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+27 +2
The EPA finally admitted that the world’s most popular pesticide kills bees—20 years too late
The agency says it may place new restrictions on the chemical by year’s end. By Tom Philpott.
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+24 +7
The Zombie Bees Are Here
Across the country, honeybees infected with a parasitic fly are behaving strangely.
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+6 +1
Optibee, and Other Buzzworthy Apps For Monitoring Your Beehive
After a century of just droning along, beekeeping is going high-tech. By Cara Giaimo.
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+21 +4
12 New Bee-Supporting Plants to Plant this Year
There are new varieties of plants coming out every year that will appeal to bees. Here are 12 of the newest.
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+30 +1
Study: How male bees battle STDs
Scientists have identified an important immune response in the semen of male honey bees, a discovery that may help researchers better protect colonies against disease. Honey bees face a barrage of threats from all angles: disease, pesticides, pollution, shrinking habitats. Recently, researchers at the University of Western Australia set out to explore the battle between bees and the fungal parasite Nosema apis. The fungal disease causes dysentery and can trigger colony collapse disorder.
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+1 +1
Controversial insecticides linked to ‘large-scale population extinctions’ of wild bees
A major 18-year study has found evidence linking controversial "neonicotinoid" pesticides with “large-scale population extinctions” of wild bees for the first time. The insecticides have been shown to have “sub-lethal” effects on bees, which are vital pollinators for many crops, in laboratory-style conditions and small-scale studies. But their actual effect in the real world was not well understood – until now.
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+20 +1
'Zombie' Honeybees make First Appearance in Canada
Honeybees infected with deadly parasitic maggots that make them behave like zombies have been found in Canada for the first time.
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+7 +1
Invisible Fences: Farmers Plant Beehive Guard Posts to Repel Elephants - 99% Invisible
Larger elephants require hundreds of pounds of food per day, making farms tempting targets for easy meals. The task of fending these animals off can be both monumental and dangerous for African farmers. At a scale that would solve the problem, traditional fencing is simply cost-prohibitive. A strange array of alternate design solutions have been developed over time, culminating in what may be the sweetest solution yet: the use of tiny honey bees to ward off the world’s largest land mammals.
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+2 +1
‘Like it’s been nuked’: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays for Zika mosquitoes
On Sunday morning, the South Carolina honey bees began to die in massive numbers. Death came suddenly to Dorchester County, S.C. Stressed insects tried to flee their nests, only to surrender in little clumps at hive entrances. The dead worker bees littering the farms suggested that colony collapse disorder was not the culprit — in that odd phenomenon, workers vanish as though raptured, leaving a living queen and young bees behind.
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+29 +1
US beekeepers fear for livelihoods as anti-Zika toxin kills 2.5m bees
‘It kills everything’: conservationist warns over threat to other animals but regulators say ‘clear and public health crisis’ allows use of Naled chemical. Huddled around their hives, beekeepers around the south-eastern US fear a new threat to their livelihood: a fine mist beaded with neurotoxin, sprayed from the sky by officials at war with mosquitos that carry the Zika virus.
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+25 +1
Bumblebee Set to Become Officially Endangered
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has proposed listing a species of bumblebee as an endangered species, the first bee species to be granted such federal protection in the continental United States. The rusty patched bumblebee - the workers of which can be identified by a small rust-colored mark on the middle of their second abdominal segment - was historically widespread along the east coast of North America, from Quebec down to Georgia, and across much of the midwest as far west as the Dakotas.
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+20 +1
Bayer and Syngenta knew their products were devastating the bees.
The SumOfUs community has known for a long time that bee-killing pesticides are decimating pollinator populations. And it turns out that agro-chemical giants Syngenta and Bayer knew it too -- but kept it secret from the public. That’s right. Thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests, previously unpublished field trials commissioned by the two neonic manufacturers have been released showing that two neonic pesticides seriously harm bee colonies in high concentrations.
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+21 +1
30,000 bees rescued from earthquake-ravaged Kaikoura
Military personnel assisting in the wake of last week's monster earthquake have completed their buzziest mission yet, rescuing a Kaikoura man's 30,000 bees. The New Zealand Defence Force have been helping to evacuate people and protect their possessions in the aftermath of last week's magnitude 7.8 quake. About 900 Kaikoura residents have been rescued, and now 30,000 insects can be added to that list.
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+8 +1
Report: Sequim Bee Farm hives vandalized, police looking for suspects
Owners of the Sequim Bee Farm are looking for answers after they say vandals poisoned 20 of their hives, killing upward of 300,000 honey bees, The Peninsula Daily News reported Wednesday. “We knew a bear wouldn’t just stop pushing over with all the honey in the hive,” Sequim Bee Farm co-owner Buddy Depew told the newspaper. “I got to looking, and the rest of the hives, the bees, were all gone.”
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+21 +1
Bumblebees: Pesticide 'Reduces Queen Egg Development'
Using the insecticide thiamethoxam in spring could reduce bee numbers later in the year, a study finds.
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+51 +1
Ten years after the crisis, what is happening to the world's bees?
It's a decade since US beekeepers first noticed that their bees were mysteriously dying. Now we know much more about Colony Collapse Disorder, raising hopes that we can turn bees' fortunes around.
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+24 +1
'Amazing change' for Montreal homeless men taking part in urban beekeeping program
Accueil Bonneau, a local group that offers a drop-in day centre and variety of services for homeless men, partnered with Montreal urban beekeeping company Alvéole four years ago.
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+30 +1
This common herb will keep bee pollinators buzzing in your garden
There is a common assumption that those plants which delight human eyes will also be the most attractive for bees. Two scientists at the University of Sussex can offer a more empirical take.
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+11 +1
Study finds parallels between unresponsive honey bees, autism in humans
Honey bees that consistently fail to respond to obvious social cues share something fundamental with autistic humans, researchers report in a new study. Genes most closely associated with autism spectrum disorders in humans are regulated differently in unresponsive honey bees than in their more responsive nest mates, the study found.
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+35 +1
Bees Are Bouncing Back From Colony Collapse Disorder
The number of U.S. honeybees, a critical component to agricultural production, rose in 2017 from a year earlier, and deaths of the insects attributed to a mysterious malady that’s affected hives in North America and Europe declined, according a U.S. Department of Agriculture honeybee health survey released Tuesday.
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