And in other insect-related news...

There's a fascinating new study out on how serotonin (a mood-regulating chemical found in the human brain, as well as in other animals and even mushrooms) triggers swarming behavior in locusts. As a bee-lover and a once and future Swarm Catcher, I'm always eager to read about the fascinating phenomenon of swarming.

Check out the story on National Public Radio.

Read the Press Release (dated 1/29/09) from the American Association for the Advancement of Science entitled Serotonin Brings Locusts Together.

Learn more about that fascinating substance, serotonin.

And, while you're at it, get the real dirt on how soil-borne bacteria can spark the production of serotonin and turn us all into "happy campers."

Surprise, Surprise! Pesticides Toxic to Honeybees Found in Pollen

A new report from researchers at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station has found 37 different types of pesticides in the pollen collected by honeybees in several sites in Connecticut. The research took place in 2007 and is now available in summarized form as a PowerPoint document.

The researchers found the following in the pollen samples they collected from the bee hives:

• 15 different insecticides and acaricides (acaricides—a.k.a. "miticides" are used to treat Varroa mite)...
• 11 fungicides...
• 10 herbicides...
• 1 plant-growth regulator...

& (sing it with me!) a profoundly poisoned partridge in a pear tree.

The researchers state that "...insecticides highly toxic to honeybees are...found in pollen frequently or at high levels." As we used to say back in the 1970s, gag me with a spoon.

And while we're on the unpleasant and urgent topic of how we're screwing our precious honeybees with our overuse of pesticides and what-all, check out this undated document entitled, Protecting Honeybees from Pesticide Poisoning.

Help Legalize Beekeeping in New York City

If you live in or around New York City, now's your chance to help promote the legalization of beekeeping here in the Big (inadequately pollinated) Apple.

Just Food has been working hard on dual fronts (NYC Dept. of Health & Mental Hygiene and the City Council) to get beekeeping legalized here in NYC, just as it is in several other major U.S. cities.

Sign the petition. (I believe that, once enough signatures are collected, the petition will be circulated to the City Council and perhaps NYCDOHMH during this critical period when the current laws pertaining to beekeeping are under active review).

Learn more and download a factsheet on the many benefits of urban beekeeping by visiting the Just Food website.

Apis Abacus

A newly published study entitled Number-based Visual Generalisation in the Honeybee finds that honeybees can count, setting them apart from many other animals and (as far as we know) all other invertebrates. Here's the abstract:

Although the numerical abilities of many vertebrate species have been investigated in the scientific literature, there are few convincing accounts of invertebrate numerical competence. Honeybees, Apis mellifera, by virtue of their other impressive cognitive feats, are a prime candidate for investigations of this nature. We therefore used the well-established delayed match-to-sample paradigm, to test the limits of honeybees' ability to match two visual patterns solely on the basis of the shared number of elements in the two patterns. Using a y-maze, we found that bees can not only differentiate between patterns containing two and three elements, but can also use this prior knowledge to differentiate three from four, without any additional training. However, bees trained on the two versus three task could not distinguish between higher numbers, such as four versus five, four versus six, or five versus six. Control experiments confirmed that the bees were not using cues such as the colour of the exact configuration of the visual elements, the combined area or edge length of the elements, or illusory contours formed by the elements. To our knowledge, this is the first report of number-based visual generalisation by an invertebrate.

Read the entire study on honeybee counting or check out this user-friendly summary of the research on the Science News website.

Profile of a NYC Beekeeper

Wending my way around the Internets on this grey and not-so-snowy morn, I came upon a gem by artist Zina Saunders: a portrait of/interview with urban beekeeper David Graves, an individual who will be familiar to anyone who spends time at the Union Square Farmer's Market here in NYC.

If you like this piece, check out the artist's amazing series on Overlooked New Yorkers. This terrific series includes portraits/interviews featuring city knights, subway musicians, bike messengers, rooftop pigeon guys, mushroom hunters, scuba divers, amateur astronomers, and many other fascinating urbanites nurturing cool obsessions.

Articles of Interest

Sunday morning = catching-up-on-reading-day. Here are a few recent (and not so recent) gems on various topics, from bees to brains, oceans to dirt, that I recommend checking out:

A Low-Tech Treatment for Bee Plague.

Natural Settings Help Brain Fatigue.

Bad News for Oceans...and Us.

How Dirt Does Right by Us.

NYC Beekeepers Have a Great New Hive!

Yesterday's meeting of the NYC Beekeepers Association had a great crowd and featured excellent presentations on the presence of pesticides in honey, a lively discussion of some of the issues surrounding the ongoing "mystery" of Colony Collapse Disorder, and the impressive efforts of Just Foods to make beekeeping legal in New York City (it's perfectly legal in many other U.S. cities, including Chicago and San Francisco).

You can take action to help legalize beekeeping in New York City by visiting Just Foods' Food & Farm Issues page.

And while you're at it, join forces with an exciting new group of urban beekeepers, environmentalists, gardeners, and freelance bee-lovers by becoming a member of the NYC Beekeepers Association. The organization is offering beginner workshops in urban beekeeping and an urban beekeeping mentoring program in February and March, so sign up for the e-newsletter while you're visiting the site.

A Haiku

Doing a bit of desperately needed office-cleanup today and found this little haiku offering, which I wrote last May:

Sunset Park subway:
A bumblebee checks me out
We see eye to eye

Humans to Trees: Drop Dead

This from an article in the New York Times entitled, Environment Blamed in Western Tree Deaths:

"Rising temperatures and the resulting drought are causing trees in the Western United States to die off at more than twice the pace they did a few decades ago, a new study has found."

Of course, the environmental issues contributing to the trees' problems—drought, rising temperatures, extended summer weather—might just possibility have something to do with human behavior. So I'd have framed the headline somewhat differently; it seems the environment is being wrongly accused here.

A Sanity-Friendly Presidency

Already I am delighted. Not in there two days, and Obama's already frozen publication of all the Bush administration's 11th hour attacks on our ecosystem, meaning that these rules can now be reviewed in light of a few new factors, such as science, evidence, democracy, and something other than perverse hostility toward the environment upon which our lives depend.

The move was announced today by the Center for Biological Diversity, with details provided here and here.

The Center's website also describes Sarah Palin's latest anti-environmental bitchfest (hint: this time she's going after Beluga whales).

Team Beek vs. Team Orange

Read all about it here.

More in the Ongoing Saga About Australian Honeybee Imports

The Associated Press reports a little story today headlined, "Beekeepers fear sting of imported Australian hives."

I can't pretend to possess the expertise (omniscience?) to know whether or not honeybee imports from Australia are a good idea or a disaster waiting to happen, but I strongly suspect that the USDA cannot be trusted to do a thorough job of anything, so one is hardly put at ease by reading about the "measures" they're taking to ensure a safe, appropriate process in authorizing these imports. (Anyone remember the failures of surveillance and regulatory protection surrounding the Mad Cow Disease scandal a few years back?)

Read all about it here, on the New York Times site.

Gov. to Moot Zoos?

Beekeepers/Barcelona

Wren and I will be going to Barcelona in a few weeks. Does anyone know any beekeepers in the area? We'll also be in the Priorat region. We would be delighted to meet some beekeepers and see some apiaries while we are there. Any leads are greatly appreciated.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Worrisome News from Hawaii

The latest "Catch the Buzz" missive from Bee Culture brings the following depressing/distressing news to our in-box, via Honolulu Star Bulletin article by Rod Thompson:

HILO » The state Department of Agriculture is warning Big Island residents not to eat wild honey collected within five miles of Hilo Harbor during the next three weeks while it attempts to eradicate varroa mites.

The mites are tiny, spider-like parasites that infect honeybees.
Since the mites were first detected on the Big Island on Aug. 20, officials have made several unsuccessful attempts to eradicate them, said Lyle Wong, head of the state Plant Industry Division.

Following those failures, the department is now setting out 200 baiting stations with low concentrations of an insecticide called fipronil, he said.

Fipronil has been widely used since 1996 in many crop and noncrop applications, Wong said. To use it to kill infected bees, the Department of Agriculture had to declare a special 15-day "crisis exemption" from restrictions on fipronil by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Wong said.

If bees near the harbor are not killed, the parasitic mites could spread to the entire island and cause a crash in the wild bee population.

In New Zealand and parts of the United States, varroa mites have caused the disappearance of more than 90 percent of wild bees.

A great deal of agriculture depends on bees for pollination. If wild ones are gone, professional beekeepers can provide services with "managed hives," but that adds cost to agricultural production, Wong said.

Commercial beekeeping in Hawaii, which includes honey production and the raising of queen bees for sale around the world, is valued at $4 million per year.