Colony Size Drives Honey Bees’ Overwinter Survival
Research in Pennsylvania shows that overall colony weight and the number of worker bees to be the leading factors in determining overwintering survival of honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies. For colonies in which the combined weight of adult bees, brood, and food stores exceeded 30 kilograms, overwinter survival rates were about 94 percent.
Mixing It Up: Mixed-Crop Fields Can Boost Natural Biocontrol of Insect Pests
A new study shows that growing a variety of crops in the same field increases local insect diversity and even improves the ratio of natural-enemy insects to pest insects.
Cuckoo Bumble Bees: What We Can Learn From Their Cheating Ways (If They Don’t Go Extinct First)
Learning how cuckoo bumble bees cheat the eusocial system can tell scientists a lot about how insect sociality evolves and how hosts and parasites coevolve. But, as other bees face declines, cuckoo bees will only get more difficult to study.
Why Smoking Soothes the Stressed-Out Bee Hive
A new study that explores the effect of smoke on honey bee (Apis mellifera) behavior finds that it reduces the instance of bees releasing a venom droplet in their signaling of danger to other bees, which researchers speculate may thereby reduce the amount of alarm pheromone released.