Free Republic

"I watch you. I believe you actually don't want to do damage," Beck told Bee. "As a guy who has done damage, I don't want to do anymore damage." Samantha Bee invited Glenn Beck on Full Frontal in an effort to reach across the aisle, wear Christmas sweaters and get to know somebody with a completely different audience than her own. "Glenn and I put on our Christmas sweaters and got to work on healing the nation," said Bee in her introduction, where she talked about how Beck has recently been reaching out to the media to "apologize for his...

This is the story of a ferocious army determined to rescue their queen from a metal fortress. Or, viewed another way, a swarm of bees who, for two days, followed their queen bee trapped inside a Mitsubishi Outlander. The Outlander belongs to Carol Howarth, a 68-year-old grandmother, who had no idea she’d picked up a tiny winged passenger when she visited a nature reserve. Later, when she stopped to go shopping in Haverfordwest, West Wales, the bees descended – thousands and thousands of them. Tom Moses, who works as a Pembrokeshire Coast National Park ranger, was driving by when he...

A group of unwelcome bees disrupted US President Barack Obama's storytelling session for children at the launch of the White House Easter egg roll on Monday.

The hardy honeybees are back, having returned from dark and mysterious places in the imaginations of the environmentalists. The latest numbers from the Agriculture Department are a stinging rebuke to the doomsayers who spread hysterical tales of a mysterious apocalypse of beedom. In the latest annual survey, federal bee counters reported the lowest rate of over-the-winter bee losses in nearly a decade. Beekeepers call a loss of 19 percent to the cold weather an acceptable mortality rate. The latest loss was not much higher at 23 percent, undercutting the dire storyline pushed by environmentalists that our fuzzy friends would be...

If the Environmental Protection Agency moves to restrict neonicotinoid pesticides, often called neonics, because of fears that they are causing bee deaths, it will happen in spite of the mounting empirical evidence rather than because of it. Last December, in response to fevered political pressure, the European Commission banned the use of neonics for two years. The moratorium, guided by the precautionary politics that now dominate science-based regulation in Europe, took effect just as a number of new studies shed increasing doubt on the belief that neonics play a key role in bee health. (snip) The “crisis” prompting this handwringing...

Conservationists working on its return are celebrating a milestone after the bee nested for the first time. The bee vanished from the UK in the 1980s, having suffered declines over the previous 60 years as its wildflower-rich grassland habitat was lost, and was officially declared extinct in 2000. A reintroduction project has brought queen bumblebees over from a healthy population in Sweden and after two releases of queens at the RSPB's Dungeness reserve in Kent, offspring worker bees have been recorded at the site for the first time. Nikki Gammans, who leads the project, said: "This is a milestone for...

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says students need to be careful when investing in their education. Bernanke says taking on debt to pay for college can be an important way of increasing one's earning potential. But higher education can also become a financial burden if it doesn't lead to a good job, he warns.

Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees. These foods provide 35pc of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying – or being killed – at a disturbing pace. The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN's index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee...

Beepods are handsome, made-in-Wisconsin wooden beehives designed for optimum bee comfort and user-friendliness. The cost? Under $500. Now show me the honey ... Along with backyard chicken-keeping, urban beekeeping is another exercise in countrified self-sufficiency that’s really picked up steam over the past couple of years and been embraced by city dwellers … the latest “urban agricultural must-have,” as the New York Times put it back in 2009. The whole bees-in-the-city movement reached an unofficial climax back in March when the ban on residential beekeeping was lifted in New York City (although NYC beekeepers had been practicing and celebrating it...

Bees can solve complex mathematical problems which keep computers busy for days, research has shown. The insects learn to fly the shortest route between flowers discovered in random order, effectively solving the "travelling salesman problem" , said scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London. The conundrum involves finding the shortest route that allows a travelling salesman to call at all the locations he has to visit. Computers solve the problem by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the one that is shortest. Bees manage to reach the same solution using a brain the size of a grass...

Ron Hoskins has found a breed of the insect that protects itself against the parasite blamed for the alarming fall in numbers. The 79-year-old made the discovery after realising that one of his hives had far fewer deaths from the varroa mite than others. He found that the insects in that hive 'groomed' each other to get rid of the mites before they had the chance to do any harm. Now he is attempting to spread his mite-resistant breed of bees by cross-breeding them with queens from other hives. Decline: The UK's bee population had dropped by 60 per cent...

Sweet little hobby Create a buzz, and help distressed bees, with your own hive JANET CARSON SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE While some people fear bees and many worry about getting stung, these little insects more than redeem themselves as the primary pollinators of plants worldwide. Today is National Honeybee Appreciation Day — well deserved because it’s estimated that more than 80 percent of flowering plants and almost a third of human food crops need bees as pollinators. Reports have been claiming the loss of bee populations is due to mites, pesticides and human activities. Many species of pollinators, including bees,...

When Susan Baxter stops to smell the roses, she has a higher purpose in mind. “On the sidewalks or in parks, wherever I go these days, I stop and count the bees,” says Baxter, a investment associate at UBS. In her own backyard on the Lower East Side, she sometimes spends an hour sipping cocktails and counting bees. “My neighbors all think I’m a weirdo.”

Recently discovered beehives from ancient Israel 3,000 years ago appear to be the oldest evidence for beekeeping ever found, scientists reported. Archaeologists identified the remains of honeybees — including workers, drones, pupae, and larvae — inside about 30 clay cylinders thought to have been used as beehives at the site of Tel Rehov in the Jordan valley in northern Israel. This is the first such discovery from ancient times. "Although texts and wall paintings suggest that bees were kept in the Ancient Near East for the production of precious wax and honey, archaeological evidence for beekeeping has never been found,"...

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer is calling for a crackdown on a unique brand of laundering. Not money or drug laundering, but honey. Schumer, D-N.Y., announced yesterday that his office will press Immigrations and Custom Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the Food and Drug Administration to more stringently regulate mislabeled honey brought into the country and the state by Chinese exporters. Almost 10 years ago, Chinese honey became the subject of special taxes when it was found that Chinese honey traders were engaging in what Schumer called “predatory trade practices.” Schumer said, since then, those traders have gone to extraordinary...

Ancient Biblical beehives have been discovered in the northern Israeli site of Tel Rehov, in the Jordan Valley. Archaeologists found the 3,000-year-old remains of honeybees – including workers, drones, pupae and larvae – inside some 30 clay cylinders, according to a report published in the June 8 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A high-resolution microscope was used to study the bodies of the small insects. The scientists said they found that their legs and wings appeared to indicate they more closely resemble the bees found in modern-day Turkey than those of present-day Israel. The bee...

LAKEVILLE, Minn. - A second person has died in a four-vehicle crash on Interstate 35 in Lakeville that released a swarm of bees from a semi. Two semi trucks, including one carrying millions of bees, and two cars collided on Interstate 35 late Monday morning . The driver of one of the cars died at the scene. The driver of the other car was airlifted to a hospital and died Monday evening. The drivers killed in the crash have been identified as 24-year-old Kari Rasmussen of St. Anthony, Minn. and 50-year-old Pamela Brinkhaus of Elko, Minn. Several first responders were...

NEW DELHI – The electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile phone towers and cellphones can pose a threat to honey bees, a study published in India has concluded. An experiment conducted in the southern state of Kerala found that a sudden fall in the bee population was caused by towers installed across the state by cellphone companies to increase their network. The electromagnetic waves emitted by the towers crippled the "navigational skills" of the worker bees that go out to collect nectar from flowers to sustain bee colonies, said Dr. Sainuddin Pattazhy, who conducted the study, the Press Trust of India...

The decline in the US bee population, first observed in 2006, is continuing, a phenomenon that still baffles researchers and beekeepers. Data from the US Department of Agriculture show a 29 percent drop in beehives in 2009, following a 36 percent decline in 2008 and a 32 percent fall in 2007. This affects not only honey production but around 15 billion dollars worth of crops that depend on bees for pollination. Scientists call the phenomenon "colony collapse disorder" that has led to the disappearance of millions of adult bees and beehives and occurred elsewhere in the world including in Europe....

An Israeli company has developed a revolutionary new drug that could solve the problem of Colony Collapse Disorder, the disturbing syndrome that has been wiping out bee communities and threatening agricultural production all over the world. The drug, Remembee, which was developed by Beeologics, has completed successful clinical trials on millions of bees in North America. Not only has it proved effective in maintaining bee health, but it also improved the longevity of bees and increased the honey in the hives. Based on Nobel prize-winning RNAI technology, Remembee helps the bees overcome IAVP virus, also discovered in Israel, which has...