Bees and humans share a long history. But now bee populations are in a worrying decline. So can beekeeping teach us how to live in harmony with the world’s most famous pollinator?
Listing the value of bees, beavers and others on the pages of the world’s financial press helps to show that ecosystems deliver benefits worth staggering amounts of money - yet we scarcely keep track of it.
The African honeybee is more resistant to pests and pathogens than its European counterparts.
Jon Hrusa/EPA
The way the Africa honeybee’s deal with parasites and pathogens can teach western beekeepers and researchers how to adapt their bees to fight diseases.
A painting from Botha’s Shelter in the Ndedema Gorge in the Drakensburg, said to be home to a rich tapestry of San art and life.
Wits University Press
Formlings are representations of flying termites and their underground nests. They are associated with botantical subjects considered by the San to have great spiritual significance.
Animal attacks have been in the news a lot. Late last year, a 22-year-old student in New Jersey was killed by a black bear he had been photographing. This summer, swimmers off the coast of North Carolina…
Insects are key to holding the food chain together. Without them, much of what we eat today won’t exist.
Pia Addison
Data from all over the globe suggest that bees are in decline, and we may lose a lot more than honey if bees are unable to cope with the changing climate and increasing demand for agricultural land.
Research shows monocultures of crops - such as this canola field - can be bad for the environment.
Peter Hayward/Flickr
Monocultures - vast expanses of a single crop - may look pretty, but mounting research shows they are likely bad for environment. And in turn that’s bad news for farms as well.
Who said bees only come in yellow and black?
Glen Peterson
There’s a battle going on in your garden between invasive and valuable domestic pollinators. Here’s how to tilt the fight in favor of our humble bumble bee.
True Australians: hard workers, quiet achievers and generally underappreciated labourers.
Insects are largely hidden from view or maligned unfairly, but they make a tremendous contribution to the Australian economy.
A bumble bee foraging for nectar and pollen at a turtlehead plant that produces the compound catalpol, which reduced bee parasite load.
Leif Richardson
Search for information on ‘self-medication,’ and you’ll likely find descriptions of the myriad ways that we humans use drugs to solve problems. In fact, the consumption of biologically active molecules…
But at least climate change should mean more flowers…right?
Smudge 9000
An exotic parasite is spreading through the world’s honey bees and global warming is making it worse, according to a study that shows it will present increasing problems in North America and Europe. All…
Honeybees pollinate a third of Australia’s food crops. Losing them due varroa might would cost the economy billions of dollars.
David McClenaghan
A nationwide outbreak of foot and mouth disease; an invasion of a devastating wheat disease; our honeybees completely wiped out. These are just three possible disastrous scenarios facing Australia; they’re…