- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Or, she might say "A fly is a fly is a fly."
Oh, my.
That's because major corporations, news media and people-who-should-know-or-who-should-at-least-fact-check are still confusing honey bees with flies.
May Berenbaum, 2016 president of the 7000-member Entomological Society of America (ESA) and a National Medal of Science recipient, recently received a solicitation letter from a well-known nature corporation asking her to help the honey bees.
All's well and good, right? Wrong. The photo on the envelope was not of her beloved honey bee. It was a photo of a fly. A syrphid fly.
Oops!
Never send a fly to an ESA president, the top of the entomological chain, and claim it's a bee.
Apparently this corporation--okay, the Sierra Club, as this is all over the Internet--obtained the "bee" photo from someone who could not distinguish certain species in the order Hymenoptera (which includes honey bees) and the order Diptera (flies). The drone fly, Eristalis tenax, is often confused with the honey bee, Apis mellifera. To entomologists, it's like confusing an elephant with a giraffe.
Berenbaum, who also has a keen sense of humor, posted a blurb on her Facebook page about the fly.
"Really, Sierra Club? You send a letter asking to help save honeybees with a photo of a syrphid fly on the envelope?" (She also pointed out that "honey bee" is two words, not one.)
That drew all kinds of comments:
- Save the syrphids!!!
- Is there a syrphid that mimics a honey bee? Maybe they fell for it.
- That is so terrible it's almost wonderful.
- Personally, I'm wondering who the heck is taking all of the pictures of syrphids!! Aren't bees a lot more common?
- I may have to use this in my next lecture about mimicry and how successful it can be, even against visual-based predators.
- May and I were close friends in high school and, I'm pretty sure that she is the smartest person I've ever met.
- Well, Eristalis tenax is just such a great mimic, I am proud of that species!
- I see images of bumble bees with "Save the Honeybee" on stickers. Kind of like "Save the Cow" with a picture of a bison, or worse. How to offer professional advice/fact checking for articles/media? Would love to do it!
- That's funny and sad at the same time!
- There are so many syrphid photos that have been used as bees, I begin to wonder if most people really don't know what bees look like!
But my favorite:
So we were sitting at the dinner table and a friend said "If only someone was running for president who was worth voting for."
Without missing a beat, my daughter said "What about May Berenbaum?"
You've now been duly nominated.
What do you think?
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You don't want to just keep bees, you want to devote your life to learning more about them and understanding them. And you want to engage in public service.
“Any universal and immutable scale with which to measure mastery of a human pursuit is at best elusive,” says Master Beekeeper Mea McNeil of San Anselmo, who doubles as a journalist, writing for beekeeping journals and other publications. “For those whose lives are devoted to understanding the wonders that are bees, every research answer begets a new question. So it is that an array of Master Beekeeper programs have been developed to bring dedicated beekeepers to a sophisticated level of knowledge that is defined by each course.”
McNeill, who is also an organic farmer, wrote those words for an article published 10 years ago in The American Bee Journal. Roger Morris of Cornell University taught the first known Master Beekeeping course, she related, and the first Master Beekeeping certificate went to beekeeper Peter Bizzosa in 1972.
The good news is that the University of California, Davis, is now planning its first-ever Master Beekeeping course. There are no times and dates. Not yet. It's all in the beginning stages, says Extension apiculturist Elina Niño of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
If you want to get on the Master Beekeeper list, send an email to sympa@ucdavis.edu from your email address or the address you want subscribed. In the subject line of your message, type in: subscribe camasterbee Firstname Lastname.
“I completed the Master Beekeeping Program at the University of Nebraska under Dr. Marion Ellis,” McNeil said, adding that it was quite comprehensive. “I learned enough about bees and beekeeping to become humbled at the vastness of the subject. An important component of that program is service, so, as a working journalist, I began writing about the bee world as a result.”
In her journal article, McNeil described several programs, but pointed out that “No two programs may be alike, but they spring from a common philosophy: the bees are precious and necessary, and those who know them well will serve to help them thrive. Most intend to create ambassadors for the bees, a mission to bring the public into greater awareness of their importance.”
These are university-level courses--extensive, detailed and challenging--with written, lab, oral and field exams. You have to know the material and be comfortable in explaining it. You may have to, for example, identify “a blob of unidentifiable substance” and “describe the cause and how to prevent it,” as McNeil wrote. One blob turned out to be “chewed up bees from skunks sucking the juices from bees, then spitting out bee parts.”
Take the Master Beekeeping Program at the University of Florida. It's an ongoing program that spans a minimum of five years. Participants work toward “advancing to the next level by reading books, demonstrating public service credits, participating in research projects, or extension programs, etc.," the website says. "In order to enter the program, you must begin by taking the written and practical examination for the Apprentice Beekeeper level." Master Beekeepers serve as an arm of the Extension services.
Meanwhile, in addition to the pending Master Beekeeper course, UC Davis offers beekeeping and queen-rearing courses for novices, intermediates and advanced beekeepers. If you're interested in joining the beekeeping course list, send an email to sympa@ucdavis.edu from the address you want to subscribed to the list. In the subject line, type: subscribe elninobeelabclasses Firstname Lastname.
If you want to learn more about the UC Davis honey bee program, access the E. L. Niño lab website at http://elninobeelab.ucdavis.edu/ or the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/elninolab.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Bee my valentine.
There's something about a honey bee foraging on a flowering quince that makes you long for Valentine's Day and the end of winter.
Flowering quince (Chaenomeles sp.) is one of the first flowers of the year to bloom. And bloom it does, in between the rain drops and rays of sunshine.
It's a delight to see the honey bees buzzing in and out of the delicate pink flowers as they tightly pack their yellow pollen for the trip back to their colony. Protein for the bees.
They're the real winged cupids of Valentine's Day, not the baby with the bow and arrow.
Wikipedia says of Valentine's Day: "The day was first associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. In 18th-century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as valentines). In Europe, Saint Valentine's Keys are given to lovers 'as a romantic symbol and an invitation to unlock the giver's heart,' as well as to children, in order to ward off epilepsy (called Saint Valentine's Malady).Valentine's Day symbols that are used today include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards."
Remember those traditional Valentine's Day cards?
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.
Me thinks that "pink" and "flowering quince" and "yellow pollen" and "honey" should have been in there somewhere...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Did you feel the buzz in 2015?
The honey bees, bumble bees, sunflower bees, sweat bees...what a year it was!
It's time to walk down memory lane--or stray from the garden path--and post a few bee images from 2015.
It wasn't all flowers and sunshine. Bees took a beating--from pesticides, pests, predators, diseases, malnutrition, climate change and stress.
Often it was predator vs. prey. So we include an image of a praying mantis feasting on one of our bee-loved honey bees, and freeloader flies (family Milichiidae) dining on a spider's prey.
That's what praying mantids, spiders and freeloader flies do. They. Eat. Bees. If I were in charge of their menu planning and food preparation, however, they'd get five-star dining: stink bugs, aphids, mosquitoes, cotton whitefly, and the Asian longorned beetle.
Give me five! Give us all five!
Happy New Year! And may the buzz be with you.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Confusion exists as to whether National Honey Bee Day is Aug. 15 or Aug. 22.
The group that formed National Honey Bee Awareness Day says its Aug. 15. Pennsylvania Apiculture, aka PennApic, launched the National Honey Bee Awareness Day in 2009.
The U.S. Congress, however, has proclaimed National Honey Bee Day as Aug. 22.
It really doesn't matter which day it is. We should celebrate National Honey Bee Day every day.
European colonists brought the honey bee to America (Jamestown colony, Virginia) in 1622. It wasn't until 1853, however, that the honey bee made its way to California, San Jose, to be more specific.
But where did the honey bee originate? For centuries, scientists thought it originated in Asia, but recent genetic analysis reveals it originated in Africa.
So all honey bees are descended from a common ancestor in Africa. It was out of Africa and into Europe and then all over the world.
In an article published in Softpedia, Charles W. Whitfield, professor of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that "Our analysis indicates that the honey bee, Apis mellifera, originated in Africa and spread into Europe by at least two ancient migrations."
Excerpts from the article:
"The genus Apis contains 10 species, nine of which endemic to Asia. The only exception, Apis mellifera, the common honey bee, is found from sub-Saharan Africa to Central Asia to Northern Europe, and it is represented by more than two dozen distinct geographical subspecies."
"From Africa, the species spread to Europe and Asia, creating distinct genetic lineages (subspecies), including the Italian bee, used extensively for agricultural pollination."
Whitfield points out that the migrations "resulted in two European populations that are geographically close, but genetically quite different. In fact, the two European subspecies are more related to honey bees in Africa than to each other."
Whitfield relates that Europeans introduced in the Americas at least 10 subspecies from different parts of Europe, Near East and Northern Africa beginning with 1622.
North and South America quickly learned about the South African savanna subspecies, Apis mellifera scutellata, which scientists brought to Brazil in 1956 in an effort to increase honey production. It became known as "the killer bee" because of its aggression as it hybridized and displaced European honey bees.
"By studying variation in the honey bee genome, we can not only monitor the movement of these bees, we can also identify the genes that cause the variations--and that will allow us to better understand the differences," Whitfield said in Softpedia.
We're glad to see the exploding interest in the honey bee--from the backyard beekeeper to the rooftop beekeepers--and the work underway to protect it.
Apis mellifera needs to bee all it can bee.
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