Some beekeepers are convinced that a swarm of bees can be charmed into landing by “tanging” any piece of metal that comes to hand. Science has never been able to prove this assertion though and it may actually be a piece of jumbled ‘folk wisdom’. It may be relatively easy to see how this narrative […]

Did you know that modern humans living in the the Spider Caves (Cuevas de la araña) in Spain around 10,000 years ago painted images of honey collection on the walls of their home? One famous picture, known as “the honey collector” is arguably the oldest evidence of our species interaction with bees.

Many people think that the runny liquid state of honey is the only natural form. This mistake bemuses beekeepers. It hasn’t gone off, it has simply formed enough sugar crystals to change consistency. Solidifying isn’t permanent either. If you like your honey runny, simply place the jar in warm water for a short while The

If Asian Hornets collaborated? Although technically not bees, Bee Pirates is a term used to denote any of a group of digging solitary wasps, from the family Crabronidae, found in South Africa. These predatory wasps are especially noted for their habit of killing and consuming honey bees. Note: These predators are also known as Bee

Although we tend to think of pollinators in terms of daylight visitors like bees and butterflies, spare a thought for the night shift. Although moths do not carry out as many visits to flowers during the hours of darkness, only 15% of the total, 2021 research by the University of Sussex found that their efforts

The world’s most dangerous bee is probably the Africanised Honeybee, created in Brazil in the 1950’s. Although intended to produce a benign variant of the European Honeybee acclimated to hotter conditions, the escaped hybrid is feared for their aggression and tendency for mob attacks on perceived threats. At least 1000 people have been killed by

Known to Hippocrates of Kos (460 – 370 BC), for whom the Hippocratic Oath is named, and liberally prescribed during the Middle-Ages, a cheap honey and vinegar mixture, called Oxymel, is being re-investigated in the light of increasing anti-bacterial resistance. According to the journal Microbiology, recent work by Erin Connelly, an interdisciplinary researcher at the

Over the weekend, I cut out the beeswax from a score of damaged frames. The waxy wood makes for great firelighters and the wax is worth more than the honey it may have originally contained. Later I moved on to another 50 or so old frames, still in a functional condition, that I wanted to

Bees crash, but flies don’t. In 1963, Austrian entomologist Herbert Heran and a German behavioral scientist, Martin Lindauer, noticed something really very odd. If honeybees fly over a calm lake, the absence of ripples causes them to suddenly lose height and crash into the water. Dead bee. Worse, in an experiment created out to replicate

Potential invasive species with honeybees in their sights don’t just include the dreaded Asian Hornet, sadly there are others. The Small Hive Beetle (Aethina tumida) was first identified as a parasite of bee colonies in their sub-saharan home in the 1940’s. Between then and now, with human help, the SHB has hopped to every continent

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