Beeman Freeman

Posted on August 2, 2014 by Ron Miksha
Morgan Freeman beekeeper bees

Morgan ‘Beeman’ Freeman

Morgan Freeman is incredible. Whether you enjoyed him driving over Ms Daisy or gaining redemption after Shawshank, you likely admired the way the man can perform. I really began to appreciate Freeman when I started watching his series of science documentaries on Discovery, the astrophysics lectures called Through the Wormhole. Respect for the actor is deep – he was born in Tennessee, grew up in rural Mississippi, yet became comfortable in Hollywood. To top it off, at age 65 he earned his pilot’s license and he flies a Cessna 414. Now 77, he decided to become a beekeeper. And it’s not just a one-hive gimmick. He is keeping 26 colonies on his Mississippi farm. He’s the beekeeper. (You’ll enjoy his interview on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show where he told us about his new business.)

So, it’s acting, flying, lecturing, and beekeeping. What’s not to like? That’s what I was wondering when I saw a Facebook page, owned by someone called JD, gushing with pride that Morgan Freeman has taken up with the bees. Facebook, as most readers of this blog know, sometimes turns into a rowdy forum with deadbeats and losers leaving their entrails and brain droppings scattered under even the most innocent of postings. Here is what one respondent replied to JD’s enthusiasm. “Freeman is a creep. Animal scat.” That was it. Nothing more. No explanation, no sources, no references. Just raw, juvenile arrogant opinion. Nothing at all to back up the stupidity, just mindless trolling rants. And this is a problem with much “social media.” Here in Canada, the RCMP have just arrested someone for allegedly bullying a former co-worker by allegedly posting crap about the co-worker, co-worker’s friends, and co-workers family on the net. The alleged bully, with over 100 charges against him, allegedly went to the trouble of creating fake Facebook accounts under the victims’ names and then, for years, he apparently wrote all manner of insult about them. If ordinary people can be attacked, how does a person like Morgan Freeman defend himself against tirades that have no substance? Why are so many people cowardly bullying and lying, while hidden behind somewhat anonymous walls? I have received my share of mail from the stupids. You, of course, learn to ignore it and you worry about the safety of the sender’s family, but it still burns up a little bit of your soul when you are hit by spitballs.

By the way, if you suspect Freeman is not really the Beeman Freeman, read on. He was asked what he is doing with the bees right now. “Feeding them sugar syrup. I mix two parts water and one part sugar.” He is also (so far) not using a bee suit in his apiary rounds. How does he keep from getting stung? “I resonate,” the new beekeeper said.

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Bee People

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Bee People, rescuing a barn by killing a colony

I previewed a new beekeeping movie, something a little different. I have to give Bee People a mixed review. I’ll walk through some of what I liked, do my thumbs down bit, then try to wrap up with some overall impressions.

The good news. First – and this is a big positive – the photography was excellent. Lots of good close-ups of bees, occasionally interesting scenery, and smart, well-positioned camera angles. As a beekeeper, I enjoy seeing hives, seeing bees, seeing honey. But I also like watching people. Bee People lives up to its title with lots of interesting characters. Their interactions, though sometimes clumsily staged, are mostly genuine. A third aspect which makes the film appealing to me is the general lack of in-your-face the-sky-is-falling-in commentary. This is not yet another movie about colony collapse disorder, or the New World Order’s conspiracy to starve us by poisoning our bees, or an exaggerated re-take on the statement that Einstein is credited with, but never said. Instead, the very real and very difficult situation of severe losses of bees for some beekeepers is obliquely referenced. Sometimes such a subtle approach is more palatable and makes a stronger case. So instead, the movie focuses on a small group of Colorado beekeepers (with a brief scene in NYC and New Jersey, and a cameo of the film’s only real expert, Dr Larry Connor). The beekeepers shown are almost all newbies: enthusiastic, but unskilled.

I had three issues with the Bee People movie. These shouldn’t stop any lover of all things bee, but they stood out in my mind. First, I had trouble finding a theme, or raison d’etre for the film. I found myself asking, “What the heck is this about?” and “Who’s the audience going to be?” There is a long string of vignettes – some interesting, some not so much – but I couldn’t find the glue that was supposed to hold them together. That might have been my own problem. Others might see it as a look at people who care about bees, but for me, there is little incentive to watch a movie about people I can see anytime.

I hope absolutely no one takes Bee People as an educational documentary because this is my second criticism. Factually, the film is a mess. Although it does not play up sympathy for dying bees, there are the statements “Commercial beekeepers lose 60% of their hives every year.” and “Every time commercial beekeepers open their hives, they find 75% of their bees are dead.” Simply not true. Winter losses for commercial beekeepers have been rather high, averaging 31% for the past 8 years, but commercial beekeepers make up the winter losses from splits in the spring (or they buy queens and packages from beekeepers who specialize in such sales). Overall numbers of hives in the USA have not dropped in the past few years – there are actually several hundred thousand more kept colonies today than there were in 2006 when CCD was first reported. (And world-wide, the number of colonies has increased much more.)

But more egregious errors surface in the beekeeping practices that are shown. At one point someone shows us how to put an active hive back together without squashing bees. And does it wrong. And then sort of shrugs and says that you will always kill a few. In another scene, the Bee Guru performs a “bee rescue” which turns into a major farce. He and his friends spend 8 hours ripping open a barn which is home to a huge, thriving, well-established colony. From the dark combs, heavy propolis, and kilos of honey stored by the bees, this is a colony which clearly did not need humans “rescuing” it. They were doing just fine and likely were headed by a queen with superior genetics – the bees had lived without meds and chemical treatment for years in the barn. The landowner apparently wanted the bees out, but she herself was a beekeeper, so the removal wasn’t because she was afraid of bees. Maybe this was a “barn rescue” and not a bee rescue. Because they took so long removing the bees, the fiasco turned into a robbing frenzy with neighbourhood bees descending on the open combs lying about. This “rescue” was in September so the bees that were hoovered up had no chance to re-establish themselves before winter. Instead, the “rescued” bees were coated with powdered sugar and placed atop an established hive at a new location so the two colonies might fight it out, or possibly merge. No mention was made of the queen. I was actually sick to the stomach watching the brutal demise of the old colony.

In the last major scene of the movie, the Bee Guru flies to New York City to help the Bee Cop who, it seems, called the Bee Guru as a reinforcement to remove bees from a house. They get to the house, use a $7,000 heat sensor to locate a nest behind a wall, rip into it, and find abandoned combs, no bees. The combs were occupied by fat ugly wax worms. Bee Guru and Bee Cop both seemed surprised that the wax worms give off heat – which was what the sensor had detected. This made a rather surreal scene for the movie. The effect, to me, is simply a big Yuck! because of the webby wormy mess – with great photography – and the scene comes near enough to the end to make it one of my last mental images of the film.

My third problem with the movie: Some of the bee people showcased by Bee People seem less than endearing. I couldn’t like the Bee Guru, though I tried. He came across as rather self-assured and self-important. (To his credit, there is a clip of the Bee Guru telling us how brilliantly innovative beekeepers are, then telling himself to “Deflate, deflate.”) In a particularly strange scene, one of the beekeepers pushes on the tail end of a squat pig named Pickles, forcing her from his house – sorry, I could neither identify with this nor see how it added to the film. On the other hand, there was the Bee Medic who seemed like a nice guy, a new beekeeper, someone I could have a beer with. The Writer (Leslie Ellis) was the nicest of all and I’d gladly have two beers with her. She was enthusiastic and self-effacing and the sort of person one wants to see keeping bees. A briefly-spotlighted family of beekeepers also seemed like totally nice folks, as did a new kid beekeeper harvesting a great honey crop. Unfortunately, he was being coached by the Bee Guru who told onlookers that beekeepers get stung on the nose more than any other place. Totally untrue, real beekeepers mostly get stung on the hands and fingers. But then again, the Bee Guru was rarely (if ever) working bees without gloves, so maybe in his case it is true.

Buy Bee People
(or not)

Here is my recommendation. If you are new at beekeeping, you might identify with some of the characters. If you have a friend getting into bees, you might watch this and learn that beekeepers are strange birds, but if you have a friend who is a beekeeper, you already know this. If you are looking for hints and tips or profound knowledge, that will only come from Larry Connor, near the end of the flick when he says he likes the new beekeepers who are getting involved, but cautions against becoming a “drive-by beekeeper” the most apt term I’d never heard before. Larry tells us to beware the beekeeper who jumps into the hobby, drives by the bee supply store, drives by the bee yard – in other words, never engages, never becomes a real beekeeper. That person’s bees will die. Instead, says the master, find a good mentor and make a real commitment to beekeeping. For a new beekeeper, that’s the best advice possible.

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Our Bees, Ourselves

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Ron Miksha

“I’ll take one of each.”

Interesting Op-Ed column in the New York Times. Mark Winston, a senior prof at British Columbia’s Simon Fraser, wrote about the widespread collapse of honey bees. Winston is one of those super-brains who studied bees and entomology for years and has more recently stepped back to take a wide view of the big ecological picture, without losing touch with his stinging friends. He is one of the ablest of scientists to warn us (yet again) to listen to the little canaries in our cage. His aptly titled piece, “Our Bees, Ourselves: Bees and Colony Collapse” invites us to scare ourselves sleepless about the future demise of our bees – and our own species. He is right to issue the warning.

More than 120 pesticides. Dr Winston says that a “A typical honeybee colony contains residue from more than 120 pesticides.” I would never eat honey again, except the professor adds that each alone “represents a benign dose.” Great, I will keep eating honey… but then he continues (and this is the red meat in his editorial) to say that together the pesticides “form a toxic soup of chemicals.” The interplay of all those poisons affects the bees’ immune systems, leading to big problems for the little bugs, and significantly impacting Colony Collapse Disorder.

Synergy. We usually think of synergy as a big positive. “The whole is more than the sum of the parts” as Mrs Rabinowitz, my grade-nine geometry teacher used to say. One plus one equals three. No, not the new math – the new reality. Two people working smartly together can carry a 300-pound baby hippo easier than two people separately, each giving it a try. That’s all good and positive, until you start talking about bad things. Bald tires might get you to the bee yard. An icy road might be passable. But put bald tires on an icy road, and their synergy spells ditch.

Mark Winston reminds us of some of the things that synergize to hurt bees:

Monoculture – the bees don’t get a mixed diet; Varroa mites – big blood-sucking monsters; Habitat destruction – lack of diversity, soil moisture retention, and wind break; Pesticides outside the hive – fungicides, insecticides, herbicides; Pesticides inside the hive – with residues that build up in the wax; Stress of commercial beekeeping – moving hives and packing them densely in yards; Genetics – maybe Winston didn’t mention this, but inbreeding abounds; Fungal, bacterial, and viral pests – the little things that we can’t see.

My bees are tough. They can lick any one or two of these enemies. But not two or three (or 120) simultaneously. And this is where the “Ourselves” part of Winston’s story comes in. We are at risk of HCD (Human Collapse Disorder) with our unending messing with the environment. Specifically, Dr Winston points out that in humans it is known that pharmaceutical interactions can be fatal when prescription drugs are used together. We are belatedly studying this. We are not studying the same effect on people from combinations of chemicals cast about in the environment. I’d like to add that one big difference between CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) and HCD (Human Collapse Disorder) is that the bees didn’t create their disorder.

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Cool in the line of fire

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Ron Miksha
Laureen Harper bees

Someone had to put the lid back on the hive…

 Gotta give the prime minister’s wife credit. She was cool and calm. Unlike the unfortunate beekeeper/chef who was jumping around and swatting bees. Had to be sooo embarrassing for the executive chef. Just another day in the public spotlight for Laureen Harper. Why so calm? She’s probably like that all the time, but it helps that Laureen grew up on a little farm near Turner Valley, south of Calgary, where the family had a greenhouse business and kept some bees. I like that she put the lid back on the hive, keeping the bees from getting even more irritated. You can watch the video (it’s worth viewing) by going to this link. She seems a natural beekeeper – wish she had also been Canada’s prime minister for these past eight years.

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Canola – a tasteful upgrade

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Canola: the yellow new food for the hungry masses

Canola is in peak bloom here this week. The cultivated oil-seed crop is a phenomenal honey producer. Canadian farmers plant just over 20 million acres of the crop each year. It yields about 100 pounds of honey per acre. If there were enough bees to collect it all, Canada would have a crop of 2 billion pounds of canola honey. As it is, we produce about 90 million pounds, but that includes alfalfa, sweet clover, fireweed, buckwheat, goldenrod, and a host of other exotics. I would guess Canada’s canola honey production is about 30 million pounds a year, hence leaving 98% of the nectar to drip to the ground for lack of honey bees. But canola is a crop that might have never existed. Except for a couple of earnest crop scientists and the magic of genetic manipulation.

Tisdale rape and honeyWhen I moved to western Canada about 40 years ago, the farmers were puzzling over a crop they called rape. Or rapeseed. The more discerning called it by its Latin name, rapa, which means turnip. A few said the stuff was big mustard, but they were wrong, although mustard seed is a distant cousin. I never liked the sound of the old name and I’m glad farmers no longer plant rape here. However, I have to wonder what happened to the old, odd sign I used to see upon entering the town of Tisdale, Saskatchewan: “Welcome to Tisdale, Land of Rape & Honey” – it was the sign that greeted me when I went to the honey co-op in that town back in the 1970s. The greeting was on that billboard because northern Saskatchewan was rife with those yellow unruly cultivars and bees made gold from their flowers. The sign, by the way, was inspirational fodder for the British band Ministry, a heavy-metal gang that released an album called “The Land of Rape and Honey” in 1988. But fortunately, political correctness and genetic engineering put an end to rapeseed.

Heart disease. Rape, as Brassica napus was known, began its domestic life in China as the vegetable yu choy, then arrived in Europe around 600 years ago. It became popular on the northern Canadian plains because it could be planted late and harvested early, beating the cold weather on both ends of the season. For quite a few years, it was used as an engine lubricant but was pushed off the market by cheap petro-substitutes. So people here started frying their perogies with the oil. When I came to be part of Saskatchewan’s landscape in the 1970s, Canadian government botanists had discovered that rapeseed – pressed and squeezed into cooking oil – contained erucic acid which caused heart disease. Rape was being phased out – worse, the government was hinting the crop might be banned by royal decree.

How to make a better oil. Keith Downey and Buldur Stefansson contravened the threatened ban by a bold move. They genetically coaxed rape into becoming canola. Canola (derived from the words CANadian OiL, A?) came about because Downey and Stefansson tediously cut the tiny seed’s endosperm from its embryo by using tiny scalpels. Then they analyzed the oil’s acids, selecting seeds that were the least erucic-ish. By 1974 the scientists ended up with a seed rich in oleic acid instead of harmful erucic. The result was the lowest content of saturated fat in any oil on the market. It was an immediate darling on health food shelves – and it found a place outside of everyone’s heart.

Not every beekeeper loves canola. Today I drove out to my daughter and son-in-law’s honey farm. I passed a few fields of canola before reaching their property, which is mostly in alfalfa and sweet clover ranch country. If they could, they would avoid canola as a nectar source for their bees. Although the honey is mild, white, and thick, it has one disagreeable attribute for the kids who are trying to make a living producing comb honey. Canola granulates, or crystallizes, really quickly. Within days. Even in pristine comb honey sections, much to the disappointment of the beekeepers. So, if someone is looking for a breeding project, perhaps canola that produces a non-granulating nectar could be the next thing to tackle.

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Hives for Humans

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Hive Homes: Hives for Humanity

I had not heard of “Hives for Humanity” until yesterday when I stumbled upon an article that talked about a garden in Vancouver where an outfit calling itself “Hives for Humanity” has placed bees. The article goes on to say that the organization would like to put a few hives on various private properties, give landowners a bit of honey, and use any profits to support the endeavour. This, of course, perfectly describes what beekeepers have been doing for hundreds of years.

But it got me thinking. Why is it that only bees get to live in beehives? (OK, bees and mice and wasps and hive beetles, wax moths, varroa mites and the occasional racoon sleeping off a hangover.) Why not take the organization’s name as a literal invitation? Hives for Humanity: A hive for every human. Just like the houses in the picture above. These Turkish hive-homes seem perfect. Thick walls to keep the place cool in winter; peaky tops to hold all those TV receivers. How quaint.

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Best place to keep bees?

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Medhat Nasr, teaching queen breeding in Alberta

I don’t know what causes colony collapse disorder. CCD is likely due to poor nutrition, weak genetics, farm pesticides, chemicals used inside beehives, varroa mites, and viruses carried by mites and injected into whatever gooey stuff bees use as blood. CCD is complicated – that’s why it is controversial and that’s why it has been hard to predict and hard to prevent. I think one reason Alberta beekeepers have not (yet) had huge bee losses has been the extraordinary help, advocacy, and educational projects provided by Alberta’s Chief Apiculturalist, Dr Medhat Nasr and his staff. They have worked extremely hard to help Alberta beekeepers keep their bees healthy – especially in areas of nosema and varroa mite control.

Alberta has a lot going for it. Our two big cities – Edmonton and Calgary – each have a million people. Another two million Albertans live out on the land. And it is a big land – the size of Texas. This Canadian province stretches from grasslands along the Montana border to parklands bordering the Northwest Territories. And Alberta includes some gorgeous Rocky Mountains. People here live well – we have the highest per capital income in North America of any state/province – roughly $80,500 for every person. With it comes great schools, universal health care, and some pretty nice biking trails. Honey is produced everywhere in Alberta that has farms and ranches. You may have heard of the Peace River Country – that’s here, too. Honey crops in the Peace can (and often do) top 250 pounds per hive. The province has 250,000 colonies and honey crops average 150 pounds; but this includes 50,000 colonies kept mostly for canola pollination contracts – those bees aren’t expected to produce much honey. The summer climate is mild, days are really long, and there are millions of acres of alfalfa, canola, and sweet clover – all of which produce white, mild-flavoured nectar.

Alberta has a lot going for it. With the lowest taxes in North America (Seriously – you didn’t expect that from a place in Canada, did you?) and a fairly libertarian government, people are mostly left alone to make a living. And that brings us back to the role of a chief bee inspector. When I was a kid, I spent three summers as a Pennsylvania bee inspector. My job was to find American foulbrood. And burn hives. I was a skinny teenager and had to talk smoothly to inspect bees hidden on farms in Appalachian hillbilly country. Only once did I need state police backup. Even though sulfathiazole was a proven treatment for AFB, our out-dated laws mandated burning. It was an awkward job, to say the least. Much better to have a system where individuals are responsible for their own welfare but are offered free or inexpensive advice and tools to help them keep healthy bees.

Good government makes a difference. You can’t let the biggest and meanest kid on the block take advantage of everyone else. The fellow who spends the most on lawyers isn’t always right – chances are he is wrong, that’s why he hires an army of lawyers. There has to be law and order and we have to participate as helpful members of the human family. When American foulbrood was the beekeepers’ biggest problem, equipment was burned to stop the disease from spreading to neighbouring farms – even if the guilty party threatened lawsuits or violence. But that was long ago and far away. I moved to western Canada 40 years ago and have always felt like I won the lottery by being here. But back to the theme of this blog entry – part of the reason Alberta has been such a successful place for beekeepers is the good governance of the bee inspection office – the Office of Beekeeping Help and Advice.

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An indoor hive

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Ron Miksha
philips indoor urban bee hive beehive

Some Indoor Honey

I can’t even begin to imagine the clever wit that went into designing this revolutionary beehive. What you see to your right – if you are looking at the hive-gadget rather than the demonstrator – is a new hive design developed by Philips. Philips is the smart Dutch company that makes everything from water-jet dental flossers to coffee makers and electric shavers. They have classy stuff. Their website tells us that Royal Philips Electronics is a diversified health and well-being company, focused on improving people’s lives through timely innovations. Their focus is on “sense and simplicity.” The Philips design department apparently dreams up great product ideas for modern living – sleek designs for products that they will probably never sell. Like the Urban beehive.

A Philips team of design experts came up with this idea. “Why not keep bees in the kitchen?” someone probably asked during a brainstorming session. “Yes! Yes! And have a potted flower at the end of the bees’ tube so bees can crawl through the tube, then fly down to the flower, gather some nectar, then bring it back into the hive!” said a second brainstormer. The third brainstormer would have jumped from her chair, “And we’ll have a string that the owner can pull so honey will drip out of the hive!” The idea, of course, is nothing short of brilliant. But it can’t be patented – beekeepers have been pulling strings and squeezing honey from their hives for centuries already.

To help Philips promote their product, I want to let you read their own sales literature: (By the way, I don’t take anyone’s money, I do this all for fun.)

“The design of the beehive is unconventional, appealing, and respects the natural behavior of the bees. It consists of two parts: entry passage and flower pot outside, and glass vessel containing an array of honeycomb frames, inside. The glass shell filters light to let through the orange wavelength which bees use for sight. The frames are provided with a honeycomb texture for bees to build their wax cells on. Smoke can be released into the hive to calm the bees before it is opened, in keeping with established practice.

“This is a sustainable, environmentally friendly product concept that has direct educational effects. The city benefits from the pollination, and humans benefit from the honey and the therapeutic value of observing these fascinating creatures in action. As global bee colonies are in decline, this design contributes to the preservation of the species and encourages the return of the urban bee.”

phillips indoor urban bee hive beehiveDid the ad department miss any buzz words? They mentioned natural, sustainable, environmentally friendly, therapeutic, and the (imaginary) global collapse of bee colonies. But will the hive actually work? What do you think? Observation hives work. This is the loveliest observation hive you can imagine – times ten! I like the design! I wonder if I could get 400 of these and put them in apartments and houses throughout Calgary? It would be such fun going from house to house, maybe dragging a little red wagon, and pulling all those strings while the honey drips out.

As you can see in the accompanying purple-coloured blueprints, the hive and flower pot are separated by an exterior house wall. The bees climb through the tube and find themselves outside where they could maybe work on more than a single potted flower. The only thing I can’t figure out is how the honey drips out the bottom when you pull the string. Chances are the designers of this hive have never actually kept bees or worked with honey combs. They will also be somewhat surprised to discover that when the hive is opened in the house, not only will the smoker set off the fire alarm, but the bees will be somewhat drawn to the kitchen lights and windows and the bees will, unfortunately, never, never, ever return to their hive. They will just hang out among the pots and pans. Other than that, it will probably work fine. But let me add this:

It is nice to see a big company such as Philips (one of the largest healthcare and electronics firms in the world) encouraging its designers, admen, and other folks to experiment, to think outside the (bee) box. Although this prototype will likely not be built, the training, learning, and innovation involved are really laudable. Seriously.

Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Hives and Combs, Strange, Odd Stuff, Tools and Gadgets | Tagged | 3 Comments

Alberta deadline

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Ron Miksha

A Bad Beekeeper

Sorry I was late posting this. Hope you are not in big trouble now. But Albertans who keep honey bees or who own beekeeping equipment are required – by law – to register as a beekeeper by June 29 of each year. Registration is nearly painless – previously-registered beekeepers receive a form to fill out before the deadline. New beekeepers need to ask for the paperwork. Although compliance is more difficult than buying a long-gun in Alberta (which is super easy, believe me, I know from experience), the registration process isn’t too tough. They need your name, location, and number of colonies. This is to help control the spread of bee diseases. If you are new to beekeeping, contact Dr Medhat Nasr, the provincial apiarist, and his staff will help you out. Their number is 1-780-415-2314.

How are Alberta’s bees? With the growing concern over the role neonicotinoids play in severe overwintering problems for honey bees, Alberta beekeepers should be worried, say anti-nic activists. Of course, they are right. The stuff is poison, a pesticide designed to kill sucking bugs. Alberta is Canada’s biggest honey producer (Alberta beekeepers make about 5 times as much honey each year as Ontario beekeepers.) and our main honey crop from canola. Canola grows from seeds treated with neonicotinoids and each year the farmer plants new seeds for each new canola crop. You can see where this is heading. Or maybe not. Last winter, Alberta had excellent wintering of honey bees. According to chief inspector Dr Nasr, the province lost only 10 to 15 percent of its bees. And it was a long, cold, nasty winter. In fact, the Western Producer ran a story about Alberta that beamed, “Bees come through gruelling winter in good condition” and indicated that losses averaged half of last year’s numbers. I can’t understand this. If the neonicotinoids are as bad as claimed (and maybe they are?) then Alberta should be ground-zero for death and destruction. But it is not. I know of one newish beekeeper who had pretty awful wintering this year due to nosema and wind exposure, but the vast majority had great wintering.

I have heard from a lot of Canadian beekeepers. They are worried that neonics will be incorrectly blamed for bee deaths. The beekeepers fear neonicotinoids will be banned and farmers will be back to aerial spraying which slaughtered bees by the billions back in the 1980s. But if the neonics are actually causing the massive deaths attributed to them in other places, we don’t want that either.

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Glow-in-the-dark bees

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Dr Schulte

Finally! Glow-in-the-dark honey bees! We’ve all been waiting for these glow bugs to complement our glow-in-the-dark radium-painted wristwatches and glow-in-the-dark jelly bean collections. Now you can have the complete set of things you probably didn’t know existed. Researchers at Germany’s Heinrich Heine University have announced they were able to add a glowing gene to a fertilized honey bee egg, feed the resulting larva enough royal jelly to create a queen, then produce drones that carry the gene. The idea was not to help scout and forager bees work more effectively at night (the Heinrich Heine Tech College is working on miniature flashlights) or to help hive bees see the waggle dance more clearly (disco balls were introduced in the 70s to accomplish that), but according to post-doc tinkerer Christina Schulte, the scientists were simply trying a “proof of concept” experiment. It worked. Glowing applications will come later.

The honey bee genome was fully decoded in 2006. That was almost ten years ago. I thought by now we would have genetically-modified stingless honey bees, honey bees that never die, and, of course, bees modified by Monsanto to be resistant to Bayer’s neonicotinoids. Science sometimes lags necessity, doesn’t it?

 

 

Posted in Bee Biology, Culture, or lack thereof, Humour, Queens, Strange, Odd Stuff | Tagged , | 4 Comments