"Last year, Dr. Melissa Bateson and her colleagues at Newcastle University in the Centre for Behaviour and Evolution at the Institute published a fascinating study in the journal Current Biology about negative cognitive biases in bees.

Dr. Bateson was particularly interested in figuring out whether bees have emotions, so she decided to test them.   Whether insects have emotions is a controversial subject, and a difficult one to study since bees cannot tell you if they are sad, etc… as a human can (even though they seem to show when they are angry pretty easily).

The study they conducted looked to see what honeybees do when their hive is shaken.  Shaking a hive simulates a predatory attack, like that of a honeybadger or bear looking for its next meal.

It seems that after being shaken for 60 seconds, honeybees consider any subsequent ambiguous stimulation as another attack, or punishment.   Honeybees expect that any further stimulation is more bad news for the colony, demonstrating this by their behavior and even chemically.  Shaken bees have lower levels of key neurotransmitters used for learning and memory – dopamine, octopamine, and serotonin.   In humans, lower levels of dopamine are believed to be associated with reduced motor control, concentration, and cognition.

The study is fascinating as it might provide evidence that honeybees have something some might consider an emotion (others might consider it just a reaction).  At the least, it shows an invertebrate that has a similar reaction – both chemically and behaviorally – as seen in humans.

What struck me most is how this is how the part of a survival instinct that cause honeybees seem to act just like many investors do when something bad news comes out about one of the stocks he or she owns."

What Investors Can Learn From Honeybees
David Maris

"The bees are gone and so is the family whose home they invaded. A Varney, Ont., couple and their toddler son left their 1-1/2 story home over the weekend to allow for cleanup and removal of thousands of bees nesting and producing honey in their ceilings.

Loretta and Dave Yates and their young son Justin haven’t returned home, but the bees were removed during a five-hour period Monday.

The Yates family hadn’t realized the extent of the bee invasion until cracks appeared in the ceilings of the two rooms and honey began to drip onto the floors. On closer examination, they noticed a dome kitchen light fixture was also starting to fill with honey.

Beekeeper Dave Schuit and three helpers pulled down the ceilings in the kitchen and living room Monday, and successfully removed the two beehives and several honeycombs -- some filled with honey, others containing brood stock.

She estimates it will cost about $1,000 to replace each of the ceilings in the two rooms. While her husband can access $1,500 to pay for the removal of the bees and the cleanup and replacement of the ceilings, the total cost is expected to be more than double that.

Yates was shocked to learn that her household insurance policy doesn’t cover damage caused by bees.

'They call it  insect damage -- an act of nature. I didn’t bring them here. I was really surprised by that,' she said."

Bees removed from Ontario house dripping honey
Don Crosby, QMI Agency

"Almost all available advice about stings is sensational or emphasizes allergies. Very little of that advice admits that bee stings are pretty insignificant most of the time, causing little more than some excitement and temporary minor pain, or that some people actually seek out bee stings for their beneficial effects."

What Everyone Needs to Know About Bee Stings
from http://www.honeybeeworld.com/misc/stings.htm

"A parasitic mite has helped a virus wipe out billions of honeybees throughout the globe, say scientists.

A team studying honeybees in Hawaii found that the Varroa mite helped spread a particularly nasty strain of a disease called deformed wing virus.

The mites act as tiny incubators of one deadly form of the disease, and inject it directly into the bees' blood.

This has led to 'one of the most widely-distributed and contagious insect viruses on the planet'.

Dr Martin explained to BBC Nature that most viruses were not normally harmful to the bees, but the mite 'selected' one lethal strain of one specific virus.

'In an infected bee there can be more viral particles than there are people on the planet,' Dr Martin explained.

'There's a vast diversity of viral strains within a bee, and most of them are adapted to exist in their own little bit of the insect; they get on quite happily.'

But the mite, he explained, 'shifts something'.

In Varroa-infected bees, over time, the vast majority of these innocuous virus strains disappear and the bees' bodies are filled with one lethal strain of deformed wing virus.

And when it comes to viral infection, it's the sheer quantity that kills; each viral particle invades a cell and takes over its internal machinery, turning the bee's own body against itself.

Although it is not clear exactly why this strain thrives in mite-infected bees, Dr Martin explained that it could be the one virus best able to survive being repeatedly transmitted from the mites to the bees and back, as the mites feed on the bees' blood."

Honeybee virus: Varroa mite spreads lethal disease
By Victoria Gill

"As I run towards a nearby river, followed by no fewer than 100,000 pissed off honey bees, my sister's words echo in the back of my mind -- 'The bugs are going to crawl up your pee pee and give you those crazy infections.'

Inside the apiary, with our faces six inches from the bee hives, Kibwana opens the abyss of doom and the honey hits the fan. Out pours one hundred thousand bees attacking us from every angle. A bee attaches itself to my producer's nose. My cameraman drops his three thousand dollar lens. I sprint from the apiary, and screams of twelve your old girls who just spotted Justin Bieber fill the air.

Skip to my salvation. I'm standing on the other side of the river with Kibwana having escaped without a scratch. Unfortunately, my cameraman was not as lucky. Standing in the middle of the river he curses the day he met me as he swats dozens of angry bees from his now bloody ankles. It turns out that even though we tried our best, here we are still just a group of crazy Mzungu's (white people) trying to fit in.

With the insanity behind us and my cohorts finally free of the bees, Kibwana invites us for a well-earned meal of the sweetest honey I have ever tasted. I thank him for his time and ask for some parting advice, "What is the secret to happiness and health?"

He answers, 'The key to life is to keep working everyday. If you do that, you will stay young.'"

Killer Bees or the Sweet Life: How Fair Trade Is Paving the Way Out of Poverty in Uganda
Chris Bashinelli

"Felix Munk gets stung up to 20 times a day but that doesn't stop him from regularly clambering up to the roof of the Vienna Opera and other city landmarks to check on the bees living above the heads of unsuspecting music lovers and government ministers.

Munk is a member of Vienna's Stadtimker, one of a growing number of urban beekeepers' associations who are trying to encourage bees to make their homes in cities, as pesticides and crop monocultures make the countryside increasingly hostile.

Bee populations are in sharp decline around the world, under attack from a poorly understood phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, whose main causes are believed to include a virus spread by mites that feed on haemolymph - bees' 'blood'.

As well as making honey, bees are important pollinators of flowering plants, including many fruits and vegetables. A 2011 United Nations report estimated that the work of bees and other pollinators was worth 153 billion euros a year.

'Bees do very well in cities,' says Stephen Martin of the University of Sheffield, an expert on the deadly Varroa mite that has wrought destruction on honey bee colonies around the world since being exported from its native Asia in the 1960s.

'There are lots of plants and flowers in cities for bees to live on. Keeping them on rooftops is a great idea because it keeps them out of the way of people.'"

Vienna pitches urban chic to beleaguered bee colonies
By Georgina Prodhan

"Angry bees swarmed two people in Indio, Calif. this morning, sending them to the hospital with almost 200 stings in all.

Dr. Wesley Burks, who chairs the University of North Carolina’s pediatrics department and has a 30-year career that involves working with skin allergies, said an attack like that is rare. If fact, he’s never seen one firsthand.

'Generally, you see somebody stung once or maybe five to ten times, but not 80 or 100,' Burks said. 'I’ve talked to people that have seen them…but it’s less than a handful.'

Burks said a large number of stings like this can often lead to anaphylactic shock — even if the patient is not allergic to bee stings.

Each sting releases proteins into the victim’s body, causing swelling and eventually resulting in a histamine reaction — as if the body were reacting to an allergy. Sometimes, that swelling can even affect the victim’s ability to breath, Burks said.

Burks said bee stings generally affect people the same way, regardless of age, but conditions like hypertension and diabetes can make it harder to respond and recover."

Bee Attack Sends Two Californians to the Hospital
By Sydney Lupkin

"Bee and bat populations alike experience a sharp decline in North America. Whereas, however, the dying of bees remains a bit of a mystery, the cause of the collapse of bat populations has been given a name: It is a fungitic disease labeled WNS, White Nose Syndrome, that has infected and killed an estimated 5 to 7 million individuals so far and is still rampaging, from North Carolina to Tennessee up to Quebec, through 16 US states and four Canadian provinces.
"Very much like bee's Colony Collapse Disorder, WNS has caught the attention of a wider public primarily because, just like bees, bats are also vital for the agricultural industry and so their decimation and possible extinction would and already does have a great economic impact: in the tropics, they are important pollinators; in North America, they are essential for pest control, consuming many thousands of metric tons of insects each year. According to an article published in Science (sciencemag.org March 13, 2011), the estimated average value of bats to the North American economy is 22.9 billion dollars a year. A large-scale loss of bat populations (Adding to the problem of WNS, many thousand bats a year belonging to species that are not cave- but migrating tree-dwellers die from wind turbines) would lead to a further intensification in the use of pesticides: maybe an additional financial burden to agriculturalists, but the real costs caused by the so-called 'downstream effects' of increased pesticide use can not even be calculated and damage, especially long-term ecological impact, might be immense."

Bats and bees dying.
by Angelika Windhofer

"Even though it is usually easy to get a bottle of honey, it doesn't always mean that it is good for you. Many larger stores pasteurize their honey, destroying much of their nutritional value and filling it with artificial enhancers to make up the lack of flavor, she said. The stores microfilter out the pollen, removing much of the natural taste while trying to make it look pretty on the shelf.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture's Grading Standards of Extracted Honey, filtered honey is honey that has had most or all of its fine particles, pollen grains, air bubbles or other materials normally found in suspension removed.

"People think, 'Oh, honey is honey' until they try natural, raw honey. Then they say, 'Oh my goodness, there is a difference,'" Marion said.

According to the USDA affiliated National Honey Board website, there are more than 300 different types of honey, and each has its own taste and coloring. While pollen is naturally kept inside the honey, many consumers prefer clear, liquid honey that stays in a liquid form for long periods of time. This kind of filtered honey is what is usually sold in stores.

"'Most [local] farms don't pasteurize their honey, which keeps the vitamins and other benefits in the honey,' certified clinical nutritionist and registered dietitian Rukhsana Shanbhag said. 'At the same time, you are supporting local farms.'"

Geneva beekeeping couple runs sweet business
By Anna-Michelle Lavandier



You can find real honey here.

Like the Bee and the Flower

Let the wise man live
in the flower of his village,
like the bee, gently taking flowers’ honey,
but not harming the blossom
and it’s colour and scent:

The Buddha