tagged w/ honey bee
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Scientists remain stymied as honeybees in the United States and across the world continue to die in large numbers.
Lately there seems to be a lot of talk about bees, honey bees in particular. In recent years, there has been a drastic and mysterious die-off of honey bee colonies. Although not unusual in the bee business, this latest decline in populations has many people talking.
Although there is an increasing demand for pollination services, the number of honey bee colonies has dropped to about 2.5 million from more than 4 million in the 1970′s. There are several reasons as to why this may be happening: loss of habitat, pesticide use, unspecified fungal diseases or mite infestations.
Scientists now believe that much of the decline is due to Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, which refers to the unexplained disappearance and dying off of honey bee colonies. Little is known about CCD, and that has many beekeepers, farmers and the general public worried.
“There are a lot of beekeepers who are in trouble” said David Mendes, president of the American Beekeeping Federation. “Under normal condition you have 10 percent winter losses … this year there are 30, 40 to 50 percent losses.”
For many years, beekeepers have been plagued by colony collapse disorder, in which formerly healthy bees abruptly vanish from their hives. The number of beehives in the United States dropped 32 percent in 2007, another 36 percent in 2008 and still another 29 percent in 2009.
A number of explanations for the phenomenon have been suggested, including diseases, parasites, malnutrition, but toxic chemicals are emerging as a major concern among beekeepers.
READ MORE: http://morichesdaily.com/2010/08/scientists-stunned-bee-populations-continue-decline/Scientists remain stymied as honeybees in the United States and across the world... more
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We are all familiar with the fact that cognitive function declines as we get older. Moreover, recent studies have shown that the specific kind of daily activities we engage in during the course of our lives appears to influence the extent of this decline. A team of researchers from Technische Universität Berlin are studying how division of labor among honey bees affects their learning performance as they age.
Surprisingly, they have found that, by switching their social role, aging honey bees can keep their learning ability intact or even improve it. The scientists are planning to use them as a model to study general aging processes in the brain, and they even hope that they may provide some clues on how to prevent them. Dr. Ricarda Scheiner, leader of the research team, will present these findings at the Society of Experimental Biology Annual Meeting in Glasgow on July 1st 2009.
The oldest bees in a colony are the foragers - a task that demands a high amount of energy. With increasing foraging duration, their capacity for associative learning was found to decrease. On the other hand, no decline was observed in nurse bees that remain inside the hive taking care of the brood and the queen, even though their age was the same as that of their foraging sisters. When the scientists artificially forced a subset of these foragers to revert to nursing tasks, they discovered that their learning performance improved again, demonstrating a remarkable plasticity in their brain circuits.
"The honey bee is a great model", explains Dr. Scheiner, "because we can learn a lot about social organization from it and because it allows us to revert individuals into a 'younger' stage. If we remove all of the nurse bees of a colony, some of the foragers will revert to nursing behavior and their brains become 'young' again. We thus hope to study the mechanisms responsible for age-dependent effects, like oxidative damage, and also to discover new ways to act against these aging processes."We are all familiar with the fact that cognitive function declines as we get older.... more
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It's the size of your thumb and it can spray flesh-melting poison. We really wish we were making that up for, you know, dramatic effect because goddamn, what a terrible thing a three-inch acid-shooting hornet would be, you know? Oh, hey, did we mention it shoots it into your eyes? Or that the poison also has a pheromone cocktail in it that'll call every hornet in the hive to come over and sting you until you are no longer alive?
Think you can outrun it? It can fly 50 miles in a day. It'd be nice to say something reassuring at this point, like "Don't worry, they only live on top of really tall mountains where nobody wants to live," but no, they live all over the goddamned place, including outside Tokyo.
Forty people die like that every year, each of them horribly.It's the size of your thumb and it can spray flesh-melting poison. We really wish... more
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The Native Village website does stories on Native Village youth and education. Each month this unique website puts out an issue of news about Native youth.
http://www.nativevillage.org
In the November 2008 issue, Native Village takes an extensive look at the Zaagkii Wings & Seeds Project in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
The Zaagkii Project thanks and honors Native Village and its Editor Gina Boltz for the excellent story and all the work and effort that went into creating the impressive layout.
To contact Native Village staff or for more info, please email:
NativeVillage500@aol.com
Native Village is a supporter of the Link Center Foundation:
http://www.linkcenterfoundation.org
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This summer, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) youth and Marquette, MI teens built the first of dozens of butterfly houses and planted 26,000 native plants that help pollinators thrive.
The three-year project is important because bees are disappearing around the world at a shocking rate.
It's called Colony Collapse Disorder and the cause is unknown although human impact is suspected.
If all the world's bees disappear - all plant and human life will vanish in about 4 years.
The second biggest pollinator are butterflies - and that's why the Zaagkii Project is protecting butterflies and teaching youth about bees.
The Zaagkii Project contributors include the Marquette Community Foundation, the Negaunee Community Fund, the Negaunee Community Youth Fund, the M.E. Davenport Foundation, the Kaufman Foundation, the Phyllis and Max Reynolds Foundation, with assistance from the Upper Peninsula Children's Museum in Marquette and the Borealis Seed Company in Big Bay.
The Zaagkii Project was founded by the non-profit Cedar Tree Institute (CTI) in Marquette whose other environment projects have included wild rice restoration (Manoomin Project) and Earth Day hazardous waste collections (Earth Keeper Clean Sweep).
The Zaagkii Project is sponsored by the KBIC, CTI, Marquette County Juvenile Court and the United States Forest Service (USFS).
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Keweenaw Bay Indian Community:
http://www.kbic-nsn.gov
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Rev. Jon Magnuson, Zaagkii Wings and Seeds founder & Executive Director of non-profit Cedar Tree Institute
906-228-5494
http://www.cedartreeinstitute.org
CTI volunteer media advisor Greg Peterson:
906-401-0109
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Jan Schultz, Botany & Non-native Invasive Species Program Leader
USFS Milwaukee, WI
(414) 297-1189
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Terry Miller, forest botanist
Hiawatha National Forest
Escanaba, MI.
906-789-3319
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Deb LeBlanc, WestSide Plant Ecologist
Hiawatha National Forest
Munising, MI
906-387-2512 ext. 19
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Marquette County Juvenile Court:
http://www.co.marquette.mi.us/probate.htm
http://www.co.marquette.mi.us/courts.htm
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Upper Peninsula Children's Museum
http://www.upcmkids.org/
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Monarch Watch::
http://monarchwatch.org
Monarch Author Lynn M. Rosenblatt
http://www.monarchbutterflyusa.com/Magic.htmThe Native Village website does stories on Native Village youth and education. Each... more
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"One year ago, the world was transfixed by the unexplained collapse of honeybee colonies in North America and Europe. Doom was predicted for entire sectors of global agriculture. And then we forgot about it.
Perhaps "forgot" is a bit harsh; the public's attention simply shifted, as is natural, and grocery store shelves are still stocked. But that doesn't mean Colony Collapse Disorder has gone away. On the contrary, as a recent spate of one-year-later news stories show, bee colonies suffered an unusually high winter die-off; beekeepers are scrambling to sustain colonies; and nobody's yet figured out what's killing the bees, but the causes may be many and intertwined: viruses, pesticides, stress, fungus, parasites.
Exacerbating the problem is the nature of modern beekeeping. If any lesson stuck in our collective consciousness after last summer's concerns, it's of the reliance of U.S. agriculture on commercial beekeepers and the reality of beekeeping as an industry that's no more natural than a high-density feedlot. For a description of these conditions and a nice roundup of the story until now, read this Guardian article by Alison Benjamin, co-author of A World Without Bees.""One year ago, the world was transfixed by the unexplained collapse of honeybee... more
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