By Elias Marat The Dutch city of Utrecht has taken a unique approach to managing its air quality by installing green roofs filled with flowers and plants on top of its bus stops. The move will not only help Utrecht achieve its ambition of becoming…
By Elias Marat The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has suspended its annual surveys of the honeybee population as the federal agency increasingly turns toward representing big agricultural interests rather than regulating them. Citing the need for budget cuts, the Trump administration’s suspension of the…
Bees are valuable to humans not only because they produce honey, but also because they pollinate wildflowers and food crops. They exclusively eat nectar and pine pollen. So in areas where intensive agriculture is practised, they suffer from the thin supply of flowers in May…
By Arjun Walia In Brief The Facts: The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced “emergency” approvals to spray sulfoxaflor — an insecticide considered “very highly toxic” to bees — on nearly 14 million acres of crops known to attract bees. Reflect On: Why do corrupt federal…
Beekeepers across the United States lost 40.7% of their honey bee colonies from April 2018 to April 2019, according to preliminary results of the latest annual nationwide survey conducted by the University of Maryland-led nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership. The survey results indicate winter losses of…
By Matt Agorist As the world population of honeybees continues to decline at a dangerous rate, a new study from Colorado State University purports to have found the answer to quell the decline—hemp. The reason hemp is such a boon to the bee population is…
By Tyler Durden The total number of honey bee colonies across Europe plunged 16% over the winter 2017–18, according to COLOSS (Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes), an international, non-profit organization based in Switzerland, tasked with the goals of protecting honey bees. Allison Gray, the lead researcher…
By Emma Fiala Minnesota’s Legislature just approved a spending plan that would set aside $900,000 over one year to assist homeowners in turning their lawns into bee-friendly habitats. That’s right—the state of Minnesota wants to pay residents to make their lawns better for bees. The…
By Mayukh Saha Of the 20,000 varieties of bees in existence, the Australian Tetragonula carbonaria is one of the 500 varieties without a stinger. Do you think that makes them defenceless? Well, think again. If any bug or insect tries to mess with this bee,…
By Emma Fiala London’s bee population will soon be getting a boost thanks to a seven-mile “bee corridor” being constructed in the London Borough of Brent. The borough recently announced plans to connect 22 “urban meadows” together to create the corridor in an effort to encourage…
By Tyler Durden Researchers from the University of New Hampshire conducted a study to document declines in about 100 wild bee species critical to pollinating crops throughout New England. What they discovered, according to the study, was a collapse in the wild bee population across the state, reported…
By Alex Pietrowski We still have so much to learn about the nature of our world and how living creatures communicate with each other. On very subtle, imperceptible levels, people, animals and even plants share information, giving us the ability to coexist. We don’t see…
By John Vibes Bees are an extremely important part of the global ecosystem because they are responsible for pollinating 80% of the flowering crops on the planet, which obviously has a significant impact on the human food supply and all life on the planet. Beekeeping…
By Vic Bishop Just under the radar of public concern is the fact that bees and pollinator insects are dying off in catastrophic numbers; and if we are unable to reverse this trend, we face a very different kind of future. Bees in particular appear…
By Olivia Rosane A new study has found that exposure to certain pesticides can alter bees’ genes, leading researchers to call for tougher regulations on the widely-used chemicals. The study, published Wednesday in Molecular Ecology, looked at the impact of two neonicotinoid pesticides on bumblebee populations and found that they…
By Amanda Froelich Thirty-eight years ago, the world’s largest bee was presumed extinct. On an expedition to Indonesia, however, a specimen of Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto) was found alive. The Guardian reports that a fully-grown Wallace’s giant bee is four times the size of…
By Elias Marat The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted “emergency” clearance to sulfoxaflor – an insecticide that, by the agency’s own admission, is considered “very highly toxic” to bees. Sulfoxaflor will be used on over 16 million acres of crops that are attractive to bees….
Up to 13% of US beekeepers are in danger of losing their colonies due to pesticides sprayed to contain the Zika virus, new research suggests. Zika – claimed to cause severe brain defects in unborn children – is alleged to be spread by mosquitoes, so…
By Rachel Blevins As the world population of honey bees continues to decline at a dangerous rate, a new study suggests that mushrooms could have a powerful effect on bees by helping them combat the viruses that have been killing their colonies. According to the…
By Jon Queally While it has been widely established by the scientific community that the class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids (or neonics) have had devastating impacts on honey bees and other pollinators, new research shows that Monsanto’s glyphosate—the world’s most widely used chemical weed-killer—is also extremely…
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