Tag: hymenoptera

taskitron:

nervous-princess:

thegreenwolf:

sachimo:

abeardfullofbees:

alilnugget:

wanashou:

beatonna:

If you aren’t totally quaking in your boots at the news of millions of bees dead, yet again, you’re nuts.

this should be concerning a lot more people than it is

not only because bees are one of the most important animals in the world and their job is a lot more than gathering honey but also because they are what scientists refer to as an “indicator species”

this means that when their populations start dwindling and then rapidly dropping, humans need to watch their shit because that means that environmental factors are too difficult for THEM to live in, so it might be difficult for US to live in, too. bees basically act as an indication that humans have a lot to worry about and when they start dying like this it deserves a lot more than a few headlines.

last year my biggest worry was the steep decline in bee population and apparently thats not about to change anytime soon. people have told me to my face that they think its strange I’m so concerned for the bees. read this you selfish fucks

Get excited, motherfuckers.  Without bees, we will die off.  Bayer and Monsanto continue to produce the chemicals that have been proven to kill them, and the government has their backs.  Bees pollinate 30% of our food in the US and we are passing legislation to PROTECT the scumbags responsible for killing them.

I preach this shit to everyone who will listen and I always get “WAAAAH I HATE BEES THEY STING AND THEY ARE BIG MEANIES!” but think about your future life without kiwis, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, peaches, sunflowers, cotton, apples, plums, pears, mustard, celery, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, beans, cherries, melons, turnips, canola oil, alfalfa, soybeans, lemons, oranges, and I could go on forever.

Bees are amazing creatures who are responsible for the comfortable lives we lead in this country and we cannot sustain and feed our population without them.

Alright you guys, there’s a good amount of notes on this but it’s only making us aware of the problem, not telling us what we can do to help. We can do something to help and YOU CAN HELP, YES THAT MEANS YOU. ALL YOU NEED IS DIRT, A FEW BUCKS, AND A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME TO MAKE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE, LITERALLY. 

Plant flowers that bees like and that attract them.

Bees prefer flowers that are blue, purple, and yellow. Choose flowers that bloom successively over the spring, summer, and fall seasons such as coreopsis, Russian sage, or germander. They especially love clover! Other plants include sage, salvia, oregano, lavender, ironweed, yarrow, yellow hyssop, alfalfa, honeywort, dragonhead, echinacea, bee balm, buttercup, goldenrod and English thyme. Buy seeds online.

GET RID OF THE PESTICIDES!!

If pesticides are killing off the bees so easily, what do you think it’s doing to us? The EPA says studies have shown pesticides can cause birth defects, nerve damage, and cancer. There are other ways to get rid of pests in the garden than using chemicals. Organic Garden Pests shows you how to keep off the bugs the organic way.

Give the bees a free home!

Giving bees a “bee block” alone is a huge load off their backs! You can buy homes here or  You can even build your own. 

Please, if you have already reblogged this, reblog this is again with what I have posted onto it so you know what you can do to help. We can make a difference.

Sources and other helpful links:

5 ways to help our disappearing bees

How to “Friend” Your Native Bees

Why gardening is good for your health

Silence of the Bees

Quick mention of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, a nonprofit group doing a LOT of good work for bees and other pollinators, among others.

signal boost

Another thing you can do is write to your government.  It may seem like writing a letter and throwing it directly into a trash can, but if enough people fill that trash can with letters, that trash can will start to wonder if its losing votes.

Also, look for ways to support native bee species in addition to honeybees. Because those guys are important as well.

Source: beatonna

addicted2wasps:

In this extraordinary case of mimicry, a harmless katydid (Aganacris sp.), mimics the feared tarantula hawk (Pepsis sp.) This large wasp has one of the most painful insect stings known. Its sting has been described as “Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has been dropped into your bubble bath” by the Schmidt Pain Index, a measure of severity of insect stings. That’s good news for the katydid, since many predators have learned to avoid insects with the warning coloration of the Pepsis wasp.

Visit The Field Museum’s insect collections online http://bit.ly/1FMfwV2

© The Field Museum. Photograph by Allie Stone, 2015

Copyright: The Field Museum. 

Kid Katydid’s long lost cousin? xD

Source: addicted2wasps

This federal judge just sided with bees over bureaucrats

typhlonectes:

On Thursday, a federal appeals court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of a pesticide called sulfoxaflor. Marketed by agrichemical giant Dow AgroSciences, sulfoxaflor belongs to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, which have been implicated by a growing weight of evidence in the global crisis in bee health. 

In a blunt opinion, the court cited the “precariousness of bee populations” and “flawed and limited data” submitted by Dow on the pesticide’s effects on beleaguered pollinating insects…

This federal judge just sided with bees over bureaucrats

23pairsofchromosomes:

Wasp uses Virus to Genetically Modify Butterfly

Many of us are familiar with the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), but a research group is France has identified the genes for C-type lectins in this species most likely originated from parasitic wasps that are known to lay their eggs in the caterpillars of this species. These proteins are carbohydrate binding proteins with a large number of roles in cells. 

Parasitic wasps are common in the insect world, with virtually all Lepidopteran species being targets for parasitism. It is believed that ~100 million years ago a wasp ancestor domesticated the bracovirus, and now these parasitic wasps employ it as a biological weapon against the caterpillars. The virus is produced in the wasp’s ovaries and acts as a vector for horizontal gene transfer (HGT). In the eukaryotic world, it is fairly rare for such an exchange of DNA between organisms.

The virus has long since lost its ability to generate a successful capsid, and as a result is reliant on the wasp’s ovaries for replication. The virus is injected into the host along with the wasp’s eggs where the domesticated virus promotes the growth of wasp progeny within the caterpillar by inhibiting its immune system. Each wasp lineage has its own set of virulence determinants encoded by the virus.

Integration of viral DNA may occur occasionally, if a caterpillar host manages to successfully defend itself against a parasitic attack or if the wasp lays its eggs in the wrong target. In both cases the caterpillar may go onto to develop into a moth or butterfly in possession of viral and wasp derived genes as seen in the monarch butterfly.

Figure showing the hypothesised process for HGT to occur between wasps and Lepidopteran species (Source)

Source: Plos Genetics – 

Recurrent Domestication by Lepidoptera of Genes from Their Parasites Mediated by Bracoviruses

Source: 23pairsofchromosomes

currentsinbiology:

How bees naturally vaccinate their babies
  

When it comes to vaccinating their babies, bees don’t have a choice
– they naturally immunize their offspring against specific diseases
found in their environments. And now for the first time, scientists have
discovered how they do it.

Researchers from Arizona State University, University of Helsinki,
University of Jyväskylä and Norwegian University of Life Sciences made
the discovery after studying a bee blood protein called vitellogenin.
The scientists found that this protein plays a critical, but previously
unknown role in providing bee babies protection against disease.

The findings appear today in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

“The process by which bees transfer immunity to their babies was a
big mystery until now. What we found is that it’s as simple as eating,”
said Gro Amdam, a professor with ASU’s School of Life Sciences and
co-author of the paper. “Our amazing discovery was made possible because
of 15 years of basic research on vitellogenin. This exemplifies how
long-term investments in basic research pay off.”  

Caption: With the discovery of how bees naturally
vaccinate their babies, researchers can now develop the first vaccine
for insects. This vaccine could be used to fight serious diseases that
decimate beehives. This is an important development for food production. Credit: Christofer Bang

Source: currentsinbiology

termanal-velocity:

fidefortitude:

the-teapot-constellation:

it’s so cute when a really fat bumblebee comes and bops against the window and immediately bumbles away like oh deary me I am terribly sorry that wasn’t where I should have been going oh what a silly sausage I am

i love your take on the inner commentary of a bee because we all see these things differently. i always imagined that if bees had a conscious inner commentary it was of a really really faint angry screaming. the bee’s just going ‘FUCK FUCK FUCK I HIT A FUCKIN WINDOW SHIT FUCK I’M GONNA FUCK UP THIS FLOWER INSTEAD S H I T I HIT ANOTHER WINDOW F U CK’ except it’s really really faint because it’s small because it’s a bee

This is the kind of quality content I want to see on my dashboard

bogleech, can you give me a reason to appreciate wasps? I swear they radiate evil. is there any good in there? somewhere?

bogleech:

This is one of my most frequent questions. People love bees, but they think wasps are just mean and that they sting for no reason. I’ve been around so many wasps and picked up wasps and never been stung – if you respect them like any other animal they’ll leave you alone unless under very unusual circumstances.

They are also basically “keystone predators,” they feed on so many other insects that if wasps disappeared the balance would go so haywire that many insects would wipe out other species, then each other, then we would lose more species that depended on those insects.

Wasps are so important to insect population control that plant life communicates with them about it directly. When a tree is being eaten by caterpillars, it will release stress pheromones that evolved just to attract the one species of wasp that specializes in those caterpillars as prey! This is so precise, corn crops can tell if they’re being eaten by either bollworms or armyworms – very similar caterpillars, but parasitized by two different wasps.

They are also major pollinators – orchids and many other flowers are pollinated only by wasps, not bees, though wasps will also pollinate all the same flowers that bees do.

Most people convinced that wasps are just evil and useless seem to be recalling a yellow jacket sting more than anything else; yellow jackets make huge nests that can be underground, so you can be walking all over it and pissing them off without knowing, whereas other animals would hear the vibration and steer clear.