It’s always very sad when people you are associated with die and for two to die just recently is very sad indeed – and having said that I didn’t know either of them personally! But Dave Cushman and Ron Brown have both been inspirational figures for me. Dave’s website was such a first rate [...]
For those who haven’t yet received their copy, here is the pre-view of the latest issue. It looks good.
Contents No 104 • June 2011
EDITORIAL 2
The UK Insect Pollinator Initiative;
Nosema; Swarms and Swarming;
Beekeeping Development; & Ron Brown
OBE and David Cushman.
OBITUARIES 12
Ron Brown OBE and David Cushman.
[...]
A report on the BBC tells us that in a discovery that may help save honey bee, Cardiff researchers say that beekeepers could hold the key to fighting a variety of drug-resistant superbugs. It has long been thought that honey’s acidic qualities and low water content are antiseptic factors in its makeup and now [...]
Total losses from managed honey bee colonies nationwide were 30 percent from all causes for the 2010/2011 winter, according to the annual survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA).
This is roughly similar to total losses reported in similar surveys done in the four previous [...]
It appears that for stressed bees, the glass is half empty. When people are depressed or anxious, they are much more likely to see their glass as half empty than half full. In tough times, evidence of that same pessimistic outlook can be seen in dogs, rats, and birds. Now, researchers reporting online on [...]
Bees and plants are so closely involved with each other that without one, there wouldn’t be the other. For beekeepers it’s all about flowers but where did they come from? How did they appear? APiS UK frequently reports on research into the origin and evolution of flowers and this research takes us further back [...]
The development of the human super-brain may well be tied to development of bi-pedalism and tool-making and scientists seeking to understand the origin of the human mind may want to look to honeybees—not ancestral apes—for at least some of the answers, according to a University of Colorado Boulder (USA) archaeologist.
Research Associate John Hoffecker [...]
Searching for magnetic fields produced by plants may sound as wacky as trying to prove the existence of telekinesis or extrasensory perception, but physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, are seriously looking for bio-magnetism in plants using some of the most sensitive magnetic detectors available.
In an article that appeared this week in [...]
Most people have trouble telling them apart, but bumble bees, honey bees, stingless bees and solitary bees have home lives that are as different from one another as a monarch’s palace is from a hippie commune or a hermit’s cabin in the woods. A new study of these bees offers a first look at [...]
Researchers believe that the findings of this important research offers a baseline to study Colony Collapse Disorder. A 10-month study by University of California, San Francisco of healthy honey bee colonies has identified four new viruses that infect bees, while revealing that each of the viruses or bacteria previously linked to colony collapse is [...]
Pollination is such a crucial ‘happening’ that any change in the various pollination parameters can critically affect both pollinator and plant. So what challenges does climate change present? One example of how it affects pollinators and plants is taken from research in the Rocky mountains in the USA.
It’s summer wildflower season in the [...]
A new study into the pollination challenge in the UK has shown that Bumblebees, solitary bees and other wild pollinating insects are much more important for pollinating UK crops than previously thought, say researchers. This is the first time anyone has looked at the contribution from both honeybees and other pollinators on such a [...]
And then pell-mell his harvest follows swift
Blossom and Borage, lime and balm and clover
On downs the thyme, on cliffs the scantling thrift
Everywhere the bees go racing with the hours
For every bee becomes a drunken lover
Standing upon his head to sup the flowers
[...]
Bee-keeping: When the Sun weeps a second time, and lets fall water from his eyes, it is changed into working bees; they work in the flowers of each kind, and honey and wax are produced instead of water.
pSalt 825, first millennium BCE
The first official mention recognizing the [...]
We all know that honey can be fermented to produce a traditional alternative to wine but why not try something that will give a kick to the whole business. Personally I have never been able to make a good mead. The last lot was truly liquid filth but I [...]
