For years we’ve been hearing story after story about the importance of conserving honeybees – specifically the European Honeybee, Apis mellifera. Then on 26 January 2018, Science magazine published “Conserving honey bees does not help wildlife” by Jonas Geldmann and Juan P. González-Varo, in which the authors reported that “managed honey bees can harm wild pollinator species.”
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man / is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” So wrote John Donne in his oft-quoted Meditation XVII. Theodore Fleming, we can assume has, at least at some point in the past, likely read Donne’s famous meditation, and perhaps was even thinking about it as he examined the discoveries he made in his study of cactus pollination and pollinators near Sonora, Mexico.
With the exception of ants, it’s difficult to imagine an arthropod more colonial than bees. However in thinking of bees this way, we all-to-often forget that not all bees are colonial. In Britain and Ireland, for example, there are approximately ten times more species of solitary bee than bumblebee and honeybee species combined.
Although not at first intending specifically to record it, the pattern of the veins in the wings of this Honey Bee, Apis mellifera, is remarkable. As the wings of these insects are essentially membranes, the common interpretation of the veins’ purpose seems to be that they provide strength to the overall wing structure. Location: Scappoose, […]