"Spring’s annual flower fashion show is just around the corner, and contrasting colors will be drawing all the bumblebees’ attention. A recent study found that bees seem to be instinctively drawn to flowers that contrast with their environment.

But fashion-forward flowers needn’t worry about patterns, bees seem unconcerned with solids vs. stripes.

An experiment at the University of Cambridge exposed bumblebees to different colors and patterns of snapdragon flowers. The bees had been raised without ever seeing a flower, until they were presented with solid red or ivory flowers as well as a red-and-ivory striped variety. The flowers were set on a brown background.

The insects preferentially flew to the ivory and the  peppermint-striped varieties."


Bold Blooms Bring in the Bees
by Tim Wall

"Slight electric fields that form around flowers may lure pollinators much as floral colors and fragrances do.

In lab setups, bumblebees learned to distinguish fake flowers by their electrical fields, says sensory biologist Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol in England. Combining an electrical charge with a color helped the bees learn faster, Robert and his colleagues report online February 21 in Science.

Plants, a bit like lightning rods, tend to conduct electrical charges to the ground, Robert says. And bees pick up a positive charge from the atmosphere’s invisible rain of charged particles."

Bees learn the electric buzz of flowers
By Susan Milius

"Saving bees is a fashionable cause. Bees are under pressure from disease and habitat loss, but another insidious threat has come to the fore recently. Concern in conservation and scientific circles over a group of agricultural insecticides has now reached the policy arena. Next week, an expert committee of the European Union (EU) will vote on a proposed two-year ban on some uses of clothianidin, thiamethoxam and imidacloprid. These are neonicotinoids, systemic insecticides carried inside plant tissues. Although they protect leaves and stems from attack by aphids and other pests, they have subtle toxic effects on bees, substantially reducing their foraging efficiency and ability to raise young.

Whatever the EU decision, this vote will not be the end of the story. The proposed ban will buy some time for scientists and policy-makers to understand more about how neonicotinoids affect bee populations. For despite what both sides of the argument say, the link between bee declines and neonicotinoids is far from clear. I gave evidence to a UK parliamentary inquiry on the issue late last year, and my experience offers a useful window on how science informs public debate and policy-making — and, in the case of the public debate, how it does not...

The assertion that a ban on neonicotinoids in Europe will save bees from extinction is absurd. There are bee species around the world in genuine danger of extinction, such as the once-common rusty-patched bumblebee in the United States, which has vanished from 87% of its historic range since the early 1990s. Diseases, rather than pesticides, are suspected of driving that decline. And although there have been dramatic falls in the numbers of managed honey bee Apis mellifera colonies in some countries, it remains a widespread and common bee, not in imminent danger of extinction."


Bees, lies and evidence-based policy
by Lynn Dicks



You could say the same about the government/media hysteria over global warming or what makes for  a healthy diet.  Gun control, abortion, immigration, health-care, you name it... the government seems to jump on whatever bandwagon it can find.  Then they ask (I should say force) you and me to pay for it all.

"Honey Bee Market La Colmena, A family owned and operated business
serving the community for over 50 years!"

- http://www.honeybeemkt.com

I recommend the lunch specials.

"In January this year [2004], 14,000 jars labelled 'Produce of India' were stopped for testing at Felixstowe docks. The honey turned out to be contaminated with chloramphenicol, a wide-spectrum antibiotic banned in food production in most countries. In susceptible individuals, it can cause a fatal blood condition, aplastic anaemia. And the country most associated with the use of chloramphenicol on bees? China - whose honey had consequently been banned on health grounds by the EU in 2002. Commenting on the Felixstowe seizure, Vijay Sardana, head of the Indian trade body CITA, said that India believed Chinese honey was being smuggled into India through Nepal, repackaged and then sold abroad.

China rejects such accusations, saying that competitor nations have a vested interest in peddling untruths to get China's honey pushed off the market. And Beijing has received new support from Brussels, which has just rescinded the import ban after EU inspectors confirmed that China was moving to stop chloramphenicol use and establish an effective control and detection system for food safety.

During the two-year EU ban, the disappearance of legal Chinese honey caused upheaval. For years it had been a basic ingredient in blended honeys because of its sweetness and cheapness; now packers worldwide switched to Argentine, Mexican and east-European honey. Yet chloramphenicol-tainted honey kept turning up.

In the export market there was a dramatic increase in honey on offer from Vietnam, for instance, where the bees had gone into such an overdrive that a country not known as a significant honey exporter had thousands of tons for sale. And there was something else. Thomas Heck, a director of the leading British honey importer Kimpton Brothers, recalls being offered a container-load of Vietnamese honey two years ago. 'Standard Vietnamese honey is dark, but this was white,' he said. 'It wasn't from one of our usual suppliers. We turned it down.'

Singapore suddenly discovered a penchant for beekeeping - surprising in a country which, according to Bee Culture magazine, 'has no bees' in the commercial sense. Overnight in early 2002, just as Chinese honey was banned by the EU, Singapore became the world's fourth biggest honey exporter and the tonnage of honey sold to Australia, which in 2001 had been zero, leaped to nearly 1,500 tonnes.

As emails and faxes kept arriving at honey packers in Europe and the US offering cheap honey from some unlikely places, investigators came to a startling conclusion: contaminated honey from China was being relabelled and offered for sale as the produce of third-world countries. In the past 12 months, honey labelled as the produce of Cyprus, Tanzania, Moldova, Romania, Argentina, Portugal, Hungary, Spain, Bulgaria and Vietnam has turned up in European ports, honey blenders and supermarkets, testing positive for chloramphenicol. In this period, it has been found in 14 consignments intercepted in Europe and the EU's 'rapid alert' food safety system in Brussels has been notified."


A bitter taste of honey
Michael Durham

"Scientists say that mass bee deaths may be caused by viruses that disrupt gene expression.

Lead scientist May Berenbaum from the University of Illinois told BBC News that the research was made possible by publication of the bee genome in 2006.

The team concentrated on analysing gene expression from cells in the bees' guts because this is the primary site of pesticide detoxification and immune defence.

Previous theories for CCD have included pesticide poisoning as well as infection and mite infestation.

But the team's genetic analysis of the bees' guts failed to reveal elevated expression of pesticide response genes.

In addition, genes involved in immune response showed no clear expression pattern despite the increased prevalence of viruses and other pathogens in CCD colonies.

What did show up in the guts of the CCD bees was an abundance of fragments from the ribosome, a structure which is the cell's protein making factory.

According to the researchers, this finding suggests that protein production is likely to be compromised in bees from CCD hives.

Previous research shows that the viruses that bees carry all attack the ribosome.

The microbes in question are known as 'picorna-like' viruses. The word derives from pico, which means little, and RNA (ribonucleic acid).

'These picorna-like viruses all attack at the same spot,' said Professor Berenbaum.

'What they do is to work their way into the ribosome and instead of making honey bee protein they make virus proteins.

'So maybe what's happening is basically the ribosome wears out. So we looked to see if the CCD bees have more of these viruses than healthy bees. And they do.'

The viruses in question include 'deformed wing virus' and 'Israeli acute paralysis virus'.

The scientists believe that if a number of similar picorna-like viruses attack simultaneously, they may be able to overwhelm the ribosome.

'We talk about a smoking gun. We have the bullet hole!' said May Berenbaum.

'We now need to look for how multiple viruses might interact on the ribosome.'"


DNA clue to honey bee deaths
By Judith Burns

"Fruits and vegetables are always there when you go to grocery store, but in coming years their availability could get stung.

The bees that pollinate your food are dying at an increasing rate causing a nationwide bee shortage. Without those bees prices will rise.

A National Agriculture Statistics Service report says honey producing hives in the United States shrunk from 4.5 million in 1980 to 2.4 million in 2008. That number is even lower four years later.

So one local beekeeper is trying a newer method, hoping he can stay in the business.

Dan Bauer's bees are no longer sitting out in the cold. He says, 'I don't know anybody else that does it in this area. A lot of it's being done in Idaho and Canada.'

What Bauer is referring to is wintering his bees inside. Once the weather gets cold, they are put into storage where they can hibernate.

'I think this is gonna be the way that a lot of beekeepers might have to go,' says Bauer adding, 'We've already had people interested in what we are doing here.'

This is all because Bauer, like other beekeepers nationwide, fears the bee death rate is only going to get worse.

Entomologists like Janet Knodel with the NDSU Extension Service are puzzled. Knodel says, 'What they're seeing now is the bees are just disappearing, and the worker bees don't come back to the hive.'

They have narrowed down some potential factors to the die out rate. They include parasites that attack the bees, increased stress from transporting them long distances and pesticide use.

Still, there is much research to be done."


Beekeepers Getting Stung by Increasing Bee Deaths
from: www.valleynewslive.com

"Europe has sided with the bees and wants to put a ban on insecticides, but MEP Robert Sturdy says this could reduce yields for some key crops by 20% and cost the EU economy up to 4.5 billion euros a year and 50,000 farming jobs.

Robert Sturdy, MP The European Commission has presented draft proposals recommending the end of three vital insecticides, Mr Sturdy, MEP for this region, says.

The EU proposals follow a report by the European Food Safety Authority into the affect these chemical products have on bee health. Three insecticides would be affected, clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam. The Commission proposes that farmers would be banned from using these neonicotinoid insecticides on crops that are attractive to bees including rapeseed, sunflowers, maize and cotton.

If the Member States of the EU agree with this discussion paper, then the Commission would like the ban in place by July and for it to be in effect for two years before a review.

The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) after reviewing the evidence last year, rejected a ban on neonicotinoids. It stated that the evidence was not conclusive and that further research was required before changing any legislation."


Bees get the bird from our MEP
from: www.cambridge-news.co.uk

"It is unusual to die from an allergic reaction following a bee sting, an allergy specialist says.

Dr Miriam Hurst said no-one had done studies in New Zealand but overseas data indicated between 0.5 per cent and 1 per cent of the population had a generalised reaction to bee stings...

Looking at overseas studies, the people who died from stings generally tended to be people with asthma and people who did not get adrenaline.

Most were stung on the foot, in the afternoon.

Those people who had a milder reaction to bee or wasp venom but had asthma and lived a long way from medical treatment were also advised to carry adrenaline and have an allergic-reaction plan."


Bee sting fatalities rare, says doctor
SALLY KIDSON

"A 53-year-old man was killed while three members of his household were injured after they were attacked by a swarm of bees in their home in Davao City Monday.

The attack occurred when a hive fell on the roof of the victims' house in Lasang district in Davao City, radio dzBB reported.

Killed was Artemio Baro Sr., 53, the report said.

A separate report on the online version of the Remate tabloid identified two of the injured as Jemar Barro, 24; and Aniceta Barro, 48.

According to the investigation, the hive fell on the victims' house due to a strong wind. When the hive broke, the bees swarmed into the house and attacked the Baro family."

1 killed, 3 hurt in Davao bee attack
— DVM, GMA News