Bees News

Recent surveys hint at an insect apocalypse. But are insects at risk globally? Mongabay talks with 24 scientists on 6 continents to find out in an exclusive new series.

The last time scientists officially reported seeing a living Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto), the world’s largest known bee, was in 1981. Now, in Indonesia’s North Maluku archipelago, the giant bee has…

Engineered by insect intelligence, the hive was a convoluted mesh of waxy secretions and labyrinthine cavities. Worker bees streamed through its recesses. Bulbous pods brimmed with fresh honey. It was…

Many pollinator insect species like bees, butterflies, and hoverflies are on the decline, due in large part to habitat destruction driven by conversion of land to agricultural fields and urbanization.…

Read other stories in this three-part profile of the Ruatāhuna community’s stewardship of its forest. What makes a forest healthy? Māori knowledge has some answers. Māori community reconnects youth with…

Read the other stories in this three-part profile of the Yiaku’s management of their ancestral forest: A forest of their own: The Yiaku as Kenya’s model forest stewards For Kenya’s…

“It’s easy to quantify if insects are dead,” said Harvard post-doctoral fellow James Crall, lead author of the recent study “Neonicotinoid exposure disrupts bumblebee nest behavior, social networks, and thermoregulation.”…

On this episode, a progress report on the Half-Earth Project direct from legendary conservation biologist E.O. Wilson. Listen here:   The Half-Earth Project recently held an event at the American…

European Union member states voted to accept a proposal banning three commonly used pesticides on April 27 in a bid to protect bee populations. “Bee health remains of paramount importance…

Over the past 10 years many areas of once-forested land degraded by cattle in the Amazon have been converted to oil palm. To measure how the oil palm plantations may…

Germany’s flying insect biomass has dropped 76 percent in the past 27 years, according to a study published last week in PLOS ONE. The findings have stunned biologists around the…

Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) declared that it was placing the rusty patched bumblebee on the U.S. endangered species list. The listing would have taken effect…

On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we’re featuring highlights from a conversation with author and biologist E.O. Wilson, one of the greatest scientists of the last 100 years. Wilson…

The rusty patched bumblebee became the first-ever bumblebee species to be protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act this week, and the first wild bee of any kind in the…

Temperate grassland ecosystems are being destroyed around the world, largely due to conversion to agricultural land driven by the need to provide food and fuel for the exploding human population.…

In a positive move for bees, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has added seven species of yellow-faced bees in Hawaii to the U.S. Endangered Species List. These are the…

The world’s largest reforestation scheme may offer only marginal benefits for — or diminish — biodiversity, a study released earlier this month in Nature Communications revealed. A team of international…

Morocco has flipped the switch on the world’s largest solar power plant [NPR] This week, Morocco’s king had the privilege of powering up the first phase of the country’s massive…

Commercial farms can benefit from creating exclusive spaces for wildlife on field edges, a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B has found. “It is possible…

According to a comprehensive new study published in the journal Science, bumblebees are particularly vulnerable to climate change disruptions. Historical bumblebee ranges have shrunk on their extreme southern edge, while…