Aussie bees eligible for Red List. World's first bee-less honey unveiled. Bees' static buzz triggers floral fragrance. Honey bees travel farther for food in rural areas – according to waggle dance.
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Conservation
(ABC News) A team of scientists from universities across Australia assessed the impact of the fires on 553 native bee species. They found at least 11 species of bees met International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria to be listed as either Endangered or Vulnerable. The most endangered species on this list lost between 55% and 59% of their habitat in the bushfires. However, the list does not include the green carpenter bee, which lost around 95% of its remaining habitat on Kangaroo Island and is extinct in the state of Victoria. The analysis suggested it was less affected in New South Wales, but the researchers said more specific studies of local populations were needed.
Number of butterflies in the UK at a record low, survey finds
(The Guardian) Butterfly Conservation, which counted butterflies and moths between July 16 and August 8, said the results marked the lowest numbers since the Big Butterfly Count started 12 years ago and called for urgent action to be taken.
Economics
MeliBio unveils world’s first real honey made without bees
(PerishableNews.com) “MeliBio, Inc. has developed a scientific approach to replace honey bees as a medium of honey production, and is providing solutions to several sustainability and supply chain issues of the broken honey industry valued at $9 billion in 2020. Recent studies show that the industry’s sole reliance on honey bees is making 20,000 wild and native bees crowded out from their habitats and vanishing at an accelerated rate. Additionally, the global honey supply chain faces difficulties in keeping up with demand with recent honey harvests being heavily affected by climate change causing low yields of honey and price volatility.”
Breeding honey bees for adaptation to regionalized plants and artificial diets
(USDA) Honey bees could be intentionally bred to thrive on plants that are already locally present or even solely on artificial diets, according to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service study. Researchers found individual bees respond differently to the same diet and that there is a strong genetic component involved in how they respond to nutrition.
Australian beekeepers urged to look out for dwarf honey bee nests
(Southern Highland News) The chief plant protection officer for NSW Department of Primary Industries said a nest of dwarf honey bees was recently found on a ship docked in Melbourne, but which had also previously docked at Port Kembla. Dwarf honey bees – Apis florea and Apis andreniformis – only grow to about 10 mm long but they are highly invasive, aggressive and host several species of parasitic mites.
BeeHero raises $15 million to save the bees, solve global food crisis
(CTECH) BeeHero, an Israeli agritech startup which develops technology to save bees, announced on Wednesday that it has raised a $15 million Series A from venture capital funds. BeeHero has developed low-cost, Internet of Things sensors, and inserts them into beehives, which are able to constantly monitor in-hive changes, and are powered by advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence. Currently, BeeHero is collaborating with five of the ten largest almond orchard growers in the world to ensure an optimal pollination process.
The great wall of bees: Watch China’s daredevil beekeepers in action
(Euronews) Hundreds of hives are attached to a mountain in China, which aims to imitate a natural environment and attract wild bees. Beekeepers go up the mountainside using the hives as stepping stones to harvest honey and check in on the bees. The project is located in Shennongjia Nature Reserve, Hubei Province.
Science
Bees’ static buzz triggers release of floral fragrance
(Chemistry World) Bumble bees visiting petunia flowers were found to trigger the release of benzaldehyde – the main constituent of petunia fragrance. Volatile emissions also rose when a researcher touched the potted flowers with a charged ball of nylon, but they didn’t when she used an electrically grounded metal rod. Bee antennae were also shown to be responsive to benzaldehyde at those emission levels.
Honey bees’ waggle dance reveals bees in rural areas travel farther for food
(ScienceDaily, British Ecological Society) By decoding honey bees’ waggle dances, which tell other bees where to find food, researchers have found that bees in agricultural areas travel farther for food than those in urban areas.
The parasite that makes bees drop off its babies
(Entomology Today) An insect that specializes in parasitizing bees changes its host’s behavior to visit flowers and curl its body to deposit the parasite’s larvae. The apparent “mind control” is another example of the unique lives of strepsipterans, or twisted wing insects.
Fund natural-history museums, not de-extinction
(Nature) “The only way to study extinct species is by leveraging the irreplaceable collections of natural-history museums. It is unfortunate, then, that instead of supporting these often imperilled institutions, private investors are spending millions on attempts to resurrect species.”
Society/Culture
Invisible Studio installs waterside bee house at English hotel
(dezeen) Invisible Studio has unveiled the Beezantium, a lakeside apiary for honey bees in the grounds of The Newt hotel in Somerset. With a hive built into its walls, the Beezantium is designed to house a bee colony, but also serve as an exhibition center for hotel guests and visitors.
They use live bees for mental health therapy at their Philly biz
(The Philadelphia Inquirer) In May 2020, Amelia Mraz and Natasha Pham founded Half Mad Honey, an apiary of nine beehives, with the expressed intent of using their honeybees for mental health therapy. The name of the business is a nod to the Mad Pride movement, which seeks to destigmatize mental illness, and to mad honey, a type of hallucinogenic honey found in Nepal and Turkey. “Our honey isn’t hallucinogenic, so we’re only half-mad.”
Technology
High-flying sensor detects living things from far above
(Scientific American) Life on our planet is characterized by a preference for particular forms of various molecules over their mirror images. DNA molecules, for example, always have a “right-handed” curl, whereas all known life uses only “left-handed” amino acids to build proteins. Nonliving matter typically shows no such preferences. Researchers have seized on this distinction to design an instrument dubbed FlyPol, which uses light to track plant life from a fast-moving helicopter more than a kilometer overhead.
One More Thing…
The power of parody. “Saving 125 million honey bees (as National Geographic’s article states) and building 2,500 beehives feels like a lot of misplaced efforts. Are there other ways we can empower women and sustain their livelihoods that involve native bees?” From The Bees In Your Backyard @BeesBackyard via Twitter.