Friday 15 July 2011

Central Beekeepers Alliance : Glass is Half Empty to Shaken Honey Bees

Central Beekeepers Alliance : Glass is Half Empty to Shaken Honey Bees

Glass is Half Empty to Shaken Honey Bees

Posted: 15 Jul 2011 02:06 AM PDT

Glass is Half Empty to Shaken Honey Bees by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. Copyright © 2011 MindsEye Productions and Central Beekeepers Alliance. All rights reserved.

When people are depressed or anxious, they tend to see their glass as half empty, not half full — but who would expect  the same to hold true of honey bees? New research out of Newcastle University has shown for the first time that bees, when agitated as they would be when disturbed by a predator, show similar signs of pessimism.

To find out something about how honeybees view the world, the researchers “set them up to make a decision about whether an unfamiliar scent portended good or bad things.”

First, the bees were trained to connect one odour with a sweet reward and another with the bitter taste of quinine. The bees learned the difference between the odours and became more likely to extend their mouthparts to the odour predicting sugar than the one predicting quinine.

Next, the Institute of Neuroscience researchers divided the bees into two groups. One group was shaken violently for one minute to simulate an assault on the hive by a predator such as a honey badger. The other group was left undisturbed. Those bees were then presented with the familiar odours and some new ones created from mixes of the two.

Agitated bees were less likely than the controls to extend their mouthparts to the odour predicting quinine and similar novel odours, they found. In other words, the agitated bees behaved as if they had an increased expectation of a bitter taste, the researchers said, demonstrating a type of pessimistic judgement of the world known as a 'cognitive bias.'

While it may be too soon to claim that honeybees experience “emotions” the way that we humans do, this seems not to be as big a stretch as once we might have imagined!

"What we have shown is that when a honeybee is subjected to a manipulation of its state that in humans would induce a feeling of anxiety, the bees show a similar suite of changes in physiology, cognition and behaviour to those we would measure in an anxious human," said Dr Geraldine Wright, one of the study’s authors. "In terms of what we are able to measure, a shaken honeybees is no less 'anxious' than a lonely dog or a rat in a barren cage."

For more information, see also:

Agitated Honeybees Exhibit Pessimistic Cognitive Biases
Melissa Bateson, Suzanne Desire, Sarah E. Gartside, Geraldine A. Wright
Current Biology – 2 June 2011 (Vol. 21, Issue 12, pp. 1070-1073)

For stressed bees, the glass is half empty
Newcastle University: Biomedicine: News – 3 June 2011

Photo:  Baukette aus Bienen by Maja Dumat on Flickr

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Thursday 14 July 2011

Central Beekeepers Alliance : Agriculture Canada Funds Project to Help Beekeepers

Central Beekeepers Alliance : Agriculture Canada Funds Project to Help Beekeepers

Agriculture Canada Funds Project to Help Beekeepers

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 11:37 AM PDT

The Government of Canada is investing more than $244,000 in the Ontario Beekeepers’ Association with the aim of helping the beekeeping industry find new ways to respond to a decline in honey bee colony populations, Agriculture Canada has announced 29 June 2011.  Funding for this project is being provided by the Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program (CAAP). In Ontario, CAAP is delivered by the Agricultural Adaptation Council (AAC).

The project aims to help beekeepers secure sustainable honey harvests and provide essential pollination services to the fruit and vegetable industry.

Approximately 7,000 beekeepers in Canada operate a total of 600,000 colonies of honeybees, according to the Honey Council’s statistics on the Canadian apiculture industry, with approximately 475,000 colonies in the prairie provinces that produce 80% of Canada’s honey crop. Funding of this new project reflects Agriculture Canada’s recognition of the ecological and economic impacst of declining bee populations “due to disease, pest resistance to treatment methods, and increased demand on honey bee colonies to provide pollination services.”   The estimated value of honey bees to crop pollination in Canada is over $2 billion.

honey bee pollinates apple blossom“The partnership formed between the AAC, and Ontario Beekeepers Association will ensure beekeepers are able to manage genetics, pests and nutrition according to their business objectives,” said Les Eccles, OBA Tech Transfer Program Lead Specialist. “Providing management strategies specific to the beekeepers goals will give more sustainable and consistent results.”

Led by the universities of Guelph and Manitoba, the program will develop a breeding program that will result in honey bees that have the ability to resist pests and diseases. It will also screen new products for pest and disease control and develop best management practices relating to pollination colonies.  Ultimately, the project will provide beekeepers — not only in Ontario, but, through knowledge transfer, all across Canada — with the ability to have better control of colony genetics and health in order to have consistent honey production and pollination services.

Photo:  Bee with Apple Blossom by Flickr user sociotard

Agriculture Canada Funds Project to Help Beekeepers was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.
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Wednesday 13 July 2011

Central Beekeepers Alliance : Central Beekeepers Meet 12 July 2011

Central Beekeepers Alliance : Central Beekeepers Meet 12 July 2011

Central Beekeepers Meet 12 July 2011

Posted: 11 Jul 2011 04:11 PM PDT

The next regular monthly meeting of the Central Beekeepers Alliance will be held on July 12th, 2011, at the Agricultural Research Centre on the Lincoln Road, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Fletcher Colpitts, the Chief Apiary Inspector for the province, and Apiary Inspector Mary Colpitts are in the Fredericton area for a couple of days, and they will be attending this beekeepers’ meeting.

Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Central Beekeepers Alliance Meeting
Agricultural Research Centre, Fredericton, NB
7:30 p.m.

New beekeepers and anyone interested in starting to keep bees are welcome to come out and join us, to learn more about beekeeping, chat with other beekeepers, and find out more about how to keep honeybees.

Central Beekeepers Meet 12 July 2011 was written and published by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. For more information, please visit http://cba.stonehavenlife.com.
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