Some like it hot? In our rapidly heating world, larger bees, like Bumbles or wax making cavity dwellers (like Honeybees) are suffering because they are more temperature intolerant. Scientists in the US trapped and studied more than 20,000 bees in the Rocky Mountains, over an eight years period, and found changes in species type over time. The numbers of temperature impacted species fell while burrowing ground living solitary bees, whose habits offer some respite from

Yes they do. Although, the honey you buy is made by honeybees, their Bumble cousins do make small caches of their own. In the 19th Century, children raiding bumblebee nests for a honey fix was a cultural norm in some places and frequently recorded, sometimes in poetic form: “Rig a jig, you bumble-bee,Make some honey sweet for me,Then fly away and make some more,To add to what you have in store,And just as sure as

Found in Indonesia, Wallace’s Giant Bee, Megachile pluto, is by far the largest surviving member of the bee family. Megachile has a wingspan of around 63.5 mm (or 2.5″ in old money). Tangentally interesting though is the source of the name, “Wallace’s Giant Bee” which hints at a local connection, or at least to South Wales. Born in humble origins in Monmouth, Alfred Russel Wallace was a Victorian explorer, amateur zoologist, (and species collector for

Robotics researcher Chris Roh of the California Institute of Technology has discovered a fascinating ability that bees have in water that is informing his engineering. Bees can not swim, but they can, according to Roh, “surf”. Since bees have a need to collect and transport water for hive cooling, some occasionally fall in. Their strategy is to move across the surface of the water until they reach safety. The problem comes that if their wings

Some people erroneously believe that bees do not sleep. The truth is that they nap several times during the 24hr cycle. Like teenage humans, young bees actually sleep more than older ones. This extra snoozing could be needed to accommodate the changes going on within their bodies as they take on new roles? * Napping bees place their heads into open cells in the beeswax and cling on to the edge, an activity which can

Banana may be full of potassium and good for your health but there’s a problem if you’re a banana loving Beekeeper. As bananas ripen, their skins give off a chemical called Isopentyl Acetate (C7H14O2), a chemical also produced in the sting glands of the honeybee. It’s their ‘Alarm Pheromone’! In the event that a guard bee uses their sting against an enemy (or, bizarrely, gets squished by a clumsy Beekeeper), a chemical signature containing Isopentyl