that, they pollinate about one-third of all the food we eat. So when honey bees began dying or disappearing at alarming rates in the U.S. and around the world more than four years ago, scientists such as Nifty Fifty Speaker Dennis vanEngelsdorp, as the acting Pennsylvania state apiarist (beekeeper) and one of the nation's most prominent advocates and researchers of bees, was naturally deeply concerned. "Bees and other pollinators are a barometer and referendum on the state of our environment,"…
lborkowski | March 29, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Daniel Zwerdling of NPR: Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon
Susan Milius in Science News: Backup Bees
Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science: The Radium Girls (Part II, Part III)
Frank N. Von Hippel on the New York Times Opinion Page: It Could Happen Here ("Nuclear power is a textbook example of the problem of 'regulatory capture' -- in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it.")
Michelle Andrews for Kaiser Health News: Demand Grows for Palliative Care
sastyk | January 5, 2011
As long as we've lived in our home, a colony of bumblebees has nested in the roof of our front porch. For years we've watched generations of bumblebees come and go, often quite closely. Our yard, edged with wildflowers and native plants (that sounds so much more elegant than "we don't mow much") is a pollinator's paradise in many ways, and we've been delighted to see them among the nearly 100 species of pollinators we've spotted over the years. Because we live in such close proximity, the bumblebees, l like the Pheobes that nest under the porch eves, are old friends.
Part of my farm…
stoat | October 30, 2010The latest in a long stream of posts avoiding more important matters. But you take what you can get, I think. This one is about my continuing wanderings in bee land.
Some comb, as you'll doubtless recognise. Don't be too hard on the poor things, as the frames have been re-ordered as I was taking them off, which is why they don't fit together as you'd expect. The stuff off to the right is what they do when you don't give them frames to work on (who would be so careless as to fail to do that?). You can see the bee-space (1/4" I think) that they like to give themselves, and the maximum…
jstemwedel | July 15, 2010I've been busy in the three-dimensional world, where I am in the middle of committing an unnatural act for an academic: writing out every word of a lecture. (As weird as it is, it makes the video production of that lecture easier -- more about that in the fullness of time.) In between such unnatural acts, however, I've been schlepping the sprogs to their summertime activities.
Today, during one such schlep, the following exchange occurred.
Younger offspring: If I walk in the shady parts instead of the sunny parts, bees and wasps won't try to sting me.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh. So, you think bees…
sastyk | July 5, 2010Not only does my terrific colleague at Myrmecos have some of the prettiest beehives I ever did see, but he's got the best collection of hive art out there. Check it out! I forsee an art project over the winter at Gleanings Farm!
Sharon
awild | July 5, 2010Our garden bees, photographed yesterday evening:
As you may have noticed, in painting our hives we've eschewed the standard hive whitewash in favor of pleasing pastels.
But we've got nothing on the hive art produced by other beekeepers on the web. Below the fold is a selection of my favorites:
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