Bees may struggle in winds caused by global warming, study finds

Experiment revealed increased wind speeds reduced the efficiency of their foraging

A hardworking honey bee might feel aggrieved to be tricked into a garden shed to feed from a fake flower. Worse, she is blasted by a cheap household fan. And then timed to see how many fake flowers she can visit in 90 seconds.

But the honey bees’ tormentors are trying to help them: their ordeal is a controlled experiment that reveals how high wind speeds significantly reduce the efficiency of their foraging.

The study by University of Sussex researchers raises fears that bees and other flying pollinators may struggle in the higher and more frequent winds caused by global heating.

The bees, which usually feed on wild flowers after leaving their hives in the campus gardens, were lured into the shed with sugar water feeders. Only one bee was allowed in at a time, and their visits to artificial flowers were videoed and timed under different fan speeds, which mimicked calm and windy days.

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They survived fire and toxic fumes. So what happened next to Notre Dame's bees?

Hives that survived catastrophic Paris cathedral blaze are healthier than ever, says beekeeper

Kim Willsher in Paris

Fri 31 Jan 2020 06.00 GMTLast modified on Fri 31 Jan 2020 13.35 GMT

It is a crisp winter morning and the area around Notre Dame is sealed off as it has been since the fire last April that devastated the cathedral.

Those in the know, however, especially those with the keenest of eyes, might spot some small movement high up to the south of the stricken and blackened structure.

The bees of Notre Dame, whose escape from the inferno seemed almost miraculous, are thriving and conserving their energy ready to produce honey this summer, just as they have every year since they took up residence on the sacristy roof in 2013.

Nearly 10 months after the Paris cathedral was ravaged by fire, the three colonies are healthier than ever, according to their beekeeper.

Sibyle Moulin, who looks after the hives, spoke to the Guardian after she visited them for the first time in six months. Access to the site is restricted because the severely damaged 13th-century stone structure is still unstable and there is a risk from lead particles from the roof that was turned into dust in the blaze.

Moulin, who had to undergo a health and safety course to resume visits to the honey bees, said the 30-45,000 insects in the three hives are absolutely fine.

“There’s nothing wrong with them at all. The behaviour of the colonies is perfectly normal,” she said. “They’re not very active at this time of the year, but that’s how it should be. They seem fine.”

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Organic farming enhances honeybee colony performance

JUNE 26, 2019

by CNRS

Bees are valuable to humans not only because they produce honey, but also because they pollinate wildflowers and food crops. They exclusively eat nectar and pollen. So in areas where intensive agriculture is practised, they suffer from the thin supply of flowers in May and June, when cultivated oilseed rape (colza) and sunflower are not in bloom. During that period, pollen collection, honey production and colony growth slow.

An article published in the Journal of Applied Ecology shows that organic farming can limit this decline. Land on which organic crops are grown offers domesticated beesmore resources, especially spontaneous vegetation (unjustly dubbed "weeds"). After examining data spanning six years for 180 hives in west central France, the researchers found that—compared with bee colonies in areas farmed conventionally—colonies living amid organic farm fields boast 37 percent more brood, 20 percent more adult bees, and 53 percent greater honey production.

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Create a buzz: how to help save wild bees – even if you don’t have a garden

With a little knowhow, balconies, doorsteps and window boxes can all be turned into wildlife havens

Kate Bradbury

Sat 22 Jun 2019 11.00 BSTFirst published on Sat 15 Jun 2019 11.00 BST

Last year’s extreme weather meant a tough year for many of the UK’s bees, and conservationists are concerned that could have a knock-on effect this year and beyond. According to a report from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, they could face long-term problems from future heatwaves. But we can give them a helping hand.

You don’t need to keep honeybees to help bees – in fact, a 2018 study commissioned by Cambridge University suggests that this can harm wild bees. It’s thought that the more bees there are in an area, the more competition there is for nectar and pollen; if every shopping centre has three or four hives on the roof, what does that mean for the wild bees?

It would be easy to assume that our built-up towns and cities are deserts for pollinators. Yet among the grey is also green: parks, gardens, balconies, doorsteps and window boxes, each with the potential to feed a city of bees. In fact, urban spaces can, in some instances, be better for bees and other pollinators than the countryside, where wildlife has largely been pushed outto make space for more crops and livestock. Gardens and parks are home to a greater variety of flowering plants than in the wild, and for a longer season, too. What’s more, we’re less likely to use pesticides in them, enabling bees and other pollinators to feed safely. Indeed, a study published last summer in the journal Proceedings Of The Royal Society B found that bumblebee colonies in urban areas were actually stronger than those in the wild.

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Bees can link symbols to numbers, study finds

Date:  June 5, 2019

Source:  RMIT University

We've learned bees can understand zero and do basic math, and now a new study shows their tiny insect brains may be capable of connecting symbols to numbers.

Researchers have trained honeybees to match a character to a specific quantity, revealing they are able to learn that a symbol represents a numerical amount.

It's a finding that sheds new light on how numerical abilities may have evolved over millennia and even opens new possibilities for communication between humans and other species.

The discovery, from the same Australian-French team that found bees get the concept of zero and can do simple arithmetic, also points to new approaches for bio-inspired computing that can replicate the brain's highly efficient approach to processing.

The RMIT University-led study is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Associate Professor Adrian Dyer said while humans were the only species to have developed systems to represent numbers, like the Arabic numerals we use each day, the research shows the concept can be grasped by brains far smaller than ours.

"We take it for granted once we've learned our numbers as children, but being able to recognise what '4' represents actually requires a sophisticated level of cognitive ability," Dyer said.

"Studies have shown primates and birds can also learn to link symbols with numbers, but this is the first time we've seen this in insects.

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Save the bees (and time and money) by creating a bee lawn

 MAY 28, 2019

by Dean Fosdick

Flowering "bee lawns" that attract pollinators are a compromise between fastidious turf management and the more casual yard approach. They add biodiversity to the landscape and need less maintenance. That makes them cost-effective, too.

Bee lawns are turf grasses blended with low-growing perennials that bloom again after mowing. They're cared for like typical lawns, making them comfortable for playing and lounging. But they also contain protein-rich ingredients providing vital nutrients for foraging pollinators.

Their natural diversity—they might contain fine fescues mixed with such spontaneous plants as white clover, dandelions (that bloom early when little else is flowering), creeping thyme, daisies and shade-tolerant lamium—make them less demanding and more resilient than Kentucky bluegrass. Bee lawns require minimal watering and little fertilizing, encourage deeper roots and build healthier soil—especially when their clippings are returned to the turf.

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With flower preferences, bees have a big gap between the sexes

Female and male bees of the same species frequent different flowers, study finds

Date:  April 24, 2019

Source:  Rutgers University

For scores of wild bee species, females and males visit very different flowers for food -- a discovery that could be important for conservation efforts, according to Rutgers-led research.

Indeed, the diets of female and male bees of the same species could be as different as the diets of different bee species, according to a study in the journal PLOS ONE.

"As we get a better sense of what makes flowers attractive to different kinds of bees, maybe we can get smarter about bee conservation," said lead author Michael Roswell, a doctoral student in the lab of senior author Rachael Winfree, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Five years ago, when Winfree Lab members were evaluating federally funded programs to create habitat for pollinators, Roswell noticed that some flowers were very popular with male bees and others with females. That spurred a study to test, for as many wild bee species as possible, whether males and females visit different kinds of flowers.

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Pesticide exposure causes bumblebee flight to fall short

APRIL 29, 2019

by Imperial College London

Bees exposed to a neonicotinoid pesticide fly only a third of the distance that unexposed bees are able to achieve.

Flight behaviour is crucial for determining how bees forage, so reduced flight performance from pesticide exposure could lead to colonies going hungry and pollination services being impacted.

Foraging bees are essential pollinators for the crops we eat and the wildflowers in our countryside, gardens and parks. Any factor compromising bee flight performance could therefore impact this pollination service.

A study by Imperial College London researchers, published today in the journal Ecology and Evolution, reveals how exposure to a common class of neurotoxic pesticide, a neonicotinoid, reduces individual flight endurance (distance and duration) in bumblebees.

The study shows that bees exposed to the neonicotinoid imidacloprid in doses they would encounter in fields fly significantly shorter distances and for less time than bees not exposed, which could reduce the area in which colonies can forage for food by up to 80 percent.

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Bolivian bees under threat from coca pesticides

January 4, 2019

High up in the Bolivian cloud forest, a woman tends to her bees, smoker in hand, working from hive to hive under a canopy of leaves to delicately gather panels of honeycomb. It's a bucolic scene that experts say won't last, for the bees are dying.

The culprit—as in so many other cases across the world—is pesticide. The difference in Bolivia is that pesticide use, along with the coca plantations it is being used to protect, is on the rise.

Environmentalists and beekeepers like Rene Villca say the bee population is being decimated by massive and intensive use of chemical pesticides to protect the region's biggest cash crop.

Here in the idyllic Nor Yungas region north of the cloud-high capital La Paz, the pesticides are taking a toll on Villca's hives.

"Of the 20 hives I have, 10 are producing normally and 10 are not."

On another part of the mountain where Nancy Carlo Estrada tends to her bees, a canopy of protective netting around her head, Exalto Mamami wades through a waist-high coca plantation, pumping out liquid pesticide from a canister on his back, face covered with a long cloth against harmful blowback from the spray.

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Bees can count with just four nerve cells in their brains

December 21, 2018, Queen Mary, University of London

Bees can solve seemingly clever counting tasks with very small numbers of nerve cells in their brains, according to researchers at Queen Mary University of London.

In order to understand how bees count, the researchers simulated a very simple miniature 'brain' on a computer with just four nerve cells—far fewer than a real bee has.

The 'brain' could easily count small quantities of items when inspecting one item closely and then inspecting the next item closely and so on, which is the same way bees count. This differs from humans who glance at all the items and count them together.

In this study, published in the journal iScience, the researchers propose that this clever behaviour makes the complex task of counting much easier, allowing bees to display impressive cognitive abilities with minimal brainpower.

Previous studies have shown bees can count up to four or five items, can choose the smaller or the larger number from a group and even choose 'zero' against other numbers when trained to choose 'less'.

They might have achieved this not by understanding numerical concepts, but by using specific flight movements to closely inspect items which then shape their visual input and simplifies the task to the point where it requires minimal brainpower.

This finding demonstrates that the intelligence of bees, and potentially other animals, can be mediated by very small nerve cells numbers, as long as these are wired together in the right way.

The study could also have implications for artificial intelligence because efficient autonomous robots will need to rely on robust, computationally inexpensive algorithms, and could benefit from employing insect-inspired scanning behaviours.

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Survey reveals 49 new bee species in Utah

"Bees are more diverse in desert areas and Utah has a lot of unique desert areas," researcher Joseph Wilson said.

By

Brooks Hays

Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Utah is home to 660 bee species, according to a new study. One out of every four bee species endemic to the United States can be found in the aptly named Beehive State.

Thanks to a four-year survey conducted by entomologists at Utah State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, scientists have an improved understanding of Utah's remarkable apian diversity.

Utah hosts a variety of habitat and a diversity of flowers attractive to a wide range of bee species.

"Bees are more diverse in desert areas and Utah has a lot of unique desert areas, with lots of elevational gradients between the deserts and adjacent mountains," Utah State entomologist Joseph Wilson told UPI. "Utah is also home to a diverse flora, we have lots of different kinds of flowering plants, which can be linked to the high bee diversity."

During the survey, Wilson and his colleagues identified 49 new bee species.

Nearly half of the bee species documented in the new paper -- published this week in the journal PeerJ -- can be found in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which was established in 1996.

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Robotic bees could pollinate plants in case of insect apocalypse

Dutch scientists say they can create swarms of bee-like drones to take over if the insects die out

Daniel Boffey in Delft

Tue 9 Oct 2018 13.15 BSTLast modified on Tue 9 Oct 2018 17.22 BST

Intensive modern farming methods and the unravelling consequences of global climate change are said to have put the future of the common bee under threat like never before.

But in Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands a group of scientists working on long-term solutions to some of the world’s thorniest problems have developed a solution that could have come straight from a sci-fi novel: robotic bees.

By reproducing some of the complex wing motion patterns and aerodynamics of fruit flies, in particular, researchers in the university’s newly opened Robohouse, a hub for Dutch expertise, believe they will be able to create swarms of bee-like drones to pollinate plants when the real-life insects have died away.

The wings of the robotic DelFly beat 17 times per second, to generate the lift needed to stay airborne and control its flight through small adjustments in their wing motion.

The researchers asked why a fly was so difficult to swat and looked to reproduce the insect’s evasive technique. The robo-bees can hover on the spot, fly in any direction, and even flip 360 degrees around pitch or roll axes. Because the robots’ wings are made of a lightweight film made of mylar, the material used in space blankets, it is safe for people to work around them.

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Bees coordinate strategy for defending colony

Date:  September 5, 2018

Source:  Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo

The Brazilian stingless bee Tetragonisca angustula (jataí in Portuguese) deploys a different strategy for defending its nests from other social insect species. In addition to posting sentinels at the nest entrance, as do most social insects, colonies of this species also have guards that hover near the entrance all the time.

A study by researchers in the Department of Entomology and Acarology of the University of São Paulo's Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ-USP) in Brazil and the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom found that hovering guardian bees position themselves near the nest entrance in a nonrandom manner.

They tend to hover in even numbers on both sides of the entrance. This distribution enables them to detect and intercept intruders more rapidly before they reach the nest and begin an attack. This strategy improves nest vigilance, according to the researchers.

The study resulted from a project supported by São Paulo Research Foundation -- FAPESP and was published in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

"We observed that the guards of this stingless bee species coordinate their nest vigilance strategy against robber bees and possible predators," said Denise de Araujo Alves, a postdoctoral researcher at ESALQ-USP and one of the authors of the study.

The researchers filmed and analyzed the behavior of 15 colonies of T. angustula stingless bees (Meliponini). The species is considered only mildly aggressive compared to most stingless bees, but its guards are especially defensive toward the obligate robber bee Lestrimelitta limao, its main natural enemy and a potential destroyer of its nests.

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'Like nicotine': Bees develop preference for pesticides, study shows

Insects’ acquired taste for pesticide-laced food is similar to nicotine addiction in smokers, say scientists

Press Association

Wed 29 Aug 2018 00.01 BST

Bumblebees acquire a taste for pesticide-laced food that can be compared to nicotine addiction in smokers, say scientists.

The more of the nicotine-like chemicals they consume, the more they appear to want, a study has shown.

The findings suggest that the risk of potentially harmful pesticide-contaminated nectar entering bee colonies is higher than was previously thought.

In a series of studies, a team of British researchers offered bumblebees a choice of two sugar solutions, one of which was laced with neonicotinoid pesticides.

They found that over time the bees increasingly preferred feeders containing the pesticide-flavoured sugar.

Dr Richard Gill, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, said: “Given a choice, naive bees appear to avoid neonicotinoid-treated food. However, as individual bees increasingly experience the treated food they develop a preference for it.

“Interestingly, neonicotinoids target nerve receptors in insects that are similar to receptors targeted by nicotine in mammals.

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Climate change linked to potential population decline in bees

Study finds that warmer temperatures push bees to their physiological limits, may drive local extinction

Date:  June 28, 2018

Source:  Northwestern University

Summary:

A new study from Northwestern University and the Chicago Botanic Garden has found that climate change may drive local extinction of mason bees in Arizona and other naturally warm climates.

In a two-year, in situ field experiment that altered the temperature of the bees' nests to simulate a warmer, future climate, 35 percent of bees died in the first year and 70 percent died in the second year. This is compared to a 1-2 percent mortality rate in the control group.

"The projected temperatures appear to be pushing this species up against its physiological limits," said Northwestern's Paul CaraDonna, who led the research. "This is evidence that we might see local extinction in the warmer parts of this species' range, which is pretty sobering."

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Clever bees can identify different flowers by patterns of scent

Date:  June 12, 2018

Source:  University of Bristol

New research led by scientists from the University of Bristol and Queen Mary University of London has revealed that bumblebees can tell flowers apart by patterns of scent.

Flowers have lots of different patterns on their surfaces that help to guide bees and other pollinators towards the flower's nectar, speeding up pollination.

These patterns include visual signals like lines pointing to the centre of the flower, or colour differences.

Flowers are also known to have different patterns of scent across their surface, and so a visiting bee might find that the centre of the flower smells differently to the edge of the petals.

This new research, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that bumblebees can tell flowers apart by how scent is arranged on their surface.

Lead author Dr Dave Lawson, from the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, said: "If you look at a flower with a microscope, you can often see that the cells that produce the flower's scent are arranged in patterns.

"By creating artificial flowers that have identical scents arranged in different patterns, we are able to show that this patterning might be a signal to a bee. For a flower, it's not just smelling nice that's important, but also where you put the scent in the first place."

The study also shows that once bees had learnt how a pattern of scent was arranged on a flower, they then preferred to visit unscented flowers that had a similar arrangement of visual spots on their surface.

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What gives bees their sweet tooth?

Date:  May 10, 2018

Source:  Newcastle University

Scientists have discovered bees linger on a flower, emptying it of nectar, because they have sugar-sensing taste neurons which work together to prolong the pleasure of the sweetness.

Newcastle University researchers report that the bees' taste neurons found on their proboscis -- their mouthparts -- fire intense signals for up to 10 seconds -- much longer than the taste neurons found in other insects.

Bees visit flowers to obtain nectar, a sugary solution, which they eat to feed their colony and to fuel their flight. Bees can taste sugars on their proboscis and when in contact with food, taste neurons on the proboscis are activated signalling the presence of food.

Publishing in Current Biology, the researchers report that the neurons that specifically respond to sugar exhibit a very intense activation, which persists up to 10 seconds.

While these neurons exhibit intense activity, the bee will remain feeding at the same sugar source. Only when this activity declines does the bee remove its proboscis to enable it to try a further feeding point.

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Climate change threatens rare British orchid that tricks bees into mating

Researchers find that warmer temperatures are upsetting the seasonal relationship between the early spider orchid and pollinating bees

Patrick Barkham

Thu 5 Apr 2018 12.37 BSTLast modified on Thu 5 Apr 2018 22.00 BST

It is one of the most cunning and elaborate reproductive deceits: the early spider orchid (Ophrys sphegodes) wafts a floral bouquet into the air that mimics the irresistible scent of a virgin female solitary mining bee, tricking gullible male bees into attempting intercourse with several flowers, thereby ensuring the plant’s pollination.

But the sexual success of this rare and declining orchid in Britain is imperilled by climate change, researchers have found.

The orchid’s ruse only works if a female mining bee, Andrena nigroaenea, has not emerged from hibernation, because as soon as this happens, the orchid cannot compete with the alluring scent of the real thing – and the plant is ignored by the male bees.

While warmer springs cause the early spider orchid to flower earlier in May, climate warming is also causing female bees to emerge from hibernation even earlier – confounding the orchid’s attempts to dupe the male bees.

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Total ban on bee-harming pesticides likely after major new EU analysis

Analysis from EU’s scientific risk assessors finds neonicotinoids pose a serious danger to all bees, making total field ban highly likely

Damian CarringtonEnvironment editor

Wed 28 Feb 2018 14.12 GMTFirst published on Wed 28 Feb 2018 11.17 GMT

The world’s most widely used insecticides pose a serious danger to both honeybees and wild bees, according to a major new assessment from the European Union’s scientific risk assessors.

The conclusion, based on analysis of more than 1,500 studies, makes it highly likely that the neonicotinoid pesticides will be banned from all fields across the EU when nations vote on the issue next month.

The report from the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa), published on Wednesday, found that the risk to bees varied depending on the crop and exposure route, but that “for all the outdoor uses, there was at least one aspect of the assessment indicating a high risk.” Neonicotinoids, which are nerve agents, have been shown to cause a wide range of harm to bees, such as damaging memory and reducing queen numbers.

Jose Tarazona, head of Efsa’s pesticides unit, said: “The availability of such a substantial amount of data has enabled us to produce very detailed conclusions. There is variability in the conclusions [and] some low risks have been identified, but overall the risk to the three types of bees we have assessed is confirmed.”

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The more kinds of bees, the better for humans

Study of 48 farms in two states shows abundance of species means lots of pollination

Date:  February 15, 2018

Source:  Rutgers University

Summary:

The bigger the area to pollinate, the more species of wild bees you need to pollinate it.

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