Category Archives: Ecology
Wild bees again
A few days ago, I wrote a snarky blog entry about one researcher’s efforts to alert us to a hazard of urban beekeeping. It is Dr Cartar’s contention that keeping bees in an urban environment robs wild native bees of … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Ecology, Science
Tagged habitat loss, Native Bees, Ralph Cartar, urban beekeeping
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Going native
A Calgary University professor has this to say about urban beekeepers: “It is not as rosy as they think. Every jewel* of honey that they get on their plate or in their jars is a jewel that has been robbed … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology
Tagged invasive species, Native Bees, Ralph Cartar, urban beekeeping, Xerces Society
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Did I goof up, or what?
Last week’s blog post drew a few interesting responses. Not from Monsanto, whom I expected would be outraged because I wrote that it is perhaps justifiable to vilify “the huge multinational for all manner of environmental ills.” Instead, incredibly, the … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology, Pesticides, Save the Bees
Tagged Bayer, corn, Monsanto, neonicotinoids
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Dead and Dying
California almond pollination season is finished. And so are many of the bees which made the trip to the west coast to participate in the largest honey bee mosh pit ever in the history of beekeeping. (For those of you … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, Ecology, Pesticides, Pollination
Tagged almond pollination, EPA, lawsuits, migratory beekeeping, neonicotinoids
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Bees Delivering Pesticides
This sounds so bizarre. At first. Canadian researchers have found an odd way to potentially deliver benevolent viruses, fungi, and bacteria to greenhouse vegetables. Before some lucky bees are allowed to fly inside glasshouses to pollinate peppers and cukes, they … Continue reading
Posted in Ecology, Pesticides, Pollination, Science, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged Beauveria bassiana, bee vectors, genetic modification
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Invasive bee hives
Dutch bee hives in Manhattan? Of course. Four hundred years and counting. New York was known as New Amsterdam by its first settlers, the Dutch from Holland who arrived on lower Manhattan Island in 1614. That’s even before the Pilgrims … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology, History
Tagged invasive species, Manhattan bees
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Wild Bees
This sounds like an interesting job. You may have heard that there are about 40,000 species of bees in the world. Most are solitary, some live loosely with familiar neighbours, and a very small number, like the honey bee, are … Continue reading
Posted in Ecology, Science
Tagged bee species, Cory Sheffield, macropis cuckoo bee, Saskatchewan
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A Multi-player Game
How does one get 50 different bee-specialists to work together on a project? Sounds like herding cats, if you ask me. But that’s what agricultural engineer Lucas Garibaldi of Argentina’s National University of Río Negro is doing. The fifty researchers … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Ecology, Pollination
Tagged Argentina, bee species, Lucas Garibaldi
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Almonds Need Bees
Almonds need bees. And beekeepers need almonds – to pay their bills. In California – which produces about 80 percent of the world’s almonds – hundreds of thousands of acres stretch from Red Bluff to Bakersfield. Each acre ideally has … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, Ecology, Pollination
Tagged almond pollination, California, Eric Mussen
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Bad Beekeeping Blog 