Category Archives: News
Plan Bee: Insecticide tags on nursery plants
Lobbying efforts by “defenders of the bees” have been rewarded by one of the largest retailers of nursery plants requiring new tags on plants. As reported today by Nursery Management magazine, all Home Depot plants treated by greenhouse or nursery producers with one of the neonicotinoid insecticides will have to carry a special tag informing customers of the treatment and potential residues. What’s this about? It’s all part of a political and scientific brouhaha over a group of insecticides that were recently discovered to have some subtle, and possibly deadly,… Read More →
Kids, bee careful out there
Entomologists often walk a fine line between sounding alarmist and underplaying the importance of pest problems. Africanized honey bees and children are a good example. The potential seriousness of living with these bees was underscored yesterday when a gym class of middle schoolers disturbed a bee hive in a water controller box on a campus soccer field. According to news accounts, 20 students were stung, and several were taken to the hospital. Presumably the bees in this case were Africanized. Coincidentally this month, BBC News magazine interviewed Texas A&M entomologist,… Read More →
Powwowing about pollinators
Pollinator protection has become almost trendy recently. One of the spin offs of the honey bee controversy over CCD, is that the spotlight has come to rest not just on honey bees, but on all insects that pollinate plants. And this is a good thing. Today nearly everyone at some point is taught in school, or via Discovery Channel, that bees pollinate flowers; but I’ll wager that relatively few understand what this really means to all of us. Pollination is the biological process by which female plant parts are… Read More →
The NYT on CCD
The New York Times just published an article and video on the complex nature of colony collapse disorder (CCD) in honey bees. Author Clyde Haberman does a good job of presenting the case for the side of the debate that argues for multiple interacting causes of the bee problem. If you’re not familiar with CCD, it is a mysterious disorder that has afflicted 30% or so of commercial bee hives in the U.S. since 2006. Something about the problem has touched a nerve with many Americans who fear that… Read More →
What is chikungunya and why should we care?
Over 30 years ago as a graduate student taking a course in medical entomology, I learned about all kinds of diseases spread by insects. By far, most of these were tropical and exotic-sounding. I figured that, if I lived and worked in the U.S., my chances of encountering most of these pathogens was practically nil. Chikungunya (chik-un-GOON-ya) virus was one of those diseases I memorized way back then, and have since mostly forgotten. The chikungunya disease was first described in 1952 during an outbreak in southern Tanzania (east Africa). The name… Read More →
National Pollinator Week coming soon
National Pollinator Week this year is June 16-22. Here’s to hoping 2014 will be looking up for honey bees and other native pollinators. Last year during National Pollinator Week a pesticide misapplication led to a highly publicized bee kill in Wilsonville, OR. But this year we’ll start with some good news. Honey bee colony winter survival was up slightly this year, though still below expected survival levels prior to the advent of colony collapse disorder (CCD). In celebration of the week, I thought I would share with you some… Read More →
Beekeeping Clinic
If you’re a beekeeper, you won’t want to miss out on the upcoming Summer Clinic in Bryan, TX on June 7. Hosted by Texas A&M University Assistant Professor of Apiculture, Dr. Juliana Rangel, the clinic will discuss recent research projects, and subjects of interest to all beekeepers. There will even be a hands-on session with Bill Baxter (bring bee suit and veil for this one), and a session on dos and don’t about teaching the public about bees. Best of all it will be an opportunity to tour… Read More →
The “Mother” bug II
I’ve been receiving calls about a small red and black insect that is extremely common at the moment. It’s scientific name is Sehirus cinctus, but it is also known as the white-margined burrowing bug. Due to it’s commonness around Mother’s Day, and its motherly habits, I kind of like the name “Mother bug”, which I used in another post. Several years ago I got a call from a graduate student doing a study on the unique behavior of these insects. He wanted to drive all the way from Notre… Read More →
Time to bait for fire ants!
If you haven’t tried them yet, fire ant baits are the best tools for really managing fire ants. They are relatively inexpensive, require little labor to apply, and are safe for both you and the environment. The biggest drawback of baits is that they cannot be used all year round. Instead applications must be timed to periods when fire ants are actively looking for food, foraging in ant worker lingo. Many years ago a researcher at Florida State University, named Sanford Porter, spent an entire year of his life (three times… Read More →
