Evidence of pesticide harm to bees is now overwhelming

Evidence of pesticide harm to bees is now overwhelming

Yet more top-quality research shows current regulation is woefully inadequate in protecting the creatures that pollinate much of our food


A UK government review of the evidence linking pesticides and harm to bees concluded it did not justify changing existing regulation. Photograph: Julian Stratenschulte/EPA
Here we go again. Yet more research has been published in the world's most prestigious, peer-reviewed journals showing that extremely widely-used pesticides have very damaging effects on bees, yet the only response from the government is inaction.

The new paper, published in Nature, shows that bumblebees foraging naturally and exposed to realistic doses of pesticides suffer in two key ways. First they are about twice as likely to die: two-thirds of the bees are lost when exposed to two pesticides compared to only a third when not exposed. Second, the exposed bees are half as successful in gathering food.

The new results reveal, again, shameful failings in the regulatory regime. The ecotoxicology tests currently required only look at honey bees. Yet bumblebees, the subject of the new research, are just as important in providing the pollination that creates much of the food we eat. Tomatoes, for example, rely on bumblebees. Furthermore, bumblebees are very different, bigger in size individually, but living in colonies of just dozens, compared to the tens of thousands in honey bee colonies.

Another failing is that current tests require just 96 hours of exposure, but the new research only saw the damaging effect after three weeks. "If we had done our study for just 96 hours, our conclusions would have been very different," says Nigel Raine, at Royal Holloway, University of London, one of the research team.

Yet another failing is that pesticides are only tested individually, not in the combination bees are exposed to in reality. The new work clearly shows a damaging cumulative effect from a combination of just two pesticides.

The reaction from pesticide manufacturers is the same as ever: the experiments are "unrealistic". Raine rejects this: "It is hard to see what you could do better." I think he has a point. The only truly "realistic" experiment would have no intervention at all, meaning you could collect no data. The manufacturers are making the perfect the enemy of the good. They also claim their own data shows there are no harmful effects, yet have not published it.

The manufacturers do have some scientists supporting their view that there is too little evidence of harm to act. James Cresswell, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Exeter, said:" It certainly wouldn't be fair to say that this research spells doom for wild bees."

Creswell also criticised research published the journal Science in March, which showed that honeybees consuming one pesticide suffered an 85% loss in the number of queens their nests produced. Subsequently, Creswell was granted £136,000 by pesticide manufacturer Syngenta to fund a research post. Cresswell said there was no connection between the two. "I consider myself an impartial scientist," he told me, adding he had not spoken to Syngenta until after his criticism was sent to Science.

The UK government has already reviewed some of the evidence of the serious harm pesticides cause to bees but, unlike other countries, chose to do nothing. But parliament is now investigating the issue, with the call for evidence open until 2 November.

"Ministers may want to start doing their homework on pesticide policy and biodiversity, because we will be calling them before parliament to answer questions," said Joan Walley MP, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, when announcing the enquiry. "In particular, we will be scrutinising the evidence behind the government's decision not to revise pesticide regulations or follow other European countries in temporarily suspending the use of insecticides linked to bee decline."

The questions are mounting: this latest research shows the need for answers is becoming ever more urgent.

The silence of the bees: government refuses to act on pesticide evidence

The silence of the bees: government refuses to act on pesticide evidence

Extrapolating scientific data appears to be fine if policy-makers like where it leads - such as a badger cull - but is abhorrent if they don't, as with bees

A honey bee joins a meadow brown butterfly on a buddleia flower. Photograph: Jenifer Bunnett/Alamy
Here's an illustrative tale of how science is used and abused in government policy making. In some circumstances, as with the imminent badger cull, you can take scientific evidence and extrapolate it to breaking point in order to justify the decision you have already taken.

Today, on the issue of bees and pesticides, we see the opposite. Despite serious evidence of great harm being caused to bees by sub-lethal doses of neonicitinoid pesticides - published in the world's most prestigious journals - the government has decided that no changes to regulation whatsoever are required, because the case has not been proven beyond all doubt.

So extrapolation is fine if you like where it takes you, but abhorrent if you don't. Evidence-based policy making remains as dreamy a concept as ever, it seems, even with something as critical as keeping the nation's pollinators in good health and our food supply secure.

The bee fiasco began in March with the publication of two studies in Science. The first found that bees consuming one pesticide suffered an 85% loss in the number of queens their nests produced, while the second showed a doubling in "disappeared" bees, those that failed to return from food foraging trips. The work was the first to be carried out in realistic, open-air conditions and used levels of neonicotinoids found in fields.

Professor Mickaël Henry, at INRA in Avignon, France, who led the "disappeared" bees study was under no illusion about the implications of his findings: "Under the effects we saw from the pesticides, the population size would decline disastrously, and make them even more sensitive to parasites or a lack of food." He said current regulation was inadequate.

These high profile studies - and others - prompted the UK's environment ministry (Defra) to investigate. "It is appropriate to update the process for assessing the risks of pesticides to bees in the light of scientific developments – including the latest research," it stated.

Now, six months on, it has delivered its verdict: "The recent studies do not justify changing existing regulation." How can this be? Defra states:

The studies were interesting but they either used neonicotinoids at a higher level than is currently permitted, or the studies weren't carried out under field conditions. The studies did not show that currently permitted uses of neonicotinoids have serious implications for the health of bee populations.

The authors of the studies dispute the suggestion that both the doses and conditions were not realistic. It seems to me that Defra are refusing to be convinced by any scientific study, because the very act of studying it means it is not "field conditions". Do you see the paradox?

Be careful to also note Defra's use of the word "permitted", which echoes the get-out used by pesticide manufacturers, but ignores the fact that farmers have and will exceed allowed doses, either by accident or design.

Another question: why have France and Italy been persuaded that the evidence is sufficient to impose a suspension in the use of some of these pesticides, but not the UK?

Lastly, Defra states:

Regulation needs to be based on all the science. Existing field studies on neonicotinoids found there weren't any significant differences between hives exposed to treated crops and hives exposed to untreated crops.

But Prof David Goulson, at the University of Stirling and leader of the other study in Science, told me previously: "If they have done these studies, where are they? They are not in the public domain and therefore cannot be scrutinised. That raises the question of just how good they are."

There is one glimmer of hope in the Defra document, which was very quietly slipped out:

The government has already put new research in place to explore further the impacts of neonicotinoids on bumble bees in field conditions and to understand what levels of pesticide residues and disease in honey bees are normal. This work is due to finish in spring 2013.

Defra also states: "We are prepared to take whatever action the evidence shows to be necessary." It seems clear to me that sufficient evidence already exists to require action, but we can only hope the new work ends Defra's stalling.

Paul de Zylva, Friends of the Earth nature campaigner, sums it up well: "The government's failure to act on neonicotinoid pesticides is astonishing – there is still a massive question mark over the impact of these chemicals in declining bee populations. Pesticide company profits must not be put ahead of bees well-being."

Update 1015, 19 September: Prof Goulson has sent me this response, which speaks for itself:

Few experiments are perfect. In this situation, the perfect experiment would be to find and follow the fates of hundreds of natural bumblebee nests in landscapes with crops treated with neonicotinoids, and hundreds of control nests in an identical landscape without neonicotinoids. The latter does not exist, since these compounds are extremely widely used. That is why we dosed our bees in the lab, before putting them in the field.

I still think that ours is the closest anyone has come to doing a well replicated, controlled experiment to look at the effects of neonicotinoids on bumblebee nests in something approaching a natural setting. If our results are anywhere close to the truth, then they are pretty alarming.

Bee study lifts lid on hive habits

Bee study lifts lid on hive habits

Experiments on division of labour among honeybees reveal why some worker bees are foragers while others nurse their queens

Bees in a hive near Woking: the study is thought to be the first to show that reversible chemical markers on genes might drive different behaviours. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Experiments on the division of labour in honeybee hives have revealed why some bees do the waggle dance while others nurse their queens.

The roles require drastically different behaviours, with nurses feeding the larvae and performing royal grooming duties, and foragers navigating great distances and performing complex dance routines to point others in the direction of rich sources of nectar.

According to a report in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the job a worker bee does corresponds to distinct patterns of chemicals that latch on to and regulate certain genes in their brains.

Honeybees are born into their place in society. Those fed royal jelly as larvae emerge as queens and do little but lay eggs. The rest become worker bees and divvy up the jobs that need doing around the hive. While some worker bees remain at home, others take flight in search of nectar, pollen and other hive essentials. The entire honeybee workforce are genetically identical sisters.

But analysis of the worker bees' DNA revealed that foragers had one pattern of chemical tags on their genes, while those that stayed home had another. When bees swapped one job for the other, their genetic tags changed accordingly. Scientists call these patterns epigenetic states, because they work on top of the normal genetic code.

The study is thought to be the first to show that reversible chemical markers on genes might drive different behaviours in a living creature.

"If this is true in a bee it has to be partly true in us. Nature is pretty good at finding the simplest way to accomplish things with the least amount of energy," said Dr Andrew Feinberg, a senior author on the study and geneticist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "I'm not saying we're like big bees, but similar mechanisms must apply."

Feinberg and Dr Gro Amdam, a bee specialist at Arizona State University, studied a kind of chemical tagging called DNA methylation on honeybee genes switched on in the millimetre-cubed brains of 21 nurses and 22 foragers.

They found 155 regions of DNA where the epigenetic patterns between the two varieties of honeybee differed. Most of these regions are known to regulate the epigenetic patterns of other genes, to switch them on or off, or alter their function in other ways.

Having established differences between the foragers and nurses, the scientists forced a shift in the hive's workforce by removing the nurse bees while the foragers were away. After a few weeks, the hive had stabilised again, with around half of the old foragers now working as nurse bees.

DNA tests on these insects revealed that the chemical tags changed in bees that reverted from foragers to nurse roles. In all, the scientists found 107 gene regions where the chemical tags differed between the two. This suggests the different roles are intimately linked to the chemicals tagged on to the bees' genes.

"What we understand now is that the bee genome is like those images where you can see two things, like an old lady and a young lady. These epigenetic marks seem to outline those two women. Depending on which bee should come to life, the different sets of marks become active," Dr Amdam told the Guardian.

"These marks can change from one image to another and even back, and something like that has never been observed before in biology," she said.

Pesticide threat to bees to be investigated by parliament

Pesticide threat to bees to be investigated by parliament

A powerful group of MPs will quiz ministers on why, unlike in other countries, the mounting evidence of serious harm is not leading to action

Neonicitinoid pesticides can cause an 85% loss in the number of queens produced and a doubling in "disappeared" bees, those that fail to return from food foraging trips: Lena Ason/Alamy
On Wednesday, I accused the government of failing to act on the significant and growing evidence that neonicitinoid pesticides cause significant harm to bees. For my trouble, I was "mythbusted" by the department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra).

But I am far from alone in my concerns and I can now reveal that a full parliamentary enquiry is going ahead into the matter. Joan Walley MP, who chairs the House of Commons environmental audit committee, a powerful cross-party group that acts as parliament's green watchdog, sent this letter to the Guardian on Friday.

Damian Carrington's blog on the government's response to recent research on the impact of insecticides on bee populations is timely (The silence of the bees). Last week the Environmental Audit Committee, which I chair, decided to undertake an inquiry looking at the effects of pesticide use in the UK on biodiversity with a specific focus on bees.

As Damian's blog pointed out, the use (and abuse) of evidence in policy-making and formulating regulation is clearly at the heart of the matter. But there are other issues that I want our investigation to examine. What monitoring is there of actual - rather than recommended - levels of pesticide usage? What are the potential impacts of these insecticides on human health? And should Defra be encouraging alternative pest-control measures, such as natural predators and plant breeding for insect-resistance, in a bid to make UK farming more bee-friendly?

We will be announcing details of the inquiry soon. In the meantime, Defra ministers may want to start doing their homework on pesticide policy and biodiversity, because we will be calling them before parliament to answer questions on these issues. In particular, we will be scrutinising the evidence behind the Government's decision not to revise pesticide regulations or follow other European countries in temporarily suspending the use of insecticides linked to bee decline.


I have very little to add to that, beyond hoping that the MPs can flush out the trials always cited by government and pesticide companies in defence of the chemicals, but which appear not to be in the public domain. The whole issue is very murky and the MPs will shed some very welcome light.

Everton blazes with wildflower meadows in time for the Liverpool Biennial

Everton blazes with wildflower meadows in time for the Liverpool Biennial

Two acres of the city have been turned into a colourful canvas, in the spirit of the meadows and wetlands which earned such praise at the Olympic Park

When you reach Liverpool on the M62, one of the first signs you see (along with one to Knotty Ash of Ken Dodd fame) directs you to theNational Wildflower Centre. This flourishing place now has a rival across the city in Everton as these pictures show.


They have been sown and landscaped in Everton Park by the artistRebecca Chesney following a research residency which she did at theYorkshire Sculpture Park over in West Yorkshire, near the birthplaces of both Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. Like the Sheffield University botanists who brought the meadows and wetlands of London's Olympic Park to such perfection in time for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, they are a blaze of colour at a key moment in Liverpool's year.

Commissioned by Landlife and the Arts Council, they will be in flower during the Liverpool Biennial openings this coming weekend, when Chesney willdiscuss them publicly in a temporary dome at the park with artist, landscaper and designer of 'edible gardens' Fritz Haeg and others on Sunday 16 September.


Part of their purpose is to encourage the city's growing population of urban bees and Chesney says:

They are already buzzing with bees and lots of other insects too. It's hoped that the meadows will remain on site for at least 3 years. This year the flowers are mostly annuals, but next year I'm hoping the perennials will dominate.


By the look of them, the wildflowers will win local support for a very much longer time in place, instead of the previous mown grass; and other northern cities will surely copy.

EU proposes to ban insecticides linked to bee decline

EU proposes to ban insecticides linked to bee decline

Three neonicotinoids, the world's most widely used insecticides would be forbidden across the continent for 
Three neonicotinoids would be forbidden from use on corn, oil seed rape, sunflowers and other crops across Europe for two years. Photograph: Narong Sangnak/EPA

Insecticides linked to serious harm in bees could be banned from use on flowering crops in Europe as early as July, under proposals set out by the European commission on Thursday, branded "hugely significant" by environmentalists. The move marks remarkably rapid action after evidence has mounted in recent months that the pesticides are contributing to the decline in insects that pollinate a third of all food.

Three neonicotinoids, the world's most widely used insecticides, which earn billions of pounds a year for their manufacturers, would be forbidden from use on corn, oil seed rape, sunflowers and other crops across the continent for two years.

It was time for "swift and decisive action", said Tonio Borg, commissioner for health and consumer policy, who added that the proposals were "ambitious but proportionate".

The proposals will enter EU law on 25 February if a majority of Europe's member states vote in favour. France and the Netherlands are supportive but the UK and Germany are reported to be reluctant.

"It's important that we take action based upon scientific evidence rather than making knee-jerk decisions that could have significant knock-on impacts," said the environment secretary, Owen Paterson. "That's why we are carrying out our own detailed field research to ensure we can make a decision about neonicotinoids based on the most up-to-date and complete evidence available."

Luis Morago, at campaign group Avaaz which took an anti-neonicotinoid petition of 2.2m signatures to Brussels, said: "This is the first time that the EU has recognised that the demise of bees has a perpetrator: pesticides. The suspension could mark a tipping point in the battle to stop the chemical armageddon for bees, but it does not go far enough. Over 2.2 million people want the European commission to face-down spurious German and British opposition and push for comprehensive ban of neonicotinoid pesticides."

Keith Taylor, Green party MEP for South East England MEP, said: "For too long the threat to bees from neonicotinoids has been dismissed, minimised or ignored. It is, therefore, good to see the European commission finally waking up. Bees have enormous economic value as pollinators and are vital to farmers. Let us hope that we're not too late in halting the dramatic decline in their population."

Scientific evidence has mounted rapidly since March 2012, when two high-profile studies found that bees consuming neonicotinoids suffered an 85% loss in the number of queens their nests produced and showed a doubling in "disappeared" bees who got lost while foraging. Neonicotinoids have been fiercely defended by their manufacturers, who claim there is no proof of harm in field conditions and by farming lobbies who say crop yields could fall without pesticide protection. Some neonicotinoid uses have been banned in the past in France, Italy, Slovenia and Germany, but no action has yet been taken in the UK. A parliamentary committee is currently investigating the impact of neonicotinoids on all pollinators and found evidence raising "serious questions about the integrity, transparency and effectiveness of EU pesticides regulation".

On 16 January, the European Food Safety Authority, official advisers to the EC, labelled the three neonicotinoids an unacceptable danger to bees feeding on flowering crops and this prompted the proposal produced on Thursday. If approved by experts from member states on 25 February, it would suspend the use imidacloprid and clothianidin, made by Bayer, and thiamethoxam, made by Syngenta, on crops that attract bees. Winter cereals would be excluded, because bees are not active at that time, and the suspension would be reviewed after two years. The European commission is also considering banning gardeners from using these neonicotinoids, although B&Q, Homebase and Wickes have already withdrawn such products from their garden centres in the UK.

"This hugely significant proposal promises a first, important step on the road to turning around the decline on our bees," said Friends of the Earth's head of campaigns Andrew Pendleton. "The UK government must throw its weight behind it. The evidence linking neonicotinoid chemicals to declining bee populations is growing. It is time to put farmers and nature before pesticide company profits. Ministers must act quickly to support safe and effective alternatives to chemical insecticides."

Bees and plants communicate via electric signals, say scientists

Bees and plants communicate via electric signals, say scientists


                                                     Electric fields could help bees detect flowers that have already
                                                           been visited and have lower pollen levels


Researchers suspect the plant's electrostatic force causes the bee's hair to bristle. Photograph: Diego Azubel/EPA
Plants use electric fields to communicate with bees, scientists have learned.

Bumblebees are able to find and decipher weak electric signals emitted by flowers, according to the study.

Tests revealed that bees can distinguish between different floral fields, as if they were petal colours. The electric signals may also let the insects know if another bee has recently visited a flower.

How bees detect the fields is unknown, but the researchers suspect the electrostatic force might make their hair bristle. A similar hair-raising effect is seen when placing one's head close to an old-style TV screen.

Flowers were already known to use bright colours, patterns and enticing scents to attract pollinators.

Electrical signals may provide a deeper level of communication, the scientists believe.

Study leader Professor Daniel Robert, from the University of Bristol team, said: "This novel communication channel reveals how flowers can potentially inform their pollinators about the honest status of their precious nectar and pollen reserves."

The research was published on Thursday in the latest online edition of the journal Science.

Plants are known to emit weak negatively charged electric fields, and bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air.

As a charged bee approaches a flower, the difference in electrical potential is not enough to produce sparks, but can be felt by the insect.

The researchers investigated the signals by placing electrodes in the stems of petunias.

They found that when a bee landed on a flower, the plant's electrical potential changed and remained altered for several minutes.

This could be a way of letting a bee know it is landing on a flower that has already been visited and lost its nectar, the scientists speculate.

To their surprise, they discovered that bumblebees can distinguish between different floral electric fields.

They were also quicker at learning the difference between two flower colours when electrical signals were also present.

"The co-evolution between flowers and bees has a long and beneficial history, so perhaps it's not entirely surprising that we are still discovering today how remarkably sophisticated their communication is," Professor Robert added.

• This article was amended on 26 February 2013 to remove an inaccurate statement that bees acquire a positive charge of up to 200 volts as they fly through the air. Two hundred volts as a value of potential, not a charge, is mentioned in the paper.

B&Q and Wickes pledge to withdraw products harmful to bees

B&Q and Wickes pledge to withdraw products harmful to bees

The retailers will remove products containing neonicotinoids, which are linked to the decline in the bee 



B&Q and Wickes are banning products containing pesticides linked to the decline in bee populations. Photograph: Haraz Ghanbari/AP
Two of the UK's biggest home improvement retailers have pledged to remove products from their shelves containing pesticides linked to the decline in the bee population.

B&Q and Wickes, two of the best known names in garden centres and DIY, said on Tuesday they would remove products containing neonicotinoids. These chemicals, commonly used as pesticides, have been suspected for years of harming bees, but were identified this year as having a devastating effect on the pollinators.

B&Q is banning the only product it sells containing imidacloprid, one of the neonicotinoid family of insecticides, and Wickes will later this year take off products containing the related thiamethoxam compound.

Along with a third compound, clothianidin, these are the three neonicotonoids identified by the European Food Safety Authority as threatening serious damage to bees.

The move by the retailers comes in response to long-running campaigns from various environmental organisations, who have warned of the links between the pesticides and bee deaths for some time, as studies have suggested links before the EFSA gave its final damning verdict.

There will now be increased pressure on other retailers still stocking the products to follow suit.

The UK govermnent's advisory committee on pesticides is urgently examining the new evidence of harm to bees from the use of certain commonly used insecticides, with a view to recommending possible changes to the current regulatory regime governing their use.

Bayer, the German company that manufactures many of the products concerned, will answer questions before the committee on Wednesday in parliament.

Andrew Pendleton, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth, said: "We are delighted [the two retailers] are withdrawing these pesticides. Other retailers must follow suit and take action to protect our bees. The spotlight now falls on the UK government. Ministers must help safeguard our beeds by immediately suspending the three pesticides identified by European food safety scientists, and ensuring farmers have safe alternatives. Declining bee numbers are a real threat to food production."

He called on David Cameron to intervene: "The prime minister must introduce a national bee action plan."

The Soil Association has also campaigned strongly for pesticides to be reviewed in the light of the precipitous decline of bee populations, and has this year begun to "name and shame" companies involved.

Bee health has been a concern for several years, as populations of the pollinators have been under threat from a variety of sources, including the spread of the deadly parasite, the varroa mite, and intensive farming. The role of pesticides was much disputed, but the landmark pronouncement by the EFSA has found that there is an undeniable link between their use and the death of bees, giving added strength to campaigners.

Garden centres weed out insecticides to help save bees

Garden centres weed out insecticides to help save bees

Five more retailers which between them operate 78 garden centres across the UK have also agreed to remove products containing neonicotinoid pesticides from their shelves. Photograph: Judi Bottoni/AP
A campaign to banish pesticides linked to the fall in bee populations appears to be gathering pace after at least five garden centre chains agreed to remove products blamed for the decline.

Hardware retailers B&Q, Wickes and Homebase created a buzz last month when they confirmed they would stop stocking products that contained three neonicotinoid insecticides that have been identified as posing a risk to bee populations.

The European Union also this month proposed a ban on using the insecticides on flowering crops. If imposed, the three neonicotinoids would be forbidden from use on corn, oil seed rape, sunflowers and other crops across the continent for two years.

However, environment secretary Owen Paterson has confirmed the UK government is opposed to a ban, arguing there is not enough scientific evidence to show that the three pesticides are linked to bee population decline.

Now five more retailers – Notcutts, Hillier, Squires, Blue Diamond and SCATS Countrystores, which between them operate 78 garden centres across the UK – have also agreed to remove products containing neonicotinoid pesticides from their shelves.

SCATS, which was the latest retailer to remove the products, told Friends of the Earth it had been stocking products containing the three pesticides and has now taken the decision to de-list them and stop ordering them with immediate effect.

According to Horticulture Week, Scotsdales Garden Centre has also bowed to pressure from its Facebook followers to take the products off the shop floor.

Friends of the Earth has been urging people to contact their local garden centres to ask them to remove products containing neonicotinoid pesticides.

Andrew Pendleton, head of campaigns for Friends of the Earth, welcomed the move and called on the government to follow suit and take action to curb the use of the chemicals.

"It's great to see garden centres across the UK heeding the warning from European safety experts and pulling pesticide products linked to bee decline from their shelves," he said.

"The approach of leading retailers stands in stark contrast to the government's reluctance to back European efforts to safeguard bees from pesticides. With bee numbers plummeting, Owen Paterson must take urgent action to safeguard these crucial pollinators by backing a ban and introducing a bee action plan to tackle all the threats they face."

Garden centres weed out insecticides to help save bees
Notcutts, Hillier, Squires, Blue Diamond and SCATS become the latest retailers to ban chemicals linked to bee decline
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guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 February 2013 16.26 GMT

Five more retailers which between them operate 78 garden centres across the UK have also agreed to remove products containing neonicotinoid pesticides from their shelves. Photograph: Judi Bottoni/AP
A campaign to banish pesticides linked to the fall in bee populations appears to be gathering pace after at least five garden centre chains agreed to remove products blamed for the decline.

Hardware retailers B&Q, Wickes and Homebase created a buzz last month when they confirmed they would stop stocking products that contained three neonicotinoid insecticides that have been identified as posing a risk to bee populations.

The European Union also this month proposed a ban on using the insecticides on flowering crops. If imposed, the three neonicotinoids would be forbidden from use on corn, oil seed rape, sunflowers and other crops across the continent for two years.

However, environment secretary Owen Paterson has confirmed the UK government is opposed to a ban, arguing there is not enough scientific evidence to show that the three pesticides are linked to bee population decline.

Now five more retailers – Notcutts, Hillier, Squires, Blue Diamond and SCATS Countrystores, which between them operate 78 garden centres across the UK – have also agreed to remove products containing neonicotinoid pesticides from their shelves.

SCATS, which was the latest retailer to remove the products, told Friends of the Earth it had been stocking products containing the three pesticides and has now taken the decision to de-list them and stop ordering them with immediate effect.

According to Horticulture Week, Scotsdales Garden Centre has also bowed to pressure from its Facebook followers to take the products off the shop floor.

Friends of the Earth has been urging people to contact their local garden centres to ask them to remove products containing neonicotinoid pesticides.

Andrew Pendleton, head of campaigns for Friends of the Earth, welcomed the move and called on the government to follow suit and take action to curb the use of the chemicals.

"It's great to see garden centres across the UK heeding the warning from European safety experts and pulling pesticide products linked to bee decline from their shelves," he said.

"The approach of leading retailers stands in stark contrast to the government's reluctance to back European efforts to safeguard bees from pesticides. With bee numbers plummeting, Owen Paterson must take urgent action to safeguard these crucial pollinators by backing a ban and introducing a bee action plan to tackle all the threats they face."

A bee sting

A bee sting is strictly a sting from a bee (honey bee, bumblebee, sweat bee, etc.). In the vernacular it can mean a sting of a bee, wasp, hornet, or yellow jacket. Some people may even call the bite of a horse-fly a bee sting. The stings of most of these species can be quite painful, and are therefore keenly avoided by many people.

Bee stings differ from insect bites, and the venom or toxin of stinging insects is quite different. Therefore, the body's reaction to a bee sting may differ significantly from one species to another.
The most aggressive stinging insects are vespid wasps (including bald-faced hornets and other yellow jackets) but not hornets in general (e.g., the European hornet is less harmful). All of these insects aggressively defend their nests.

In people with insect sting allergy, a bee sting may trigger a dangerous anaphylactic reaction that is potentially deadly. Honey bee stings release pheromones that prompt other nearby bees to attack.



Honey bee stings
A honey bee that is away from the hive foraging for nectar or pollen will rarely sting, except when stepped on or roughly handled. Honey bees will actively seek out and sting when they perceive the hive to be threatened, often being alerted to this by the release of attack pheromones (below).

Although it is widely believed that a worker honey bee can sting only once, this is a partial misconception: although the stinger is in fact barbed so that it lodges in the victim's skin, tearing loose from the bee's abdomen and leading to its death in minutes, this only happens if the skin of the victim is sufficiently thick, such as a mammal's. Honey bees are the only hymenoptera with a strongly barbed sting, though yellow jackets and some other wasps have small barbs.

Bees with barbed stingers can often sting other insects without harming themselves. Queen honeybees and bees of many other species, including bumblebees and many solitary bees, have smooth stingers and can sting mammals repeatedly.

The sting's injection of apitoxin into the victim is accompanied by the release of alarm pheromones, a process which is accelerated if the bee is fatally injured. Release of alarm pheromones near a hive or swarm may attract other bees to the location, where they will likewise exhibit defensive behaviors until there is no longer a threat, typically because the victim has either fled or been killed. (Note: A true swarm is not hostile; it has deserted its hive and has no comb or young to defend.) These pheromones do not dissipate or wash off quickly, and if their target enters water, bees will resume their attack as soon as it leaves the water.

The larger drone bees, the males, do not have stingers. The female worker bees are the only ones that can sting, and their stinger is a modified ovipositor. The queen bee has a smooth stinger and can, if need be, sting skin-bearing creatures multiple times, but the queen does not leave the hive under normal conditions. Her sting is not for defense of the hive; she only uses it for dispatching rival queens, ideally before they can finish pupating. Queen breeders who handle multiple queens and have the queen odor on their hands are sometimes stung by a queen.

The main component of bee venom responsible for pain in vertebrates is the toxin melittin; histamine and other biogenic amines may also contribute to pain and itching. In one of the medical uses of honey bee products, apitherapy, bee venom has been used to treat arthritis and other painful conditions.

Honey bee life cycle

Honey bee life cycle

The honey bee life cycle, here referring exclusively to the domesticated Western honey bee, depends greatly on their social structure.

Colony life

Unlike a bumble bee colony or a paper wasp colony, the life of a honey bee colony is perennial. There are two castes of honey bees: queens, which produce eggs; and workers, which are all non-reproducing females. The Drones(males) only duty is to find and mates with a queen. The queen lays eggs singly in cells of the comb. Larvae hatch from eggs in three to four days. They are then fed by worker bees and develop through several stages in the cells. Cells are capped by worker bees when the larva pupates. Queens and drones are larger than workers and so require larger cells to develop. A colony may typically consist of tens of thousands of individuals.

While some colonies live in hives provided by humans, so-called "wild" colonies (although all honey bees remain wild, even when cultivated and managed by humans) typically prefer a nest site that is clean, dry, protected from the weather, about 20 liters in volume with a 4 to 6 cm² entrance about 3 m above the ground, and preferably facing south or south-east (in the northern hemisphere) or north or north-east (in the southern hemisphere).

Development

Stages of development of the drone pupae.

Development from egg to emerging bee varies among queens, workers and drones. Queens emerge from their cells in 16 days, workers in 21 days and drones in 24 days. Only one queen is usually present in a hive. New virgin queens develop in enlarged cells through differential feeding of royal jelly by workers. When the existing queen ages or dies or the colony becomes very large a new queen is raised by the worker bees. The virgin queen takes one or several nuptial flights and once she is established starts laying eggs in the hive.

A fertile queen is able to lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs. Each unfertilized egg contains a unique combination of 50% of the queen's genes and develops into a haploid drone. The fertilized eggs develop into either workers or virgin queens.

The average lifespan of a queen is three to four years; drones usually die upon mating or are expelled from the hive before the winter; and workers may live for a few weeks in the summer and several months in areas with an extended winter.

List of bees of Great Britain

Genus Colletes
Colletes cunicularius
Colletes daviesanus - Common in England, scarce in Scotland and Ireland
Colletes floralis
Colletes fodiens - Widespread on sandy habitats in England, Wales and southern Scotland
Colletes halophilus
Colletes hederae - Southern, generally coastal distribution
Colletes marginatus - Localised to sand dunes on coasts of England and Wales. Inland population in the Brecks.
Colletes similis - Widespread in southern Britain and Ireland
Colletes succinctus - Widespread throughout the Britain and Ireland on heathland and moorland


Genus Hylaeus
Hylaeus annularis - Widespread, locally common
Hylaeus brevicornis
Hylaeus communis
Hylaeus confusus
Hylaeus cornutus
Hylaeus gibbus
Hylaeus hyalinatus
Hylaeus pectoralis
Hylaeus pictipes
Hylaeus punctulatissimus
Hylaeus signatus
Hylaeus spilotus
[edit]Family Andrenidae

[edit]Genus Andrena
Andrena agilissima
Andrena alfkenella
Andrena angustior
Andrena apicata
Andrena argentata
Andrena barbilabris
Andrena bicolor
Andrena bimaculata
Andrena bucephala
Andrena chrysosceles
Andrena cineraria
Andrena clarkella
Andrena coitana
Andrena congruens
Andrena denticulata
Andrena dorsata
Andrena falsifica
Andrena ferox
Andrena flavipes
Andrena florea
Andrena floricola
Andrena fucata
Andrena fulva
Andrena fulvago
Andrena fuscipes
Andrena gravida
Andrena haemorrhoa
Andrena hattorfiana[1]
Andrena helvola
Andrena humilis
Andrena labialis
Andrena labiata
Andrena lapponica
Andrena lathyri
Andrena lepida
Andrena marginata
Andrena minutula
Andrena minutuloides
Andrena nana
Andrena nanula
Andrena nigriceps
Andrena nigroaenea
Andrena nigrospina
Andrena nitida
Andrena nitidiuscula
Andrena niveata
Andrena ovatula
Andrena pilipes s.s.
Andrena pilipess.l
Andrena polita
Andrena praecox
Andrena proxima
Andrena rosae
Andrena ruficrus
Andrena scotica
Andrena semilaevis
Andrena similis
Andrena simillima
Andrena stragulata
Andrena subopaca
Andrena synadelpha
Andrena tarsata
Andrena thoracica
Andrena tibialis
Andrena tridentata
Andrena trimmerana
Andrena vaga
Andrena varians
Andrena wilkella
[edit]Genus Panurgus
Panurgus banksianus
Panurgus calcaratus

[edit]Family Halictidae

[edit]Genus Halictus
Halictus confusus
Halictus eurygnathus[1]
Halictus maculatus
Halictus quadricinctus
Halictus rubicundus
Halictus scabiosae
Halictus subauratus
Halictus tumulorum
[edit]Genus Lasioglossum
Lasioglossum albipes
Lasioglossum angusticeps
Lasioglossum brevicorne
Lasioglossum calceatum
Lasioglossum cupromicans
Lasioglossum fratellum
Lasioglossum fulvicorne
Lasioglossum laeve
Lasioglossum laevigatum
Lasioglossum laticeps
Lasioglossum lativentre
Lasioglossum leucopus
Lasioglossum leucozonium
Lasioglossum limbellum
Lasioglossum malachurum
Lasioglossum minutissimum
Lasioglossum morio
Lasioglossum nitidiusculum
Lasioglossum parvulum
Lasioglossum pauperatum
Lasioglossum pauxillum
Lasioglossum prasinum
Lasioglossum punctatissimum
Lasioglossum puncticolle
Lasioglossum quadrinotatum
Lasioglossum rufitarse
Lasioglossum semilucens
Lasioglossum sexnotatum
Lasioglossum smeathmanellum
Lasioglossum villosulum
Lasioglossum xanthopus
Lasioglossum zonulum
[edit]Genus Sphecodes
Sphecodes crassus
Sphecodes ephippius
Sphecodes ferruginatus
Sphecodes geoffrellus
Sphecodes gibbus
Sphecodes hyalinatus
Sphecodes longulus
Sphecodes marginatus
Sphecodes miniatus
Sphecodes monilicornis
Sphecodes niger
Sphecodes pellucidus
Sphecodes puncticeps
Sphecodes reticulatus
Sphecodes rubicundus
Sphecodes scabricollis
Sphecodes spinulosus
[edit]Genus Dufourea
Dufourea halictula
Dufourea minuta
[edit]Genus Rophites
Rophites quinquespinosus
[edit]Family Melittidae

[edit]Genus Melitta
Melitta dimidiata
Melitta haemorrhoidalis
Melitta leporina
Melitta tricincta
[edit]Genus Macropis
Macropis europaea
[edit]Family Dasypodaidae

[edit]Genus Dasypoda
Dasypoda hirtipes
[edit]Family Megachilidae

[edit]Genus Anthidium
Anthidium manicatum - European wool carder bee
[edit]Genus Stelis
Stelis breviuscula
Stelis ornatula
Stelis phaeoptera
Stelis punctulatissima
[edit]Genus Heriades
Heriades truncorum
[edit]Genus Chelostoma
Chelostoma campanularum
Chelostoma florisomne
[edit]Genus Osmia
Osmia aurulenta
Osmia bicolor
Osmia caerulescens
Osmia inermis
Osmia leaiana
Osmia niveata
Osmia parietina
Osmia pilicornis
Osmia rufa
Osmia uncinata
Osmia xanthomelana
[edit]Genus Hoplitis
Hoplitis claviventris
Hoplitis leucomelana
Hoplitis spinulosa
[edit]Genus Megachile
Megachile centuncularis
Megachile circumcincta
Megachile dorsalis
Megachile lapponica
Megachile ligniseca
Megachile maritima
Megachile versicolor
Megachile willughbiella
[edit]Genus Coelioxys
Coelioxys afra
Coelioxys brevis
Coelioxys conoidea
Coelioxys elongata
Coelioxys inermis
Coelioxys mandibularis
Coelioxys quadridentata
Coelioxys rufescens
[edit]Family Apidae

[edit]Genus Nomada
Nomada argentata
Nomada armata Scabious Cuckoo Bee
Nomada baccata
Nomada castellana
Nomada conjungens
Nomada errans
Nomada fabriciana
Nomada ferruginata
Nomada flava
Nomada flavoguttata
Nomada flavopicta
Nomada fucata
Nomada fulvicornis
Nomada fuscicornis
Nomada goodeniana
Nomada guttulata
Nomada hirtipes
Nomada integra
Nomada lathburiana
Nomada leucophthalma
Nomada marshamella
Nomada obtusifrons
Nomada panzeri
Nomada roberjeotiana
Nomada ruficornis
Nomada rufipes
Nomada sexfasciata
Nomada sheppardana
Nomada signata
Nomada similis
Nomada striata
Nomada succincta
[edit]Genus Epeolus
Epeolus cruciger
Epeolus variegatus
[edit]Genus Eucera (long-horned bees)
Eucera longicornis
Eucera nigrescens
[edit]Genus Anthophora (flower bees)
Anthophora bimaculata
Anthophora furcata
Anthophora plumipes
Anthophora quadrimaculata
Anthophora retusa

Genus Melecta (cuckoo bees)
Melecta albifrons
Melecta luctuosa

Genus Ceratina (carpenter bees)
Ceratina cyanea

Genus Xylocopa (carpenter bees)
Xylocopa violacea

Genus Bombus (bumblebees)
Subgenus Bombus
Bombus cryptarum
Bombus lucorum - white-tailed bumblebee
Bombus terrestris - buff-tailed bumblebee
Bombus magnus - northern white-tailed bumblebee
[edit]Subgenus Cullumanobombus
Bombus cullumanus - Cullum's bumblebee (extinct)
[edit]Subgenus Kallobombus
Bombus soroeensis - broken-belted bumblebee
[edit]Subgenus Megabombus
Bombus hortorum - garden bumblebee
Bombus ruderatus - large garden bumblebee
[edit]Subgenus Melanobombus
Bombus lapidarius - red-tailed bumblebee
[edit]Subgenus Psithyrus
Bombus barbutellus - Barbut's cuckoo-bee
Bombus bohemicus - gypsy cuckoo-bee
Bombus campestris - field cuckoo-bee
Bombus rupestris - hill cuckoo-bee
Bombus sylvestris - four-coloured cuckoo-bee
Bombus vestalis - vestal cuckoo-bee
[edit]Subgenus Pyrobombus
Bombus hypnorum - tree bumblebee
Bombus jonellus - heath bumblebee
Bombus monticola - mountain bumblebee
Bombus pratorum - early bumblebee

Subgenus Rhodobombus

Bombus pomorum - apple bumblebee (extinct)

Subgenus Subterraneobombus
Bombus distinguendus - great yellow bumblebee
Bombus subterraneus - short-haired bumblebee (extinct)


Subgenus Thoracombus
Bombus humilis - brown-banded carder bee
Bombus muscorum - moss carder bee
Bombus pascuorum - common carder bee
Bombus ruderarius - red-shanked carder bee
Bombus sylvarum - shrill carder bee

Genus Apis (honey bees)
Apis mellifera - western honey bee

First ‘zombie bees’ reported in Washington state

First ‘zombie bees’ reported in Washington state

A parasite makes the bees active at night and fly in strange ways until they die. The infection is another threat to bees that are needed to pollinate crops.

Mark Hohn, a novice beekeeper in Kent, holds up a plastic bag with a dead zombie bee and pupae — two at each end of the bag, Saturday. Hohn found that his bees are infected with a parasite that causes them to fly at night and lurch around erratically until they die.

SEATTLE — The infection is as grim as it sounds: "Zombie bees" have a parasite that causes them to fly at night and lurch around erratically until they die.

And experts say the condition has crept into Washington state.

"I joke with my kids that the zombie apocalypse is starting at my house," said Mark Hohn, a novice beekeeper who spotted the infected insects at his suburban Seattle home.

Hohn returned from vacation a few weeks ago to find many of his bees either dead or flying in jerky patterns and then flopping on the floor.

He remembered hearing about zombie bees, so he collected several of the corpses and popped them into a plastic bag. About a week later, the Kent man had evidence his bees were infected: the pupae of parasitic flies.

"Curiosity got the better of me," Hohn said.

The zombie bees were the first to be confirmed in Washington state, The Seattle Times reported.

San Francisco State University biologist John Hafernik first discovered zombie bees in California in 2008.

Hafernik now uses a website to recruit citizen scientists like Hohn to track the infection across the country. Observers also have found zombie bees in Oregon and South Dakota.


ELLEN M. BANNER/AP

Mark Hohn, a novice beekeeper, checks out bees in one of the hives in the backyard of his Kent home, Sept. 22, 2012. Dead honeybees from his 1.25-acre spread are the first in Washington confirmed to be infected by a parasitic fly.

The infection is another threat to bees that are needed to pollinate crops. Hives have been failing in recent years due to a mysterious ailment called colony collapse disorder, in which all the adult honey bees in a colony suddenly die.

The life cycle of the fly that infects zombie bees is reminiscent of the movie "Alien," the newspaper reported. A small adult female lands on the back of a honeybee and injects eggs into the bee's abdomen. The eggs hatch into maggots.

"They basically eat the insides out of the bee," Hafernik said.

After consuming their host, the maggots pupate, forming a hard outer shell that looks like a fat, brown grain of rice. That's what Hohn found in the plastic bag with the dead bees. Adult flies emerge in three to four weeks.

There's no evidence yet that the parasitic fly is a major player in the bees' decline, but it does seem the pest is targeting new hosts, said Steve Sheppard, chairman of the entomology department at Washington State University.

"It may occur a lot more widely than we think," he said.

That's what Hafernik hopes to find out with his website, zombeewatch.org. The site offers simple instructions for collecting suspect bees, watching for signs of parasites and reporting the results.

Once more people start looking, the number of sightings will probably climb, Hohn said.

"I'm pretty confident I'm not the only one in Washington state who has them," he said.

Honey Bees Can Tell The Difference Between Different Numbers At A Glance

Honey Bees Can Tell The Difference Between Different Numbers At A Glance


The remarkable honey bee can tell the difference between different numbers at a glance. A fresh, astonishing revelation about the 'numeracy' of insects has emerged from new research by an international team of scientists from The Vision Centre, in Australia.

In an exquisitely designed experiment, researchers led by Dr. Shaowu Zhang, Chief Investigator of The Vision Centre and Australian National University and Professor Hans Gross and Professor Juergen Tautz of Wurzburg University in Germany, have shown that bees can discriminate between patterns containing two and three dots – without having to count the dots.

Layout of the Delayed Match-to-Sample (DMTS) experimental apparatus. The bee encounters and flies through the initial sample pattern (S) before traversing a 1m-long tunnel with a perspex roof. There is a baffle behind the entrance of the decision chamber and baffles behind the entrances of the choice chambers The baffles prevented the bees from experiencing the stimuli in the decision chamber until they had entered it, and from viewing the feeder from the decision chamber. Upon entering the choice chamber, she is presented with two choice patterns (C1 and C2), only one of which (C1 in this case) has the same number of dots as S. The bee must choose the matching pattern C1 in order to obtain a hidden reward of sugar solution. (Credit: Gross HJ, Pahl M, Si A, Zhu H, Tautz J, et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004263.g001)

And, with a bit of schooling, they can learn to tell the difference between three and four dots.
However at four, bee maths seems to run out: the team found their honeybees couldn't reliably tell the difference between four dots and five or six.

In the study, the bees flew though an entry of a Y-maze marked with a pattern of either two or three dots, which were signposts to the reward. They then had to choose between two patterns by correctly matching the number of dots, to find where the reward was – a feat they then managed to repeat reliably once they had learned that two dots at the first entry meant they had to look for two dots at one of the second pair of patterns, where the reward was hidden.

Careful control over the experimental environment showed the bees were not using colour, smell or other clues to find their way to the hidden sugar-water reward, says Dr. Zhang.
"My colleague Professor Srinivasan has demonstrated that bees can count up to four landmarks on their way from their hive to a food source. This new research shows they can tell the difference between different numbers – even when we change the pattern, shape or the colour of the dots!"

Presenting blue and yellow dots, stars and lemons, or random patterns didn't fool the clever insects, which continued to reliably navigate their way to the reward once they had figured out and memorised what the signs meant, based on number.

To begin with, the bees spent quite a bit of time scanning the dots. On later visits they zipped straight past them, once they knew what they meant.

"Bees can definitely recognise the difference between two, three and four – although four a little less reliably. This is a process known as 'subitizing' – which means responding rapidly to a small number of items.

"We think the bees are using two memory systems," Dr. Zhang says. "First is working memory, which they use to recall the number of dots that point to the reward. The second system is to use memory rules. We found this out by changing the pattern of the dots - but the bees still managed to locate the reward."

The experiment also demonstrates the remarkable learning power of social insects, which have to go out foraging over long distances – the Vision Centre team has tracked bees over distances as great as 11 kilometres – and then find their way back to the hive, and out to the food source again reliably.
Dr. Zhang says the ability to discriminate between different numbers is part of this navigation, perhaps as bees pass clumps of two trees or three trees on their way to the food source, or use similar patterns among flowers or other landmarks as they draw close to it.

"There has been a lot of evidence that vertebrates, such as pigeons, dolphins or monkeys, have some numerical competence – but we never expected to find such abilities in insects. Our feeling now is that – so far as these very basic skills go – there is probably no boundary between insects, animals and us."
The tantalising question is whether bees can actually perform elementary arithmetic - and Shaowu and his colleagues are already planning an experiment to explore it.

Even the Midnight Sun Won't Convince Bees to Work Nights

Even the Midnight Sun Won't Convince Bees to Work Nights

Bees observe a strict working day, even in conditions of 24-hour sunlight. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology tagged worker bumblebees with a radio identifier, similar to an Oyster Card, which was used to monitor their movements during the constant light of the Arctic summer.

Ralph Stelzer and Lars Chittka from Queen Mary University of London, UK, carried out the study at a research station in Northern Finland. According to Stelzer, "Constant daylight would seem to provide a unique opportunity for bumblebee foragers to maximise intake, and therefore colony growth, by remaining active during the entire 24-hour period. We found that bees do not naturally take advantage of this opportunity, suggesting that there is some benefit to an 'overnight' break."
The researchers studied both native bees and a group of bee colonies they imported into the Arctic. Both species worked a day shift, with maximum activity around midday, and retired to their nests well before midnight. Stelzer and Chittka speculate that the bees must have some way of telling the time in the absence of day/night cues, suggesting that the insects may be sensitive to light intensity and quality or changes in temperature.
Speaking about the possible advantages gained by taking some time off, the researchers said, "Despite the light, temperatures do fall during the Arctic 'night', so it may be that the bees need to return to their nests in order to warm their brood. Also, it has been suggested that a period of sleep helps bees to remember information gained during the day's foraging."

Tiny Brained Bees Solve a Complex Mathematical Problem

Tiny Brained Bees Solve a Complex Mathematical Problem

Scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London and Queen Mary, University of London have discovered that bees learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they discover the flowers in a different order. Bees are effectively solving the 'Travelling Salesman Problem', and these are the first animals found to do this.
The Travelling Salesman must find the shortest route that allows him to visit all locations on his route. Computers solve it by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the shortest. However, bees solve it without computer assistance using a brain the size of grass seed.

New research shows that bumblebees can find the solution to a complex mathematical problem which keeps computers busy for days. (Credit: iStockphoto/Alexey Kryuchkov)

Dr Nigel Raine, from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway explains: "Foraging bees solve travelling salesman problems every day. They visit flowers at multiple locations and, because bees use lots of energy to fly, they find a route which keeps flying to a minimum."
The team used computer controlled artificial flowers to test whether bees would follow a route defined by the order in which they discovered the flowers or if they would find the shortest route. After exploring the location of the flowers, bees quickly learned to fly the shortest route.
As well as enhancing our understanding of how bees move around the landscape pollinating crops and wild flowers, this research, which is due to be published in The American Naturalist, has other applications. Our lifestyle relies on networks such as traffic on the roads, information flow on the web and business supply chains. By understanding how bees can solve their problem with such a tiny brain we can improve our management of these everyday networks without needing lots of computer time.
Dr Raine adds: "Despite their tiny brains bees are capable of extraordinary feats of behaviour. We need to understand how they can solve the Travelling Salesman Problem without a computer. What short-cuts do they use?'

Despite Darkness, Nocturnal Bees Learn Visual Landmarks While Foraging At Night

Despite Darkness, Nocturnal Bees Learn Visual Landmarks While Foraging At Night

Day-active bees, such as the honeybee, are well known for using visual landmarks to locate a favoured patch of flowers, and to find their way home again to their hive. Researchers have now found that nocturnal bees can do the same thing, despite experiencing light intensities that are more than 100 million times dimmer than daylight. The new findings, reported in the latest issue of Current Biology by a team led by Eric Warrant at Lund University, Sweden, advance our understanding of the visual powers of nocturnal animals.

he head of the nocturnal sweat bee Megalopta genalis (Family Halictidae) features large compound eyes, sensitive antennae that bristle with receptors detecting vibrations and odours, powerful mandibles for burrowing in wood and three round ocelli, small eyes whose function in nocturnal bees is unknown. Scanning electron microscope image by Rita Wallén. (Courtesy of Lund University, Sweden

The competitive and dangerous world of the tropical rainforest has driven many normally day-active animals to adopt a nocturnal lifestyle, with the cover of darkness allowing them to exploit food resources in relative peace. Several groups of bees and wasps – including the Central American halictid bee Megalopta genalis – have become nocturnal, and despite the darkness and their apparently insensitive compound eyes, they have retained remarkable visual abilities. In the new work, performed on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, the researchers used infrared night-imaging cameras to show that by performing special orientation flights, Megalopta visually learns landmarks around the nest entrance prior to foraging and uses these landmarks to locate the nest upon return. The researchers found that if landmarks were moved to a nearby site while the bee was away, upon her return she intently searched for her nest in the landmark-bearing, but wrong, location.
Despite this impressive behavioral sensitivity, optical and physiological measurements revealed that Megalopta’s eyes are only about 30 times more sensitive to light than those of day-active honeybees, woefully inadequate to account for Megalopta’s nocturnal homing abilities. A solution to this paradox may lie outside the eye. The researchers identified in the bee’s brain specialised visual cells with morphologies suited to summing light signals and intensifying the received image.

Zombie bees

Zombie bees

Honey bees were found in Washington that were acting strange, almost as if they were drunk. Tests were conducted on collected specimens, and it was found that they had been infected by the parasitic fly apocephalus borealis (also known as the zombie fly). Bees infected by apocephalus borealis have been dubbed as "zombie bees," or "zombees". The infection has spread to Oregon, California, and South Dakota. Tests are being conducted on bees in several other states to determine if the bees there are infected. Bees infected with the apocephalus borealis fly cannot spread the infection to humans.

Nocturnal bees

Nocturnal bees

Four bee families (Andrenidae, Colletidae, Halictidae, and Apidae) contain some species that are crepuscular (these may be either the vespertine or matinal type). These bees have greatly enlarged ocelli, which are extremely sensitive to light and dark, though incapable of forming images. Many are pollinators of flowers that themselves are crepuscular, such as evening primroses, and some live in desert habitats where daytime temperatures are extremely high.

Bees were monitored weekly for 7 yr at light traps in the tropical monsoon forest of Barro Colorado Island. Fifty species and 17 genera were recorded, including nocturnal Megalopta and crepuscular Rhinetula (Halictidae) and Ptiloglossa (Colletidae). Twenty-eight native meliponines and African Apis mellifera in traps increased the known resident highly social bees to 32 species. Most of the 11,860 bees were Megalopta; these species were present throughout the year, as were Rhinetula and Ptiloglossa. Abundance of Megalopta was lowest during the dry season; this was its only consistent seasonality. Peak abundance occurred at various times during dry-to-wet-season transition and in the first half and the end of the wet season. Centris and Epicharis, large, solitary anthrophorid bees, were present in the early wet season and absent in the late wet season and most of the dry season.

 The highly social bee Trigona aff. cupira was aseasonal but had abundance peaks during all but the mid-to-late wet season. Megalopta genalis abundance and M. ecuadoria abundance were highly positively correlated within years, and weekly correlated with abundances of other bees. Pairwise correlations between years were low for each Megalopta species and for combined bees of other genera.

A singularly large catch of Megalopta genalis in 1978 corresponded to flowering of the monocarpic tree Tachigalia versicolor near light traps. Fluctuation of bee abundance at light traps probably indicates local flower availability for this species and, to a lesser extent, for the other bees. The data suggest large year-to-year variation in seasonal abundance of resources used by nocturnal bees and by bees in general, but are limited to indicating the presence or absence of most other bee species.

The yearly variances in abundance of a stingless bee species and of Megalopta in Panamá are comparable to those of eight temperate bumble bee species studied in England, but combined diurnal and crepuscular bee abundance is considerably less variable. The African honey bee arrived on Barro Colorado Island in mid-1982 and has produced no noticeable changes in abundance of other bees but has yet to reach its potential, numbers there; light-trap studies could provide perhaps the most reliable information on its impact.

Bees and humans

Bees and humans

Former coat of arms of Abella de la Conca, Lleida, Spain

Bee larvae as food in Java

Bees figure prominently in mythology and folklore and have been used by political theorists as a model for human society. Journalist Bee Wilson states that the image of a community of honey bees "occurs from ancient to modern times, in Aristotle and Plato; in Virgil and Seneca; in Erasmus and Shakespeare; Tolstoy, as well as by social theorists Bernard Mandeville and Karl Marx."[29] They are found in heraldry where they can signify industriousness as in the Manchester bee in the crest of Manchester City Council.
Despite the honey bee's painful sting and the stereotype of insects as pests, bees are generally held in high regard. This is most likely due to their usefulness as pollinators and as producers of honey, their social nature, and their reputation for diligence. Bees are one of the few insects frequently used in advertisements in a positive manner, typically for products containing honey (such as Honey Nut Cheerios).
In ancient Egypt, the bee was seen to symbolize the lands of Lower Egypt, with the Pharaoh being referred to as "He of Sedge and Bee" (the sedge representing Upper Egypt).
In North America, yellowjackets and hornets, especially when encountered as flying pests, are often misidentified as bees, despite numerous differences between them.
Although a bee sting can be deadly to those with allergies, virtually all bee species are non-aggressive if undisturbed and many cannot sting at all. Humans are often a greater danger to bees, as bees can be affected or even harmed by encounters with toxic chemicals in the environment (see also bees and toxic chemicals).
In Indonesia bee larvae are eaten as a companion to rice, after being mixed with shredded coconut "meat", wrapped in banana leaves, and steamed.

Flight of bee

Flight of bee

Bee in mid air flight carrying pollen inpollen basket

In M. Magnan 1934 French book Le vol des insectes, he wrote that he and a M. Saint-Lague had applied the equations of air resistance to bumblebeesand found that their flight could not be explained by fixed-wing calculations, but that "One shouldn't be surprised that the results of the calculations don't square with reality". This has led to a common misconception that bees "violate aerodynamic theory", but in fact it merely confirms that bees do not engage in fixed-wing flight, and that their flight is explained by other mechanics, such as those used by helicopters.

In 1996 Charlie Ellington at Cambridge University showed that vortices created by many insects’ wings and non-linear effects were a vital source of lift; vortices and non-linear phenomena are notoriously difficult areas of hydrodynamics, which has made for slow progress in theoretical understanding of insect flight.

In 2005, Michael Dickinson and his Caltech colleagues studied honey bee flight with the assistance of high-speed cinematography and a giant robotic mock-up of a bee wing. Their analysis revealed that sufficient lift was generated by "the unconventional combination of short, choppy wing strokes, a rapid rotation of the wing as it flops over and reverses direction, and a very fast wing-beat frequency". Wing-beat frequency normally increases as size decreases, but as the bee's wing beat covers such a small arc, it flaps approximately 230 times per second, faster than a fruitfly (200 times per second) which is 80 times smaller.

Cleptoparasitic bees

Cleptoparasitic bees

Bombus vestalis, a cuckoo bee parasite of the bumblebee Bombus terrestris

Cleptoparasitic bees, commonly called "cuckoo bees" because their behavior is similar to cuckoo birds, occur in several bee families, though the name is technically best applied to the apid subfamily Nomadinae. Females of these bees lack pollen collecting structures (the scopa) and do not construct their own nests. They typically enter the nests of pollen collecting species, and lay their eggs in cells provisioned by the host bee. When the cuckoo bee larva hatches it consumes the host larva's pollen ball, and if the female cleptoparasite has not already done so, kills and eats the host larva. In a few cases where the hosts are social species, the cleptoparasite remains in the host nest and lays many eggs, sometimes even killing the host queen and replacing her.

Many cleptoparasitic bees are closely related to, and resemble, their hosts in looks and size, (i.e., the Bombus subgenus Psithyrus, which are parasitic bumblebees that infiltrate nests of species in other subgenera of Bombus). This common pattern gave rise to the ecological principle known as "Emery's Rule". Others parasitize bees in different families, like Townsendiella, a nomadine apid, one species of which is a cleptoparasite of thedasypodaid genus Hesperapis, while the other species in the same genus attack halictid bees.

Solitary and communal bees

Solitary and communal bees

A solitary bee, Anthidium florentinum
 (family Megachilidae), visiting Lantana

Most other bees, including familiar species of bee such as the Eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica), alfalfa leafcutter bee (Megachile rotundata), orchard mason bee (Osmia lignaria) and the hornfaced bee (Osmia cornifrons) are solitary in the sense that every female is fertile, and typically inhabits a nest she constructs herself. There are no worker bees for these species. Solitary bees typically produce neither honey nor beeswax. They are immune from acarine and Varroa mites, but have their own unique parasites, pests and diseases (see also diseases of the honey bee).

Solitary bees are important pollinators, and pollen is gathered for provisioning the nest with food for their brood. Often it is mixed with nectar to form a paste-like consistency. Some solitary bees have very advanced types of pollen-carrying structures on their bodies. A very few species of solitary bees are being increasingly cultured for commercial pollination. Most of these species belong to a distinct set of genuses, namely: carpenter bees, sweat bees, mason bees, polyester bees, squash bees, dwarf carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, alkali bees, digger bees.


A solitary bee, Anthidium florentinum (family Megachilidae), visiting Lantana

An Africanized bee extracts nectar from a flower as
pollen grains stick to its body in Tanzania

Solitary bees are often oligoleges, in that they only gather pollen from one or a few species/genera of plants (unlike honey bees and bumblebees which are generalists). No known bees are nectar specialists; many oligolectic bees will visit multiple plants for nectar, but there are no bees which visit only one plant for nectar while also gathering pollen from many different sources. Specialist pollinators also include bee species which gather floral oils instead of pollen, and male orchid bees, which gather aromatic compounds from orchids (one of the only cases where male bees are effective pollinators). In a very few cases only one species of bee can effectively pollinate a plant species, and some plants are endangered at least in part because their pollinator is dying off. There is, however, a pronounced tendency for oligolectic bees to be associated with common, widespread plants which are visited by multiple pollinators (e.g., there are some 40 oligoleges associated with creosote bush in the US desert southwest, and a similar pattern is seen in sunflowers, asters, mesquite, etc.)

A European honey bee extracts nectar from an Aster flower

Solitary bees create nests in hollow reeds or twigs, holes in wood, or, most commonly, in tunnels in the ground. The female typically creates a compartment (a "cell") with an egg and some provisions for the resulting larva, then seals it off. A nest may consist of numerous cells. When the nest is in wood, usually the last (those closer to the entrance) contain eggs that will become males. The adult does not provide care for the brood once the egg is laid, and usually dies after making one or more nests. The males typically emerge first and are ready for mating when the females emerge. Providing nest boxes for solitary bees is increasingly popular for gardeners. Solitary bees are either stingless or very unlikely to sting (only in self-defense, if ever).
While solitary females each make individual nests, some species are gregarious, preferring to make nests near others of the same species, giving the appearance to the casual observer that they are social. Large groups of solitary bee nests are called aggregations, to distinguish them from colonies.

In some species, multiple females share a common nest, but each makes and provisions her own cells independently. This type of group is called "communal" and is not uncommon. The primary advantage appears to be that a nest entrance is easier to defend from predators and parasites when there are multiple females using that same entrance on a regular basis.

GENERAL HONEYBEE INFORMATION

GENERAL HONEYBEE INFORMATION

- There are four major species of honey bees in the world. Australia has the species, Apis mellifera (which means “carrier of nectar”).
- Age of this species is 19 million years.
- An average beehive, at the height of the season, can hold between 50-100,000 bees.
- The average temperature of a hive is (93 -95 F)
- On average, a honey bee weighs 1/10 gram.
- Honey bee eggs are 1.6mm.
- A worker bee averages between 12-16 millimetres long. Queens and drones are slightly longer.
- Honey bees have 5 eyes, 2 sets of wings and 6 legs.
- Bees communicate by vibrations and chemical cues. They are deaf to most sounds and are mute.
- A worker bee visits between 1,000 flowers each collection trip.
- In one day, a worker bee might visit as many as 10,000 flowers.
- The average worker bee makes 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
- A hive of honey bees must visit over one million flowers to make one kilo of honey.
- Bees can forage for nectar and pollen over a radius of up to 3 kilometres.
- The flight time required to produce 1 kilo of honey is equivalent to one bee travelling 4 times around the world.
- It would take about one ounce of honey to fuel a bee’s flight around the world.
- A hive of bees would have to fly over 30,000 miles to bring you one kilo of honey.
- Flight speed is about 25 kilometres per hour (12 mph).
- Normal wing beats are around 250 cycles/second, whereas buzzing wing beats are 400-500 cycles/second.
- A single hive can produce 15-30 kilos per fortnight on a strong nectar flow.
- Honey bees are the only insects to produce food for humans.
- Bees never sleep, but they do rest inside the hive.
- When a bee stings, it looses it’s stinger and dies.
- Pollinated fruit and vegetables seeds are up to 30% larger and have better germination rates than non-pollinated ones.
- Approximately one half of the human diet is derived directly or indirectly from crops pollinated by bees.
- Honeycombs have six-sided cells.
- When bees take nectar back to the hive, they fan their wings to get the moisture out of it. Then they seal the honey in the combs with wax which they make from special glands.
- Bees maintain a fairly constant temperature in the hive of about 22 degrees Celsius, by fanning their wings. Oh hot summer days, you will see them hanging in bunches out of the hives, trying to get cool.
- Bees carry pollen on their hind legs in a pollen basket, or corbicula.
- They can carry nearly their own weight in nectar and pollen.
- Bees natural enemies include mice, wasps, birds and small mammals.
- Bees attempting to enter a different hive will be killed as intruders, although bees returning with nectar may be admitted.