Big E Observation Hive Drama...

It seems someone doesn't like honeybees!  I worked in the MA building at the Big E last night, and we discovered that some had blocked our observation hive entrance!

 Here we have club member Leo Scarnici to the rescue!  Leo is a tall guy, so you can see that someone had to work to get that entrance blocked.  Who would do such a thing?  It's a mystery.

The Big E!

We're so excited for the Big E!  It starts Friday, September 12th! Our bees are already buzzing in and out of our booths in the MA Building and in Farmarama.

MA Building

 MA Building

Farmarama

 Farmarama

Come see us and the bees at the Big E!  

Member Spotlight... Leo Scarnici

I'd like to introduce a new club member who is doing great work trying to save bees.  Leo Scarnici officially joined the HCBA just last month at our July BeeBQ.  Leo shoots breathtaking photos and videos of bees and uses his work to correct the public's perception of them.

Check out this recent video...

About Bees: Flight Modes from isavebees on Vimeo.

You can learn more about Leo and his mission on his website I SAVE BEES

Welcome, Leo!  We're so glad to have you as part of the club and we look forward to seeing more great projects from you.

US Retailers Look to Limit Pesticides...

U.S. retailers look to limit pesticides to help honeybees

BY CAREY GILLAM

Wed Jun 25, 2014 2:36pm EDT

(Reuters) - Home Depot (HD.N) and other U.S. companies are working to eliminate or limit use of a type of pesticide suspected of helping cause dramatic declines in honeybee populations needed to pollinate key American crops, officials said on Wednesday.

The moves include requiring suppliers to label any plants treated with neonicotinoid, or neonic, pesticides sold through home and garden stores.

Atlanta-based Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer, is requiring its suppliers to start such labeling by the fourth quarter of this year, said Ron Jarvis, the company's vice president of merchandising/sustainability. Home Depot is also running tests in several states to see if suppliers can eliminate neonics in their plant production without hurting plant health, he said.

"The Home Depot is deeply engaged in understanding the relationship of the use of certain insecticides on our live goods and the decline in the honeybee population," Jarvis said in an email.

Also on Wednesday, BJ's Wholesale Club [BJ.UL], a warehouse retailer with more than 200 locations along the East Coast, said it was asking all of its vendors to provide plants free of neonics by the end of 2014 or to label such products as requiring "caution around pollinators" like bees.

At least 10 other smaller retailers, with locations in Minnesota, Colorado, Maryland and California, have announced plans to limit or eliminate neonics from plant products.

The class of pesticides known as neonics are sold by agrichemical companies to boost yields of staple crops such as corn, but are also used widely on annual and perennial plants used in lawns and gardens.

A report issued on Wednesday by the environmental group Friends of the Earth said that 36 out of 71, or 51 percent, of garden plant samples purchased at top garden retailers in 18 cities in the United States and Canada contained neonic pesticides.

Scientists, consumer groups, beekeepers and others say bee deaths are linked to the neonic pesticides. But Monsanto, (MON.N), Bayer (BAYGn.DE) and other agrichemical companies say a mix of factors such as mites are killing the bees.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates total losses of managed honeybee colonies at 23 percent over the winter of 2013-14, the latest in a series of annual declines.

Last week, the White House announced a plan to fund new honeybee habitats and to form a task force to study how to reverse the honeybee declines. The bee die-off is worrisome for agriculture because honeybees pollinate plants that produce about a fourth of the food consumed by Americans.

An analysis of 800 peer-reviewed studies released this week by the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, a group of scientists from several countries, concluded that neonics were a key factor in bee declines and had other harmful effects on the environment.

(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

ORIGINAL SOURCE:  REUTERS

Spider Venom May Save the Bees...

Spider venom may save the bees
Bee populations, both wild and captive, are in decline in Europe, the Americas and Asia for reasons scientists are struggling to understand

PARIS - Venom from one of the world's most poisonous spiders may help save the world's honeybees, providing a biopesticide that kills pests but spares the precious pollinators, a study said Wednesday.

Bee populations, both wild and captive, are in decline in Europe, the Americas and Asia for reasons scientists are struggling to understand, with industrial pesticides among the suspected culprits.

Last year, scientists said certain pesticides used to protect crops or bee hives can scramble the brain circuits of honeybees, affecting memory and navigation skills they need to find food, placing entire hives under threat.

The EU has since placed a temporary ban on some of these chemicals.

Now a team led by Newcastle University, England, found that a biopesticide made with a toxin from Australian funnel web spider (below) venom and a protein from the snowdrop plant, was bee-friendly.

"Feeding acute and chronic doses to honeybees, beyond the levels they would ever experience in the field... had only a very slight effect on the bees' survival and no measurable effect at all on their learning and memory," said a university statement.

Neither adult bees nor larvae were affected, said the study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The biopesticide was previously shown not to be harmful to humans, despite being highly toxic to a number of key pests.

Bees account for 80 percent of plant pollination by insects. Without them, many crops would be unable to bear fruit or would have to be pollinated by hand.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) says pollinators contribute to at least 70 percent of the major human food crops.

The economic value of pollination services was estimated at 153 billion euros ($208 billion) in 2005.

"There isn't going to be one silver bullet," said study co-author Angharad Gatehouse.

"What we need is an integrated pest management strategy and insect-specific pesticides will be just one part of that."

ORIGINAL SOURCE:  New Vision