Bees Lose Buzz When Sick

Bumble Bee collecting pollen from a cone flower. Note the antenna are pointed to where the pollen is in the flower

Okie Bill has contributed a photo to this story.

Why did the bees go on strike?
Because they wanted more honey and shorter working flowers!

stuad70 has contributed a photo to this story.

Don't quite get this. Why did the bees who had the stimulus taker longer? Were they sick because their immune system had been stimulated or was it to simulate an illness that they were injected?

My garden is filled with flowers that attract insects. I purposely plant, shade, sun and water my garden to provide the ultimate attraction for insects.

DenaVB has contributed a photo to this story.

This happy bumble bee is pollinating my dahlia flower in San Luis Obispo, California. This bumble bee is not sick today!! We have lots of bumble bees in our garden and they seem to work hard even in the early morning when the honey bees are still back in the hive. Bumble bees are welcome in my garden!!

joeesabol has contributed a photo to this story.

Hi, I’m a mother of three grown children, and ive been married for 28 years, now its time for me to explore,,ive been a professional gardener for 14 years and took up photography about 3 years ago. I took 3 collage courses and loved it. Last year I bought my first good digital camera and love the different things you can do,,,I miss the dark room but this is more exciting.Thanks for the comments and the invite ,this picture is a bumble bee in my garden, theirs hundreds of them this year. Thanks Tina

cooperdooper77 has contributed a photo to this story.

Good story, I never cease to be amazed at the facts of nature :)

Bombus Impatiens, the Common Eastern Bumblebee. There is one other species I'm trying to photograph currently in the yard. Here's a great site to help you ID them, even if you're not in Illinois.
http://beespotter.mste.uiuc.edu/

Currently I'm obsessed with taking pictures of non-social wild bees, along with the bumblebees and honeybees.

TER-OR has contributed a photo to this story.

A North American bumblebee busy pollenating in a botanical garden in Ringwood, New Jersey. With the lack of honey bees this year, these fellows have been picking up the slack and doing most of the job.

smantrom has contributed a photo to this story.

Great article. Lots of facts I didn't know!

DillyFae has contributed a photo to this story.

This is a bumblebee photographed near Des Moines, Iowa. It is crawling around a common thistle in a pasture. Though the blooms are extremely beautiful, the plant is intrusive to grazing areas, hard to eradicate, and painful to the touch.
-Ryan Stone

PlanMyGreen has contributed a photo to this story.

A bumble bee on an ice plant flower hanging on for dear life.

kf4usq has contributed a photo to this story.

Breaking news - Bumble Bee caught in the act of stealing nectar from a clover! News at 11:00.

Actually, I did not know bees could get sick. This really is interesting.

jayleenb has contributed a photo to this story.

My bumble bee was still buzzing, so I think it is still alright.

mdanys has contributed a photo to this story.

Very interesting coverage of a topic that definitely needs more in-depth study.  Not many people realize how important the honeybees are to our environment & existence. 

I captured this bee hard at work and coated with pollen along the Foss Waterway in Tacoma, WA.  We were amazed at how much pollen it was carrying!

Bees have been in the news recently with the hive death syndrome in the US threatening agriculture and the diversity of bumble bees in decline everywhere. Many people do not realise, or do not often think about, just how dependent we are on these complex, usually social, insects. In Europe it has become common to see bumble bee nest boxes in parks along with bird boxes. It's possible to equip your own garden with nest sites - they only need holes such as in dry stone walls and log piles, but you can make more effective nest sites by burying a porous narrow-necked china bottle or jug up to the neck in earth - look for online sources of information on this.

Bees are members of the Hymenoptera, a group which provides an interesting test of evolutionary theory, as in this one group three lineages have evolved eusocial (hive) behaviour independently at least once - the ants, bees and wasps. The peculiarity which leads to this is haplodiploidy - the females are diploid, having pairs of chromosomes, but the males develop from unfertilised eggs and are therefore haploid, having only one set of chromosomes. This means that, assuming that the queen mated with only one male, the workers share 3/4 of their sisters' genes but only 1/2 of their daughters'. This generates a bias to cooperate with the reproduction of their sisters and predicts that the Hymenoptera should have a strong tendency to evolve colony-formation and sibling altruism.

The bumble bee shots were taken hand-held with a Konica-Minolta A200 in macro and auto-exposure modes, on a sunny day in Überlingen am Bodensee.

Elliott Bignell has contributed a photo to this story.

These are photographs of bumblebees from a deserted beach in Crete (Greece)

xamogelo has contributed a photo to this story.

This was taken in my front garden... I've always strived to get a decent photo of a bumble bee...

This isn't too bad, although far from perfect. I'm happy with the depth of field though..

SBB...

SBB1976 has contributed a photo to this story.

These happy Greek bumblebees are from May 2005. In the meantime, though, bees of all kinds everywhere remain under threat from pollution, disease, and habitat destruction (fires, construction projects &c). Let's make sure bees will always be in the picture!

beewatcher has contributed a photo to this story.

This photo of Bombus terrestris (Buff-tailed bumblebee) was taken near a building site in Amersfoort, Holland.

tetabiakti has contributed a photo to this story.

r4n has contributed a photo to this story.

Taken in our front yard this summer by my wife, Cathy.

tinch72 has contributed a photo to this story.

This bumblebee was captured on my trip through a Norwegian forrest this summer. Me and the bumbleebee had a long chase, with lots of shots, until it deceided to give me a pose long enough for me to capture the moment. Just love the furry, unbrushed look of it.

Juuni Elisabeth has contributed a photo to this story.

This is a Golden Bumblebee, found in the North Isles - this was on Sanday, one of the Northern Orkney Islands. I don't know much about them, but I do know they are quite rare. And vrey beautiful!

annadg has contributed a photo to this story.

Lovely summer day in England. I belive the bee was working not taking the sun bath. Hard working bee. As most of the people are at holidays and you will not find doctors in hospital, MPs in there offices.

Reporting from London.

darwaysh has contributed a photo to this story.

I took this photo on a very rainy day in the Highlands of Scotland. I was out walking by the riverbank and decided to take some shelter under a tree, when I spotted this very busy bumblebee on a wildflower.

nige.else has contributed a photo to this story.

While visiting Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summitt, Missouri I walked through a wildflower area and noticed so many bees. It's a welcome site as I hardly see any in my own yard any longer.

lissalou66 has contributed a photo to this story.