Although we tend to think of Honeybees as the only true honey producer, the products of other members of their extended family, most notably the Bumbles and certain Ants, have long had a place in the human food chain. Interestingly, the honey of the Australian Honeypot Ant, eaten and used medicinally by First Nations peoples […]

It’s not a triffle. It may surprise you that every young bee is fed ‘Queen Jelly’, (a secretion produced in the hypopharynx in the lower jaw of nurse bees) , for the first three days after they hatch. At that point, they all look identical. After day three though, feeding of all but a chosen

Every contact leaves a trace. In a recently published paper from a collaboration lead by meta-geneticist Dr. Solenn Patalano, Greek scientists outlined a way to identify and use trace DNA in honey. Although this may seem like just another quality test, the outlined methodology identifies the sources of both floral honey and non-floral honeydew and

Now infamous as the zombie creating fungus loose in “The Last of Us” games and TV show, Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis, often shortened to Cordyceps (as in the series), is a real thing that affects ants, bees and other members of the hymenoptera family. Thankfully this fungus. that actively takes over insect’s brains and forces them to

Did you know that some people who experience the distractions of ADHD charmingly refer to their particular neuro-divergence as having “bees in the brain”? (Note: the author of these posts has ‘bees on the brain’, but that is a different, incurable, and on one level more expensive malady?)

Being a Queen Bee can be a Game of Thrones. Not only can bees spontaneously dump their aging Queens for younger more productive heirs, and embark upon colonial ventures by swarming, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that many thrones are actually won by violence! In order to increase their survival chances, so called “USURPTION SWARMS” probe

You catch more flies with honey, as they say, but you may just be able to can catch bees with Lemongrass Essential Oil? It may sound strange, but bees scent places of interest. When swarming, scouts mark potential new homes and guide their comrades by raising their tails and broadcasting the Nasonov Pheromone. This complex

See Apple TV+. After becoming Emperor of France in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte needed a dynastic symbol that would imply traits of vigilance and zeal which he felt that he possessed. For insect inspiration, Napoleon looked to the Emperor Charlemagne (who had adopted the cicada as an emblematic device), and selected, another insect, the industrious honeybee.

Hint, it’s a myth. Probably? According to the Internet, (and many beekeepers and candle-makers for that matter) among the many charms of pure beeswax candles is a strange alchemy by which good ‘negative ions’ are released during burning. This sounds reassuringly like science, but for it to be true, there would need to be some

: #Black_Bees_Matter. After the last Ice Age until about a century back, honeybees in Northern Europe were described as Black Bees. Due to changes in farming practices during the Victorian period and, in the UK, after the devastating “Isle of Wight Disease” outbreak in the early 1900’s, numbers tumbled. To restore their stocks, British beekeepers

Use honey for artificial brains? In 2022, engineers at Washington State University turned to the environmentally safe ingredients in honey to “make components for computer systems that mimic neurons and synapses of the human brain, known as neuromorphic computers”. The engineers created memristors, a device to regulate current, by putting honey processed into a solid

Did you know, that around 21,000 young Queen Bees are imported into the UK each year, mostly from EU countries (with whom we still share notification processes on bio-security threats). Importation is overseen by the National Bee Unit of DEFRA, but is not without contention, with advocates for both locally bred stock and imported genes