Washington: A recent study by researchers discovered that changes in temperature negatively impact several species of bumble bees over the past 120 years. A group of researchers revealed that change in temperature has a negative impact more than other factors- precipitation or floral resources.The research findings were published recently in Biology Letters."Bumble bees are important pollinators for wild plants and for the crops humans rely on for food. That's why we need to develop conservation strategies that account for the future impacts of climate change on bee populations," says study lead Hanna Jackson, a Masters student in the M'Gonigle Lab in biological sciences at Simon Fraser University.Jackson and her colleagues analyzed an existing dataset containing records on 46 bumble bee species across North America between 1900 - 2020. They created two occupancy models - one focused on time and the other on environmental factors - to estimate effects of climate and land-use variables on species' occupancy, a measure of where species are found. They found that six bumble bee species decreased through time, 22 increased and the remaining 18 were stable.They note that temperature and precipitation both increased, on average, between 1900 and 2020 in the post-industrial revolution period. Temperature changes had primarily negative impacts on bumble bees, with 37 of the 46 species exhibiting greater declines or less positive increases in occupancy under observed temperature changes compared to if the temperature had remained constant.Importantly, nine species of bumble bee exhibited declines that link to changing temperatures within their ranges. The team did not find patterns in the other factors that were studied, such as precipitation and only one species declined based on floral resources.In fact, both floral resources and precipitation had mixed results. Approximately half of the bumble bee species were negatively impacted by changes in precipitation or floral resources while the other half were positively impacted.Therefore, researchers conclude that changing temperatures are a major environmental factor driving changes in bumble bee community composition."Because bumble bee species likely vary in their future responses to land-use and climate change, conservation action should prioritize individual species, taking into account their unique climate and habitat preferences," adds Jackson.&nbsp;—ANI

A recent study by researchers discovered that changes in temperature negatively impact several species of bumble bees over the past 120 years.

Researchers Find Climate Change Negatively Impacts Bumble Bees

Washington: According to researchers at Queen Mary University of London, along with an international team of scientists, bumblebees don't seem to keep memories of how sweet a flower was, but instead only remember if it was sweeter than another flower.
In new research published in the journal eLife, bumblebees were first trained on two flowers, learning that one flower was sweeter than a second flower. Later, they learned that a third flower was sweeter than a fourth flower. Then bumblebees were given the choice between two of the flowers they hadn't seen together before, for example, the second and third or the first and third.
Over a series of experiments, bumblebees' preferences during the tests indicated that they could only retain very basic ranking memories for the flowers for very long. The bumblebees could only remember that a flower had been better or worse during the training phase. Bees couldn't seem to remember for more than a few minutes how sweet or rewarding the flowers were on their own or even how much sweeter they were compared to other flowers.
Previous research shows that we humans actually keep memories for both absolute information (e.g. how sweet something is) and comparisons [Palminteri and Lebreton, 2021]. Starlings, a bird native to Europe, and the only other animal for which this question has been examined, similarly use a combination of absolute and comparative information when remembering options [Pompilio and Kacelnik, 2010].
Ms Yonghe Zhou, the co-lead author of the paper and currently a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London, says: "Our results reveal an intriguing divergent mechanism for how bumblebees retain and use information about options, compared to humans and birds."
Prof Fei Peng, a senior author currently at Southern Medical University, China, states "It may be that the different strategies used by bumblebees and humans may have evolved because of their different diets. Maybe because bumblebees evolved to mostly only eat flower nectar, they never needed to remember the details and could survive and thrive simply using simple comparisons."
Ms Yonghe adds: "Despite what may seem to be a poor memory strategy, bumblebees do very well in finding the most profitable flowers. It's fascinating to consider how different animals, in their own ecological niche, can be similarly successful using such different strategies." —ANI

According to researchers at Queen Mary University of London, along with an international team of scientists, bumblebees don't seem to keep memories of how sweet a flower was, but instead only remember if it was sweeter than another flower.

Research Finds Bumblebees' Memories Are Poor But Useful

Oxford (UK): According to a recent Oxford University Press study in PNAS Nexus, agricultural chemicals like fertilisers and pesticides can alter how bees perceive a flower, which in turn decreases the number of bees that visit a flower.
For the purpose of encouraging insect eating and pollination, flowers offer a wide variety of cues and attractants. Bees can navigate the environment by using colour, the sun, and magnetic fields. They recognise plants on a smaller scale by using cues like blossom colour and odour, as well as humidity and electric fields. Large-scale spray treatments are a common practice among farmers when it comes to applying chemical combinations, particularly fertilisers, to plants.
A significant source of pollution that has been related to declines in the quantity and variety of bee populations is the extensive use of chemicals in horticulture and agriculture.
Although many of these compounds have long been known to be hazardous, little is known about how agrochemicals disrupt the direct relationship between plants and pollinators. Flowers' characteristics can change in a variety of ways when sprayed. Many chemicals used in agriculture have an electric charge that is intended to stick to plants. Therefore, spray applications may alter the electric fields that surround a flower. Thus, a key concern is whether the use of agrochemicals can skew floral cues and alter the behaviour of pollinators like bees.
Researchers here tested the effect of fertilizer sprays on various floral cues used by bees. They observed that the chemical did not affect vision and smell, but that there was a response in the electric field surrounding the flower. To visualize this, the researchers sprayed cut flowers with positively charged, coloured particles released as an aerosol.
The bio-electric potential in the stem of the flower was measured by the researchers to have a better understanding of what altered the bloom. The electromagnetic field that surrounds flowers has a significant source of this potential. The bio-electric potential was shown to be altered by chemical sprays for up to 25 minutes.
This change corresponds with reported reductions in bee-feeding attempts in nature, which last for around 20 minutes, and is significantly longer than natural fluctuations, such as those brought on by the wind. It's interesting to note that scientists found the plant responded the same way after using chemicals and a simulated rain event, showing the effect lasts longer than the duration of the chemical use. The researchers recreated the electrical alterations brought on by fertilisers in the field by electronically manipulating flowers in order to investigate if bees are indeed aware of the changes in the plant's electrical signature.
They noticed that when bumblebees were flying toward the flowers, they were less eager to settle on an electrically altered flower than they were on an unaltered control flower. This demonstrated that bumblebees are able to recognise and distinguish between the modest, dynamic electric field changes brought on by agricultural pesticides. The fact that fertilizers affect pollinator behaviour by interfering with the way an organism perceives its physical environment offers a new perspective on how human-made chemicals disturb the natural environment and emphasizes the importance of considering the seemingly hidden senses that are used by insects to understand and learn about their environment. "That fertilizers affect bee behaviour by changing the way it experiences its physical environment gives a new perspective on how humans disturb the natural environment, said the paper's lead author," Ellard Hunting. "Imagine yourself not being able to distinguish apples from tomatoes because someone sprayed some chemicals in the vegetable department. This may be relevant for all organisms that use the electric fields that are virtually everywhere in the environment.'' —ANI

According to a recent Oxford University Press study in PNAS Nexus, agricultural chemicals like fertilisers and pesticides can alter how bees perceive a flower, which in turn decreases the number of bees that visit a flower.

Research: Fertilisers Affect How Bees See Flowers

San Francisco: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved the first vaccine for honeybees, which will prevent American foulbrood disease, a fatal bacterial disease that destroys honeybee colonies.
According to CNN, USDA issued a conditional vaccine license to the US-based Diamond Animal Health company, the collaborating manufacturer for Dalan Animal Health, on December 29.
“We hope the availability of this product will aid in the prevention and/or treatment of the disease American Foulbrood in honeybees given their central role in American agriculture (eg — pollination),” USDA was quoted as saying.
The agency said that it was its “first licensure of a honeybee product”, according to the report.
On its website, the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service describes American foulbrood disease as “one of the most widespread and destructive of the honeybee brood disease”.
Moreover, Dalan’s CEO, Annette Kleiser, called the vaccine “a breakthrough in protecting honeybees”, said the report.
“Global population growth and changing climates will increase the importance of honeybee pollination to secure our food supply,” Kleiser was quoted as saying.
“We are ready to change how we care for insects, impacting food production on a global scale,” he added.
Furthermore, unlike traditional vaccines, the honeybee vaccine is not administered via a syringe. According to Dalan, it is mixed into “queen feed”, which the worker bees consume.
Dalan further mentioned that the vaccine will be available for purchase in the US in 2023, the report added. —IANS

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved the first vaccine for honeybees, which will prevent American foulbrood disease, a fatal bacterial disease that destroys honeybee colonies.

US Approves First-Ever Vaccine For Honeybees

Washington: When it comes to returning to collect additional pollen and nectar, honey bees are more devoted to their flower patches than bumble bees, according to researchers. The findings of the study were published in Ecosphere. In all, 76 per cent of honey bees in the research returned to the same lucerne flower area, compared to 47 per cent of eastern bumble bees. Size does, however, crucial, especially for bumble bees. They were more devoted to larger flower patches, but honey bees did not change their chance of returning to a flower patch based on patch size. The large patches in the research were about 15 by 15 yards in size, with 225 plants planted in each, more than twice as many as the tiny patches, which were approximately 10 by 10 yards in size and included 100 lucerne plants apiece. To remain faithful to a given spot, an insect or animal must have dependable spatial memory that allow them to navigate complicated environments and return to the same area repeatedly. Both honey and bumble bees have demonstrated this ability to return to previously visited foraging locations, so other species-specific factors must be present to explain the differences in patch fidelity observed between the two species, according to ecologist Johanne Brunet of the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wisconsin, who led the study with postdoctoral associate Fabiana Fragoso. Differences in patch fidelity could be the result of bumble bees' more explorative foraging behaviour--their willingness to invest individually in foraging, often visiting more than one type of flower per foraging bout--compared to honey bees' more highly developed communication system--the honey bees' well-known waggle dance. Honey bee foragers perform the dance when they return to the hive to share the location of valuable food sources with other foragers; bumble bees do not. "So higher patch fidelity of honey bees, relative to bumble bees, may reflect a greater aversion to risk, be it in terms of wasting energy and resources or encountering predators," Brunet said. The better our understanding of the characteristics that drive patch fidelity in important pollinators like honey bees and bumble bees, the better beekeepers, producers and conservation biologists will be able to support pollinators' health as well as uphold the essential agricultural need to have crops pollinated to produce a harvest, Brunet added. But the implications go far beyond that. For example, the pattern of pollination can have potential impacts on gene flow, the way in which gene pools of two separate populations of the same species mix. "Bumble bees' lower patch fidelity can translate into higher gene flow among the patches they visit, creating a higher probability for bumble bees to move genes longer distances," Brunet said, adding, "Higher gene flow in plant populations in the natural environment will also tend to homogenize their genetic diversity." —ANI

When it comes to returning to collect additional pollen and nectar, honey bees are more devoted to their flower patches

Researchers Discover How Honey Bees Are More Faithful To Flower Patches Than Bumble Bees

Florida: Scientists have discovered a unique method of strengthening honey bees' immune systems to help them fight lethal viruses, which have contributed to significant losses of the essential pollinator worldwide. The research team, which included entomologists from the University of Florida, the Agricultural Research Service-USDA, Louisiana State University, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, demonstrated in a new study that stimulating honey bee cells to produce free radicals helped the bees withstand a variety of viruses. In reality, in full-scale field trials, the treatment significantly decreased, and in some cases, completely eliminated, viral activity. "This approach is especially exciting because it doesn't just target a specific type of virus but helps with many different viruses," said Daniel Swale, senior author of the study. Swale is the associate director for training and special projects in the UF Emerging Pathogens Institute and associate professor in the UF/IFAS entomology and nematology department. "Additionally, we demonstrated that our treatment works both in the lab and in colonies that each contain 80,000 bees in the field. This is huge because, in a hive setting, bees are exposed to so many different viruses and stressors, so successfully controlling viruses in that environment is very encouraging," said Swale, who completed some of this research while at Louisiana State University. Honey bee colonies, and the beekeepers who manage them, play an important role in food production by pollinating many crops. In recent years, honey bee populations have seen significant declines, and viruses, while not the top cause of honey bee deaths, are among the main contributors. "Varroa mites are the number one cause of honey bee losses, but it's important to point out that varroa mites, aside from physically weakening bees, also transmit viruses to bees. If we can mitigate viruses in honey bee colonies, that would be a big step forward," said Michael Simone-Finstrom, a co-author of the study and a research molecular biologist with the ARS Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Research Lab in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In the experiment, the researchers used a compound called pinacidil to alter potassium ion channels, a protein found in the cells of bees' and most living things. Altering these channels produced slightly more free radicals. "While free radicals are often bad for cell health, in moderate amounts they can be therapeutic, as we see in this study. In this case, the additional free radicals signal to the immune system to ramp up, which helps the bees fight off viruses," said Troy Anderson, a co-author of the paper and a professor of entomology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The scientists administered the drug to honey bee colonies by mixing it into sugar water and drizzling the water over the honey comb at night. The bees then consumed the sugar water and fed it to their young. During the day, bees are constantly moving in an out of the hive, so giving them the treatment at night maximizes the number of bees that will receive it. The treatment protected bees from six potentially deadly honey bee viruses: Israeli acute paralysis virus, deformed wing viruses A and B, black queen cell virus and Lake Sinai viruses 1 and 2. The researchers also showed that pinacidil helped more bees survive in colonies heavily infested with varroa mites. Administering pinacidil to commercial honey bee hives may only be feasible for some beekeepers, the researchers said, but the study opens the door to identifying other active ingredients that may work better and cost less. "One of the big take-aways from this study is that potassium ion channels can be a target for improving immune system function in honey bees and possibly other insects. We would like to find a molecule, such as a peptide, or a new technology that has the same effect as pinacidil but is more accessible to beekeepers," Swale said. —ANI

Scientists have discovered a unique method of strengthening honey bees' immune systems to help them fight lethal viruses

Immune-Boosting Therapy Helps Honey Bees Fight Viruses: Study

Washington: According to a new study warmer springs are causing bees to awaken earlier, threatening the pollination of crops such as apples and pears. The research was published in Ecology and Evolution.   The study, which is thought to be the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom, discovered that for every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature caused by climate change, wild bees, such as bumblebees, emerge from their nests 6.5 days earlier on average. As spring arrives earlier and bees emerge earlier in the year, they may lose sync with the plants on which they rely, implying that there will be less food for them to consume. This means that bees may not have enough energy to pollinate crops effectively or may completely miss crop blossom. Ph.D. researcher Chris Wyver, of the University of Reading's School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, who led the study, said: "Rising temperatures are making life tougher for bees. Warmer conditions mean bees emerge from hibernation earlier, but there may not be enough food to provide energy for them when they start buzzing about.   "Matching wake-up dates with plant flowering is vital for newly emerged bees because they need to find pollen and nectar to increase their chances of survival and produce offspring. A mismatch means bees cannot pollinate effectively." "Less natural pollination could lead to farmers needing to use managed honeybees, meaning greater costs, which may be passed on to consumers. We could see even more expensive apples, pears and vegetables in supermarkets as a result." The study examined 88 different species of wild bees over a period of 40 years, using more than 350,000 individual recordings that showed shifts in emergence dates, both over time and in relation to temperature. Data showed that some bees emerge earlier than others as different species of bee respond differently to the changing temperature. On average, 88 species are emerging 4 days earlier per decade. With winters projected to be between 1 and 4.5°C warmer and up to 30 per cent wetter by 2070, according to the Met Office, spring is likely to continue to start earlier and bees will continue to become active earlier in the year. (ANI)

According to a new study warmer springs are causing bees to awaken earlier, threatening the pollination of crops

Warmer springs are causing bees to wake up earlier: Study

Washington DC: Trees should be pollinated by both honey bees and mason bees for the best cherry harvest. A recent study performed by a University of Gothenburg professor demonstrates yet another advantage of biodiversity. Like many other fruit trees, most sweet cherry cultivars depend on cross-pollination to produce their fruit. This means that there need to be several different cultivars of sweet cherry trees in an orchard for the bees to transport pollen from one to another. “Sweet cherry trees are usually planted in alternate rows of different cultivars. In some cases, you can put different cultivars in the same row, but this can make the harvesting logistics tricky. In other words, the bees have to fly from one row of trees to the next to ensure that the trees set fruit,” says Julia Osterman, a biologist at the University of Gothenburg and lead author of the study published in the scientific journal Ecology and Evolution.  Two bee species produce a synergy effect Working with German researcher colleagues at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Julia Osterman found that if trees were pollinated by more than one bee species, they produced more cherries. The researchers observed bees in a total of 17 cherry orchards in eastern Germany. Some growers used honey bees in hives as pollinators, while others used wild mason bees. Some orchards used both species to different extents. The researchers noticed a synergy effect in those orchards in which both species of bee were present. “It had an impact on the sweet cherry fruit set. The orchards with honey bees and lots of mason bees could have cherries on up to 70 per cent of the blossom. In orchards with only honey bees or only mason bees as pollinators the rate could be as low as 20 per cent,” says Julia Osterman. Many growers were already using two species of bees, often as a back-up if the weather was too cold for the honey bees when the cherry trees were in bloom, as cherries flower early. Honey bees only become active once the temperature is above 12°C, but mason bees can cope with lower temperatures. The sharp increase in fruiting occurred when both species were active. The researchers are now speculating on the reasons for this. Bamboo sticks as nest material “One theory is that the presence of mason bees affects the foraging behaviour of honey bees,” says Julia Osterman. “This disturbs them and so they change rows more often, resulting in more cross-pollination. But all we know at the moment is that interaction between the bees produces a synergy effect.” Of course, this is valuable data for cherry growers who can attract wild mason bees to their orchards by providing good nest material. “Mason bees are solitary and don’t make honey in honeycombs like honey bees,” Julia Osterman explains. “They are more focused on collecting pollen to feed their offspring. They like to crawl into tube-shaped spaces where they can lay their eggs. Fruit growers can encourage mason bees to nest in their orchards by placing bamboo or wood with holes drilled in it at the site. However, it only seems to work up to a certain limit, after which you won’t attract any more mason bees, no matter how much nest material you bring in.” Similar results have been observed in almond orchards and Julia Osterman’s next step will be to investigate whether this synergy effect applies to other fruit trees, as well as, try to determine exactly how the two bee species are affecting each other. —ANI

Trees should be pollinated by both honey bees and mason bees for the best cherry harvest. A recent study performed by a University of Gothenburg

Pollination By Multiple Bee Species Improves Cherry Harvest: Research

Chamarajanagar (Karnataka): One person died and 14 others were admitted to a hospital following an attack by forest bees during the cremation of a body in the Kongarahalli village of Karnataka's Chamarajanagar district, said officials on Monday.
The deceased was identified as 60-year-old Chennappa, a resident of the village. The injured were admitted to the Holycross hospital. One of the injured persons was critical.
According to police, the incident took place on Sunday late in the evening during the funeral of a woman. The swarm of forest bees attacked the people gathered for the funeral as soon as the funeral pyre was lit.
A beehive was located close to the cremation spot, and the bees attacked the people gathered for cremation. The people ran helter-skelter following the attack. Chennappa sustained severe injuries during the attack and succumbed on the way to hospital.
—IANS

One person died and 14 others were admitted to a hospital following an attack by forest bees during the cremation of a body

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Researchers Find Climate Change Negatively Impacts Bumble Bees

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Researchers Find Climate Change Negatively Impacts Bumble Bees

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