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Guest blog post by Eileen Guest. Convincing my kids to care about bees wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I try to engage with my boys when we go outside to play. However, I constantly find myself being drawn to my garden to pull one more weed…
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A recent study out of Queen Mary University of London shows that bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) can learn to pull a string for a reward then teach others to do the same. This suggests that that bumblebees engage in cultural transmission, a form of social learning. The Experiment In this experiment, individual bumblebees were…
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A single worker bee may have multiple mites such as this one attached to its body. Image credit Andrew BradleyWith cold months approaching, beekeepers are preparing their hives to overwinter. This includes fighting off parasitic varroa mite infestations, which often lead to honeybee colony deaths from late fall to early spring. A 2016 USDA survey reports that among honeybee management operations of both greater and less than five colonies, varroa…
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Does eating your favorite food put you in a good mood, give you that extra push to go about your day? Researchers at Queen Mary University of London released a study that suggests bumblebees demonstrate similarly “happy” responses when they eat their favorite treat, sugar water. Bees begin to forage at ambiguous…
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Late last month, the United States identified 7 species of yellow-faced bees for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Once prolific throughout the Hawaiian islands, these yellow-faced bees have declined rapidly in population in recent years like so many wild bee species throughout the United States. Habitat loss, wildfire, development,…
