A female from one of the newly discovered Attenborough species of cuckoo bee THOMAS ONUFERKO Scientists have discovered 15 new species of cuckoo bees hidden in North American museum collections and in an ancient thesis. Like their avian counterparts, cuckoo bees lay their eggs in the nests of other bees, […]
Concerns over the health of honeybees and other pollinators have led the EU to push for a total ban GETTY IMAGES Member states will vote on Friday on an almost complete ban on the use of neonicotinoid insecticides across the EU. Scientific studies have linked their use to the decline […]
Wild insects are the most important and vulnerable pollinators. Pollinators such as bumblebees and solitary bees have become endangered. Szefei / www.shutterstock.com Pollinating insects like bees, butterflies and flies have had a rough time of late. A broad library of evidence suggests there has been a widespread decline in their abundance and diversity […]
Many hoverflies have stripes and resemble bees and wasps GETTY IMAGES Bee diseases have been detected in hoverflies for the first time. The brightly-coloured flies may be picking up bee viruses as they forage at the same flowers. And scientists think hoverflies could then be spreading the deadly infections long […]
Flowers may take advantage of visual illusions to attract bees. from www.shutterstock.com When a human looks at a distant skyscraper, it appears small to the eye. It’s a visual illusion, and we use other contextual information to know the building is actually tall. Our new study shows, for the first time, that […]
Coming to a forest near you? Dendroctonus frontalis, one of a host of pests whose distributions are changing in the Anthropocene. Credit: Erich Vallery, Southern Research Station, USDA Forest Service. A set of fundamental tactics ranging from the theoretical to the practical can be used to combat the challenges brought on […]
The buzz is that even gardening for bees takes constant vigilance. Deposit photos Entomologist Vera Krischik has a bee and butterfly garden bursting with Mexican sunflowers, goldenrod, salvia and black-eyed susans. But when she has problems with aphids or Japanese beetles, she’s careful to get rid of them responsibly. “We think that […]
Losses of rare insects are well documented, but there is little research on insects as a whole GETTY IMAGES It’s known as the windscreen phenomenon. When you stop your car after a drive, there seem to be far fewer squashed insects than there used to be. Scientists have long suspected […]
The Painted Lady is often mistaken for the monarch butterfly USFWS A colourful, shimmering spectacle detected by satellites over the US state of Colorado has been identified as swarms of migrating butterflies. Scientists at the National Weather Service (NWS) first mistook the orange radar blob for birds and had asked […]
Three quarters of the honey samples in this study showed traces of neonicotinoids SIMON ROWELL A new study has found traces of neonicotinoid chemicals in 75% of honey samples from across the world. The scientists say that the levels of the widely used pesticide are far below the maximum permitted […]