World Bee Day

It is World Bee Day today. Why is there a World Bee Day? Because people do not seem to understand the vital role bees and other pollinators play in the survival of the human species. And if we do not act to save these creatures, we will soon see far-reaching results.

Learn more about our pollinators and how we may help them!

6 Surprising Things about Bees by CNN

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Help (also via CNN)

BUILD A BEE BATH! On any windowsill or balcony place a small bowl of water with something in it upon which a bee might land, e.g., pebbles, marbles etc. They can drink and also bring a drop home with them!

NB 20th May was chosen because it was the day that Anton Jansa, a pioneer of modern apiculture, was born!

Bees in Conversation

Found this old bee pic and wondered what they might be saying to each other. This was my thought - but maybe you think otherwise ...?

World Bee Day!

I can't beelieve I missed World Bee Day. At least now I understand why there was a guy dressed as a bee yesterday on Antonella's cooking show on RAI1!

My apologies to the bee community, and here is one of the last bee pics I took in Finchley before leaving London. I was on my way to pick up some empty wine boxes (great for packing books) from Waitrose and spotted this chap on Ballards Lane.

Don't forget to put a little water on the windowsill for your local bees this summer. Some pebbles in a bowl (or marbles for a more colourful look) will give the bees a landing spot while they drink. Grazie!

 

The Bee Project

Today, with the help of my great friend Francisco, and the long-distance advice and support of my beloved LL, I hung 15 bee photos at the Casa Tua restaurant in Cromer Street, WC1. They are initially part of the event Artists in Spritz, and the manager has offered the opportunity for the pictures to remain on show for 2-3 months. I've been working towards something like this for quite some time, and am so excited that it has now come to pass. My first exhibition!

If you are in London, if you like bees, if you are hungry near KingsX-St Pancras, come to Casa Tua and have a look. You won't bee sorry!

Best of the Bee Pics So Far

Am considering which bee pics to put into a small exhibit. Have been dithering about this for months.  No more! Here are Flora & Fauna (mostly) of Finchley.

Bees of Summer

June bee in Finchley

At the beginning of the summer the ravaj got a new camera. She thought it might help her to learn the capabilities of this machine if she could find a photography project. Somehow, a flowering bush full of bees on Essex Park caught her eye, and she began to shoot them. Next came the bees that visited the lavender in the garden by the flats, and those around the buddlea on the platform at Finchley Central station.

July bee in the garden

Standing in the bushes at the station did get her some funny looks, including a woman who thought she had fainted and came to check if everything was ok. With much practice and a lot of patience, the project appears to be progressing.

Bees are not that easy to photograph. They are so fast - 1/2000th of a second sometimes catches the beat of their wings. When they are still, their faces are usually in a flower and all you can see are their bottoms. So the first challenge is to get the bee still, in focus, and with its head visible. Next is to get it facing you, and after that to get it in flight (in focus and facing you!).

To bee continued ...

all photos © Ariel J Friedlander

Action Bee

been trying to shoot some bees recently. A group of them seem to like hanging out in the weeds outside Finchley Central station. Thus you will find me, back to the road, ankle deep in empty beer cans and fag packets, learning how to get a decent pic of a bee. After a few weeks of this, here is my first halfway decent shot of a bee in the air (rather than resting on a flower having a drink).

Finchley Bee

Trying not to get anxious as the tennis reaches a climax. Calm photo of a bee outside my flat going about its business.

Save the Bees Update

It's been a while since anything about bees appeared on this page I know. However, 2013 began with some excellent news for the bee community:  two giant DIY/garden centre companies have agreed to stop stocking products containing pesticides linked to the current decline of the bee population! Well done B&Q and Wickes ... now who shall be next?
(Read about it here.)

The insecticides in question are called neonicotinoids. And yes, they are chemically related to nicotine. No good for humans, and no good for bees. Who knew?!

King Bee or not King Bee

Adam Gopnik on the BBC website has pointed out that Shakespeare thought the bee in charge of the hive was a gentleman bee. He cites Henry V I:2

"For so work the honey-bees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor:
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold,
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone."


He then very kindly did some Googling for us so we didn't have to:

"the bee sex confusion goes back at least to Aristotle, and was only solved in the late 17th Century, when Swammerdam found that the king was, so to speak, cross-dressing and really had ovaries."


For more details, the rest of the article is here.

Welcome back Bees!

The BBC reports:

"A bumblebee which is extinct in the UK is to be reintroduced from New Zealand under plans being announced. The short-haired bumblebee was exported from the UK to New Zealand on the first refrigerated lamb boats in the late 19th Century to pollinate clover crops. It was last seen in the UK in 1988, but populations on the other side of the world have survived. Now Natural England and several other conservation groups have launched a scheme to bring the species home.

Poul Christensen, Natural England's acting chairman, said; "Bumblebees are suffering unprecedented international declines and drastic action is required to aid their recovery. "Bumblebees play a key role in maintaining food supplies - we rely on their ability to pollinate crops and we have to do all we can to provide suitable habitat and to sustain the diversity of bee species. As many as 100 of the bees will initially be collected in New Zealand and a captive breeding plan established, with the aim of eventually releasing them at Dungeness, Kent, where they were last seen. They will be flown back on planes in cool boxes, and will not be disturbed, according to Natural England, as they will be in hibernation during transit.

The scheme's project officer Nikki Gammans, of the Stirling-based Bumblebee Conservation Trust, said the bee was a "keystone species" which was key to pollinating around 80% of important crops. "By creating the right habitat for these bumblebees, we are recreating wildflower habitat that has been lost, which will be good for butterflies, water voles and nesting birds." The partnership project is being run by Natural England, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust the RSPB and Hymettus."

Misbeehaviour in the honey world

The Telegraph reported yesterday regarding the nefarious activities of foreign honey exporters:

"So-called "honey laundering" involves elaborate schemes in which cheap, diluted or contaminated honey from China is brought in after being "laundered" in another country to disguise its origin and evade tariffs and health inspections. A five-month investigation by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper found the international honey trade rife with criminal enterprises designed to take advantage of the demand for imports created by the mysterious collapse of bee colonies across America."

The rest of the story may be found here. Meanwhile, do check the origins of your honey, since some of the scam products may have harmful chemicals within.

isaac rosenberg's bee

as a belated marking of veterans day here in the usa, a verse from a rosenberg poem i heard sir antony sher reading on radio four this past weekend:

"None saw their spirits' shadow shake the grass,
Or stood aside for the half used life to pass
Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth,
When the swift iron burning bee
Drained the wild honey of their youth."

the poem is 'dead man's dump', and may be found here

uk honey shortage

even though i am a diabetic, i still find these stories about bees rather alarming. from tomorrow's telegraph:

"English honey to run out before Christmas
By Paul Eccleston

English honey is unlikely to feature on Christmas menus this year as supplies run out. The catastrophic decline in honey bee numbers has continued with populations down 30 per cent on last year. Combined with another wet summer - which prevented the bees gathering pollen - it has resulted in a honey shortage. Stuart Bailey, chairman of the UK's biggest producer, Rowse Honey, said: "Supplies continue to dribble through and we might have enough for another six weeks or so but I expect it to be gone before Christmas." Amateur beekeepers in England produce about 3,000 tonnes annually but the bulk - 80 per cent - is distributed to family and friends or sold at the garden gate or at farmers' markets. Supermarkets and shops rely on a few dozen big commercial honey farms for their supplies of English honey but there is much less available this year. Rowse, who have a third of the market in the UK, had hoped to supply supermarkets with 250 tonnes but Mr Bailey thinks it may be only half that amount. "It has been a terrible, terrible year possibly the worst for 28 years. Bee numbers are down again and the weather has been so bad it has prevented them from foraging. We will be lucky if the total honey crop this year amounts to 2,000 tonnes," he said."

the rest of the story is here.

add to that an earlier telegraph story that israel will soon no longer be the land of milk and honey but just the land of milk:

"The land of milk and honey is in danger of becoming just the land of milk after a 60 per cent fall in local honey production because of poor rainfall. Apiarists across Israel are reporting honey harvest levels well below half the norm following poor winter and spring rains. The poor rainfall meant there were fewer nectar-bearing flowers available for the bees. The bad weather has compounded already reduced levels of honey production caused by the mysterious global phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) where hives across the world have suddenly been deserted. Israel has suffered its fair share of CCD incidents and local scientists have identified a virus spread by a parasitic mite that could be the cause of CCD. This has yet to be confirmed. When Israeli academics reported the discovery of the new virus anti-Israeli articles started appearing on the internet accusing Israel of creating this virus as part of biological weapons programme."

wtf?

csi: the hive

a positive story from the bee world was reported by the bbc recently, telling us that the way bumblebees search for food may help humans hunt down serial killers (human ones). a team at the university of london reports that:

" ... bees create a "buffer zone" around their hive where they will not forage, to reduce the risk of predators and parasites locating the nest. It turns out that this pattern of behaviour is similar to the geographic profile of criminals stalking their victims. "Most murders happen close to the killer's home, but not in the area directly surrounding a criminal's house, where crimes are less likely to be committed because of the fear of getting caught by someone they know," Dr Raine explained."

so all we have to do is apply bee patterns to human ones and ... hurrah! well, it is certainly an interesting idea. i wonder how it occurred to someone in the first place?

the full story is here.

crisis point for uk honeybees

now that the grauniad is reporting this story, does that mean it is finally real? here is some of what alison benjamin wrote last tuesday:

"Britain's honeybees have suffered catastrophic losses this year, according to a survey of the nation's beekeepers, contributing to a shortage of honey and putting at risk the pollination of fruits and vegetables. The survey by the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) revealed that nearly one in three of the UK's 240,000 honeybee hives did not survive this winter and spring. The losses are higher than the one in five colonies reported dead earlier this year by the government after 10% of hives had been inspected. The BBKA president, Tim Lovett, said he was very concerned about the findings: "Average winter bee losses due to poor weather and disease vary from between 5% and 10%, so a 30% loss is deeply worrying. This spells serious trouble for pollination services and honey producers."

The National Bee Unit has attributed high bee mortality to the wet summer in 2007 and in the early part of this spring that confined bees to their hives. This meant they were unable to forage for nectar and pollen and this stress provided the opportunity for pathogens to build up and spread. But the BBKA says the causes are unclear. Its initial survey of 600 members revealed a marked north-south divide, with 37% bee losses in the north, compared to 26% in the south. "We don't know why there is a difference and what is behind the high mortality," said Lovett.

The government recognises that the UK's honeybee hives - run by 44,000 mostly amateur beekeepers - contribute around £165m a year to the economy by pollinating many fruits and vegetables. "30% fewer honeybee colonies could therefore cost the economy some £50m and put at risk the government's crusade for the public to eat five portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day," Lovett warned.

The Honey Association warned last month that English honey will run out by Christmas and no more will be available until summer 2009. It blames the shortage on fewer honeybees and farmers devoting more fields to wheat, which has soared in price but does not produce nectar ...

... In the US, honey yields have been decimated by honeybee loses of 36%, many due to colony collapse disorder (CCD), a mysterious disappearance linked to the blood-sucking varroa mite, lethal viruses, malnutrition, pesticides, and a lack of genetic diversity. CCD has spread to Canada, France, Germany and Italy but has not yet been confirmed by government in the Britain."

prince charles talks to a bee

no, the heir to the throne is not following in the footsteps of his ancestor king george (the one who purportedly talked to trees), but rather is seen here at the sandringham flower show with beekeeper barry walker-moore, who told him of the threat that disease is posing to bee populations, and asked him to back a campaign for more research.

bee news

busy bee at wimbledon
what with this bee that was bugging venus, the bee theme in the most recent series of doctor who that was finally revealed to be (sorry) that some of the bees were aliens and their disappearance left a trail that helped the doctor figure out some important plot point, and this reuters report:

"A truck containing 330 crates of bees, about 12 million of them altogether, overturned on a major highway near the town of St Leonard, New Brunswick, in Eastern Canada on Monday, setting free thousands of irritated stinging insects. Police sealed off the vehicle and called for expert help with the millions that were left inside. "Trying to unload 12 million agitated bees out of the back of a truck would not be a good situation," said Derek Strong, a local spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. A team of beekeepers arrived and poured smoke into the truck to calm down the bees, which will be moved later in the day. Police said there was no general danger to the public. "If there's anyone in St Leonard who is allergic to bees, we're recommending they leave town for a couple of hours," Strong told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp."

at least now we know where some of the bees are.

german bees

not that i wish to bee boring, but news just in from germany that the bee population there has dropped by 25%. is anybody listening?

could it bee?

am catching up on the latest season of doctor who. in two separate episodes now donna has mentioned the disappearance on earth of the bees. am wondering if this is a hint for a future episode.

o i do enjoy doctor who. and torchwood. maybe torchwood a little more because there are more welsh accents and of course eve myles. i do not watch much tv these days, but these are two programmes to which i always look forward.

nu - as my thesis professor doctor d. always says - bee good.