Bees and Beekeeping

Edit: Halictus scabiosae, identified through observations.be with 99% certainty.

What am I looking at? Except a very industrious little worker?

How do I go about figuring it out? Is there some reliable site that would allow me to refine by stripes and such? Thanks.

This is Wallonia, Belgium. I got a new camera, which allows me to get much more detailed entirely useless pictures! I was one with the bees for an entire hour, came home with 500 pictures, and this is the only photo I got of this one. The stripe pattern struck me, with the very sharp lines, but I have no head, no thorax, no nothing...

What do folks make of this news? I know a lot of U.S. (and some Canadian) beekeepers have really enjoyed the Hive Life conference in the past.

Hey folks, I found a few Pollinator Databases to share and would appreciate any more interaction databases or reference you guys use being thrown my way. :)

Global Bee Interaction Dataset

• https://github.com/seltmann/global-bee-interaction-data

This dataset comprises all bee interactions indexed by Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI; Poelen et al. 2014). It is published quarterly by the Big Bee Project (Seltmann et al. 2021) to summarize all available knowledge about bee interactions from natural history collection, and community science observations (i.e., iNaturalist), and the literature. Interactions include flower visitation, parasitic interactions (mite, viral), lecty, and many others.

UK DoPI - UK Database of Pollenator Interactions

• https://www.sussex.ac.uk/lifesci/ebe/dopi/

The Database of Pollinator Interactions (DoPI) documents British pollinator-plant associations. DoPI unites the disparate publications currently scattered throughout the scientific literature with unpublished reports and databases into a single online depository.

This article has been circulating for a while, summarizing the latest BIP data on colony losses. Thought this forum might allow some beekeeper discussion of it. Do we think this annual "doom and gloom" reporting on BIP's colony loss survey data is useful, or does it sow pointless confusion among non-beekeepers?

Hi all, this little guy (or maybe big for a bee) was visiting my Passionflower today :)

Hello all,

With the threat of honeybee extinction looming on the horizon, I got to thinking that rearing stingless bees could eventually supplant apiculture for the production of high-value base materials used in the biomedical industry. Unfortunately, they don't produce much in the way of actual honey and the slow (re-)adoption of the practice has coincided with the loss of traditional knowledge and habitat destruction in Mesoamerica.

Despite many efforts to fund research programs around the world, interest in adopting meliponiculture here in North America seems next to nil. Perhaps there is a good reason behind it, but I suspect it's merely the product of ignorance and lack of funding sources.

With that said, has anyone heard or read anything that suggests the potential for (safely and lawfully) importing these little beauties into North America? Even if you don't know, I would love to hear everyone's thoughts and musings on meliponine bees anyways.

Or do you hope to keep bees? Or just think bees are neat?

This article was published recently and it seems like the method described could be useful or may just interrupt broodrearing so much that a colony wouldn't ever be able to thrive after being subjected to it. Who has tried any queen caging method like this before? Did it work for you?