History of 'cuckoo bees' needs a rewrite, study says

(PhysOrg.com) -- The evolutionary history of the bee family Apidae -- which has the largest number of species and includes honeybees -- may need a major revision, according to a new Cornell study published online in the Proceedings ...

Insulin signaling key to caste development in bees

What makes a bee grow up to be a queen? Scientists have long pondered this mystery. Now, researchers in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University have fit a new piece into the puzzle of bee development. Their ...

Insect research gives humans six legs up

(PhysOrg.com) -- You could say that Bert Hölldobler's career began during a childhood walk in the Bavarian woods with his father. The elder Holldobler turned over a rock out in the forest, exposing a colony of carpenter ...

Bees that nest in petals

A rare species of solitary bees found in the Middle East, Osima avoseta, constructs its nests from petals, creating chambers of pink, yellow, blue, and purple for its larvae. The colorful nests moist, secure chambers for ...

No single protein determines queen development in honeybees

The proteins in the larval food of honeybees are not specific determinators to make the larvae grow into queens—that includes the protein royalactin, which had been previously claimed to be the 'queen determinator' in a ...

Sunflower pollen protects bees from parasites

Plant pollens vary in quality as food sources for bees, and pollen from the sunflower family (the family that includes dandelions, daisies, and thistles) is known to have some unpleasant qualities. Bees fed exclusively sunflower ...

Newly named bacteria help honey bee larvae thrive

Honey bees are under constant pressure from a whole host of stresses—diseases, poor nutrition, sublethal effects of pesticides, and many others. While researchers have been aware for a number of years of a community of ...

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