Bees

Pesticide contamination may be triggering abnormal brain development in baby bumblebees, according to the results of a newly published scientific paper during which researchers scanned the brains of 92 worker bees using micro-CT technology.

A striking new study has identified a link between warming temperatures and local declines in bumblebee populations. The research suggests bumblebees are disappearing in both North America and Europe at a pace, “consistent with a mass extinction.”

To better understand the behaviour of bumblebees, scientists have used high-speed cameras to observe them in flight, finding that they can enter a type of “economy mode” when carrying particularly hefty cargo.

Honeybee numbers are falling to colony collapse disorder (CCD), which has devastating implications for global ecosystems and agriculture. But now, researchers have engineered bacteria that can help bees fend off two of the main causes of CCD.

Beekeepers frequently open up their hives to check on them, but doing so adds to their workload, and it stresses out the bees. A team of Dutch entrepreneurs set out to develop an alternative, resulting in the BEEP base hive-monitoring system.

To raise awareness of the plight of bees – and, no doubt, to nab some positive PR buzz and shift a few more Big Macs – McDonald's in Sweden has created what it calls "the world's smallest McDonald's." But there's a twist, would you bee-lieve it – it's not a McDonald's. It's a beehive.

The potential for micro flying-robots in areas like search and rescue, agriculture and hazard detection is huge, but so are the hurdles. Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have been working on these problems with their Bee+, drawing inspiration from the insect world.

​Depending on their formulation, most adhesives fail either when they're exposed to excessive humidity, or when they dry out in arid conditions. Honeybees, however, don't have such problems with their "pollen pellets." A new understanding of why this is so could lead to better manmade adhesives.

A colony of bees in Austria and a school of fish in Switzerland have become unlikely allies. In experiments run by several European universities, the two very different animal species were able to communicate and coordinate their movements long-distance with the help of some robotic interpreters.

Some studies suggest the world is entering a sixth major extinction event. But now, in a rare piece of good news from that field, researchers from Australia, Canada and the US have rediscovered Wallace’s giant bee, an insect that hasn’t been seen in almost 40 years.

Honeybees are increasingly under threat. To help save these creatures from extinction, researchers from York University have found a group of genes that appears to be related to how hygienic a particular colony of bees is, and selective breeding for these genes could help fight colony collapse.

Researchers have found that bees can do basic arithmetic. The discovery that bees have the ability to add and subtract shows that the busy little insects are capable of a sophisticated level of cognition and proves once again that brain power isn't necessarily dependent on brain size.​