Latest news with #honeybee
Daily Mail
09-07-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
JOHN MACLEOD: Hairy and dishevelled, bopping along as if sozzled...but hum of the bumblebee is truly the voice of our gardens
'The hum of bees is the voice of the garden,' mused the late Elizabeth Lawrence, internationally known garden writer – and she spoke not of the industrious, humourless honey-bee, merely a unit in in a hive of fantastically ordered complexity and its one loyalty to the Reich. She meant the bumblebee, meandering gently about, never in a rush, loath to sting. Hairy and dishevelled, it bounces off windows and bops, as if a little sozzled, amidst delphiniums and buddleia and honeysuckle and the bonny purple heather. The Victorians rather sweetly called them 'humblebees.' In Old English, they were 'dumbledores' – yes, that's where she got it – and the Romans thought them creatures of the Muses. To our Celtic forebears, they were messages from the heavens. And, even today, some superstitions endure. A bumblebee flying into your house, they do say, heralds some important, forthcoming visitor. They portend luck and sweetness; a bumblebee landing on your hand declares that you are about to come into money. And, chilled and ponderous as a bumblebee might seem – less the maniacal jiving of the honeybee advising the hive of abundant good things at such-and-such a location than embarrassing Dad-dancing at a wedding – it is supremely efficient. Its four wings beat two hundred times a second; it thunders like an exquisitely tuned guitar-string – and it is the only living thing capable of pollinating a tomato plant. Accordingly, great commercial growers important thousands of boxes of bumblebees each year, sourced largely from France and Belgium and where they are commercially farmed, for their glasshouses. Bumblebees do not make honey: they do not need to, for a colony lasts but one long summer. Only the fattest hibernating queens, holed up in some crevice, survive winter – and her first mission, understandably, is to feed. Duly regaled with nectar from the first spring flowers, and protein-rich pollen from catkins and fluffy pussywillow, she then seeks out some des res – most species like to repurpose a fieldmouse's burrow – moulds some waxy cups, stores therein garnered nectar and pollen-balls, and lays her first eggs. Larvae duly pupbate and, just like that, she now commands a troop of workers – all girls; and the only thing that might go amiss is the invasion of a queen of some cuckoo bumblebee species, who usually kills (or, in rare mercy, enslaves) the original queen. What no queen will tolerate is a worker laying her own eggs. Her Majesty, naturally hurt as well as cross, promptly eats them. It is in only late summer, and doubtless with a world-weary sigh, that boys are begotten: lazy, laddish and stingless and only the luckiest getting to mate. 'He does nothing except stay out all night,' darkly confides Gill Perkins of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, 'get drunk on nectar and look for sex.' It might as well be a hall of residence. There are only seven relatively common species of bumblebee you are likely to see in Britain, and the biggest, the Great Yellow Bumblebee – 'like big, fat flying ping-pong balls,' enthuses Mrs Perkins – is now confined to the far north. Caithness, Sutherland, Orkney – and the Western Isles where, too, we can boast a unique bumblebee sub-species. A small heath bumblebee, bombus jonellus var. hebridensis. All told, though, there are twenty-four species in this country, as the late and peerless Bernard Levin enthused in a column published, rather sweetly, on 9 July 1975 – a precise half-century ago. He had just read Dr D V Alford's definitive work on the subject, published by Davis-Poynter for the eyewatering price, at that time, of £25, and imaginatively entitled Bumblebees. 'They go by names of such variegated magnificence,' panted Levin, 'such exquisitely poetic beauty, that I must introduce you to a selection. 'There is bombus agrorum, for instance, who is obviously a rustic bumblebee, forever sucking straws and leaning over gates; there is bombus americanorum, who, no doubt, chews gum; bombus distinguendus, who comes of a very old family of bumblebees, and bombus elegans, who only goes to the best tailors. 'Bombus frigidus, a very reserved bumblebee; bombus hortorum hortorum, who stammers; bombus inexpectatus, who is apt to pop out from behind lampposts and cry 'Boo!'; bombus senilis, poor old thing… 'And bombus virginalis, or so she says.' But all is not well for bumblebees. 2024 was the worst year for their numbers in Britain since records began. A big factor, of course, was its extraordinarily bad spring, with – according to the Meteorological Office – many areas receiving more than double, and in some places triple, the usual amount of rainfall for March, April and May. Untold, emerging queens were chilled, starved and clobbered just at the frailest point of bumblebee life – when a season's new colonies are being established by assorted single mums. Though conditions improved, even July and August saw their second-worst counts since Bumblebee Conservation Trust monitoring began. 'We've got smaller, weaker populations of a lot of these bumblebees,' says Dr Richard Comont, 'because of long-term habitat changes. We know that bumblebees were struggling anyway and smaller, weaker populations are less able to respond to changes: they don't have that resilience. 'Although there's loads of bumblebees in midsummer, they all come from very small numbers that emerge from hibernation in the spring.' Protracted heatwaves – remember the scorcher that was 2022, so protracted that in many districts it triggered a 'false autumn'? – also jeopardise bumblebee colonies. Queens and workers routinely 'thermoregulate,' fanning eggs and larvae when things hot up, but if the thermometer hits 35 degrees or more then all is lost. For almost the greatest paradox of bumblebees is that they are creatures of temperate climes, not tropical - at their most abundant in territory like the Alps and Britain and the cool summers of the Outer Hebrides. There are even some that live in the Arctic, like bombus polaris. ('Said to have nuclear mandibles,' purred Bernard Levin.) But still greater threats are neonicotinoid pesticides – which dramatically reduce a queen's egg-laying success – and even a 26% fall is enough, in many instances, for local extinction. Climate change and heavy metal pollution, as we reported yesterday, are even affecting how bumblebees hum, according to experts – and humming is vital in teasing such flowers as the tomato to open up for a visit. The simple destruction of habitat, though, long predates such toxins. Since 1950 we have lost, incredibly, 97% of Britain's wildflower meadows – largely due to modern intensified farming – and with dire ecological consequence. One reason that bumblebees still prosper in the Western Isles is because of the lowkey crofting agriculture – Hebrideans do not scamper around spraying things – and because of the fabled machair, the rich coastal shell-sand grazings which, at this season, are a riot of sweet, scented, blossom. I fully understand why neighbours mow their lawns, but wince when they go above and beyond and strim the roadside verges too. And when, several months ago, the northern verge the length of my street was churned up by BT – laying the kit for high-speed broadband – I quietly ordered in some wildflower seed and did much discreet evening sowing. Poppy, cornflower, yellow rattle, ox-eye daisy and so on. A summer without bumblebees is, for me, unthinkable. And, as French mathematician André Sainte-Laguë once joyously reflected, 'According to aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly. Its bodyweight is not the right proportion to its wingspan. 'Ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway.'
The Guardian
08-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Could become a death spiral': scientists discover what's driving record die-offs of US honeybees
Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers. Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. 'Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,' says Adee. 'Then a week later, there'd be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.' Adee went on to lose 75% of his bees. 'It's almost depressingly sad,' he says. 'If we have a similar situation this year – I sure hope we don't – then we're in a death spiral.' It developed into the largest US honeybee die-off on record, with beekeepers losing on average 60% of their colonies, at a cost of $600m (£440m). Scientists have been scrambling to discover what happened; now the culprits are emerging. A research paper published by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), though not yet peer-reviewed, has found nearly all colonies had contracted a bee virus spread by parasitic mites that appear to have developed resistance to the main chemicals used to control them. Varroa mites – equivalent in size to a dinner plate on a human body – crawl and jump between worker bees. If there are no infections present, they do not typically damage the bee. But if diseases are present, they quickly spread them. While varroa typically infects honeybees, not wild bees, the diseases that they spread can kill other pollinators – research has shown that the viral outbreaks among honeybees often spill over to wild colonies, with potential knock-on effects on biodiversity. All beekeepers in the USDA screening used amitraz, a pesticide widely used in the sector to get rid of mites. But the research showed all mites tested were resistant to it: after years of heavy use, amitraz no longer appears to be effective. This discovery underscores 'the urgent need for new control strategies for this parasite', researchers say. Mite numbers have increased to high levels in recent surveys, according to the researchers, who collected hundreds of samples from dead and living hives from 113 colonies. 'When mites become uncontrolled, virulent viruses are more likely to take over,' researchers say. Since the 1980s, varroa mites globally have developed resistance to at least four leading miticides – pesticides specifically formulated to control mites that are challenging to develop – causing significant problems for beekeepers. Norman Carreck, a senior technician at the University of Sussex, who was not involved in the research, says: 'Sadly, it was inevitable that major honeybee colony losses would again occur in the US at some point. 'It was only a matter of time before widespread resistance to amitraz, the only remaining effective synthetic chemical, would develop,' he says. But the discovery of amitraz-resistant mites in hives does not mean they alone were responsible for all of last year's record die-offs. A combination of factors is likely to be causing successive colony deaths among US bees, including the changing climate, exposure to pesticides, and less food in the form of pollen and nectar as monocrop farming proliferates. Many US beekeepers now expect to lose 30% of their colony or more every year. These wider combined factors are also devastating for wild pollinators and native bee species – and honeybees, which are closely monitored by their keepers, may be acting as a canary in the coalmine for pressures affecting insects more generally. Paul Hetherington, of the charity Buglife, says honeybees are in effect 'a farmed animal as opposed to wild bees, but they will be suffering from the same stresses as their wild cousins, in particular loss of good habitat, climate stress, chemical stress, light. Adee says: 'We had mites for 20 years, and we never had over 3% losses.' He believes there is a 'combination of things' that makes the bees more stressed and the mites more deadly. He cites the use of neonicotinoid insecticides in the US, which harm bees' nervous system, paralysing and ultimately killing them. Some researchers have warned of neonicotinoids causing another 'silent spring', referring to Rachel Carson's 1962 book on the effects of the insecticide DDT on bird populations. Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex, says the study provided no evidence that the viral load was higher in weaker colonies. 'Almost all bee colonies have these viruses, but they only do significant harm when the colony is stressed.' He says high levels of viral infection may be a symptom of ill health, not the cause. Due to government staffing cuts, the USDA team were unable to analyse pesticides in the hives and asked bee experts at Cornell University to carry out the research, with the results still to be published. Experts are concerned that successive loss of honeybee colonies could affect food security as the insects pollinate more than 100 commercial crops across North America. Reports of new losses this year came through before the California almond blossom season, which is the largest pollination event in the world, requiring the services of 70% of US honeybees. Danielle Downey, director of the nonprofit beekeeping research organisation Project Apis m., which conducted the die-off survey, says: 'If you like to eat, you need healthy bees to pollinate crops. Beekeepers try to rebuild each year but they are pushed to the brink as losses and input costs keep increasing. 'If beekeepers fail, there is no backup plan for the pollination services they provide in US food production,' she says. Meanwhile, beekeepers are being pushed close to ruin. When Adee was growing up, he would get upset about losses of more than 5%. Now a loss of 30% each year is standard. 'It's absolutely insane that that's an acceptable loss in a livestock industry,' he says. Like many beekeepers, Adee was unable to restock this year because the losses were so high. 'I'm just watching every nickel and dime right now, because I don't want to get rid of men that have helped me manage these bees for years.' Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage
The Guardian
08-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Could become a death spiral': scientists discover what's driving record die-offs of US honeybees
Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers. Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. 'Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,' says Adee. 'Then a week later, there'd be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.' Adee went on to lose 75% of his bees. 'It's almost depressingly sad,' he says. 'If we have a similar situation this year – I sure hope we don't – then we're in a death spiral.' It developed into the largest US honeybee die-off on record, with beekeepers losing on average 60% of their colonies, at a cost of $600m (£440m). Scientists have been scrambling to discover what happened; now the culprits are emerging. A research paper published by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), though not yet peer-reviewed, has found nearly all colonies had contracted a bee virus spread by parasitic mites that appear to have developed resistance to the main chemicals used to control them. Varroa mites – equivalent in size to a dinner plate on a human body – crawl and jump between worker bees. If there are no infections present, they do not typically damage the bee. But if diseases are present, they quickly spread them. While varroa typically infects honeybees, not wild bees, the diseases that they spread can kill other pollinators – research has shown that the viral outbreaks among honeybees often spill over to wild colonies, with potential knock-on effects on biodiversity. All beekeepers in the USDA screening used amitraz, a pesticide widely used in the sector to get rid of mites. But the research showed all mites tested were resistant to it: after years of heavy use, amitraz no longer appears to be effective. This discovery underscores 'the urgent need for new control strategies for this parasite', researchers say. Mite numbers have increased to high levels in recent surveys, according to the researchers, who collected hundreds of samples from dead and living hives from 113 colonies. 'When mites become uncontrolled, virulent viruses are more likely to take over,' researchers say. Since the 1980s, varroa mites globally have developed resistance to at least four leading miticides – pesticides specifically formulated to control mites that are challenging to develop – causing significant problems for beekeepers. Norman Carreck, a senior technician at the University of Sussex, who was not involved in the research, says: 'Sadly, it was inevitable that major honeybee colony losses would again occur in the US at some point. 'It was only a matter of time before widespread resistance to amitraz, the only remaining effective synthetic chemical, would develop,' he says. But the discovery of amitraz-resistant mites in hives does not mean they alone were responsible for all of last year's record die-offs. A combination of factors is likely to be causing successive colony deaths among US bees, including the changing climate, exposure to pesticides, and less food in the form of pollen and nectar as monocrop farming proliferates. Many US beekeepers now expect to lose 30% of their colony or more every year. These wider combined factors are also devastating for wild pollinators and native bee species – and honeybees, which are closely monitored by their keepers, may be acting as a canary in the coalmine for pressures affecting insects more generally. Paul Hetherington, of the charity Buglife, says honeybees are in effect 'a farmed animal as opposed to wild bees, but they will be suffering from the same stresses as their wild cousins, in particular loss of good habitat, climate stress, chemical stress, light. Adee says: 'We had mites for 20 years, and we never had over 3% losses.' He believes there is a 'combination of things' that makes the bees more stressed and the mites more deadly. He cites the use of neonicotinoid insecticides in the US, which harm bees' nervous system, paralysing and ultimately killing them. Some researchers have warned of neonicotinoids causing another 'silent spring', referring to Rachel Carson's 1962 book on the effects of the insecticide DDT on bird populations. Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex, says the study provided no evidence that the viral load was higher in weaker colonies. 'Almost all bee colonies have these viruses, but they only do significant harm when the colony is stressed.' He says high levels of viral infection may be a symptom of ill health, not the cause. Due to government staffing cuts, the USDA team were unable to analyse pesticides in the hives and asked bee experts at Cornell University to carry out the research, with the results still to be published. Experts are concerned that successive loss of honeybee colonies could affect food security as the insects pollinate more than 100 commercial crops across North America. Reports of new losses this year came through before the California almond blossom season, which is the largest pollination event in the world, requiring the services of 70% of US honeybees. Danielle Downey, director of the nonprofit beekeeping research organisation Project Apis m., which conducted the die-off survey, says: 'If you like to eat, you need healthy bees to pollinate crops. Beekeepers try to rebuild each year but they are pushed to the brink as losses and input costs keep increasing. 'If beekeepers fail, there is no backup plan for the pollination services they provide in US food production,' she says. Meanwhile, beekeepers are being pushed close to ruin. When Adee was growing up, he would get upset about losses of more than 5%. Now a loss of 30% each year is standard. 'It's absolutely insane that that's an acceptable loss in a livestock industry,' he says. Like many beekeepers, Adee was unable to restock this year because the losses were so high. 'I'm just watching every nickel and dime right now, because I don't want to get rid of men that have helped me manage these bees for years.' Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage
CTV News
01-07-2025
- Science
- CTV News
Honeybee swarming season begins in Nova Scotia
As honeybee swarming season begins in Nova Scotia, a local beekeeper gives tips on what to do if you see this phenomenon in the wild. Swarming usually occurs in the spring and is a honeybee colony's way of reproducing and expanding their colony. While a swarm can often contain tens of thousands of bees, Graham McGuire, a hobby beekeeper in Halifax, says they're mostly docile if left alone. 'Honeybee swarms are usually anywhere from a maybe a cantaloupe size to over a basketball size, and it's a solid mass of bees hanging all together and there would obviously be some in flight around it. So they do look a little different from a wasp or a hornet, and that sort of swarming, clumping behavior is very distinctive to honeybees.' Honeybees can be identified through several features like their size - being smaller than wasps, hornets, and bumblebees - as well as having slightly more muted colours. Honeybees also lack any hair on their bodies. Anyone who comes across a swarm is recommended by McGuire to contact the Nova Scotia Beekeepers Association as they maintain a list of swarms and can dispatch beekeepers to move them to a safe space if needed. 'If you don't know what you're doing with them obviously it's best to call a professional, and the Nova Scotia Beekeeper's association tries to work with hobby beekeepers all around the province to make sure the bees instead of being exterminated end up in a safe place.' With files from CTV's Jim Kvammen. For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Bee colony biggest I've dealt with, says keeper
A honey bee colony discovered in a wall cavity of an industrial building "is the biggest I've ever dealt with", a beekeeper has said. The nest, believed to contain 80,000 insects, was found about six weeks ago at Crisp Malt, Great Ryburgh, near Fakenham, Norfolk, by scaffolders. Steve Barrett, of Barrett's Bees, said: "Yes, there's been a few stings, nothing major, but they've been very, very friendly, it's been a successful day." He is also the beekeeper of brewing company Adnams of Southwold, Suffolk, and he initially plans to relocate the bees to his aviaries there. "This is the biggest I've every dealt with, it's a really good size and very healthy too, said Mr Barrett. The extent of colony came to light when the company decided to renovate a building dating back to 1903, said Dan Clarke, site manager at Crisp Malt. "As we put up some scaffolding, the scaffolders recognised there were some bees flying in and out of the building, so we stopped to have a little look, called in contractors and yes it's a bee hive," he said. "There's always bees and other stuff flying around, no-one took much notice, but they've been around for 10 to 12 years and the hive was a lot bigger than expected." Chris Fulford, from builders PJ Spillings, was surprised that the bees were "a lot less angry than I thought they'd be". The site supervisor admitted he was a bit nervous when he began cutting into the wall to access the colony. "It's unnerving when they're all right in front of your face and you're in the hole, putting your hands in there, but it's been alright, I've got a nice suit and only got stung once so far," he said. Mr Barrett, who has 18 miles of aviaries across various counties, expects the bees to settle into their new home quickly. "They'll do orientation flights, I'll face them southerly and there's quite a bit of forage where they're going," he said. Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X. Beekeeper helping kids get a buzz from nature Flowers on ex-industrial sites 'harming bees' Beekeeper creates 18-mile bee corridor along coast
