Blue Sky Bee Supply Blog
Honey Bee Colonies More Successful By Foraging on Non-Crop Fields
A bee gathering pollen and nectar from a helianthus flower.TUCSON, ARIZONA, March 20, 2019—Honey bee colonies foraging on land with a strong cover of clover species and alfalfa do more than three times as well than if they are put next to crop fields of sunflowers or canola, according to a study just published in Scientific Reports by an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist and his colleagues.Managed honey bee colonies placed from May until October next to land in the U.S. Department of
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10th May 2019
The Self-Grooming Behavior of Honey Bees Can Be Affected By Pesticides.
A University of Guelph study is the first to uncover the impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on honey bees’ ability to groom and rid themselves of deadly mites.The research comes as Health Canada places new limits on the use of three key neonicotinoids while it decides whether to impose a full phase-out of the chemicals.Published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, the study revealed that when honey bees are infected with varroa mites and then regularly exposed to low doses of a commonly us
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30th Apr 2019
A Key Observation Was That Orchards Fare Best When They Have a Diverse Community of Bees Flying in From Natural Habitats.
Honey bees aren’t the only pollinators of apple flowers: bumble bees, sweat bees, mason bees and many other species do, too—and the more the better, according to findings of a study recently published in the journal Science.A Cornell University-led team that included Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists found that apple orchards with diverse bee species yield more, high-quality fruit than orchards with fewer, closely related bee species. However, that production benefit hinged on what
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8th Apr 2019
Discovering the Critical Role of the Honey Bee Gut Microbiome in Health and Defense Against Parasites
Researchers from Virginia Tech were part of a collaborative $958,415 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study the host-microbiome-parasite interactions in the honey bee gut, with $750,000 coming to Virginia Tech.Researchers Lisa Belden, David Haak, T.M. Murali, and Richard Fell from Virginia Tech and Jenifer Walke from Eastern Washington University are collaborating to study the critical role of the honey bee gut microbiome in health and defense against parasites using a systems biology
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21st Mar 2019
There is a Protein in Royal Jelly that Causes Bee Stem Cells to Renew Themselves, So Queen Bees are Bigger and Contain More Cells Than Worker Bees
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
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7th Mar 2019