Bees See Your Face As A Strange Flower

From Live Science:

Bees can learn to recognize human faces, or at least face-like patterns, a new study suggests.

Rather than specifically recognizing people, these nectar-feeding creatures view us as "strange flowers," the researchers say. And while they might not be able to identify individual humans, they can learn to distinguish features that are arranged to look like faces.

The results suggest that, even with their tiny brains, insects can handle image analysis. The researchers say that if humans want to design automatic facial recognition systems, we could learn a lot by using the bees' approach to face recognition.

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Invading Beetles Mummified By Stingless Bees

From New Scientist:

It's not so much eternal life, more a case of instant death. Parasitic beetles that dare to invade the hive of certain stingless bees end up entombed forever in resin. "They're stopped in their tracks and they dehydrate and shrivel up like a mummy," says Mark Greco, an entomologist at the Swiss Bee Research Centre in Bern who discovered the practice in a species of Australian stingless bees, Trigona carbonaria, living in the wild.

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Killer Bees: Nasty Sting, Not So Smart

From New Scientist:

Killer bees may be among the most feared of all insects - but they ain't too smart.

A new study has compared the wits of Africanized killer honey bees with those of a more docile European breed.

Killer bees - which result from a cross between African honey bees and a Brazilian variety in the 1950s - have spread from Central American into the southern United States. Increased intelligence had been suggested as one reason for this expansion.

Apparently not.

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Super-Sniffing Bees Combat Colony Pest

Government scientists have developed a population of honeybees that can root out the Varroa mite, a main culprit in a honeybee die-off. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

Government-developed honeybees are equipped with a keen sniffing ability to root out a deadly parasite.

In an effort to stem a massive bee die-off, government scientists have developed a population of honeybees that can root out a main culprit in the epidemic -- a parasite that feeds on pupae in nests and spreads viruses within hives.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists hope the population of Varroa mite-detecting honeybees could potentially improve the health of the overall honeybee population.

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Who Killed All Those Honeybees? We Did

iStockphoto

From Discovery:

The great bee die-off is not such a mystery after all: Industrial agriculture has stressed our pollinators to the breaking point.

It was mid-July, and Sam Comfort was teetering at the top of a 20-foot ladder, desperately trying to extract a cluster of furious honeybees from a squirrel house in rural Dutchess County, New York. Four stingers had already landed on his face, leaving welts along the fringe of his thick brown beard. That morning, the owner of the squirrel house had read an article in the local paper about Comfort’s interest in collecting feral honey­bees, so he called and invited him over. Commercial bee colonies, faced with massive mortality rates, are not faring so well these days, and unmanaged hives like this one could be their salvation. Comfort hurried over, eager to capture the hive’s queen and bring her home for monitoring and, if she fares well, breeding.

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Bees Fight Back Against Colony Collapse Disorder: Some Honey Bees Toss Out Varroa Mites

ARS researchers have developed honey bees that more aggressively deal with varroa mites, a parasite that is one of the major problems damaging honey bees today. (Credit: Photo by Stephen Ausmus)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 5, 2009) — Honey bees are now fighting back aggressively against Varroa mites, thanks to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) efforts to develop bees with a genetic trait that allows them to more easily find the mites and toss them out of the broodnest.

The parasitic Varroa mite attacks the honey bee, Apis mellifera L., by feeding on its hemolymph, which is the combination of blood and fluid inside a bee. Colonies can be weakened or killed, depending on the severity of the infestation. Most colonies eventually die from varroa infestation if left untreated.

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Short-Haired Bumblebee To Be Repopulated In UK

A queen short-haired bumblebee, one of a species which died out in the UK, but survived in New Zealand after being shipped there more than 100 years ago, is to be reintroduced in the UK. Photograph: Bumblebee Conservation Trust/Dave Goulson

From The Guardian:

Descendants of the lost UK bumblebee will be brought from New Zealand to Dungeness in what could be a landmark repopulation programme.

British conservationists have drawn up plans to repopulate the countryside with a species of bumblebee that was declared extinct here nearly a decade ago.

The short-haired bumblebee officially died out in the UK in 2000, but descendents of the doomed community live on in small pockets of New Zealand, where they were taken to pollinate red clover in the late 19th century.

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Tumors Feel The Deadly Sting Of Nanobees

Bee on a finger. Researchers have recently harnessed the toxin in bee venom to kill tumor cells. (Credit: iStockphoto/Tatiana Buzuleac)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — When bees sting, they pump poison into their victims. Now the toxin in bee venom has been harnessed to kill tumor cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees.

In mice, nanobees delivered the bee toxin melittin to tumors while protecting other tissues from the toxin's destructive power. The mice's tumors stopped growing or shrank. The nanobees' effectiveness against cancer in the mice is reported in advance online publication Aug. 10 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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One In Five Honeybees Is Wiped Out In A Year

Dying out: Honeybees are decreasing rapidly in number, with almost a fifth of the UK's population perishing last year

From The Daily Mail:

Nearly a fifth of Britain's honeybees perished last year, increasing fears the species is in serious decline, experts warned yesterday.

Although the death toll is lower than the previous year - when nearly a third of hives did not make it through the winter - beekeepers say it is double the 'acceptable' level.

The annual survey by the British Beekeepers' Association revealed 19.2 per cent of colonies died in the winter.

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Honey-bee Aggression Study Suggests Nurture Alters Nature

The study looked at bee aggression in European (pictured) and Africanized honey bees. (Credit: Photo by Diana Yates)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2009) — A new study reveals that changes in gene expression in the brain of the honey bee in response to an immediate threat have much in common with more long-term and even evolutionary differences in honey-bee aggression. The findings lend support to the idea that nurture (an organism's environment) may ultimately influence nature (its genetic inheritance).

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Honeybees Warn Of Risky Flowers

From The BBC:

Honeybees warn each other to steer clear of dangerous flowers where they might get killed by lurking predators.

Scientists made the discovery by placing dead bees upon flowers and then watching how newly arriving bees react to the danger.

Not only do the bees avoid the flowers, they then communicate the threat when they return to the hive via their well known waggle dance.

The discovery is published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

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Trading Energy For Safety, Bees Extend Legs To Stay Stable In Wind

Some bees brace themselves against wind and turbulence by extending their sturdy hind legs while flying. (Credit: iStockphoto/Roel Dillen)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 3, 2009) — New research shows some bees brace themselves against wind and turbulence by extending their sturdy hind legs while flying. But this approach comes at a steep cost, increasing aerodynamic drag and the power required for flight by roughly 30 percent, and cutting into the bees' flight performance.

The findings are detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Secret To Bumblebee Flight Revealed: Insects Defy gravity through brute force

Photo: Bumblebees stay aloft using brute force unlike the elegant flight of other insects

From The Daily Mail:

For almost a century, baffled scientists have wondered how bumblebees stay in the air. Now a new study has shown they defy the laws of gravity by using brute force.

Unlike the elegant, efficient flight of butterflies and dragonflies, they furiously flap their wings fuelled by energy-rich nectar, says the Oxford University team.

‘Bumblebee flight is surprisingly inefficient. Aerodynamically speaking it’s as if the insect is “split in half”', said Dr Richard Bomfrey, of the Department of Zoology.

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Cure For Honey Bee Colony Collapse?

Beekeeper with honeycomb. (Credit: iStockphoto/Kamilla Mathisen)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2009) — For the first time, scientists have isolated the parasite Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia) from professional apiaries suffering from honey bee colony depopulation syndrome. They then went on to treat the infection with complete success.

In a study published in the new journal from the Society for Applied Microbiology: Environmental Microbiology Reports, scientists from Spain analysed two apiaries and found evidence of honey bee colony depopulation syndrome (also known as colony collapse disorder in the USA). They found no evidence of any other cause of the disease (such as the Varroa destructor, IAPV or pesticides), other than infection with Nosema ceranae. The researchers then treated the infected surviving under-populated colonies with the antibiotic drug, flumagillin and demonstrated complete recovery of all infected colonies.

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Giant Honeybees Use Shimmering 'Mexican Waves' To Repel Predatory Wasps

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2008) — The phenomenon of "shimmering" in giant honeybees, in which hundreds—or even thousands—of individual honeybees flip their abdomens upwards within a split-second to produce a Mexican Wave-like pattern across the bee nest, has received much interest but both its precise mode of action and its purpose have long remained a mystery.

In a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE this week, researchers at the University of Graz, Austria, and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK, report the finding that shimmering—a remarkable capacity of rapid communication in giant honeybees—acts as a defensive mechanism, which repels predatory hornets, forcing them to hunt free-flying bees, further afield, rather than foraging bees directly from the honeybee nest.

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