Each month our Bee Informed Blog highlights current news, science, and research related to solitary bee conservation, food insecurity, and sustainability.
1. The loss of insects is an apocalypse worth worrying about
(Vox) Perhaps you don’t think much about the value of dung beetles. But without them crawling around farms, stables, and wild savannas today, the world would be pretty, er, shitty. What about the importance of small, mosquito-like flies called midges? Without them, there’d be no chocolate and likely no ice cream because they pollinate both cacao and the plants that feed dairy cows.
“There are lots of tiny little things in this world that hold aloft everything that we value,” said Oliver Milman, an environmental journalist at the Guardian and author of a new book called The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World. Continue reading...
2. Researchers ID sex pheromone of invasive giant hornet
(Science Daily, University of California - San Diego) Scientists have developed a method for tracking the Asian giant 'murder' hornet's presence and possibly accelerating its removal. The researchers identified the major components of the Asian giant hornet queen's sex pheromone, an achievement that could be used as bait to trap and track the insects. Continue reading...
3. A vision for more sustainable farmlands
(High Country News) Central California can’t continue to farm at its current industrial scale. As land is fallowed, what could take its place?Ideas for what to do with fallowed land remain largely conceptual, but advocates are busy putting together a vision of what is possible. Some of these uses give local government agencies across the West a prototype for a different kind of future for the region’s farmland — treating the transition as an opportunity to address public health, equity and access. Continue reading...
