Tag: Bee Health

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About Honey and Beehive Products QUIZ

Bee on Flower

About Honey

Honey is a nutritious, healthy and natural food produced by the bees. Its benefits go beyond its use as a sweetener as it contains several minerals, enzymes, vitamins and proteins that confer unique nutritious and organoleptic properties. Honey can be monofloral if one specific plant nectar and pollen content prevails in pre-defined percentages or polyfloral if it contains an unspecified mix of different nectars and pollens. Due to environmental, geographical and climatic conditions honey may vary in pollen content and relative humidity. Honey is produced in all five continents and its consumption varies from country to country also due to cultural reasons and eating habits.

Beehive Products

Honey bees may provide livelihood or a source of income for many beekeepers all over the world. This could happen through the services provided by the bees (mainly pollination service, apitherapy and apitourism), or directly through the bee products. The last include: alive bees to guarantee always new queen bees or bee packs, honey, pollen, wax, propolis, royal jelly and venom. Bee products may be used as food for humans, feed for animals, cosmetics, medicines used in conventional medicine (mainly vaccination), or in apitherapy, or other like manifold products, carpentry, attractant, sweeteners, etc.

We all know the bee basics. They’re important pollinators. They make honey. They make buzz. They like to join you at picnics.

But did you know that they also provide us with medicines and even help keep our planet beautiful and healthy?

Take our bee QUIZ and learn more about these tiny food heroes! >> CLICK HERE

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Honey bee life span are 50% shorter today than they were 50 years ago

A new study by University of Maryland entomologists shows that the honey bee life span for individual honey bees kept in a controlled, laboratory environment is 50% shorter than it was in the 1970s. When scientists modeled the effect of today’s shorter lifespans, the results corresponded with the increased colony loss and reduced honey production trends seen by U.S. beekeepers in recent decades.

Colony turnover is an accepted factor in the beekeeping business, as naturally age and die off. But over the past decade, U.S. beekeepers have reported high loss rates, which has meant having to replace more colonies to keep operations viable. In an effort to understand why, researchers have focused on environmental stressors, diseases, parasites, pesticide exposure and nutrition.

This is the first study to show an overall decline in bee potentially independent of environmental stressors, hinting that genetics may be influencing the broader trends seen in the beekeeping industry. The study was published November 14, 2022, in the journal Scientific Reports.

“We’re isolating bees from the life just before they emerge as adults, so whatever is reducing their lifespan is happening before that point,” said Anthony Nearman, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Entomology and lead author of the study. “This introduces the idea of a genetic component. If this hypothesis is right, it also points to a possible solution. If we can isolate some , then maybe we can breed for longer-lived honey bees.” Continue reading Honey bee life span are 50% shorter today than they were 50 years ago

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Murder Hornets preying on honeybees

Murder Hornets

This wasp earned its nickname from preying on honeybees. It can swoop down and grab them out of the air. The hornet then carries this treat home to nourish young hornets. A raiding party of several dozen Asian giant hornets can kill a whole hive. The attackers can kill thousands of bees in just a few hours. In such mass attacks, hornets bite the heads off adult bees. Attackers leave the adult bodies in heaps. They carry off young bees as protein for young hornets.

V. mandarinia ranks as the world’s largest hornet. Queens can grow some 5 centimeters (2 inches) long, about the length of an average-sized woman’s thumb. Wingspans can exceed 7 centimeters (2.8 inches), not quite the full width of a woman’s palm. Workers are smaller.

Such true hornets are big, predatory, colony-forming wasps. They belong to the genus Vespa. None are native to North or South America. Most are native to Asia. They need meat to feed their young. That’s in contrast to honeybees, which collect plant pollen as protein. Another difference: A honeybee dies after its single-use stinger rips out of its body. Hornets can sting over and over. Continue reading Murder Hornets preying on honeybees

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Bees aren’t getting enough sleep, thanks to some common pesticides

(CNN)We are all better after a decent night’s sleep — and insects are no different.

But two new studies have found a commonly used pesticide is disrupting the sleep of bees and flies — with big consequences for the important insects.
In one study, researchers looked at the effect of pesticides on bumblebee behavior by giving the creatures nectar sugar laced with neonicotinoids — one of the most commonly used pesticides — and then tracking their movements in a foraging arena.
The impact of the pesticide — similar to the amount a bee would encounter in the wild — was stark.

Continue reading Bees aren’t getting enough sleep, thanks to some common pesticides

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Bee Superfoods Promote Health

Bee Superfoods

The Egyptians wrote about it back in 5500 B.C., the Indians used it for their religious ceremonies in 1000 B.C. and even the Babylonians have been noted to use it in their medicinal practices. The western world actually discovered the benefits of bee superfoods by accident during an investigation of native Russian Beekeepers who regularly lived past 100 years of age who ate raw honey, rich in bee pollen, every day. Here are three superfoods:

Continue reading Bee Superfoods Promote Health

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Climate change is killing bumblebees

Climate change is killing bumblebees: Study A new study has drawn a direct link between climate change and the global decline in bumblebee populations.

Chemicals are routinely applied around residential landscapes to kill insect pests and troublesome weeds, but many are indiscriminate and devastate pollinators in the process.

Over the past 30-plus years, pollinator populations have crashed worldwide due to a variety of reasons, including pesticide and herbicide exposure, invasive pests and diseases, loss of habitat, loss of species and genetic diversity, and a changing climate, scientists say. Continue reading Climate change is killing bumblebees

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Bumblebees Face Climate Crisis Extinction

bumblebees

Rampant pesticide use and habitat loss has already crippled bumblebee populations. New research now shows that warming temperatures around the world will further push bumblebees to the brink of extinction, as The New York Times reported.

The loss of bumblebees spells trouble for plant biodiversity since they are some of the most important pollinators in the world. Bumblebees pollinate and fertilize a wide array of plants and crops, including tomatoes, blueberries and squash. However, if you are in North America, you are nearly 50 percent less likely to see a bumblebee in any given area than you were prior to 1974, according to the new research, as National Geographic reported.

The new research, published in the journal Science, employed a massive dataset and a complex modeling system to look at bee populations and to find the reason for their decline. The researchers found that bee populations have experienced the largest decline in places that have warmed at a faster rate than the rest of the planet.

Continue reading Bumblebees Face Climate Crisis Extinction

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Save bumble bees, plant these flowers

(CNN)Researchers have figured out which plant species bumble bees prefer to include in their diets, providing advice to those wishing to help with bee conservation efforts.

During the summer months of 2015 to 2016, authors captured bumble bees on more than 100 plant species across more than 400 plots in the Plumas National Forest in California — a mountainous, meadowy area with wildlife habitats near running water, where bumble bees are abundant.
mountain pennyroyal
The findings, published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Entomology, revealed that the most popular plant species among the bees were Oregon checker-mallow and mountain pennyroyal flowers.

Continue reading Save bumble bees, plant these flowers