Insects, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 14, 2015

(Bee)autiful Shot: Pollen-Covered Eyeball Wins 'Small World' Photo Contest

A photo contest that pays tribute to the tiny wonders of the world has a particularly buzzworthy winning image this year: a close-up of a bee's eye, covered in dandelion pollen. More than 2,000 photographers submitted images to the 2015 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition, but just 20 of those...

Nov 3, 2015

Revolt in the Hive: Why Worker Wasps Sometimes Kill Their Queens

Workers in wasp nests sometimes kill their queens, even though these egg-laying wasps are also their mothers. Now, researchers think they might know why such murders take place — so that workers can give birth to sons of their own, according to a new study. Wasps are often social insects...

Nov 9, 2015

City Life Can Be Tough on Bees

Humans aren't the only ones who find city life uniquely stressful — bees feel the stress, too, scientists have found. Honeybees living in urban areas encounter more deadly pathogens than their counterparts living in the burbs or the country. Over the past century, pollinator numbers have declined dramatically in the...

Nov 13, 2015

Bumblebee Training Reveals Males to Be Surprisingly Smart

Male bumblebees are thought to be dim-witted — a bit bumbling, you might say — compared to females. See, female bumblebees do all the work, from fetching the nectar to feeding the kids to cleaning the hive. Males are thought to be good for pretty much one thing: helping to...

Dec 17, 2015

'Heavy Metal' Bee Is a Headbanging Pollinator (Video)

Australia's blue-banded bee is a successful pollinator because it uses its head — literally, scientists have found. Like a heavy-metal fan headbanging to Iron Maiden, this species of blue-banded bee (Amegilla murrayensis) vibrates its head rapidly when visiting flowers. This turns out to be quite an effective method for distributing...

Dec 22, 2015

Flower Aroma Is a Honeybee's Chill Pill

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast. And, it seems, flowers can calm an aggressive honeybee. Scientists in France and Australia have found that angry honeybees are less likely to attack when exposed to certain floral scents, such as lavender, associated with the promise of food. This occurs even...

Dec 23, 2015

Hop to It! Cocooned Wasp Larvae Jump to Survive

Parasitic wasp larvae Bathyplectes anurus are perfectly hoppy inside cocoons hijacked from the weevil larvae they ate. Image credit: Yoriko Saeki Tiny, cocooned parasitic wasp larvae hop their way to safety, jumping to get away from predators and to find cool, shady areas, a new study finds. These wee jumpers...

Feb 11, 2016

Buzzworthy View: See the World Through a Wasp's Eyes

Before a ground wasp leaves its burrow to forage, it takes to the air to perform a peculiar aerodynamic exercise: looping in arcs around the nest and gradually gaining height and distance before flying away. Now, scientists have created a video of this swirly trip from the insect's point of...

Feb 24, 2016

Dutch Buzz: Bees Get Smaller, Men Taller

A team of scientists took a closer look at declining bee populations in the Netherlands and discovered something unexpected — it wasn't just the bee populations that were shrinking. The bees themselves were getting smaller. Over nearly a century and a half, big-bodied female bee species in the Netherlands have...

Jul 26, 2016

These Honeybees Have Mastered Twerking: How They Do It

Honeybees are famous for their wiggling, waggling dances, which they use to communicate with others in their hives. Now, a new study reveals the anatomical limits to a honeybee's moves. The bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) can curl their abdomens, the new research finds, but they can't flex them upward —...

Sep 8, 2016

Four New Wasp Species Identified in China

Four species of parasitoid wasps have been discovered in northwest China, a new study reports. The new species belong to the genus Gasteruption. These wasps have slender bodies and inflated, club-shaped hind legs. They also have elongated necks, and keep their abdomens raised and hind legs dangling during their slow,...

Sep 13, 2016

Photos: Oddball Bees Build Nests Out of Sandstone

Anthophora Pueblo (Image credit: Michael Orr, Utah State University)A new species of desert-dwelling bee, Anthophora pueblo, peeks out of its sandstone nest. These bees gnaw holes into the rock, a difficult process that leaves older bees with worn-out mandibles. New research published Sept. 12 in the journal Current Biology, however,...

Sep 13, 2016

'Unusual' Bee Species Drills Apartment-Style Nests Out of Rock

A newly discovered species of bee does things the hard way, gnawing its nests out of solid rock even when softer dirt is available. This hard work appears to pay off, however, by providing the bees greater protection from the vagaries of life in the desert Southwest. The species, dubbed...

Sep 29, 2016

Bumblebee Set to Become Officially Endangered

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has proposed listing a species of bumblebee as an endangered species, the first bee species to be granted such federal protection in the continental United States. The rusty patched bumblebee - the workers of which can be identified by a small rust-colored mark...

Dec 1, 2016

The Mysterious Sex Lives of Hawaii's Endangered Yellow-Faced Bees

In late September 2016, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) added seven of Hawaii's yellow-faced bee species to the Endangered Species List — the first time any bee has been declared endangered. What do we know about their sex lives and could this information be the key to saving...