I don’t know about you, but I’m longing for spring. It’s the same every year: about February, I begin to feel tired of the winter. Now it’s March, but it’s still cold and grey. So I thought it would be nice to warm up with a series on insect pollination. To mentally prepare for better…
Happy New Year! Last year finished in a rush and with the changes on my site, the last post on this blog got lost. So, here’s the recapitulation on how social or solitary life-histories influence overwintering, foraging and reproduction. And I’m including some health aspects, too -I missed these in the last post. This will…
Try to think of the last time you had a heavy cold. You felt weak and not really motivated to work, right? Diseases obviously affect our capacities, from being sluggish because of a cold to unable to leave the bed with high fever. Well, it may be very similar for bees: honey bee workers parasitized…
Like any organism, bees have diseases. In honey bees, there are treatments against the Varroa mite. With other diseases, beekeepers can give some help. Like choosing the right place for the apiary, the flower diversity etc. Which I usually sum up with “good practices”. Non-managed bees, however, have to deal with their parasites and pathogens…
Bees rely on flowers to get the nutrients they need – both adults and larvae. Looking at bee nutrition more in detail however, makes clear that it isn’t as simple as that. All 20,000 bee species have different life-histories, have different amounts of offspring, may be social, solitary or something in between. Some species are…
The relationship between bees and flowers is one of the best examples for mutualism: the flowers get pollinated and the bees get food. Perfect, isn’t it? It is. But, sometimes bees don’t give the return service. They take the nectar without pollinating. That’s what’s called nectar robbing. It sounds quite deceiptful and not in line…
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