October 2007
If you live on the edge of or in an African National Park, elephants can be a major garden pest. A group from Oxford has discovered that you can drive them away with the sound of bees… DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!
Original open access article in Current Biology (includes link to film, at bottom of page); BBC news item; BBC video.
Filed under Conservation, Insects, Mammals, Videos
March 2007
Open Access article in PLoS Biology on the role of the vitellogenin gene on social organisation in honey bees, using RNAi to demonstrate its function at different stages
March 2007
All over the USA, bee hives are empty. For an unknown reason, bees are leaving the hives. This could have disastrous effects on crops – commercial bees are a major pollinator. A similar situation is being reported in the UK.
Article from The Independent here.
Open access article in Journal of Experimental Biology, showing that bees can be trained to perform behaviours at specific times, demonstrating the interaction between learning and circadian rhythms. Go here.
Filed under Biological rhythms
October 2006
How do bees and ants know how far they have travelled? Fascinating review article here from Current Biology (open access).
Filed under Insects, Locomotion
October 2006
The honeybee genome has just been published in Nature. Full details on what this means for our understanding of bee behaviour and evolution, plus links to the Nature podcast about the genome etc here.
Filed under Audio files, Behaviour, Evolution, Genetics, Insects
