News

Bee Informed: Forest Bees, Greenhouse Pollinators, and Solar Field Bee Habitat

Bee Informed: Forest Bees, Greenhouse Pollinators, and Solar Field Bee Habitat

Each month our Bee Informed Blog highlights current news, science, and research related to solitary bee conservation, food insecurity, and sustainability. 1. In a New Study, Spring Forest Bees Get Their Due Temperate forests in the eastern United States come to life in April and May with colorful blankets of wildflowers, birds singing from newly leafing tree branches, and plenty of insect activity. That includes one greatly understudied group of native insects: the forest-living bees. A new study, however, is shedding much-needed light on the ecology of these often small but busy bees that do much of the spring pollination work in...

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Harvesting Highlights and Alerts

Harvesting Highlights and Alerts

First and foremost, a THANK YOU to all of our Bee Farmers and Bee Buy Back Participants this season!  You can take pride knowing that your region-specific mason bee cocoons will go to next season's bee raisers and help increase pollination and food production across the country! We also wanted to take this opportunity to alert you to a few emerging issues that we noticed during this harvesting season and give you a few tips to reduce the incidences of bee loss next year. What we want to see! A healthy mason bee cocoon (below) will appear dark grey or brown, ovular...

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Bee Informed: Bee-Free Honey, "Save the Bees", and A Glimmer of Hope

Bee Informed: Bee-Free Honey, "Save the Bees", and A Glimmer of Hope

Each month our Bee Informed Blog highlights current news, science, and research related to solitary bee conservation, food insecurity, and sustainability. 1. Exclusive: We Tasted the World’s First Real Honey Made Without Bees From MeliBio and We Couldn’t Taste the Difference Californian food tech MeliBio has just unveiled its flagship product, the world’s first-ever real honey made without bees. After debuting the product at a private tasting event in San Francisco, MeliBio is now ready to take orders from food service businesses and ship out its bee-free honey by the end of the year. Studies show that the industry’s reliance on honeybees...

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Bee Informed: "Perfect Lawns", Endangered Bees, and Tracking Bee Health with eBird Data

Bee Informed: "Perfect Lawns", Endangered Bees, and Tracking Bee Health with eBird Data

Each month our Bee Informed Blog highlights current news, science, and research related to solitary bee conservation, food insecurity, and sustainability. 1. Do you have a glossy green front lawn? What is this, the 1950s? Are our conceptions of gardening outdated and harming the planet? It turns out, yes, they are! So what should we do? Check out this article in The Guardian to learn how the "perfect lawn" is harming our pollinators and guidance on how you can create and maintain a pollinator-friendly garden. 2. Feds’ Plan To Save Endangered Rusty Patched Bumble Bee Misses Mark, Critics Say Four years after...

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