(EurekAlert/Pensoft) Restoration work on a cathedral in Panama uncovered around 120 clusters of nearly two-centuries-old orchid bee nests built on the altarpiece. The bee species that constructed the nests was identified as the extremely secretive Eufriesea surinamensis.
(WEAU 12 News) The Chippewa Valley Beekeepers Association teamed up with Xcel Energy to provide a community apiary. The beekeeping space will be set up on 32 acres that is being developing into wildflower habitat next to an Xcel Energy substation. Members of the club say this new land will provide people access to the proper resources needed to run a bee hive.
(Reuters) Puerto Rican honey bees are abandoning hives as weeks of earthquakes disrupt colonies, raising concerns that a subspecies seen as a possible solution to the global bee crisis could take another hit after being decimated by hurricanes in 2017.
(New York Times) Reframe your relationship with bugs. Cultivate a glorious mess. Take out your earbuds. Put your money where your values are. Vote.
(Great Lakes Echo) Great Lakes researchers are seeking fundamental knowledge about pollinators like bumble bees and butterflies, hoping to reverse their decline. “Part of this project is to create a baseline for future comparison. We’ve been resampling places where pollinators were sampled 50 years or 100 years ago and trying to see how the populations have changed.”
(EurekAlert/Universidad Complutense de Madrid) The results of this research suggest a general explanation for the maintenance of biodiversity in competitive environments. “This pattern could explain how species that compete for the same resources are able to coexist.”
(BBC) Germany’s Ministry for the Environment said leaf blowers were too loud, polluted the air and posed a fatal threat to insects. The ministry issued the guidance in response to a request by a Green MP. Leaf blowers should not be used unless they are “indispensable”, the ministry said. However, the ministry said it was not planning to ban the devices.
(British Ecological Society) The issue with regular lawn mowing is that it favors grasses, which grow from that base of the plant, and low growing species like dandelion and clover. Other species that have their growing tips or flowering stems regularly removed by mowing can’t compete. Allowing plant diversity in urban lawns to increase has the knock-on effect of increasing the diversity of other organisms such as pollinators and herbivores. Pest species, on the other hand, benefitted from more intense lawn mowing.