Honey Bees (& Keeping Same) & Other Pollinators

[Stryder50]

Stryder50 FYI

In 2020 we had an infestation of the "Murder Hornets" and I called the Texas Department of Agriculture. An agent from Dallas came out and gave the people in my hood a lecture and a video that blew our minds. Since then we have not paid any attention to the killers and have not seen any for the past 2 years. Thank God for the busy little honey bees. I learned 70 years ago living on a farm not to harm pollinators as the are vital for 3/4 of the worlds plants and trees.


Enjoy the 3 minute video..

Honeybees Not Defenseless Against Murder Hornets, Watch Them ROAST One Alive! (VIDEO) - Think Americana - Trending Daily News

Talk about something that's insane, the media is already trying to tell the public what they should be afraid of next. Just as things are finally starting to ease up just the slightest bit, the media starts pushing the story about the "murder hornet" and how it has now been seen in America...

thinkamericana.com

'

That's interesting since they first appeared up in B.C. Canada and didn't get very far down her into the USA. I'm in NW Washington State, about eight miles from Canadian border and we only had a few sightings locally here.
Hadn't heard of anything as far South and East as Texas.

 

[Stryder50]

The Wild Story of Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey​

New Zealand’s manuka honey is celebrated for its unique healing properties and is in demand from London to Hollywood. This is the unusual history of an even more unusual honey.
...
With all due respect to sauvignon blanc drinkers, New Zealand’s trendiest liquid export is something far sweeter than wine. Derived from the nectar of a native bush (Wleptospermum scoparium), manuka honey has stirred enthusiasm among health-conscious connoisseurs since the early ’80s, when a local scientist first confirmed that it possesses unique, antimicrobial properties. Now, the on-trend sweetener is finding mainstream appeal in the United States as a slightly more savory alternative to its domestic counterparts.

The manuka industry was shipping around $40 million worth of honey a decade ago, and by 2017 that number had swelled to $270 million. As surprising as that boom has been, manuka’s origins are even more unlikely.

The western species of bee necessary for commercial honey production, Apis mellifera, is not native to New Zealand. In fact, the colony-building insects weren’t introduced to the Southern Hemisphere until 1839. Their arrival, along with the subsequent development of an entire industry, is owed to the fastidious stewardship of Mary Bumby—an English beekeeper and sister of a Methodist missionary.
...
Despite its historical significance, manuka honey failed to gain notoriety over the subsequent century. Throughout most of the 1900s, the product was ignored in favor of wildflower-derived alternatives. An international market failed to materialize. This changed in 1980, when Dr. Peter Molan—a noted New Zealand biochemist—confirmed the antibacterial properties unique to the nectar produced from this particular plant. (Its healing properties had already been known in traditional Maori medicine.)

“All honey produces hydrogen peroxide when diluted,” says Von Eaton. “Only manuka honey, however, also contains those extra substances that allow it to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria commonly found in chronic wounds, bed sores and leg ulcers.” Because this characteristic is quantifiable, a certifying group was soon set up to measure what became known as “Unique Manuka Factor.” Today, “UMF” is a prominent trademark on many a manuka label, not unlike the SPF rating you read on sunscreen lotion bottles.

“Medical-grade, sterilized manuka honey consists of manuka with a 10+ [certified UMF] or higher rating,” explains Scott Coulter, CEO of Comvita, the popular brand that helped pioneer the labeling standard. “It contains the compounds that provide manuka’s unique topical support for wound healing, acne and scars.”

Although domestic demand was soaring—along with pricing—manuka honey didn’t become an international sensation until 1991. Bill Floyd, a marketing specialist hired by the National Beekeepers’ Association of New Zealand, coined the term UMF and advertised it to U.S. media at just the right moment, when alternative health and wellness routines were finding fashion. It’s been something of a cult commodity in the States ever since.
...

The Wild Story of Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey

New Zealand’s manuka honey is celebrated for its unique healing properties and is in demand from London to Hollywood. This is the unusual history of an even more unusual honey.

getpocket.com

​

 

[Missourian]

Saw a swarm last night.

We are attempting to capture them with bountiful sugar water...

Any advice? Stryder50 White 6

 

[Stryder50]

Sorry, haven't time to relate personal experience on swarm capture.
Here's a feel links to consider.
(Maybe later I'll have time for a personal perspective)

How to Catch a Swarm and Install it in a Beehive​

How to Catch a Swarm​

How to Attract and Catch a Swarm of Bees​

An Introduction to Capturing and Installing a Swarm of Bees​

 

[badger2]

The Wild Story of Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey​

New Zealand’s manuka honey is celebrated for its unique healing properties and is in demand from London to Hollywood. This is the unusual history of an even more unusual honey.​

...​

With all due respect to sauvignon blanc drinkers, New Zealand’s trendiest liquid export is something far sweeter than wine. Derived from the nectar of a native bush (Wleptospermum scoparium), manuka honey has stirred enthusiasm among health-conscious connoisseurs since the early ’80s, when a local scientist first confirmed that it possesses unique, antimicrobial properties. Now, the on-trend sweetener is finding mainstream appeal in the United States as a slightly more savory alternative to its domestic counterparts. ​

​

The manuka industry was shipping around $40 million worth of honey a decade ago, and by 2017 that number had swelled to $270 million. As surprising as that boom has been, manuka’s origins are even more unlikely. ​

​

The western species of bee necessary for commercial honey production, Apis mellifera, is not native to New Zealand. In fact, the colony-building insects weren’t introduced to the Southern Hemisphere until 1839. Their arrival, along with the subsequent development of an entire industry, is owed to the fastidious stewardship of Mary Bumby—an English beekeeper and sister of a Methodist missionary.​

...​

Despite its historical significance, manuka honey failed to gain notoriety over the subsequent century. Throughout most of the 1900s, the product was ignored in favor of wildflower-derived alternatives. An international market failed to materialize. This changed in 1980, when Dr. Peter Molan—a noted New Zealand biochemist—confirmed the antibacterial properties unique to the nectar produced from this particular plant. (Its healing properties had already been known in traditional Maori medicine.)​

​

“All honey produces hydrogen peroxide when diluted,” says Von Eaton. “Only manuka honey, however, also contains those extra substances that allow it to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria commonly found in chronic wounds, bed sores and leg ulcers.” Because this characteristic is quantifiable, a certifying group was soon set up to measure what became known as “Unique Manuka Factor.” Today, “UMF” is a prominent trademark on many a manuka label, not unlike the SPF rating you read on sunscreen lotion bottles.​

​

“Medical-grade, sterilized manuka honey consists of manuka with a 10+ [certified UMF] or higher rating,” explains Scott Coulter, CEO of Comvita, the popular brand that helped pioneer the labeling standard. “It contains the compounds that provide manuka’s unique topical support for wound healing, acne and scars.”​

​

Although domestic demand was soaring—along with pricing—manuka honey didn’t become an international sensation until 1991. Bill Floyd, a marketing specialist hired by the National Beekeepers’ Association of New Zealand, coined the term UMF and advertised it to U.S. media at just the right moment, when alternative health and wellness routines were finding fashion. It’s been something of a cult commodity in the States ever since.​

...​

The Wild Story of Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey

New Zealand’s manuka honey is celebrated for its unique healing properties and is in demand from London to Hollywood. This is the unusual history of an even more unusual honey.

getpocket.com

​

Leptospermum scoparium is host to Thiotricha tetraphala and Hierodoris atychioides. So any lepidopteran feeders by default link to loss of cancer information in their genomes:

Leptospermum scoparium / Cancer

Health Benefits of Manuka Honey as an Essential Constituent for Tissue Regeneration - PubMed

In addition to bacterial growth inhibition, glyoxal (GO) and MGO from Manuka honey can enhance wound healing and tissue regeneration by their immunomodulatory property. Further studies are needed to provide detailed information about active components of Manuka honey and their potential efficacy...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[badger2]

Not so much with the plant growing in the wild, but with local pesticide use, that can drift into/onto other surfaces. For example, see the plight of the endangered Dakota Skipper, Hesperia dakotae.

 

[whoisit]

Bees and butterfly's love our greenhouse, so we put screen on both ends to keep them out.
We put chicken wire around the raised bed to keep out rabbits. A little work but last forever.
Squirrels no longer in yard since we got the dogs.

 

[badger2]

Notes on Pollinators

Native bees, not introduced honey bees, can be killed by nectar from certain plants, while other natives including some flies are not susceptible to the poison nectar. Specialist evolution in action.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/epdf/10.1021/JF500521w

'In an experiment, adults of the generalist bee Osmia lignaria were paralyzed and died soon after feeding on biologically relevant doses of zygacine, matching results suggesting toxicity of nectar and pollen of Zigadenus venenosus to honey bees (Apis mellifera)....The authors suggest that the presence of zygacine in nectar and pollen may explain the absence of generalist pollinators visiting this plant and that Andrena astragali and pollinating flies may have adaptions to cope with consumption of Zygacine.'

We think that these authors did not go far enough by simply invoking detoxification by specialists of the poison compounds, because the difference between a poison and a medicine may very well be only the amount. Therefore, besides detox, the idea that evolution has afforded (other uses of the medicine-poison for the specialist genomes [italics), links human cancer information to the two lepidopterans tied to the OP.

 

[Stryder50]

As one reads through the following link, recall that the European Honeybee could be considered an invasive species over here in the America's hemisphere. However, after several centuries, they have become rather "native".

How a single honey bee colony led to a species invasion​

...
This is the genetic paradox of invasion; small, genetically homogenous groups of organisms, taken far from home, can still become pervasive pests. For example, the famous case of cane toads, brought to Australia to try to control insects munching on sugarcane crops, quickly became an-ever-expanding menace in their own right.

Clearly, many invasive species manage to thrive despite the evolutionary roadblocks, and cane toads aren’t the only interlopers disrupting the down-under ecosystem. New research of a stinging, buzzing environmental threat offers some insight into how and why.

Surprising selection

In a study published February 29 in the journal Current Biology, scientists cataloged the spread of Asian honey bees (Apis cerana) in Australia, and analyzed the invasive populations’ genetic journey. They found that the tens of thousands of hives now buzzing across northeastern Australia likely originated from a single bee colony (one breeding queen and her workers), introduced to a Queensland port around 2007. Despite that extreme initial genetic bottleneck, over the course of just 10 years, the insects started re-diversifying and adapting to their foreign habitat via natural selection, according to the research. One queen bee held enough genetic diversity to kickstart an entire, viable population. "Our data support the view that genetic bottlenecks may have little impact on adaptive potential," write the study authors.
...
“We weren’t expecting to find selection,” says lead researcher Kathleen Dogantzis, a biologist at York University in Toronto. Usually, patterns of natural selection take a long time to emerge. “The assumption is that it takes populations a lot longer to get acclimatized and adapted to a new environment. But we were able to show that, in a very short period of time–within this 10-year period–certain regions of the genome are contributing,” to the bees’ population growth, she explains.
...
Asian honey bees are native to a wide swath of Asia, from Afghanistan to Japan. In their home range they’re critical pollinators and an important part of the ecological web. But in Australia, where the honey bees aren’t native, they may compete with native insects, birds, and mammals for flower resources, and nest in tree cavities that would otherwise offer important habitat for native species. The Asian honey bees also threaten the human-managed hives of European honey bees that are used to boost agricultural production.

The closest native population to Australia is in Indonesia, but people brought the insects to New Guinea in the 1970s for their honey and farming purposes. And this is where the colony that made it to Queensland shores came from, according to the new study. The researchers compared genome sequences from the native Indonesian population, the introduced New Guinean colonies, and the invasive Australian hives and found that the Australian and New Guinean bees were mostly closely related.
...

MSN

 

[Stryder50]

Another article on the Asian honeybees;

Invasive Asian honeybees defy evolutionary expectations​

MSN

 

[Stryder50]

Why We Tell Bees About Death​

The connection between apiarists and funeral rites stretches back centuries.​

...

The 19th-century English artist John Romney depicted the all-important art of beekeeping. Universal History Archive / Getty Images

In 1858, New England quaker John Greenleaf Whittier published a poem in The Atlantic about grief. In sparse verses, he tells of a home where the lady of the house has passed away. A “chore-girl” in mourning goes to the family apiary and drapes “each hive with a shred of black.” She’s come to tell the hives’ inhabitants the terrible news: “Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! / Mistress Mary is dead and gone!”

Strange though it may sound, the custom of telling the bees about a death in the household has been going on for centuries. It’s been recorded throughout the United Kingdom, as well as parts of France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Beekeepers in parts of New England still keep their hives abreast of certain events, particularly a passing.

When Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022, the royal beekeeper made a public announcement that the palace hive had been notified. While the custom might have startled some,“[it] would have come as no surprise to any beekeeper, and probably no surprise to a lot of members of the public who have more than a passing interest in folklore,” says Mark Norman, author of Telling the Bees and Other Customs: The Folklore of Rural Crafts and creator of The Folklore Podcast.
...

Why We Tell Bees About Death

The connection between apiarists and funeral rites stretches back centuries.

www.atlasobscura.com

 

[Stryder50]

A bump for reference sake.
It's time of year to get started if you want to try keeping honey bees and hives.
If you already have such, now is time to check in how they are doing and help them get a start on Spring.