Search Results for: bees
Native bees need love too!
A Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service expert wants people to better understand and appreciate our native bee pollinators. When people see a bee in their garden, many assume it is a honeybee when, odds are, it is actually a native bee,” said Molly Keck, AgriLife Extension integrated pest management specialist and entomologist, San Antonio. She said, in the simplest of terms, a native bee is usually any bee except a honeybee since honeybees are not native to the Americas. And while bees can look very similar or very… Read More →
Caring about the Other Bees
In my experience, most people like bees. Aside from the occasional bad encounter with a sting, most of us know that bees are good, and a necessary part of our spaceship-earth zoo. Recently, we’ve heard about honey bee die-offs due to a variety of problems. These stories are almost always about domesticated European honey bees, not native and wild bees. These problems are largely cultural and have to do with sanitary bee management, not so much with ecological issues. Bees are important to agriculture and will be well… Read More →
New books on bees
If bookstores are any indication, it seems bees are getting lots of love these days. Lots of new resources and references are available on bees. So I thought I would share a few of the resources that I know of that might be of interest to any of you looking to expand your knowledge of these important insects. The Bees in Your Backyard, A Guide to North America’s Bees by Joseph S. Wilson & Olivia J. Messinger Carril. Princeton Univ. Press. I just ordered my copy, it looks… Read More →
New study on bees and neonics
Are insecticides to blame for killing off the honey bee? That question has stimulated lively debate in both scientific and policy circles the past two years. At the heart of the controversy is a group of insecticides known as neonicotinoids. Neonics, as they’re sometimes called, have risen over the past 20 years to become the number one class of insecticides sold worldwide, and are being used increasingly by nurseries and home gardeners to control a variety of landscape and garden pest problems. Environmental groups contend that the case is… Read More →
What to do if you’re attacked by bees?
While honey bees are highly beneficial to man, they can also be dangerous. If you don’t believe this, consider two Texas incidents this summer. In June, a Waco area man was killed by honey bees while working on his tractor. This past weekend a couple was severely stung and two of their miniature horses were killed following a bee attack at their Tarrant county home. Both incidents illustrate how serious honey bee infestations can be. It’s not that bees are mean, in a human sense. But they do take exception… Read More →
Honey bees at center of controversy
What could present a more peaceful, bucolic image than the scene of beekeepers tending their bee hives? Beekeepers are traditionally seen as the gentlest of agriculturalists, not killing for food but merely reaping the labor of an industrious insect in exchange for nurture and protection. Yet there is little peaceful about the verbal and political battle swirling about beekeepers and honey bees at the moment. You may have seen the headlines in recent years proclaiming the doom of the honey bee. The domestic bee industry in the U.S…. Read More →
Waiting for the bees
As the season tilts toward spring in Texas I begin to look forward to the increase in insect activity. Not the pest activity, like mosquitoes and fire ants, but the vast majority of insects that are either harmless or who actively benefit us in one or more ways. Bumble bees are among those creatures which are mostly beneficial to people, though many of us have little appreciation for the gifts they give. In fact, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist Michael Warriner, it’s been 100 years since… Read More →
A new threat to honey bees?
The domesticated honey bee’s life is anything but easy. Enslaved by humans to produce honey (for which their hives are regularly raided), uprooted to lead a nomadic life traveling on flatbed trucks from field to orchard, worked year-round, attacked by various mites, fungi and now exotic viruses, is it any wonder that some bees are collapsing from the sheer weight of it all? This accumulation of multiple stresses is, in fact, the current best guess by bee researchers on what is causing the much dreaded “colony collapse disorder”,… Read More →
Forget honey bees, worry about Monarchs
Don’t misunderstand me. I like honey bees. And like most people I talk with, I’m aware of the threat to honey bees posed by the latest calamity facing beekeepers, the “colony collapse disorder”. Managed bee colonies in our country and around the world are dying off at alarming rates. And this is not good. But honey bees are not native to the New World. If all the honey bees in the U.S. were to die tomorrow, agriculture would take a devastating hit, and we would see an immediate… Read More →
Junk-food honey bees
Someone forwarded a link to this New York Times story yesterday, and it got me thinking about the junk that honey bees eat. Every fall, people report problems with honey bees being attracted to trash cans, soda cans, and all variety of sweet things. I’ve always believed this phenomenon was due to the combined effect of a declining natural supply of nectar and possibly an enhanced craving for carbohydrates prior to winter (stoking the fires for a long, cold winter). While the honey bee PR groups would probably… Read More →
