This article touches on most recent beekeeping news topics.
"The more scientists find out about how life's rich tapestry works-and that each critter has such a crucial role to play-the more we are convinced that all life forms share a number of similarities. It's truly uncanny.
Take, for example, humans and honeybees: we are quite similar in a number of ways. We both share addiction and rage management issues. Bees and humans just can't seem to get enough caffeine, nicotine or cocaine; once we start, the euphoric 'give-me-more' insatiable gene dominates our habits.
It also turns out that both angry humans (mostly males) and worker honeybees (exclusively females) head-butt one another. In the case of the honeybees, when the hive is under attack bees stop their sexy waggle dance for a tenth of a second and vibrate 380 times a second. Vibrations are accompanied by head-butting fellow workers, which we now know conveys that the hive is under siege.
Over the past four years a quarter of a trillion honeybees have died prematurely on our home-planet Earth. Clearly something is terribly wrong here.
In so many different ways the bees are acting as nature's canaries in coalmines. Of the 100 crop species providing 90 percent of the world's food, about 74 percent are pollinated by bees. The bees are the first critters to touch and help make our food, and they are getting sick around the globe. As a matter of fact, in March 2011 the United Nations issued a warning that mass bee deaths signal the writing on the wall for global food security."
The Incomparable Honeybee
Reese Halter
"The more scientists find out about how life's rich tapestry works-and that each critter has such a crucial role to play-the more we are convinced that all life forms share a number of similarities. It's truly uncanny.
Take, for example, humans and honeybees: we are quite similar in a number of ways. We both share addiction and rage management issues. Bees and humans just can't seem to get enough caffeine, nicotine or cocaine; once we start, the euphoric 'give-me-more' insatiable gene dominates our habits.
It also turns out that both angry humans (mostly males) and worker honeybees (exclusively females) head-butt one another. In the case of the honeybees, when the hive is under attack bees stop their sexy waggle dance for a tenth of a second and vibrate 380 times a second. Vibrations are accompanied by head-butting fellow workers, which we now know conveys that the hive is under siege.
Over the past four years a quarter of a trillion honeybees have died prematurely on our home-planet Earth. Clearly something is terribly wrong here.
In so many different ways the bees are acting as nature's canaries in coalmines. Of the 100 crop species providing 90 percent of the world's food, about 74 percent are pollinated by bees. The bees are the first critters to touch and help make our food, and they are getting sick around the globe. As a matter of fact, in March 2011 the United Nations issued a warning that mass bee deaths signal the writing on the wall for global food security."
The Incomparable Honeybee
Reese Halter
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