bees
awild | December 5, 2007
Bombus impatiens
details: Canon 100mm macro lens on a Canon 20D
bees on plain white paper
f/14, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
Canon 550EX speedlite flash, bounced off white paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop
grrlscientist | October 9, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, elephant, Africanized honeybees, maize, Africa
As humans compete with wildlife for ever smaller areas, the likelihood for conflict between them grows. Unfortunately, this is a problem for the endangered African elephants, whose love for human crops has caused grief for both elephants and people. However, some creative research by a team from Oxford University has suggested a possible solution to the "elephant problem."
Elephants are not afraid of mice, but new research shows that they definitely fear the sound of bees because the angry insects can inflict painful…
grrlscientist | October 4, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, Brown paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus, hymenoptera, evolution, eusociality, social behavior
Brown paper wasp , Polistes fuscatus.
Fairport, New York, USA. 2003.
Many thanks to Alex Wild for sharing his amazing images here.
Thanks to Elizabeth Tibbetts for the species identification.
[larger view]
Eusociality, or "true social behavior", is the most extreme form of cooperative sociality known. Due to its seemingly altruistic nature, eusociality has provided many interesting challenges for evolutionary theory. Eusociality, as exemplified by ants, bees and wasps, is…
grrlscientist | September 26, 2007tags: hymenoptera, bees, Augochlora species, Metallic Green Native Bee, Image of the Day
Metallic Green Native Bee, Augochlora species.
This tiny and very fast-moving, alert bee is hard to photograph. I found it nectaring on Eupatorium serotinum, a/k/a late-flowering boneset, in the West 11th Street Park in the Heights section of Houston, Texas, on September 23, 2007.
Image: Biosparite [larger view].
The Green Metallic Bee in the genus Augochlora, in the Halictid Family. According to the Audubon Guide: the "Female digs nest of many branching burrows in dead wood or uses pre-existing…
zooillogix | May 30, 2007A mad scientist at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, has developed a new technique for finding unexploded land mines: bomb-sniffing bees! Professor Nikola Kezic spends his days training hives of honey bees--whose sense of smell is much more powerful than that of humans-- to detect and point out explosives buried in the ground. By combining sources of food with chemical explosives in a confined environment, Kezic conditions the bees to associate the smell of explosives with delicious sustenance. Once released into the wild, the bees make a bee-line (seriously this is too easy) for the land…