How many bee species does a meadow need? Research detects metabolic stressors in bee brains. Robot bee project to study buzz pollination.
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A quick note of explanation and apology before getting to this week’s stories...
Last Friday the Bee Report was sent out twice to everyone – first at the normal time, then again about twelve hours later. This was an error by Substack, the platform I use for the newsletter. Hopefully, this didn’t inconvenience anyone by adding one more email to your weekend inbox. But if it did, or if you felt a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of fascinating bee news coming your way last week, I do apologize.
Thank you for being such a loyal fan of the Bee Report and weathering these small hiccups with me. Now, on with the news...
Conservation
Photo: Barry Rosenthall
How many bee species does a meadow need?
(Phys.org, University of Maryland) A meadow’s lush array of flowers needs a full phalanx of bees to pollinate them – far more than just the honey bees and bumble bees that most people are familiar with. According to a new study, less common bees are much more important for ecosystem health than previously documented.
Roadkill literally ‘drives’ some species to extinction
(Scientific American) As astronomical as the numbers may be for larger animals, they pale in comparison with the amount of insects and other smaller creatures that perish on the road. It’s estimated that 228 trillion insects are killed each year on the world’s 36 million kilometers of roads.
2021 ice storm took out nearly 18% of Oregon city’s tree canopy
(Statesman Journal) The President’s Day ice storm that hit Salem in 2021 left tens of thousands of people without power, downed scores of power lines and brought life to some parts of the city to a complete standstill for days. A recently released report from Salem Public Works Department highlighted another serious casualty of the ice storm: hundreds of acres of trees. According to this year’s Salem Tree Report, a citywide analysis found a 17.6% tree canopy loss from August 2020 to May 2021.
Economics
Photo: Guy Thompson
Honey bees: Better insulation, less impact on the environment and other pollinators?
(Twitter, Guy Thompson @pguythompson) “Cladding a London home in cork helped save 70% on the heating bills. Cladding a beehive leads to similar reductions in energy needs i.e. nectar. This would constitute a dramatic decrease in the pressure each colony exerts on the environment. Surely a no-brainer for beekeepers?”
(Twitter, Ldn Beekeepers Assoc @LondonBeeKeeper) “Could reducing honey bee energy needs be an effective way of reducing honey bee impact on the nectar economy shared by all pollinators?”
(Twitter, Hamish Symington @HamishSymington) “Wouldn’t the bees still collect the same amount of nectar, though, and just store it as honey rather than eat it?”
(Twitter, Prof. Jeff Ollerton @JeffOllerton) “Might they even collect more, if colonies in warmer hives are active for longer?”
Policy/Law
Photo: Center for Biological Diversity
EPA’s plan to work towards better protections for endangered species
(Twitter, Lori Ann Burd @LoriAnnBurd) “EPA’s pesticide office just released a workplan for addressing its endangered species consultation backlog. I’m encouraged EPA recognizes its failures and hope it’ll act fast to reduce the impact of chemical poisons on our most vulnerable plants & animals.”
Pollinator-friendly solar amendment introduced to Massachusetts climate bill
(Twitter, Mass. Pollinator Network (MAPN) @MassPollinators) “Thank you @Jo_Comerford for introducing Amendment #114 to MA’s Climate Bill (S.2819) to revive @MassDOER’s pollinator-friendly solar program, which DPU struck down this year.”
Biden administration launches $1 billion conservation program
(Yale Environment 360) The Biden administration has launched a $1 billion program to advance its goal of conserving 30% of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. The program, called the America the Beautiful Challenge, will serve as a “one-stop shop” for states, tribes, territories, non-governmental organizations, and others to apply for numerous grants for conservation and restoration projects, the administration said. It is backed by an initial $440 million in federal funds over five years – the bulk of which comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law that Congress passed last year – and aims to draw private and philanthropic contributions to reach the $1 billion mark.
Climate litigation boosted by IPCC report
(Scientific American) A recent U.N. climate report gives key validation to lawsuits that prod fossil fuel companies to pay for climate damages and governments to move more aggressively on climate mitigation. The landmark report last week from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change credits this trend of climate litigation with influencing “the outcome and ambition of climate governance”.
Science
Photo: Emily Paine, Bucknell University Communications
Bee brain research detects metabolic stressors in pollinators
(Bucknell University) A team of researchers is now attempting to unravel the complex factors impacting the health and behavior of honey bees and native pollinators with a novel approach: They’re getting inside the bees’ heads. The researchers are using a method called nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to measure metabolic stress changes in the bee brain, which has been implicated in colony collapse disorder.
Distinct colony types caused by diploid male production in the buff-tailed bumble bee
(Twitter, Ricardo Caliari Oliveira @ri_caliari) “Some #bumblebee colonies paradoxically produce males much earlier in the season. @dipietroviviana now shows that these ‘early-switching’ colonies are in fact producing diploid males, and that workers have no choice but to make the best of a bad situation” Original paper
New species and the first halictid bees documented from Saint Lucia
(Twitter, ZooKeys @ZooKeys_Journal) “This study describes #NewSpecies and the first halictid #bees documented from Saint Lucia. The species are illustrated and compared to similar ones from the Lesser Antilles.” Original paper
An unexpected new genus of panurgine bees from Europe discovered
(Twitter, Hymenoptera Journal @HymenopteraJour) “An expanded phylogenomic data set of #bee species of the Old World Panurgini, with a reassessment of generic and subgeneric concepts for the tribe” Original paper
Bees should all be in one family
(Twitter, Alex Wild @Myrmecos) “Here’s a taxonomy hill I will die on: bees should all be in one family, Apidae. They’re such a coherent, well-defined group.”
Society/Culture
Photo: Monica Pelliccia
‘I dream of bees’: one boy’s encounter with a swarm in Sicily led to a lifetime’s devotion
(The Guardian) It was love at first sight when five-year-old Carlo Amodeo first saw a swarm of black bees. He could not stop thinking about them and every night for a week he had the same dream: of building a house for the bees made from wood using his toy carpentry set. Today, Amodeo has been a beekeeper for more than 40 years. And though he never built that bee house, he has been instrumental in helping the recovery of the Sicilian black bee (Apis mellifera siciliana), along with Palermo University and researchers.
(Publishers Weekly) Lars Chittka, a behavioral ecology professor at Queen Mary University of London, combines cutting-edge science with a rich historical perspective in this take on what it means to be a bee. He considers whether bees have individual personalities, experience consciousness, or dream, and in each case, using experiments he and his coworkers have undertaken, explores the likelihood of answers in the affirmative.
Peter Kuper’s INterSECTS: Where Arthropods and Homo Sapiens Meet
(Twitter, NY Public Library @nypl) “Explore INterSECTS, an exhibition from award-winning cartoonist @PKuperArt that traces the evolution of insects over 400 million years, and investigates the contributions of naturalists represented in NYPL’s vast collections.”
Technology
Photo: Mario Vallejo-Marin
Robot bee project to study buzz pollination
(The National) Two scientists have been awarded a £640,000 grant to create “robot bees” that will simulate the buzzing of bumble bees. These microbots are the size of a fingernail and weigh a quarter of the weight of a honey bee. They will allow the scientists to control the vibrations’ pitch, force, and timing, and simulate bees’ interactions with flowers. The researchers say their work is not to create robotic substitutes for bees, but to better understand pollination and the diversity of bee species. “Bumblebees can buzz pollinate but honeybees cannot, and we don’t know much about thousands of other bees... This will help us study how the bee’s characteristics affect the buzz and what types of vibrations are most effective for pollination.”
One More Thing…
“These sculptures have been lovingly handmade entirely from paper. The internal structures are made from card and paper and then covered in thousands of paper pieces. All the extra details are hand scored or fringed.” Artwork by Lisa Lloyd.