Blue Sky Bee Supply Blog

Inside a hive, all females are the same when they are larval bees. Then, one female is selected as the queen bee, and she is fed a special diet of royal bee jelly. The jelly nurtures her into becoming the queen bee. The other females get a non-royal diet. Royal bee jelly is made by worker bees, for the sole purpose of developing a queen. As a result, adult queens are larger than the other bees, live longer and are the only fertile ones in the hive.The reason is that a queen’s stem cells can self …

A pollination biologist from Stellenbosch University is using quantum dots to track the fate of individual pollen grains. This is breaking new ground in a field of research that has been hampered by the lack of a universal method to track pollen for over a century.In an article published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution recently, Dr Corneile Minnaar describes this novel method, which will enable pollination biologists to track the whole pollination process from the first visit by …

Graduate student Cassondra Vernier conducted lab experiments and observed hours of bee interactions at the entrance to the hive. She is shown here at Tyson Research Center, Washington University’s environmental field station.A 3-week-old foraging bee also has a very different job to support the hive than a younger bee — one who spends her time as a nurse caring for bee larvae and building the waxy honeycomb structures in the hiveA honey bee hatches and grows up deep inside a hive. Surrounded by …

No one expects sustainable energy and lifestyle businesses to completely replace the fossil fuel jobs that have been lost. But advocates in both areas are hoping that sustainability career paths can assist displaced workers and the next generation to find satisfying employment and create more diversified, robust local economies. Sustainable businesses with an emphasis on small, locally-based options keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community.Jobs are blossoming in sustai …

The Pollinator Stewardship Council, Inc. Board of Directors considered the preponderance of research concerning neonicotinoids (neonics), and is announcing their decision to call for a moratorium on the use and registration of the neonic class of pesticides. We agree with The Task Force on Systemic Pesticides 2017 “Worldwide Integrated Assessment of the Effects of Systemic Pesticides on Biodiversity and Ecosystems,”“The [ecosystemic] consequences of losing the invertebrate fauna due tocontinuous …