official-bee-posts

[official-bee-posts]

Official saved the bumblebees post! 🐝

@beepostsdaily

"A Scottish field once home to mono-crop barley has become a pollinator’s paradise after intervention from a local trust saw bumblebee numbers increase 100-fold.

Entitled Rewilding Denmarkfield, and run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the project has also seen a sharp increase in the number of species passing through the rolling meadows after they were reclaimed by dozens of wildflower species.

The area north of Perth is about 90 acres in size, and surveys of bumblebees before the project began rarely recorded more than 50. But by 2023, just two years of letting “nature take the lead” that number has topped 4,000, with the number of different bee species doubling.

“This superb variety of plants attracts thousands of pollinators. Many of these plants, such as spear thistle and smooth hawk’s beard, are sometimes branded as ‘weeds’. But they are all native species that are benefiting native wildlife in different ways,” Ecologist Ellie Corsie, who has been managing the project since it began in 2021, said.

“Due to intensive arable farming, with decades of plowing, herbicide, and pesticide use, biodiversity was incredibly low when we started. Wildlife had largely been sanitized from the fields. Rewilding the site has had a remarkable benefit.”

Similar increases have been recorded in the populations of butterflies, with a tripling in the number of these insects seen on average during a ramble through the field.

The numbers of both insects are now so high that Rewilding Denmarkfield offers bee and butterfly safaris to visitors.

Local residents told the Scotsman that on spring and summer days, the field is awash with color, and hums with the sounds of bees and birds. Even as multiple housing developments expand around the Denmarkfield area, the field is a haven for wildlife."

-via Good News Network, December 2, 2024

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee post!

Can I request some silly medieval bugs?

HELL YEAH BROTHER LET’S GO

ants from my beloved harley ms 3244 folio 50r

bees from the aberdeen bestiary folio 63r

scorpions from harley 3244

woims also from harley 3244

and, last but not least, this incredibly literal stag beetle from Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 16169 (De animalibus), folio 331v

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee post

hey what insects make honey

bees

[official-bee-posts]

Official beekeeping post!! 🐝 🐝

“don’t eat honey because it exploits the bees and they can’t consent!!!” bees are literally unionized and will walk out if they don’t like being in the beekeeper’s hives

[official-bee-posts]

Official bumblebee post 🐝

Now that I've figured this one out no one can stop me! A newborn being handfed sugar solution, which it seems quite pleased with given the grooming

[official-bee-posts]

Official Christmas Bee Post! 🎄🐝

it crimmus

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee board post! 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝

Hihihi hello do you think you could do a stimboard for bees?

!!Bee Stimboard!!

1--2--3--4--5--6--7--8--9

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee movie post! 🐝

Bee Movie (2007) dir. Simon J. Smith & Steve Hickner X-Men: First Class (2011) dir. Matthew Vaughn

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee post 🐝

[official-bee-posts]

Official baby bumblebee post!! 🐝 🐝 🐝

@onenicebugperday

Didn't manage to add this in a ask and had to cut a few minutes of it here also, but here's one of the bbees I reared this summer being born! They are born without the yellow pigment, which slowly spreads to the stripes within the first day of life. You can tell that the big sister that came to help by gnawing the opening in the comb a bit bigger is not that much older, maybe up to half a day max. They are virtually helpless and very docile and usually hide under the comb until their wings get their proper rigor and their legs gain rudimentary coordination. At this age they won't even sting. I can't recall the exact species here, and the options are almost impossible to ID reliably without DNA-analysis in the absence of drones, but I'm pretty sure this is a Bombus cryptarum nest. The workers in this nest are around the average size, but we also had nests where the workers were the same size as the queen and some that (sadly) only produced workers that were under half a centimeter long.

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee post! 🐝 With bonus bee-mimicking moth!

The Oriental Blue Clearwing Moth: these moths were regarded as a "lost species" for more than 130 years, until they were finally sighted again in 2013

For more than 130 years, the Oriental blue clearwing moth (Heterosphecia tawonoides) was known only from a single, badly damaged specimen that was collected in Sumatra in 1887. There were no recorded sightings of this species again until 2013, when entomologist Dr. Marta Skowron Volponi unexpectedly found the moths feeding on salt deposits that had accumulated along the riverbanks in Malaysia's lowland rainforest.

These moths were observed by researchers again in 2016 and 2017, and research indicates that the moths are actually bee-mimics, as they mimic the appearance, sound, behavior, and flight patterns of local bees. Their fuzzy, bright blue appearance might seem a little out of place for a bee-mimic, but those features do appear in several different bee species throughout Southeast Asia.

When the moths are in flight, they bear a particularly strong resemblance to the bees of the genus Thyreus (i.e. cuckoo bees, otherwise known as cloak-and-dagger bees), several of which are also bright blue, with banded markings, dark blue wings, fuzzy legs, and smooth, rounded antennae. The physical resemblance is compounded by the acoustic and behavioral mimicry that occurs when the moths are in flight.

Cloak-and-Dagger Bees: the image at the top shows an Indo-Malayan cloak-and-dagger bee (Thyreus novaehollandiae) in a sleeping position, holding itself upright with its mandibles clamped onto a twig, while the image at the bottom shows a Himalayan cloak-and-dagger bee (T. himalayensis) resting in the same position

The moths also engage in "mud-puddling" among the various bees that congregate along the riverbanks; mud-puddling is the process whereby an insect (usually a bee or a butterfly) draws nutrients from the fluids found in puddles, wet sand, decaying plant matter, carrion, animal waste, sweat, tears, and/or blood. According to researchers, the Oriental blue clearwing moth was the only lepidopteran that was seen mud-puddling among the local bees.

Dr. Skowron Volponi commented on the unusual appearance and behavior of these moths:

You think about moths and you envision a grey, hairy insect that is attracted to light. But this species is dramatically different—it is beautiful, shiny blue in sunlight and it comes out during the day; and it is a master of disguise, mimicking bees on multiple levels and even hanging out with them. The Oriental blue clearwing is just two centimeters in size, but there are so many fascinating things about them and so much more we hope to learn.

This species is still incredibly vulnerable, as it faces threats like deforestation, pollution, and climate change. The president of Global Wildlife Conservation, which is an organization that seeks to rediscover "lost species," added:

After learning about this incredible rediscovery, we hope that tourists visiting Taman Negara National Park and picnicking on the riverbanks—the home of these beautiful clearwing moths—will remember to tread lightly and to take their trash out of the park with them. We also recommend that Americans learn about palm oil production, which is one of the primary causes of deforestation in Malaysia.

Sources & More Info:

Phys.org: Bee-Mimicking Clearwing Moth Buzzes Back to Life After 130 Years

Mongabay News: Moth Rediscovered in Malaysia Mimics Appearance and Behavior of Bees to Escape Predators

Journal of Tropical Conservation Science: Lost Species of Bee-Mimicking Clearwing Moth, H. tawonoides, Rediscovered in Peninsular Malaysia's Primary Rainforest

Frontiers in Zoology: Southeast Asian Clearwing Moths Buzz like their Model Bees

Royal Society Publishing: Moving like a Model - mimicry of hymenopteran flight trajectories by clearwing moths of Southeast Asian rainforests

Medium: Rediscovery in a Glint of Blue

re:wild.org: The "Search for Lost Species" Project

[official-bee-posts]

@bees-official @fistfuls-of-bees @irespondbees

Official invitations to the hive 🐝

@beepostsdaily @good-bee-recommendations

We should start a hive!

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee post!

i make a bee <3

[official-bee-posts]

Official bumblebear post!! 🐝🐻

Bumblebear

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee post! 🐝

This is the second year for my backyard cup plant. It started as a giant mystery stalk which must have sprouted from a wildflower mix scattered a year or two earlier.

Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) is not native in Arizona, and can be invasive in some settings. But it likes steady water, so it seems to stay put in the flower bed and draw every bee, butterfly, and tiny creature from miles around.

This is all one large plant, which generated hundreds of flowers in July and August. I love it to distraction.

Cochise County, Arizona, July 2024.

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee post

everyone please admire this genital dissection i did today while trying to identify this male longhorn bee. i avoided doing these for the longest time but it really is the only way to reliably ID a huge chunk of bee species. i spent like an hour trying to key this guy out using external morphological features but it only took about 10 seconds once i yanked his crazy little hog out and compared it against the big chart of bee dicks. he's a Eucera amsinckiae.

[official-bee-posts]

Official bee post 🐝

photo: David Castenson