With fewer bees to pollinate fruits and vegetables each year, ‘beemageddon’ may soon cause the collapse of the agriculture industry. –My Science Academy Help dissuade Beemageddon! It is well-known that we have long been nearing the collapse of our current food system with the concurrent collapse of bee colonies around [...]

April showers bring May flowers and you know what flowers bring—bees. I came across a nifty DIY bee hive tutorial on the Homesteading Self Sufficiency Survival page, and soon found myself deep into an internet investigation of all kinds of do-it-yourself homes and hideaways for attracting critters to your yard [...]

On January 6th, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that crops attractive to honeybees (in particular the European Apis mellifera) cannot contain chemicals from the neonicotinoid family of pesticides. This conclusion was reached after an extensive EFSA study that officially linked these pesticides to the recent decline in honeybees [...]

A new report in Nature proclaims that exposure to neonicotinoid and pyrethroid pesticides “impairs natural foraging behavior and increases worker mortality” in bumblebees, “leading to significant reductions in brood development and colony success.” The exposure levels cited in the report are similar to those found in fields. The study, which looked at bumblebee [...]

A new study suggests that the pesticides used in farming are killing off worker bumblebees and damaging their ability to gather food. This means that colonies that are vital for plant pollination are more likely to fail when they are used. The research was conducted by a team of British [...]

Although the U.S. White House is usually busy dealing with a faltering economy and terrorism-related threats in the Middle East, it’s been buzzing with a different kind of activity this season. The honeybees on the South Lawn has reportedly delivered 175 pounds of honey this year. Yes, the U.S. presidential [...]

Urban beekeeping is a hobby that’s becoming quite popular with city-dwellers around the world. But the concept can be a bit more challenging than trying to grow a garden on your condo balcony. What do you do if you want to create a hive, so that you can produce fresh [...]

Things we don’t think are cute: frogs, bees, bats. Things that we need to continue enjoying this wonderful world: frogs, bees, bats. But buried under mortgages, job loss, the high cost of gas, parent/teacher meetings, dinner and getting to bed before midnight, people just don’t have the time or energy [...]

It’s no secret how important bees are to our ecosystem, our health, our very survival, really. Beyond their crucial status as pollinators in the food system, people have long since recognized the medicinal healing properties of bee venom, as well as a number of worker bee byproducts like raw honey, [...]

For many years, the hockey stick graph was the main indicator that global warming was actually happening. But recently the accumulation of more and more clues that climate change is not only real, but increasingly relevant, has scientists alarmed. Joining troubling signs like the disappearance of permafrost and melting glaciers [...]