So much bee-related news this month!
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So much of bee-related news this month
I'm currently working on two different stories for the Bee Report and was planning to have at least one finished for this newsletter. However, both stories took unexpected detours this week and will require additional time to complete. Fortunately, January has been filled with bee-related news, so there's plenty to share with you in this issue. Three particular stories I'd like to spotlight:
1. The pesticide industry’s playbook for poisoning the Earth: The Intercept published its investigation into the pesticide industry's coordinated efforts to hide the potential harm of their insecticide products to bees and other non-target insects. The report chronicles a years-long campaign of misinformation, misdirection and political influence to bring these products to market despite the dangers. It's a familiar playbook, one we've seen used by Big Tobacco, Big Oil and the makers of opioids. So reading this story wasn't a surprise, but it was powerful to see the evidence laid out in one place. What was surprising, though, is that more people weren't talking about it. Has this playbook become so familiar that we're no longer moved when it's revealed in a new context?
2. Smart single mother bees learn from their neighbors: New research showing that solitary bees have a sort of social awareness by looking into their neighbors' homes to see if a particular area is a good place to make their own. And in the process we are shown, once again, that bees can understand that symbols represent certain information.
3. How you and me and flowers and bees get charged up with static electricity: Bees are positively charged, flowers are negatively charged, and this helps guide bees to the flowers? Mind blown. I know that understanding bees through this lens of electric ecology is not completely new, but this was my first exposure to it. Very cool stuff.
Finally, you'll notice the layout looks a little different in this issue. I've always struggled with how many stories to include in a particular newsletter, but the sheer number of great stories this month convinced me that more is better. So I've tweaked the layout to include the stories while making it easy to look through them all. Let me know what you think!
And don't miss the new section at the end: One More Thing. I constantly come across bits and bobs of bee-related info that don't fit a particular category but are still worth sharing.
Enjoy!
Conservation
New study helps California’s bumble bees by identifying their favorite flowers
(Entomology Today) “We discovered plants that were big winners for all bumble bee species but, just as importantly, plant species that were very important for only a single bumble bee species. This study allowed us to provide a concise, scientifically based list of important plant species to use in habitat restoration that will meet the needs of multiple bumble bee species and provide blooms across the entire annual life cycle.”
Survey asks: what is an endangered species?
(Michigan Technological University) Three-quarters of those surveyed said a species deserves special protections if it had been driven to extinction from any more than 30 percent of its historic range. Not everyone was in perfect agreement. Some were more accepting of losses.
A sneak peak at the inaugural issue of 2 Million Blossoms
(2 Million Blossoms) “Our first issue has printed and shipped, but you can still get a copy… You can also download our PDF that includes the table of contents, guest editorial by Mark Winston, and the lovely piece by Craig Childs, along with the brief companion story on the original scientific research.”
Economics
Plots available at community beekeeping space in Wisconsin
(WEAU 12 News) The Chippewa Valley Beekeepers Association teamed up with Xcel Energy to provide a community apiary. The beekeeping space will be set up on 32 acres that is being developing into wildflower habitat next to an Xcel Energy substation. Members of the club say this new land will provide people access to the proper resources needed to run a bee hive.
In quake-hit Puerto Rico even the bees are fleeing their homes
(Reuters) Puerto Rican honey bees are abandoning hives as weeks of earthquakes disrupt colonies, raising concerns that a subspecies seen as a possible solution to the global bee crisis could take another hit after being decimated by hurricanes in 2017.
Policy/Law
The pesticide industry’s playbook for poisoning the Earth
(The Intercept) Lobbying documents and emails obtained by The Intercept show a vast strategy by the pesticide industry to influence academics, beekeepers, and regulators, and to divert attention away from the potential harm caused by neonicotinoids. As a result, the global neonics industry generated $4.42 billion in 2018. In the meantime, the effects are being seen in massive insect die-offs. Certain insects are nearing extinction.
When is a pesticide not a pesticide? When it coats a seed
(Bloomberg Environment) If you apply a chemical to a field of crops, either from a sprayer towed behind a tractor or from above, by an aerial crop duster, that is considered a pesticide. However, if you take that same chemical and coat it on a seed, then plant that seed in the ground, it ceases to be pesticide – at least according to government regulators. This exemption is what allowed the use of neonics to take off in the late 1990s. But this exemption was never meant for agriculture.
Experts call for overhaul of pesticide regulations
(Phys.org) A trio of researchers are calling for an overhaul of the regulatory frameworks that define the ways that pesticides can be used. “Environmental risk assessment of pesticides does not account for many stressors that have intensified in recent years, such as climate change, habitat destruction, and increasing landscape homogeneity, the combination of which can aggravate effects of pesticides in nature.”
Colorado lawmakers propose bee bill to protect our ‘most important pollinators’
(CBS4) Colorado state legislators, environmental advocates and beekeepers announced the introduction of a bill to protect bees. The “Protect Pollinators Regulate Neonicotinoids” bill is designed to reduce the use of neonics. Environment Colorado said it would present thousands of petitions gathered across Colorado in support of this initiative.
Xerces, Defenders, CFS seek to join lawsuit defending decision to protect four native bees in California
(Xerces Society) The Xerces Society, Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Food Safety contend that the California Fish and Game Commission has clear legal authority to place insects on the state's endangered species list. There is also strong scientific support that these four bee species meet the requirements for listing. Under the current regulatory timeline, the Commission is likely to make a final decision to place these four species on the list this year, making these bees the first invertebrate pollinators to receive such protection in California.
Science
Smart single mother bees learn from their neighbors
(Queen Mary University of London) A new study found the clever bees looked for signs of parasite infection in other species’ nests and used this information to select a safe place to bring up their own brood. The scientists found these species were surprisingly intelligent in their observations and able to notice other cues of parasite infection in the surrounding environment. For example, they were able to remember geometric symbols found next to parasitized nests, and avoid nests near these symbols in future breeding periods.
Collectors find plenty of bees but far fewer species than in the 1950s
(ScienceNews) Declines in the number of species occurred on nearly every continent, starting at various points in the last four decades but largely in the 1990s on most continents. One exception was Australia and nearby islands, where the number of bee species estimated from observations spiked in the 2000s before dropping back down in the 2010s. Globally, thousands of bee species have become so rare that they are difficult to find or have gone extinct.
Insecticides becoming more toxic to honey bees
(PennState) During the past 20 years, insecticides applied to U.S. agricultural landscapes have become significantly more toxic — over 120-fold in some midwestern states — to honey bees when ingested, according to a team of researchers, who identified rising neonicotinoid seed treatments in corn and soy as the primary driver of this change.
Prescribed burns benefit bees
(North Carolina State University) Freshly burned longleaf pine forests have more than double the total number of bees and bee species than similar forests that have not burned in over 50 years, according to new research. The study found that the low-intensity prescribed burns did not reduce the amount of nesting material for above-ground nesting pollinators, and the abundance of above-ground nesting pollinators was not impacted by the fires. Meanwhile, below-ground nesting species appeared to benefit from the increased access to bare soil.
Bumble bee vomit: scientists are no longer ignoring it
(New York Times) When a bumble bee is choosing which flowers to gather nectar from, she might consider a plant’s distance, the shape of the petals and how sugar-rich the nectar is. The bumble bee likely considers another variable as well: How fast can she barf it back up?
Wild bees provide a bigger slice of the pie in pumpkin pollination
(Penn State) Pumpkin growers frequently rent managed honeybee colonies to pollinate their crops, but a recent study suggests wild bees may be able to do the job just as well and for free. Approximately 97 percent of the field observations consisted of three pollinators: bumble bees, honeybees, and squash bees. However, hand collections from the blossoms revealed 37 different bee species visiting the flowers. And the pollen transfer from just the wild species easily exceeded the pollination requirements for pumpkins.
Honey bees are fond of strawberries, but solitary bees are always present
(Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) While honey bees might prefer strawberry fields over flowering oilseed rape, honey bees are less common in among strawberries when the oilseed rape is in full bloom. In contrast, solitary wild bees, like mining bees, are constantly present in the strawberry fields. “Wild bees are therefore of great importance for the pollination of crops… our results also show that wild bees in the landscape should be supported by appropriate management measures.”
Pollination is better in cities than in the countryside
(iDiv) German researchers have demonstrated experimentally that flowers were more successfully pollinated and more frequently visited in cities than in rural areas, despite also finding greater diversity of flying insects in the countryside. By far the most industrious urban pollinators were bumble bees, most likely benefiting from the abundant habitats available in the city.
A single gene for scent reception separates two species of orchid bees
(ScienceDaily / University of California – Davis) Orchid bees are master perfumers, and research suggests that the perfumes males concoct are unique to their specific species. A new study now links the evolution of sexual signaling in orchid bees to a gene that’s been shaped by each species’ perfume preferences.
19th-century bee cells in a Panamanian cathedral shed light on human impact on ecosystems
(EurekAlert/Pensoft) Restoration work on a cathedral in Panama uncovered around 120 clusters of nearly two-centuries-old orchid bee nests built on the altarpiece. The bee species that constructed the nests was identified as the extremely secretive Eufriesea surinamensis.
How you and me and flowers and bees get charged up with static electricity
(North Country Public Radio) The field of electric ecology: The surface of the earth, and the flowers growing from it, tend to have a more negative charge. Bees are moving and flying around, and tend to be more positive. So just like your hair with a balloon, the hairs on a bumble bee or honey bee tend to bend towards a flower in the presence of its static field. This helps guide the bee into the flower. Honey bees even seem to carry an indication of the flower’s charge back to their hive, helping to communicate the location of target flowers to hive mates.
Eva Crane, the ultimate beekeeper
(Cosmos) Eva Crane was one of the greatest writers on bees and beekeeping in the 20th century. See wrote and published hundreds of papers, articles and books. She helped create one of the world’s major databases on bee science. And her honey bee studies took her to more than 60 countries, “sometimes traveling by dugout canoe or dog sled to document the human use of bees from prehistoric times to the present”.
Technology
‘Emirati Queen Bee’ for UAE’s food security is here
(Gulf News) The United Arab Emirates is crossbreeding bees to develop a resilient Queen that can endure the harsh desert climate and sustain crucial pollination rates crucial for the country’s food security. And technology company Oracle is collaborating with the World Bee Project on a Global Hive Network using AI and cloud computing to track and retrieve data through sensors attached to hives.
One more thing...
From Zach Portman (@zachportman) on Twitter: "Here is the tip of a bee antenna 🔬🔬 Look at all those sensory doodads! Species Perdita argemones"
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