beeinformed-blog1

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Time for Spring & honey bee bling!🐝@followthehoney 🌷 #BeeAmour #beeinspired #glow #bee #sweet #honey #bangles #bling #handmade #gifts #foryourhoney #anyoccasion #entrepreneurs #elegant #weship #wedeliver #love #Boston #CambMA 💖 #FollowTheHoney

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Bee studies stir up pesticide debate

The threat that neonicotinoids pose to bees becomes clearer. The case for restricting a controversial family of insecticides is growing. Two studies published on 22 April in Nature1, 2 address outstanding questions about the threat that the chemicals pose to bees, and come as regulators around the world gear up for a fresh debate on pesticide restrictions.

Continue Reading.

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I love bees and wasps and I wish I could convince people they aren’t gonna just sting ya. They will if you swat and harass them but normally they just want some of that pop or sugary food. This babe was stuck in my house so I coaxed her on my hand and she stayed there for a bit. Also bee kisses are the best

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What can I do about the ants in my kitchen?

“My response comes from the heart: Watch your step, be careful of little lives. They especially like honey, tuna, and cookie crumbs. So put down bits of those on the floor, and watch closely from the moment the first scout finds the bait and reports back to her colony by laying an odor trail. As a little column follows her out to the food, you will see social behavior so strange it might be on another planet. Think of the kitchen ants not as pests or bugs, but as your personal guest superorganisms.”

-Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, 2014

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shrinking hexagon

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This is one of the largest living organisms on Earth.

Stretching across more than 100 acres of land in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah is what is considered one of the largest (by area) and most massive living organisms on earth—a vast group of quaking aspens dubbed “Pando,” which is Latin for “I spread.” Though the patchy forest looks like it consists of different trees, the tall trunks are actually all genetic clones, according to Jennifer DeWoody, a geneticist for the USDA Forest Service.

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Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a bee? With this new exhibit, you can….sort of.

http://www.laweekly.com/arts/whats-its-like-to-be-a-bee-this-exhibit-will-help-you-find-out-5422111

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HONEY pendants are now available on the site! Made from bronze/brass with beautiful hand-carved ~25 million year old Chiapas amber hexagon inlays. I have just a handful of them cast at the moment, and each will be made to suit with your choice of amber color (mixed shown). https://onetribe.nu/honey-pendant-bronze-chiapas-amber

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“Dog-bee” (Trigona spinipes)

…a species of stingless bee (Trigona spp.) which  is known to occur in Brazil. T. spinipes will build nests on a variety of areas, including trees and even human structures, with colonies averaging 5,00-100,000 individuals. Like other bee colonies, colonies of T. spinipes will gather nectar, to the point where they are considered an agricultural pest on many crops, including passion fruit. 

Classification

Animalia-Arthropoda-Insecta-Hymenoptera-Apidae-Trigona-T. spinipes

Image: Jose Reynaldo da fonesca

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I’ve decided to buy my own hive.  I worked all winter painting and preparing for this weekend.  We installed 4 lbs of Italian Bees and a queen. Here are the series of pictures from this family day.  Enjoy! (part 1)

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A Top Bar Honeybee Hive (a.k.a. the “Honey Cow”)

I’ve been building all sorts of beneficial insect habitats and hotels over the past few months, as I finish installing a food forest design. One of the last components of this little edible ecosystem I am going to add is a top bar beehive.

This subset of beehive designs is one of the oldest modes of beekeeping, and mimics the way bees build their combs in nature. A beeswax-coated bar is placed over a protected cavity, and the bees build the rest in the form of the vessel.

Short top-bar hive from Greece, as depicted in 1682: Wikimedia Commons

It is both a productive, and apicentric mode of beekeeping. Designs can be adapted to account for what materials are locally available, and the system can thrive with little to no upkeep. 

An interpretation of “The Honey Cow,” by James Satterfield in Canton, Georgia, USA

My father-in-law works at the municipal recycling station, so I am going to try build a simple small top bar hive with a window, using what recycled materials and timber he can find for the project. After which time, I just need to come into some European Honeybees!

Images:  Medina Beekeepers User: Mike Rossander/Adventures with a Top-Bar Hive; Talking with Bees

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A London Street Artist Paints Swarms of Bees on Urban Walls to Raise Awareness of Colony Collapse Disorder

Street artist Louis Masai Michel is on a one-man mission to raise awareness of the plight of the humble honey bee through his Save the Bees mural project . The murals began shortly after Michel returned from a trip to South Africa where he was painting endagered animals, when he began to learn about about bees and the grave implications of colony collapse disorder. He immediately set out to paint a series of murals incorporating bees on walls around London in May of last year, but the endeavor proved wildly popular and has since spread to Bristol, Devon, Glastonbury, Croatia, New York, Miami, and New Orleans.       Michel is currently taking a break from bees to open a show of unrelated artwork at Lollipop Gallery later next month, but plans are in the making for a phase two sometime next year. You can see more of his bee work in this gallery.

We learned about this Michel’s #SavetheBees work through a collaboration between Sony’s #FutureofCities project and photographer Abbie Trayler-Smith who has been documenting urban beekeeping in London. You can read a short interview with her here.

Colossal

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3/22/15

Halictus- Sweat bee.

This little guy couldn’t fly so I brought him in let him clean up and rest. Took him back out and he flew away. :)

https://youtu.be/a5FOQZgUcus

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Little wooly bear trucking along!

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I came home from a long day in the lab to find this beautiful animal waiting for me in tupperware. Does your boyfriend catch and leave you lovely black widows? I didn’t think so.. that’s what I call romance.

This is actually ecologically exciting too- I’ve recently been rather sad because of the recent decline of these beneficial native spiders (brown widows seem to be displacing them), so she was a pleasant and more rare find nowadays…

Now, what shall I name her?

Give a dollar to spider research here.

Update: her name is Julia

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Dance of the Honeybees in motion