A honey bee colony is a superorganism. Something I say very often is: “A colony is more than the sum of the number of adult bees and brood cells!”. That seems difficult to understand sometimes. Considering that honey bee health is getting more attention, however, this is an important concept to figure out. Even more…
In the past two years I often heard “There’s no glory in prevention.”. This is one of the reasons why New Year’s resolutions often fail. It’s the gap between the instant gratification of staying on the couch eating chips in contrast of the long-term benefit of exercising and eating healthy. So, very timely for this…
Pollination and human health are closely linked. I like to say that we get full without pollinators, but healthy only with them. Of course, human health – like bee health – depends on many factors. But as you all know: Healthy nutrition is an important part of it. This insight also arrived in human medicine…
Agriculture and gardens are important elements in the discussions about bee habitat. Usually, they’re presented as a contrast: “More bee diversity in gardens than in farmland!” and similar headlines are quite common. This may be even true in some cases. There are studies showing this, and I’ve talked about simplified landscapes and their risks to…
“Native bees” is a buzzword and is becoming more and more a synonym for all bee species except honey bees. Not even all honey bees: Generally, it’s used to contrast Western honey bees, Apis mellifera. It mainly comes from North American and Australian bee researchers. In these regions, honey bees aren’t native. Therefore, the contrast…
Bee health and biodiversity may not be the most obvious connection. The first thing that comes to your mind could be flower diversity – it’s important for bee nutrition and, therefore, health. But this time, it’s all about the value of biodiversity for avoiding virus infections. Something mostly unexplored. To be honest, a connection I…
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