Bees

Waggle wars: Honeybees’ dance moves boost food hunts for the hive - Study

tomwt — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 16:03:49 +0000

Waggle wars: Honeybees’ dance moves boost food hunts for the hive - Study tomwt Wed, 02/26/2025 - 08:03 More CNAS in the Media Maria Mocerino | Interesting Engineering February 25, 2025

INTERESTING ENGINEERING - In light of the diminishing number of honeybees, a computer science team from UC Riverside has developed the technology to improve beehive health in commercial settings.

“Over the last year, the U.S. lost over 55% of its honeybee colonies,” Boris Baer, UCR professor of entomology, told UC Riverside News.

“We are experiencing a major collapse of bee populations, and that is extremely worrying because about one-third of what we eat depends on bees.”

Along with the sensor from UC Riverside that se to support beekeeping, bolstering a form of communication that aids the bees in their survival might increase their chances.

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Bees

Boris Baer

Center for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER)

The underappreciated benefits of wild bees

tomwt — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 21:15:11 +0000

The underappreciated benefits of wild bees tomwt Tue, 08/22/2023 - 14:15 More CNAS in the Media Ula Chrobak | Knowable Magazine August 21, 2023

KNOWABLE MAGAZINE - Domestic honeybees are pretty much synonymous with pollination in the public’s mind, particularly when it comes to crops, and the plight of wild bees has largely been overshadowed by concern about threats to the domestic variety. Many people don’t know the difference between wild and domestic bees, further obscuring both the troubles faced by many wild species and their value, says Hollis Woodard, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside.

Researchers also stress the need to monitor native bees. Scientists lack data on species abundance, especially for solitary bees, which can be hard to find because they nest in places like leaf piles and can have small ranges. Woodard leads the National Native Bee Monitoring Network with the hope of fixing that by gathering and standardizing data on native bees across the US.

The data could show which bees are doing well. “Truly, I think there are going to be some bees that are doing just fine,” Woodard says. “And it would be really inspiring and hopeful for people to see that.”

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Honey bees are not in peril. These bees are.

tomwt — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 16:59:11 +0000

Honey bees are not in peril. These bees are. tomwt Thu, 01/26/2023 - 08:59 More CNAS in the Media Benji Jones | Vox January 19, 2023

VOX - What do you know about bees? That they produce honey? That they live in a hive? That they swarm?

Well, I have news: These characteristics don’t actually describe most bees in the US. Of the roughly 4,000 native species, not a single one produces true honey. Not one! Most of them live alone. Most of them have no queen.

The bees that many people are familiar with are honey bees, Apis mellifera, a nonnative species that Americans brought over from Europe centuries ago. Beekeepers manage them like any other farm animal, to produce honey and pollinate crops.

But all of that attention on honey bees has, some ecologists argue, overshadowed their native counterparts: the wild bees. They’re an incredible bunch, found in all sorts of colors and sizes, and they’re important pollinators, too — better, by some measures, than honey bees. On the whole, native bees are also at a much greater risk of extinction, in part, because of the proliferation of European honey bees.

“People are devoting a lot of their love and attention and funding to honey bees,” said Hollis Woodard, a bee researcher at the University of California Riverside. “That can be detrimental to wild bees. If we really want to say, ‘Save the bees,’ I think we need to get some facts straight about who’s who and what’s what.”

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The is a New Vaccine for Bees, Which Matters for us Too

tomwt — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 22:48:56 +0000

The is a New Vaccine for Bees, Which Matters for us Too tomwt Thu, 01/12/2023 - 14:48 More CNAS in the Media KPCC January 09, 2023

KPPC - The United States Department of Agriculture has approved a vaccine for honeybees, which play an integral role in our food system. The vaccines could help prevent American foulbrood disease, which is a bacterial disease that can spread quickly between hives. In the past, the disease has been handled by burning the infected hives or using antibiotics. But the new vaccine is groundbreaking and will be given to the queen bees in a jelly form, that will be ingested and then be passed down to her offspring. Bees pollinate one-third of our food crops in the United States. Their demise may be ours too.

Joining us this morning on AirTalk to discuss the bee vaccine is Margarita Lopez-Uribe, associate professor of entomology at Penn State and Hollis Woodard, associate professor of entomology and wild bee biologist UC Riverside.

LISTEN TO THE KPCC INTERVIEW

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Bees

Why bees have one of the most important jobs in America

Site Factory admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 16:45:00 +0000

Why bees have one of the most important jobs in America Site Factory admin Fri, 03/13/2020 - 09:45 More CNAS in the Media "In Focus" staff | In Focus March 10, 2020

IN FOCUS - The bee population is declining and experts say that’s a serious issue because they provide us with a very important service … pollination.

Professor Boris Baer of UC Riverside talks about how 1/3 of the food grown in the U.S. is pollinated by bees, a process necessary for plants to reproduce.

Baer says traditionally, beekeepers loose approximately 16-20 percent of their hives every winter, but recently that number has risen to 40 percent.

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Department of Entomology

Boris Baer

Bees