bees news, articles and features | ��è��Ƶ

��è��Ƶ recommends a devastating account of farming honeybees

Thomas Lewton — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Jennie Durant's Bitter Honey is a great exposé of the true cost of industrially farming US honeybees, finds Thomas Lewton. But the book's grim figures of bee death alone may not prompt deep change – how about seeing them as fellow creatures?

The long-overlooked insects that could save our crops

Marta Zaraska — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 16:00:00 +0000

Hoverflies, often mistaken for bees and wasps, pollinate three quarters of our crops. Now we’re discovering we can train them to be even more efficient

Honeybees are getting confused by electric pollution from power lines

Madeleine Cuff — Thu, 22 May 2025 07:00:09 +0000

Airborne electric fields similar to those from nearby power lines seem to have a dramatic effect on honeybee foraging, raising concerns about widespread impacts on pollinators

Largest ever US honeybee die-off has destroyed 1.6 million colonies

Colin Barras — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 18:00:29 +0000

Beekeepers often experience some seasonal losses, but this past winter, more than half of all US honeybee colonies died off, potentially the largest loss in US history

Plants laced with a variety of fungi are more popular with bees

James Dinneen — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:00:09 +0000

Bees visited flowers on plants inoculated with diverse fungi more than plants without this treatment – but not every combination of fungus had the same effect

Antidote to deadly pesticides boosts bee survival

Corryn Wetzel — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 16:00:18 +0000

A common eastern bumblebee gathering nectar

Nature Picture Library/Alamy

In the first study of its kind, scientists have discovered that feeding bees absorbent bits of hydrogel boosts their chances of surviving exposure to toxic pesticides.

As key pollinators, bees provide essential services to both wild plants and human-grown crops. But the pollen they ingest is often contaminated with chemicals that can have devastating biological effects on the bees, such as spurring colony collapse or causing near-instant death.

Read more

Ants change the way they build nests to stop diseases spreading

Earlier studies found that particles of hydrogel – a soft, non-toxic material that is highly absorbent – mixed into soil can bind to and trap neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides widely banned in Europe, but still used in the US. That led and her colleagues to investigate if small pieces of hydrogel could neutralise pesticides inside the bodies of common eastern bumblebees (Bombus impatiens).

“No one – to my knowledge – had done this,” says Caserto, who did the work while at Cornell University in New York.

The researchers began by mixing microscopic hydrogel particles – small enough to pass through the bee’s digestive tract, but not to travel elsewhere in its body – into sugar water. After the bees slurped the solution, researchers gave them a high dose of pesticides. Bees that received the hydrogel treatment had a 30 per cent higher survival rate compared with those that didn’t.

When the researchers gave bees doses of pesticides that would scramble their nervous systems, but not kill them, hydrogels reduced the insects’ symptoms. Bees that got the gel were better able to feed and walk than those that went without, and they beat their wings at a faster, healthier rate.

Because the bees eventually excrete the hydrogel particles, they would have to be continually re-dosed with the antidote. While this makes the treatment improbable for wild bees, it is still a promising option for human-managed bees, like those used for honey production and crop pollination.

“These particles could be incorporated into pollen patties or sucrose feeds that are already used for managed bee colonies,” says Caserto. “And hopefully, when bees go out in the field and get exposed [to pesticides], they will be less susceptible.”

Journal reference

Nature Sustainability

How clues in honey can help fight our biggest biodiversity challenges

Graham Lawton — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 15:00:00 +0000

There are secrets aplenty in a pot of honey – from information about bees' "micro-bee-ota" to DNA from the environment – that can help us fight food fraud and even monitor shifts in climate

Watch bees defend their nest by slapping ants with their wings

Carolyn Wilke — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 07:00:41 +0000

With a flick of the wing, Japanese honeybees slap away ants that try to infiltrate their hive. Ants often invade honeybee nests, seeking to steal honey, prey on eggs or kill worker bees. In defence, bees have been known to fan their wings to blow ants away. Now, researchers have documented them making contact with their wings and physically batting ants out of the hive, a behaviour that hasn’t been studied before.

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Bees vs wasps: Which insect is really worthy of all the buzz?

Footage from a high-speed camera shows that guard bees, positioned near a nest’s entrance, tilt their bodies towards approaching ants and flutter their wings while pivoting away. A successful hit sends the ant flying. Many beekeepers seem unaware of this strategy, says “I myself did not notice this behavior during my approximately 10 years of beekeeping experience,” she says. Sakamoto, and all at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan, introduced three local species of ants to the entrance of two Japanese honeybee (Apis cerana japonica) colonies and filmed hundreds of showdowns between the insects. In most of these interactions, the bees smacked at ants with their wings. But the defence didn’t always work. For Japanese queenless ants (Pristomyrmex punctatus) and Japanese pavement ants (Tetramorium tsushimae), about half to one-third of attempts flung ants away. Wing-slapping was far less successful against Japanese wood ants (Formica japonica), a larger and faster species. Ants vary in their level of menace to bees: some species bite or kill workers, while others are less of a threat. Bees may have evolved to favour the fanning defence to avoid making contact with the more dangerous ants, but wing-slapping may be a more efficient option against other species, the researchers suggest. They hope to investigate this idea by mapping bee responses against ant aggression. The team also plans to study how bees’ interactions with ants change over time and whether they improve at wing-slapping with more experience. “These defensive behaviours still hold many mysteries,” says Morii.

Journal reference:

Ecology

Asian hornets have overwintered in the UK for the first time

Madeleine Cuff — Fri, 31 May 2024 16:37:46 +0000

Queen Asian hornets found in East Sussex this year are a genetic match to a 2023 nest, suggesting the invasive species is becoming established in the UK

Experience the world from a bee’s perspective

Obomate Briggs — Wed, 15 May 2024 09:00:37 +0000

The 20,000 known species of bee alive today are the product of 120 million years of evolution. They are vital to our planet’s ecosystems and to human existence. But their populations are dwindling. Award-winning artist and sculptor Wolfgang Buttress is known for creating multi-sensory artworks that take inspiration from our evolving relationship with nature, and his latest exhibition, Bees: A Story of Survival, fuses art, science and technology to draw visitors into the world of a bee. Using cutting-edge audio-visual technology, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey through immersive rooms as sights, scents and sounds bring our world to life from a bee’s perspective. Sound plays a major role in this exhibition. Martin Bencsik at Nottingham Trent University, UK, who researches how bees communicate, acted as Buttress’s scientific collaborator, contributing to the soundscape that connects visitors to a live beehive. This soundscape constantly changes in response to the activity of the colony. “If the bees are healthy, it means the world is healthy, and sadly that is not the case,” says Buttress. He hopes that these captivating installations will increase our appreciation for bees and boost our concern for their welfare and that of our planet.

is at World Museum, Liverpool, UK, until 5 May 2025

bees news, articles and features | ��è����Ƶ

��è����Ƶ recommends a devastating account of farming honeybees