This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Wanted to put out the call for a seasoned writer to add a chapter on this. The Colony Collapse Disorder page is sweet, but where is it on the Bees page? Michaeljwsiegel 23:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
It is linked to on this page, but as it does not affect 99.999% of the world's bees, it is not appropriate to discuss it here. CCD affects ONE species of honey bee, it does not affect bees in general. I, and the other seasoned writers, keep things where they belong. Dyanega 17:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
On Good Morning America, They did a special on facing fears and Sam Champion's Fear was bees they said that they did not know what it was (I now know it was CCD) makes African Honey bees just die and disappear without a trace. African Honey bees are given a place in this article and I think It should be included. --71.255.69.2 (talk) 20:26, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
There have been exactly zero confirmed cases of Colony Collapse Disorder among Africanized bees and far fewer confirmed cases among Western honeybees than anyone would expect watching the media reports. Please remember that Champion is a weatherman, not a bee researcher. If you want to know about CCD, you should look in that article, not here. As has been said many times before, it only affects a tiny fraction of the bees in the Bee family. Rossami(talk) 04:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I came to this page looking for something on the disappearing bees, found nothing and went to look on the talk page to find a link to the info I wanted. It seems like there may be enough people doing that to warrant a header so they are directed straight to that information.IMFromKathlene 02:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Let me ask a question, and I would like you to think about it carefully: do you go to the mammal article and expect to find a header there linking you to the AIDS article? Humans are, after all, the most well-known mammal on the planet. So why isn't every disease that affects humans also listed at the top of the mammal page? Maybe because the mammal page is the place to talk about things that apply to mammals in general, and not just humans? There are some 20,000 species of bees, and colony collapse disorder affects exactly ONE of those species - the Western honey bee - and that one species already has some 20 WP pages devoted solely to it, its biology, its behavior, its management, and its diseases. This particular article is not about that species. This article is about ALL bees, and if this were something that affected ALL bees, then it would deserve a discussion here. Otherwise, it merits only a link, and this page does indeed have a link to CCD, so if you "found nothing" it's because you simply missed it. Dyanega 06:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
AIDS has a keyword (or two, both HIV and AIDS). "CCD" is not a keyword yet-- I just wanted info on disappearing bees. No one would logically look up "mammal" trying to find information on AIDS, they would look up AIDS or HIV. You have to keep how people use information in mind, not just the most logical way to sort it-- people aren't logical. I don't have the article with me (it's in my work inbox, so I can get it Friday), but there's this fantastic piece on how people use the internet. They scan pages for what they want, they click on links, but they don't read every piece of information on a page when they're only searching for one thing. I "simply missed it" because there wasn't anything I recognized as a header related to the subject I was looking for in the places I looked in. IMFromKathlene 02:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The lead paragraph of colony collapse disorder today reads in part "It was originally apparently limited to colonies of the Western honey bee in North America[1], but European beekeepers have recently claimed to be observing a similar phenomenon in Poland and Spain, with initial reports coming in from Switzerland and Germany, albeit to a smaller degree[2]." Bee is a fine article, but most people will be coming here to find out more about why America's bees are disappearing, not to learn how many segments are in a bee's antennae. This is a current event of great interest to John Q. Public. I suggest that a one or two-sentence reference to CCD be added to the Bee lead paragraph or immediately following it. Thank you. --CliffC 17:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
AIDS is also a current event of great interest to John Q. Public. But it does not deserve to be at the top of the mammal article, any more than Colony Collapse Disorder belongs at the top of the bee article. If I interpret your statement correctly as to why people are coming to this page, then they are coming here for the wrong reason (i.e., because John Q. Public thinks there is only one bee species in existence). That, I would argue, is all the more reason to EDUCATE such readers that there are many bee species - and it would be misleading to include a header on colony collapse disorder because that would imply, incorrectly, that this phenomenon affects bees in general. For example, your statement "America's bees are disappearing" is misleading, sensationalist hyperbole. Not one bee species native to the Western Hemisphere ("the Americas") is affected by CCD. The statement should be "European honey bees being kept by beekeepers in America are disappearing" - and even that is misleading, because there are thousands of beekeepers all over the US whose colonies are doing just fine. There are SOME beekeepers who are losing colonies, and what the scientists are trying to do right now is figure out why THOSE colonies are dying, and not all the others. Just because the mass media cannot keep things in perspective does not mean Wikipedia has to fall into the same trap. Dyanega 20:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
What would the community think of putting something at the beginning of the Bee article like This article is about bees in general. For Western honey bee see related article about that specific bee. I admit, I'm not crazy about it since there are lots of bees that people will accidentally come here for. Still, I suspect this is the most common mistake. Henryhartley 20:49, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
If people don't know, in advance, that the Western honey bee is the only species affected by CCD, then they won't know that the Western honey bee article is the one they were looking for; the only way to find that out is to read this article - and CCD most definitely IS mentioned in this article! It seems odd that it should be considered an imposition on a reader to actually be asked to read the article. Anyone who reads the article will see the link to CCD, discussed where it should be, under pollination, because that is the only real impact it has. Dyanega 23:42, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
A primary goal of Wikipedia, or any reference work, should be easy access to the information sought. I think we editors sometimes lose sight of who the vast majority of our users are. They are not our fellow editors, engineers and scientists. They are Joe Sixpack, his wife and their children. If we know a subject has great currency in the popular media, why wouldn't we make information on that subject as easy to find as possible?
Dyanega says people "won't know that the Western honey bee article is the one they were looking for; the only way to find that out is to read this article" -- no, that statement is only true if we make it be true. People who come to Bee because theyr'e wondering about those "disappearing" Bees will have no idea that CCD is the term they're looking for, and won't know the Western honey bee from their elbow. Why make them wade though an entire article to find a link they probably won't even recognize once they get to it? That's not helpful.
Let's put the information we know people are most interested in up front, where they can find it right away. Let's simply insert, immediately after the first paragraph, a statement similar to Recently there has been a great deal of media attention given to the subject of the so-called "disappearing" bee population of the United States and some European countries. To learn more about that subject, please see Colony Collapse Disorder. That would be helpful. --CliffC 01:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I can see your point, and as long as you have no objection to my altering it to be a little more precise, then I'll insert just such a comment. Dyanega 05:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The statement you inserted is fine with me. --CliffC 11:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
User:Madchester removed our agreed-on text, with edit summary "fix per WP:LEAD". A short discussion of his objections can be found at User talk:Madchester. I have now couched the missing CCD information as a {{For}} template, in the hopes that this will satisfy the requirements and people involved. --CliffC 02:51, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
range and climate?
It would be nice if the artical had some info about the range and climate of various bees. (unsigned by User:74.79.174.201)
The range was already included at the top of the page (everywhere except Antarctica) - I presume by climate you meant habitat, so I added that. Dyanega 08:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
We need to add some information on bee sting allergy
I fail to see why this would belong here, given that most bee species do not sting humans. The place for information on sting allergies on the sting page. Dyanega 01:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Royal Jelly
Royal jelly is not mentioned once in the article, I would put it in but I do not know where it should go.
Please do not. It does not belong in this article, as only 7 species out of 20,000 produce it. It is already linked on the Honey bee page, where it belongs. Dyanega 20:54, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Bee 'hibernation'
I removed this edit to the miscellaneous section by an IP user since it lacks a citation and is not written in a style befitting an encyclopedia:
"If you sedate a North American honeybee with smoke and put it in a freezer, you can take it out weeks later and it will come back to life, unharmed."
If someone would like to re-add it, citing a source and rewriting in wikipedia style, please do so. Thx, SteinAlive | ☎ | ☉ 00:57, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Source? How does one (1) get a source for somethiing that isn't true, or (2) justify putting trivia regarding Western honey bees in the Bee article instead of the Western honey bee article? Dyanega 07:35, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Is/was this an appropriate edit? There are links on the disambig page. SteinAlive | ☎ | ☉ 07:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Navigation
I've heard conflicting conflicting accounts of how bees navigate, namely from one source that they use radio waves (citing speculation that mobile phone masts have caused them disorientation) and from another that they use the sun. Which is true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.189.32.65 (talk) 14:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
First, I'm assuming that you're asking about honeybees and specifically of Western honeybees. That's the predominantly studied species among all the families of bees. Very little research has been done on other species. If that's the case, the radio story is junk. There was one study about cell phone base stations which, when placed inside the hive caused some minor effects. The study has been criticized on many grounds including 1) the unrealistic assumption that anyone would place a base station actually inside a living colony and 2) that the "measured" effects failed to properly control for the normal factors and behaviors of bee colonies. The reported results could be equally well explained (and in fact are better explained) by susceptibility to parasitic varroa mites. Western honeybees have three "eyes" on the top of their heads which they use to orient on the sun during the long-distance legs of their journey. These light sensors are tuned in such a way that they can get an accurate sighting even through fairly heavy cloud cover. The bees orient on a combination of visual and olfactory cues at the end-points of the trip. Rossami(talk) 16:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
Like WOW dude, that's so cool! 194.176.105.40 (talk) 08:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Larvae
Should a page be made for bee larvae? On the larvae page there is a link to this non-existant page. Or should information on larvae be added and the link come back to this page instead? (ApostleJoe (talk) 13:32, 4 January 2008 (UTC))
There is nothing unusual or different about bee larvae, and no reason to create a separate page; the non-existent link was to a word not used in English, and has been corrected. Bee larvae are called either "grubs" or "larvae" in English, as are ant larvae, wasp larvae, and beetle larvae. Dyanega (talk) 21:28, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh, alright. I don't know anything about bees, which is why I checked. Thanks for responding! :) (ApostleJoe (talk) 23:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC))
Pictures
These are some amazing photos. I'd like to congratulate all the people who worked on making this such a vivid article. Especially on a HiDef monitor :). Phillip Shaw (talk) 05:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Vandalisim
Can you protect this page please?
Or my enemies will continue to vandalise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.1.104.29 (talk) 13:38, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
"Your enemies"? There doesn't seem to be too much vandalism going on at the moment, from the page history. --McGeddon (talk) 14:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Taxobox
Is there any way to list the superfamily Apoidea above the Anthophila in the bee taxobox? Presently, I think the listing implies that Apoidea is included within Anthophila and is as such misleading. I tried playing around with "unranked_something" parameter, but nothing else than unranked_superfamilia works. --Yerpo (talk) 08:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure how you would do that since the lifecycle of different kinds of bees are often so radically different. If you're thinking just of the honeybee, you might want this or even this. It depends on which species you are considering. Rossami(talk) 21:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Honey bee decline
The honey bees have been dying off because the Venomous 3-step honey bee has taken over the bee kingdom. Known to be the most poisonous of all insects, the venomous 3 step bee can sting you causing you to die in 3 steps unlike its brother the extremely venomous 2-step bee.
The honey bee decline seems to me a massive enough problem with such significant consequences for agriculture (and thus human existence) that it deserves mention here, though this page is about bees generally. Do people agree? I have added the Bee#Pollination#Depopulation section; I encourage others to help with this.
The danger of extinction in the USA and Europe seems significant and I have added this back in specifying that the problem is severe in those two areas. Hgilbert (talk) 10:39, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
No. That problem is unique to the honeybee and even more specifically, to the Western honey bee, only one of the roughly 20,000 species that are covered in this article. You also have your facts wrong. While there has been a reported decline in some commercial beekeepers' operations, there is nothing in the scientific literature to suggest that there is any realistic danger of extinction of even the one species, much less of all of them. Rossami(talk) 13:31, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Not only domesticated bees: wild bees are also in severe decline. World-wide extinction is unlikely but I have provided two citations expressing the level of concern about the USA and Britain. These are from notable newspapers that should be acceptable as sources, especially as there is certainly nothing in the scientific literature that contradicts the noted decline. Hgilbert (talk) 13:55, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
The general decline that you talk about is already better discussed in Pollinator decline where you will find that there are scientific studies which refute the inflammatory claims made by those newspapers. (They may be notable but they are not especially reliable on topics outside their area of expertise.) According to the actual literature, the dominant reasons for the decline are thought to be the introduction by man of foreign pests and diseases to populations without existing immunity, habitat loss and pesticide misuse (that is, spraying by individual farmers against label instructions, not the approved use via the seed coatings). Toxic side-effects of approved chemicals used in accordance with the label instructions has not been substantiated as more than mere speculation in any study to date. If you want an authoritative and very up-to-date discussion of the specifics around those two pesticides, I suggest you look up some of the recent postings of Dr James Fischer on BEE-L. Rossami(talk) 15:26, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
I appreciate your efforts towards accuracy and avoiding an inflammatory tone. Note that one newspaper report cites a Minister of Agriculture, the other a Professor at the Universität Würzburg specializing in bee research: both of these are quoted referring to the danger that the bee will be extirpated. Both gentlemen cited are well within their areas of expertise. Hgilbert (talk) 17:30, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
What sources have demonstrated that wild bees (other than feral exotic Apis mellifera and bumblebees) are in "severe decline"? I see no quotes from any Ministers of Agriculture in the articles you cite, and the actual comment from the professor in Würzburg was "It is not a sudden problem, I has been happening for a few years now. Five years ago in Germany there were a million hives, now there are less than 800,000. If that continues there will eventually be no bees." - and all that is referring to is managed honey bees, not WILD honey bees, nor any other bee species (note that even if the rate is constant, we still have at least 20 more years to go). I note also that you have suddenly switched from using the word "extinct" to using the word "extirpated" - they are very different terms. The decline of feral exotic Apis populations is - in the New World, an ecologically beneficial thing, as it should reduce the pressure on native pollinators (the concern people have is not ecological, it is over the impact on agriculture, which is a different matter entirely). In the Old World, I'm not aware of documented declines outside of managed beekeeping operations (i.e., decline of wild Old World Apis). Can you cite any sources showing this? The decline of bumblebees, on the other hand, is a real phenomenon and a legitimate concern, but much of it (if not all) appears to be traceable to the commercial movement of diseased bumblebees from one continent to another, transmitting those diseases to wild populations when the bees are released - it evidently has nothing to do with GMO's, pesticides, or cell phones. Aside from those two phenomena, there are no "severe declines" that I'm aware of - and given that I'm a world authority on "wild bees", if anything else were happening, I honestly expect I would have heard about it by now from one of my colleagues. Has it never occurred to you that none of the people making these dire statements in front of the press are actual bee biologists? Dyanega (talk) 17:38, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Bees
Wow the testmaster learned alot about bees by reading this article. I am very allergic to bees so this topic of bees is important to me. I had a bees nest in my car and got stung so i'm surprised to learn that bees are non aggressive in most times. I am still very afraid of bees though. But good work, the testmaster highly likes this article Testmasterflex (talk) 04:04, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
BEE FLIGHT.
I'm new here so I don't know how to post a new discussion topic. And I can't edit this article. What I would like to add (below the 1930's calculations) is:
In fact the equations used to calculate if bees can fly only proof that bees can't hang glide. Bee wings work more like the propeller on a helicopter. And it's no surprise that using equations to calculate if something can hang glide and applying that to a helicopter shows that the helicopter-like object will fail to fly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aru05001 (talk • contribs) 00:56, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
If anyone can refer people to his report submitted to a peer-review science journal and published, that should be most useful to readers keenly interested in genuine documentation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pachomius2000 (talk • contribs) 02:36, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Bees and humans and the soda can image
Bees in soda can image
Rossami said: " removing the image of a soda can. That image does not really illustrate the main topic of this section."
I feel it does; soda cans are synthetic products and the image illustrates that bees interact with the human world via its output. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:19, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
As currently worded, I believe that section focuses more on the mythological and social connections or analogies between bee and human behavior. Certainly, that's the thrust of the first two paragraphs. The picture, on the other hand, brings to my mind only the connotation of fear of being stung. While true that many humans do fear being stung, that's only a very small part of the section. It's also remarkably rare. Honey bees will forage almost anywhere before they will start in on processed soda. There needs to be a near-complete nectar drought. Honey bees much prefer floral sources if any are available. Yellowjackets, on the other hand, are very commonly seen foraging around soda cans in the fall. The connection to the main thesis of the section seems too tenuous to me. Rossami(talk) 15:15, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
The fear of being stung isn't the intention - the intention is to show that bees interact with the "human" environment (such as the soda cans) - Is there a reliable source that states that it is rare for a honey bee to soda cans? I read this from a California fire department http://www.ci.manteca.ca.us/fire/bees.html and it actively instructs people to remove old soda cans as Africanized honey bees may nest in them. These links (from reliable sources) also say the same thing [1][2] - Even though I doubt the bees pictured in this photo are Africanized, the fact that honeybees interact with soda cans should be more than enough of a rationale. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:52, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
First, please toss those references out. Most of their facts are right but some are way off. Both European and Africanized honeybees need a minimum cavity size before they will establish a colony. Seeley is the most reliable source I know [3] and while he only measured European colonies, the lowest observed cavity size was 12 liters. Subsequent studies, including those assessing Africanized colonies, have validated his observed ranges. Africanized honeybees are a bit more tolerant of different cavity types (including a greater tolerance for ground cavities) but you're not going to see a jump from 12 liters to 12 ounces. There simply isn't room in that small a cavity. Biologically, it can't work. The wording on those different sites are close enough that I strongly suspect that they all copied from the same wrong source. Note: Yellow jackets and certain other wasp species will happily nest in cavities of that size but I don't believe they'd ever nest in that material. The painted metal and lack of ventilation would make it inhospitable in the summer. As I said above, though, you will definitely see yellow jackets foraging in soda cans in the fall. To your question about forage preferences, my source is a lecture by K Flottum (Editor of BeeCulture magazine and one of the preeminent US lecturers on honeybees). Unfortunately, I don't have a good written source for that information. Rossami(talk) 21:26, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Bees nesting in soda cans?? All I can say is OMG! - is that ever a case of ridiculous misinformation! Someone in the California fire department really, really has no idea what they're talking about. Furthermore (and yes, there is a "furthermore") even if we could agree that there is some use in talking about how honey bees will exploit artificial food sources provided by humans, such as soda cans and hummingbird feeders, that information would NOT belong in this article. It would belong in the European honey bee article, and nowhere else, since it applies to only this ONE species. Dyanega (talk) 23:25, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Dyanega, Rossami said that yellowjackets also exploit artificial food sources such as soda cans, so this behavior would be practiced by more than one species of bee, correct? If this was something only the European honey bee did, then I could understand excluding it. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Ummm...yellowjackets are only distantly related to bees - I doubt you'd use an example of how dogs behave to illustrate a point in an article about cats. So no, that's not correct. There are over 20,000 species of bees which act nothing at all like honey bees, so it's best to keep as much information as possible about the European honey bee in its own article where it belongs. Dyanega (talk) 00:02, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
maybe not soda cans but trash cans.Demomoer (talk) 11:51, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Gallery
I'm pretty sure the gallery should be removed, the link to the Commons is an adequate resource for images. Cheers, Jack (talk) 23:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Pollination
The honey bees have been dying off because the Venomous 3-step honey bee has taken over the bee kingdom. Known to be the most poisonous of all insects, the venomous 3 step bee can sting you causing you to die in 3 steps unlike its brother the extremely venomous 2-step bee.
In the Pollination section, seems like the last paragraph should start "The pollination value..." rather than "The population value..." -- very small edit. Agapostemon (talk) 00:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Bee species
Not sure whether the (latin) equivalents of following groups were already mentioned in article:
1. Stingless Bees
2. Yellow & Black Carpenter Bees
3. Green Carpenter Bees
4. Reed Bees
5. Blue Banded Bees
6. Teddy Bear Bees
7. Leafcutter Bees
8. Resin Bees
9. Homalictus Bees
10. Masked Bees —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.245.81.115 (talk) 13:24, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I would like to identify the species of bee that moved into an abandoned mole hole in my back yard. How would I go about doing that? These are long and skinny bees. Although this kind of bee produces an awful bee sting (since I got stung yesterday), it doesn't seem to be as potent a sting as other bees (my bee sting is almost gone the next day). Rather than me attempting to shoot a picture of the bee, maybe someone else could post a whole bunch of authoritative pictures here. The bee I am curious about, is long and skinny, as opposed to the roundish honey bee. If the color of its body is useful, it has the same kind of color as a European honeybee.
Is there any formal way of figuring out the species of a bee, short of an expensive DNA test? 216.99.198.8 (talk) 20:21, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Interwiki
Please someone put the interwiki [[eu:Erle]], thanks. 200.81.121.30 (talk) 16:47, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Grammar
This protected article has quite a few grammatical mistakes in it. Perhaps the author should go over it more thoroughly and correct those. Take the closing sentence, for instance:
"In Indonesia bee larvae are eaten as accompanion to rice, after mixed with shredded coconut "meat", wrapped in banana leaves, and steamed."
There is no such word as "accompanion" in the English language: a simpler, more grammatically correct clause would read: "bee larvae are eaten with rice dishes" or even simply "with rice".
Also, "after mixed with shredded coconut meat" should be either "after being mixed with coconut meat" or "after they are mixed with coconut meat..." There's obviously an ellipse in the original, and the word "meat" after coconut should not have quotes around it for any reason. The flesh of the coconut is simply called its meat; there's nothing unique or peculiar about that.
These are just examples from one sentence. In other words the article probably ought to be flagged for clean-up.
This is kind of a minor squabble, as the article is pretty well balanced and informative, but ....
Buried in the middle of the second paragraph on Pollination is the sentence: "One small subgroup of stingless bees, called "vulture bees," is specialized to feed on carrion, and these are the only bees that do not use plant products as food." It is an interesting point, but it seems that this comment needs to stand more on its own, doesn't pertain to the paragraph other than by this tangential observation that there is (only) one group of bees which is not herbivorous. The simplest change would be to contain the comment in parentheses. More work would be to promote the Vulture bee sentence to its own paragraph and maybe as part of the introductory remarks; because Vulture Bee has a hot link to its own topic, expansion within this broader article on bees may not be needed.
Also within this same topic (Pollination) are a few more points. If there is interest, I can track down sources for any of the following points.
== More than just carry a static charge, bees generate the charge as a part of flight and their wing vibrations.
== Could something be added on how some bees land on the petals and walk to the reproductive center of the flower, (honeybees e.g.) while others land directly on the center (megachilidae bees such as leafcutter and mason bees e.g.)?
BEE COMMUNICATION, KARL von FRISCH
ABOUT 1945 AN AUSTRIAN ENTOMOLOGIST(SP?)NAMED KARL von FRISCH STUDIED BEE COMMUNICATION. HE SHOWED BEES COMMINICATE BY A "WIGGLE" DANCE TO SHOW DISTANCE TO A SOURCE OF POLLEN, AND A POLARIZATION EFFECT TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTION WITH RESPECT TO SUN. UV LIGHT ALSO INVOLVED. THIS WAS HISTORIC, GROUND-BREAKING RESEARCH INTO INSECT SCIENCE.
I SUGGEST THESE TOPICS SHOULD BE TO THE BEE SECTION OF THIS VERY GOOD ARTICLE.
SmJOE (talk) 07:49, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Honey bees in science fiction literature
There are probably some pretty good reasons for not taking bee hives into outer space, but be that as it may, I would like to read about honey bees in science fiction. The main article would have been a lot more helpful if it had had a link to an article about honey bees in science fiction literature. Surely there are a lot of science fiction authors who have dealt with the practical benefits of raising bee hives in outer space. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 06:30, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
I was thinking of writing a science fiction story myself about domed habitats on the moon, and bee farmers raising honey as a product suitable for trade or export. (No, I would not cross the obvious line between science fiction and horror). It ought to be easy enough to have flowering plants from which the bees could collect nectar. But I am limited by my ignorance of bee raising in low gravity habitats. Like you, I can only speculate. Yes, I am somewhat familiar with the basic stuff, like bees navigating by the position of the sun in the sky, and how they ventilate their hives by beating their wings. I am not sure if bees can endure 14 days of night, or whether they can navigate by earthshine instead of (or in addition to) sunshine. But low gravity combined with low atmospheric pressure shouldn't be an obstacle to this sort of thing. Availability of flowers is probably the biggest obstacle (but I'd be glad to be corrected).
I was hoping that the issue of bees in science fiction literature would already have covered these things well in advance, so I could just come along later and read it at my own leisure and convenience. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 22:46, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Interesting. It was tried; read about it by clicking here.Abductive (reasoning) 23:43, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
The book review in your link indicates that none of the queen bee's eggs hatched on returning from space? Did the queen bee live its entire life after returning? Now I am worried it is harder to raise bees in a low gravity environment than I first thought. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 00:22, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Many embryos need a graviational cue to know which way is up (and therefore where to put the head). From what I have heard, insects don't need a gravitiational cue, so the failure to hatch could be related to something else. Perhaps the "bee enclosure module" didn't keep them warm enough, as can be read between the lines in the primary source here. The article has pictures, by the way. I'd say that the experimenters killed the developing young; they tried to transfer the comb upon return to Earth. Abductive (reasoning) 01:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
"Weasel Words"
So from what I gather, changing the wording in article to indicate that biologists have educated guesses about bee phylogenies and the like is unacceptable. Well, according to User:Fences_and_windows, that is. His/her own words:
"the hedging and weasel words add nothing to the article. If there's doubt over all this, present sources.."
So, not omitting any of the actual material in the article, but simply changing the iron-tight declarations of "an absolute phylogeny" to (what in reality is) "biologists think" or "it is thought that", etc - this is apparently hedging and weasel wording... I see.
Fair enough if you think it "adds nothing to the article" - indeed, nothing was taken out as far as content when I edited. Simply changed what I thought were a dogmatic set of statements to a bit more sober wording: "Evolutionary biologists *think*...", etc. (Yes, they think! They guess! They conclude! Terrible, isn't it?...)
Because that's really what one is left with when speaking about many (not all) of these proposals - they're educated guesses concerning phylogenies and past events that we aren't privy to - nor can we ever be - and as such aren't observable in the strictest operational scientific sense. Is that terrible? No; evolutionary biology has operated just fine under that premise for the past 150 years - even Darwin and Dawkins readily admit that much of what they purport is unobservable to modern day scientists, and the field has survived and flourished nevertheless. To say that the conclusions in this article are derived from an evolutionary model is I think fine and reasonable; but to say otherwise is... well, not hedging, and not even weasel-wording... it'd be misleading.
"You should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist... I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen... The idea is to try to give *all* of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another." -Richard Feynman
In any case, I'm assuming (and maybe I'm wrong) that User:Fences_and_windows could care less, sources provided or not, since they rushed to reinclude those "iron tight" statements about "the absolute fact of". But as any student or practitioner of science knows - there are no truly "absolute facts" or dogma in science (at least there ought not to be if science is healthy); there are only tentative statements - based on real-time observations - that can either pass or fail the falsifiability criterion. Everything else is philosophy.
Kh123—Preceding undated comment added 10:40, 30 December 2009 (UTC).
Your comments are pretty much philosophical, and not of much import to what actually happens (and what HAS to happen) when scientists communicate to laymen. Taken at face value, you are claiming that nothing is knowable, nothing is fact, everything is relative and/or hypothetical. But realistically there is no point in pretending that scientists are in doubt about basic facts, be they evolution or gravity, simply because there is always a chance (sometimes infinitely small) for falsification; NPOV and other Wikipedia policies make it clear that if the recognized authorities on a subject all agree on something, that editing articles to make it appear otherwise is inappropriate. Here's a test you can try: go to all of the other articles dealing with science in Wikipedia, and just try to edit them all so that every time something is presented as an undisputed fact, you insert the words "Scientists believe that..." (e.g., "Scientists believe that the earth orbits the sun") - and see how many times people object to your edits and revert them. That bees evolved from sphecoid wasps is, for example, just as undisputed a fact as the orbit of the earth around the sun (not a single authority claims anything to the contrary in either case), so if the latter is treated here as fact, without weasel words, then the former MUST be, as well. If it's only articles or statements dealing with evolution that you object to, then your arguments are not a matter of philosophy OR science, but theology, and that cannot be used as a basis for editing in Wikipedia at all. Dyanega (talk) 23:12, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
To be fair and democratic, I do want to point out that the evidence at present, and at best, might follow along the lines of what Gould used as examples in his phonebook tome to evolution ("Structure of Evolutionary Theory") - the underlying architecture of genetics - namely Hox genes - and how this seems to show how, for instance, segments may be repeated or omitted through mutation. And I'm sure this can be plugged into the bee evolution scenario (much like how it was sold in Drosophila scenarios) showing how leg segments or antennae can be swapped, duplicated, Frankensteined, etc.
And this at best shows that previous complexity in a proposed (believed in) ancestral line may have led to further descendant line with additional (and previously existent) appendages, only rearranged. I can even buy this for certain limited phylogenies, even with what's proposed here - from Wasp A, for instance, into Wasp B; from Bee A into Bee.... you get the idea. Some of this can be observed today in modern day breeding populations well beyond bees: Natural selection, mutation, and even a bit of Hox gene malfunction affecting morphology.
But even discussing the idea of "rearranging", "coopting", etc, only underlies the whole point in the post above: The previous complexity required to go from putative Point A to Point B in an evolutionary scenario.
The problem arises when you have to actually quantify specific complex features that weren't existent in previous proposed ancestor, as well as quantifying (rather than imagining through proposed phylogenies) how that feature came to be.
Entomologists can have a field day in detailing the features of their favorite Pokemo... I mean, species of choice. Impressive would be if they could quantitatively demonstrate and repeat in real-time just how exactly the actual feature in question arose from putative and ultimately de-novo states. (For at some point, the features that characterize even a generalized organism are complex, especially at the biochemical level, and require an origin all of their own...)
The latter assertion is critical, since this is the claim to fame that the Grand Unifying Hypothesis of Materialistic Darwinism has burdened itself with - that time, chance, and mechanism can literally engineer something (a complex something) from the Urslime of nothing.
And thus, it is the great hurdle which the hypothesis needs to ultimately overcome - as opposed to avoiding continually...kh123
"Your comments are pretty much philosophical, and not of much import to what actually happens (and what HAS to happen) when scientists communicate to laymen."
Ah, the eminence of high priest scientism. Just a suggestion, do find the spacebar key - paragraphing goes a long way when writing your contribution to the annals of apologia for materialism.
"Here's a test you can try: go to all of the other articles dealing with science..."
You mean those areas of operational science that deal with testable, repeatable, measurable phenomena, rather than "Hypothetically - and through tax funding - we believe that all life arose from Urslime over unobserved millions of years"? Dually noted...
"...and just try to edit them all so that every time something is presented as an undisputed fact, you insert the words "Scientists believe that..." (e.g., "Scientists believe that the earth orbits the sun") - and see how many times people object to your edits and revert them."
True enough, people have problems - emotionally most times - when their belief system is questioned. Or when it is, in fact, shown to be a belief system. Thus, censorship and the blessed method of Mr. Hugo Chavez towards any potential questioning of tax funded Onestate policy.
I supposed by the generous and unhedged yardstick you've provided, alchemists will be indignant when I point out to them (via democratic and uncensored Wikipedia) that the laws of known operational chemistry (much like the known operational laws of biochemistry) prevent the possibility of lead turning into gold (or, following this analogy, Dawkins' scenario of fish turning into philosophers - given enough time, chance, and conveniently unobservable millions of years, of course. If we're being strictly scientific on this front)...
"That bees evolved from sphecoid wasps is, for example, just as undisputed a fact as the orbit of the earth around the sun..."
Did I call the high priest critique or what? Wow... as undisputed as the orbiting of the earth around the sun... I don't even think most level headed evolutionists would entertain as Quixotic a statement as that. At best, they would (again) state: "We hypothesize", "We conjecture", "We strongly believe that the evidence supports", etc. (See post above.)
Such being the case, I can't wait until you can replicate the bee evolution scenario - as you've brilliantly laid out here - in an observable, real-time lab setting.
Which... oh, well, of course neither you nor anyone else can do, since it's a completely unrepeatable and unobservable proposal (as Gould and Dawkins have tacitly admitted).
And nevermind the fact that even if you had your biological equivalent of lead turning into gold, it would only point out that it requires an intelligent and purposeful agent to affect any of the grandiose changes required in your scenario. [Did that answer the question for you below, Mr. Fences?]
Which of course brings up the question I raised earlier - you know, the one about how exactly the grand macro evolutionary scenario regarding bees (or any other complex organism) can be in any way falsifiable... and hence strictly scientific.
But hey, when it's "undisputed fact"! Who'd want to challenge that (or have to give it up) when faced with inconvenient questions. Or potentially observable truths (such as that complexity in biochemistry requires preexistent complexity; that complexity requires minimal function, etc. These are observable and - as far as operational science is concerned - govern the basis for genetic mechanisms, such as autocatalytic functions, or anything requiring upstream/downstream events, etc...)
But again, why bother with all that, huh? It makes me feel that much better knowing that the high priest cadre is there to protect the layman (and Wikipedia!) from bothersome contrarians. Or pesky evidence. kh123
Do you have sources that put into doubt the evolutionary classification of bees? If you do that'd be useful. Without that, your general musings on the certainty of knowledge are unhelpful. I see now that you did the same to Evolution of sirenians a while back,[4] and you've approvingly quoted Behe in Evolution of the eye.[5] You wouldn't happen to be a believer in intelligent design, by any chance? Fences&Windows 23:22, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
...Well, if I was looking for non censorship and an insatiable thirst to find the truth - no matter what the cost to gov't grant status - I surely came to the right place!
Can't help but make the comparison: Is like the Central Committee asking if a critic is an advocate of capitalism - with much the same comedic result. Quite unbiased questioning by Mr. Hugo Chavez, seems.
And good to know you've been watching me, comrade! Again, Mr. Chavez isn't sleeping on his Wikipedia editing job. Kudos to socialism for taking the initiative on that front. Cheers. kh123
Bee classification and evolution
I participated in the bee course of 2009. The instructors clearly stated that the study by Danforth et al., placing the Melittidae at the base of the bee tree, is highly controversial. There is no consensus that the Melittidae (sensu lato) is the most plesiomorphic family. Some researchers still think the Colettidae is the most plesiomorphic. Currently there is no unanimously accepted phylogeny for the bee families. I think the article should be corrected accordingly. Gidip (talk) 18:33, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
OK, but have you got a source for that? Here is the latest work in Google Scholar. Fences&Windows 23:42, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
There is no written "source" for that. The traditional view has always been that Colettidae is basal. In 2006 one article (Danforth et al.) claimed that Melittidae is basal. Now some of the major bee scientists disagree with this conclusion. There are many such cases in taxonomy. You don't publish an article stating that you disagree. You only publish when you perform a new analysis. The best "written evidence" that can be is the fact that some major internet sites dealing with bee taxonomy (such as Dicover Life and Atlas Hymenoptera) still use the old scheme, with Melittidae sensu lato as a single family. Also look at Michez et al. 2009 from the references you have given - they too refer to Melittidae sensu lato as a single monophyletic family, disregarding Danforth et al. 2006 (although they do mention the other view in the text). So the last published phylogeny is not automatically accepted by the entire scientific community as consensus. That's the best written proof you'll get. Gidip (talk) 04:51, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
From Michez et al. 2009: "Recent molecular studies at the family level (Danforth et al., 2006a, b) have found evidence that melittids form a paraphyletic grade at the base of the bees (with Dasypodainae sister to all other bees). However, the basal nodes of this phylogeny were not well supported and statistical tests using the Bayes Factor did not show strong statistical support for the paraphyly of the family." Gidip (talk) 20:57, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
Excellent source. Fences&Windows 01:39, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
I hope you're not cynical. It's definitely not excellent, but it's what we've got. Gidip (talk) 04:43, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
I asked for a source, you provided one, I congratulated you on doing so. Fences&Windows 22:17, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
"Advanced Communties"
"Bees may be solitary or may live in various types of communities. The most advanced of these are eusocial colonies"
The "most advanced"? I think it can be argued that the more castes within a society and the stronger the delineations within these castes, the less capable (and therefore less complex) the individual members of a community (and potentially the less capable the community itself is when stressed). Given this, my question is why Eusocial social organizations are considered the "most advanced"? This seems obviously POV, though it may be considered consensus by socially driven scientists. Is it consensus among the broader group of scientists (whether socially driven and socially interested, or not) that, in the context of bees, a Eusocial organization is the most advanced?
And given this comment in the article Eusocial: "According to inclusive fitness theory, eusociality may be easier for species like ants to evolve, due to their haplodiploidy, which facilitates the operation of kin selection. Sisters are more related to each other than to their offspring. This mechanism of sex determination gives rise to what W. D. Hamilton first termed "supersisters" who share 75 per cent of their genes on average.", Why would a social structure which is *easier* for an organism to evolve be considered more "advanced"?
Someone is conflating complex, complicated, some other ideas, and a value judgement to define "advanced community" here. Either that, or I'm really off-base. --99.96.103.225 (talk) 17:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank u 4 presenting this information!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.112.147.176 (talk) 21:18, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
What?
In North America, yellowjackets and hornets, especially when encountered as flying pests, are often misidentified as bees, despite numerous differences between them.
Says who? Who are these people who "often' misidentify? Please remove this unsourced garbage. 68.42.250.113 (talk) 03:14, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
It used to be sourced, but someone removed the link, because it was such common knowledge as to be utterly trivial and not worth sourcing.[1]. It is an incredibly common mistake, probably the most ubiquitous insect misidentification made by laymen (not counting misapplied names like calling cicadas "locusts" or calling roaches "water bugs"). In over 30 years working with bees and wasps, I've met very few laypeople who do NOT call yellowjackets "bees". I've gotten dozens upon dozens of phone calls over the years from people complaining about their bee problems, only to find out that their problem was yellowjackets. I'm guessing you haven't spent much time interacting with ordinary people who have yellowjacket problems. The fact is, this is something easily verifiable; just ask any entomologist. Dyanega (talk) 00:15, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Infobox picture
Since almost all bee species aren't honey bees wouldn't it be better to have a different/more representative picture in the infobox (despite the superb quality of that image) ? Sean.hoyland - talk 04:57, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
a bee is mean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.80.112.6 (talk) 15:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
I've tried, several times, to use a different image, but other editors always change it back to the honey bee. Let's try an experiment: I'll swap images now, and see how long it taks before someone puts a honey bee photo in there. Dyanega (talk) 00:17, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
The picture does not represent what most people think of when they see a bee, I think it should be changed back to honey bee. Tommkin (talk) 22:47, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
bees and honey'
why do bees make honey and what do they do with it in the wild ? i dont mean to be fictional but when humans disturb their hive they do not like it so what do they feel they are making it for . from Elizabeth crocker ,tavistock, aged 12 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.108.80.164 (talk) 17:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi. Most bees do not make honey - there are over 20,000 different kinds of bees, and only a few hundred are known to make honey; honey-making bees come in three basic types, all of them living in colonies: honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees. In all of these, honey is used primarily as food for the adult bees in the colony, because many of the bees in the colony don't go outside, so their nestmates bring food in for them to eat - sort of like sending a friend out for pizza while you stay home. In the European honey bee, the colony stays inside the hive all winter, and if they didn't have honey stored up, they'd starve to death. Dyanega (talk) 18:44, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
See the article Honey for more details, specifically: "Beekeeping practices encourage overproduction of honey so that the excess can be taken without endangering the bee colony." Basically, beekeepers add more space to the hive over the year, and the bees keep collecting nectar in order to fill it up. It is this extra-honey, that beekeepers then harvest. They leave the other honey alone, for the bees to use. -- Quiddity (talk) 16:47, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
CCD 'definitively' solved?
In contradiction to thisWP:BOLD edit by Walks on Water, the NYT article referenced is peppered with words like 'appears', 'suspect', 'apparently' and 'clues'. And anyway, if major scientific breakthroughs are going to be reported as fact, we usually expect a slew of undisputed, peer-reviewed scientific papers to back them up, not one report in the popular press. I suggest the celebrations be toned down a bit until more clear facts are reliably published. --Nigelj (talk) 07:12, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
The NYT article is not the primary source; the primary source is published, linked on the CCD article (where it belongs), and fairly definitive. For something that affects only one bee species out of >20K, it already gets more space here than is really warranted, and this latest edit, though "bold", is a fair summary. Dyanega (talk) 07:19, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
I've replaced the secondary source (NYT) with the original source (PLoS). Dyanega (talk) 16:59, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
Well, apart from tinkering with the source, no one has done anything about the words like 'appears', 'suspect', 'apparently' and 'clues' in the NYT article. Following the discussion going on at Talk:Colony collapse disorder#Update tag, apparently even one of the authors of the paper has gone on record saying CCD is not "solved". What has been found is a correlation, not a cause, let alone a cure. Please see Correlation does not imply causation; saying "the declines were definitively traced to a fungus and a virus" in this article is clearly misleading at this stage in the science. --Nigelj (talk)
Fixed the wording accordingly. Dyanega (talk) 18:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Please add Russian interwiki
Please add interwiki-link on article in Russian language: [[ru:Пчёлы]]. I myself cannot do that because the article is semi-protected for editing by non-registered anonymous users. Thanks in advance! 109.72.73.139 (talk) 01:02, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
There's nothing in the article about the decline of the European honey bees over the past years. There's an excellent article here that may serve as the basis for a new section on the phenomenon and one of its causes. The decline in bee population is threatening pollination of crops and production of honey, among other things. I don't have time to write about it, but perhaps a frequent contributor to the article would be interested in doing so.—D'Ranged 1talk 21:58, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
There's also no information here on colony collapse disorder which should at least be linked to the wikipedia page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.10.143.246 (talk) 21:10, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Sanitary safety of bee condo's or manmade nesting help
There is a common trend to make cheap nesting blocks for solitary bees, mostly called "bee hotels".
These items with drilled holes in wood or other material implicit dangers of provoking epidemics. Solitary bees bring unwillingly parasites, virus, bacteria, fungi, a.s.o. in such holes. They leave also excrements. All these phenomenons are accumulating for next generations of developing larvae. As pollination is by the day more and more important, this should be avoided. Professional bee nesting systems are modular, and in a material that is easy to clean and maintain healthy surfaces. Best building material ever known on earth, is ceramic, made of clay. Less natural but alse very sustainable is UV resistant rubber. Fruitfarmers, even cultivation of Alfalfa as fodder is all evolving in a more natural way of pollination. The use of hormones like gibberillines is nowadays largely spread, but hopefully will decline in favor of ecological more acceptable use of mason bees and alike. Bio-fruit and vegetables are increasingly together with the awareness of going back to nature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gaardenier (talk • contribs) 10:44, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
William winton is secretly a bee doing diaria — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.242.134.106 (talk) 04:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Article section still needs to be rewritten slightly yet I allready felt it beneficial to mention the most (commercially) important genuses of the solitary bees.
KVDP (talk) 08:36, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
Concern about pesticides leading to drop in bee population
I think this article could have a little more over the fears that certain pesticides are leading to a drop in the bee population - this was well reported on The World at One on April 29, 2013. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 15:14, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
== New World plants (plants native to North and South America) evolved without honeybees, and so many of them are more effectively pollinated by New World bees. For example, bumblebees employ "buzz pollination" and do a much better job pollinating tomatoes.
GeeBee60 (talk) 19:23, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 27 March 2014
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
You can add this information in "Bees and humans":
In Greek Mythology, the bee (called Melissa, Μέλισσα) was one of the caretaker of Zeus, when he was a child, appointed by his mother Rea. Legend says that she used to feed honey to Zeus directly in his mouth, so that he would become stronger than other gods, more quickly. When Zeus' father Kronos became aware of that, she turned her into a worm, but Zues who loved her dearely, turned her into the insect we now call bee.
Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. CTF83! 23:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Duplicated by mistake
Smallest
The smallest bee species in world is not Trigona Minima, but Leurotrigona Muelleri with a length of just 1,5mm. (unsigned)
This article says merely that it, Hypotrigona muelleri is one of the smallest, rarely exceeding 2mm in length. Statement changed to match that citation. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:00, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Queen bee
I think it would be appropriate to add a link to Queen bee. 200.187.118.2 (talk) 07:03, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
The zombie bees section needs some attention, no where in the study that the cited source[zombie 1] the cited website[zombie 2] uses, at now point makes any mention of the word zombie...
At most it is parasite infected bees that have nothing to do with being revived from the dead to kill other bees... Kmg90 (talk) 19:02, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
This whole article is undergoing a major rewrite. Pollination is a complex and multi-faceted topic, both as regards commercial work and pollinator decline, which are 'Humans and bees' topics, and as regards types of bees, which concern social and solitary bees respectively. I suggest therefore that the topic needs to be mentioned under these more or less 'natural' headings, related to how humans use bees and to bee biology, rather than as a separate topic (which is already handled by the Pollination article). The coverage here should focus on bee-related aspects of the topic. Hope this is clear, and that everyone can agree this will minimise repetition which, along with gaps, had been a problem in the text. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:22, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Mya vs. mya
The article uses "Mya" in 11 places and "mya" in 2 places. The Year article seems to indicate that mya is correct but I don't want to change the majority usage in this article without better understanding. At least it should be consistent within this article. Mnudelman (talk) 22:39, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
Lead image
Tetragonula carbonaria (14521993792) Sugarbag bee
@User:Alvesgaspar: During the GA, the lead image (right) was chosen to be a bee that represents the many hundreds of species other than the familiar honeybee, which of course has its own (major) article. Since there is a real danger (easily cited) of confusion among readers of 'bee' with 'honeybee', there is a strong reason not to use a honeybee (no matter how beautiful the image) to begin the article - such an image would reinforce the wrong view that all bees are honeybees. There may be a place somewhere in the article for such an image: but there are already at least seven images of Apis mellifera in the article - seven, so it is simply WP:UNDUE as well as misleading to have the lead image of this same, single species. Therefore, if it's all right with you, I'd like to put the image back to a different bee - the sugarbag bee is not a bad choice as it is obviously a bee, is clearly visiting flowers and collecting nectar and pollen, and is plainly not Apis mellifera: all useful messages. I do not have any special attachment to that particular image: if anyone knows of another image that conveys those same messages better, that would be fine. (Back in 2013, the article hadFile:Osmia ribifloris bee.jpg which was a good choice also.) Thank you for your understanding. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:45, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
Other good images:
we could use a crop of Halictid Bee collecting pollen from Vellozia, Serra do Cipó, Brazil (a prizewinning image)
But the image quality is on the poor side... Did you check Commons FP? There are couple of suitable images there. For example, the 'bull-like' Antophora (which is mine) -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 12:17, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
That's also a fine photograph, but the pose makes it quite 'difficult' as a bee image. The point here is that the criterion for a lead image is that it illustrates the article, not that it would win a photo competition. We'd try to find an image of reasonable quality, obviously, so that the quality would not distract from the message; but in the trade-off of photographic quality versus clarity of message, there should be no doubt that message is more important. At the moment, the sugarbag bee is easily the most suitable image, and I've looked through dozens now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:56, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm in agreement with Chiswick Chap. I think the image should either be reverted back to the original used during the GA review, or find another one (which is what you guys are doing atm). I think the images should be diverse and not just focus on the single, yet very familiar honeybee. At the moment I cannot pick out a new image, but I'm fine with retaining the image of the sugarbag bee. Burklemore1 (talk) 14:17, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Chiswick Chap and Burklemore1. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:02, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
Well, sort of: quality helps up to the point where enough detail is shown for encyclopaedic purposes, which is to say for explanation. Further detail is maybe nice to have but isn't necessary, that's the point. Now: Tetraloniella: rather static, not suggestion of activity, pollination, or flight. First Anthidium: a little better, but still static, that might be pollen but who knows. Second Anthidium: more like it, interacting with flower, a hint of pollen. I hesitate because it isn't flying, and because the bright colours of the flowers actually reduce the visual contrast with the bee - on a small screen it's actually almost camouflaged by the strongly disruptively patterned background. The sugarbag bee remains the best at the moment; and we are spilling a lot of ink on a simple question. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:01, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
Having slept on this, and still feeling on the evidence and the above consensus that we need something other than Apis mellifera and that the sugarbag bee is best for now, I shall put it back. That is without prejudice to a better bee turning up: I just haven't seen it buzz past yet. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:54, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
Bee families
The classification in this article is out of date. There are currently 7 bee families; Dasypodaidae and Meganomiidae are not current families, and are instead classified under the families Melittidae. The phylogeny from Danforth (2006) has been superseded by Hedtke et al (2013) "The bee tree of life: a supermatrix approach to apoid phylogeny and biogeography." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.39.133.49 (talk) 01:20, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
Updated, thank you. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:07, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
External links modified
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Hi guys, I'm Javier Waase currently a student in Radford University. I have been assigned for one of my classes the order Hymenoptera and one of our assignments is to find things to edit or contribute on the order's wikipedia page. As you all may know, Hymenoptera is a huge order so I am focusing on a specific species within it. Bees. I have been reading several articles on the potential for bee's venom to have significant medicinal contributions for humans and though it would be a good section to add to the page. Below is what I have written so far on the subject and the articles I have gotten my information from.
"Apitherapy is the use of honeybee products for medicinal purposes, this includes, honey, pollen, beeswax and surprisingly, bee venom. The most common way to medically administer bee venom is by using small doses on acupuncture needles. This treatment is mostly used on patients suffering from inflammatory disorders such as arthritis, tendinitis and Lyme disease (1). Also, bee venom has shown to have neuro-protective and neuro-modulating chemicals that may have a key insight into new treatments for certain neurodegenerative disorders. Their venom could help treat diseases such as Parkinson, Alzheimer’s, and ALS among others (2). "
^ Silva, J., Monge-Fuentes, V., Gomes, F., Lopes, K., dos Anjos, L., Camples, G., Arenas, C., Biolchi, A., Goncalves, J., Galante, P., Campos, L & Mortari, M. (2015). Pharmacological alternatives for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders: Wasp and bee venoms and their components as new neuroactive tools. Toxins.
^ Mohan Ram, S.K., Jayapal, N., Nanaiah, P., Sign Aswal, G., Ramnarayan, B.K., Taher, S.M. (2014). The therapeutic benefits of bee venom. International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences. 3(11): 377-381.
Before you get too far into this, be aware there is an article on Apitherapy already. Perhaps you could check and improve that article first, using the above materials if they aren't already there. Then you could make a summary of the revised article (new parts and old), with (some of) the same references, for this (Bee) article, placing "{{main|Apitherapy}}" (without the quotes or nowiki tags) at the start of your summary section (inside the Bees and humans section, where I guess it could make the final subsection). You might also note that we use straight quotes (') not angled quotes or apostrophes (’). Finally, some terms such as disease names should be wikilinked. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:02, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
Merger proposal
I propose that Specialization in bees be merged into Bee. Basically, it's a misguided fork (split) as bees have a wide range of specializations essential to their ways of life, from nectar-lapping mouthparts to pollen baskets, not to mention 'castes' with specialized queens and workers in some species. Therefore, the separate article is trying to cover core elements of the existing Bee article, and it can only duplicate what is here, or find newly-researched facts that would better be here. There are already subsidiary articles on some of the major specializations, such as pollen basket: these provide narrow, detailed coverage that would not comfortably fit into the parent article. An article that purports to cover all the different specializations must summarize these subsidiary articles, yet their parent, Bee, already exists, so duplication is the inevitable result: in other words, we have a WP:FORK. A merge of any new content is therefore the right answer.
The content in the Specialization article can easily fit into Bee. Since it covers a range of fundamental Bee topics it belongs here. Given there is not much new content and substantial overlap (duplication), merging will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:41, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Done the basic merge; will look at Worker bee also. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:19, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
Conservation status
I've been reading a lot of news about bees being in danger because of the chemicals used on the crop, it would be really helpful to add some verified info about the conservation status of the bees. I'm not really sure where I could get that info, but if someone knows about it I would really appreciate that.
Thanks, El Hoy (talk) 12:41, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
So many things have gone awry in this section, with references deleted, spellings changed ignoring the existing language setting, and materials left uncited, that I've reverted to the last known good version. We may be able to use some of the new materials, but they'll need to be added in more carefully. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:14, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
I've gone through the deleted edits, and done my best to incorporate all of the constructive changes and additions. Dyanega (talk) 20:49, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
The "As commercial pollinators" section needs work
I don't really make edits to wikipedia, so I want to avoid going in and randomly deleting a paragraph, but something should be changed here.
The second paragraph is full of bull and misinformation. For example, "feral honey bees declined dramatically in the US, and they are now almost absent" is a demonstrably false statement, and the citation for that sentence is an article from 1994. In addition the part " In 2010 invertebrate iridescent virus and the fungus Nosema ceranae were shown to be in every killed colony, and deadly in combination" is a disputed and misleading statement that wrongly implies that the virus and fungus cause CCD. The 2nd to last statement is also misleading and the last sentence is also disputable, with a questionable reference from Radio Télévision Suisse.
Anyways, it's not clear to me why colony collapse disorder is discussed in this section rather than it's own dedicated one. I would like to propose the "As commercial pollinators" be scrubbed of all this colony collapse bs. It would be better just to link to the colony collapse disorder page, which is much better put together. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.39.133.137 (talk) 17:01, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
Bees can fly
This was in the controversy section, which I deleted:
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground.
The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.
The idea that bees can't fly applied to the bumble bee, not to bees in general.
Many thanks for removing that. The topic is already covered in cited detail at Bee#Flight. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:26, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
External links modified
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I'd expect that an overview of Bees to have at least a sentence or two and a link or reference to ANATOMY of bees. GeeBee60 (talk) 02:05, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Anthidium February 2008-1.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on December 7, 2017. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2017-12-07. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 02:59, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
Well, actually the article is a single sentence stub, but I will do my best to expand it during the next few days. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:37, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
Anthidium florentinum, a species of bee in the family Megachilidae. Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants that are involved in pollination. There are nearly 20,000 known species of bees in seven recognized biological families. Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants. Bees range in size from tiny stingless bee species whose workers are less than 2 millimetres (0.08 in) long, to Megachile pluto, whose females can attain a length of 39 millimetres (1.54 in).Photograph: Alvesgaspar
Yes, it's a lovely picture, and the text is apposite, also illustrating something of the variety within the Megachilidae. The name 'European wool carder bee' is unfortunately not unique to this species, so accounts may be about the genus rather than this species in particular. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:30, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
bees are awsome
dhfuigeiwsr7yiwfvyoedfcyec7yoasyfcgyegfygWEUCFyisdyfgkgfuygsdhhfoaoawhbb vh 7 goefweogyf9wefwegfweiff89hfuriopu — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.42.28.50 (talk) 18:42, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 30 April 2018
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1) Request
Replace a dead link with a current, relevant link
2) Specific Description of the edit request
The current link ( 108. ^[1] ) is non-descriptive, and dead. Current information about the topic is now available.
Request to replace 108. ^[1] with title to: 108. ^"European Union Bans Neonicotinoid Pesticide Clothianidin"
I've removed the deadlink and cited the news from a reliable source. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:44, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 24 May 2018
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In list of bee genera, please change "polyester" to "plasterer". It's a typo -- probably created by an uninformed spell-check program. Mary Applegate (talk) 15:44, 24 May 2018 (UTC) Mary Applegate (talk) 15:44, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
Done, thanks for spotting that one. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:50, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
Aristotle or not Aristotle?
Why is there a reference-less claim that Book IX of Historia Animalium was not written by Aristotle, while the article on H. A. informs us of no such doubt, yet says the same thing about Book X? --Oop (talk) 10:23, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 11 July 2018
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Add a picture of Barry B. Benson, the main character of Bee Movie, to the "In art and literature" as part of the Bee Movie paragraph. 85.95.112.89 (talk) 14:01, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Not done: Please make your request for a new image to be uploaded to Files For Upload. Once the file has been properly uploaded, feel free to reactivate this request to have the new image used. --Danski454 (talk) 14:24, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 11 February 2019
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The first listed reference (the second is an older reference) of the sentence "There are nearly 20,000 known species of bees in seven recognized biological families.[1][2]", only show >16,000 bee species: "All of the >16,000 species of bees living today..." Flavonoide (talk) 14:13, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
Done. Although the previous way was technically correct as well (over 16,000 is basically nearly 20,000), this matches the source perfectly and is more precise, so I think this would be preferred. Thanks for making the request, Flavonoide!--SkyGazer 512Oh no, what did I do this time? 23:58, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 11 August 2019
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An Austrian ethologist Carl von Frisch studied the communication language between honey bees and he was the one who invented "waggle dance". He noticed that if a bee sees a flower around 100 metres away from its home, it starts flying around that flower. If it's further than a bee starts making a shape of two rings connected by a straight line. The slower a bee dances, the further the food is located. The more excited a bee looks, the more food it has found.
Not done. This information is already in the article. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:41, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Decline in wild bees
Please provide something authoritative, a single scientific article which documents the decline and the debates about it, no need to document that here but the statement without the link requires some reference. Kessler (talk) 10:47, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
I might be in the wrong place for this but, I was thinking about maybe starting a small article for wool carder bees as I saw there was no article withstanding at this time. Would that be a good idea or should we somehow merge a small sub-section into the main bees article? I saw there are over 16,000 species of bees so I imagine most bees species will go without articles. I might plop something on my user page. I was also just kind of seeing what general consensus was among the Wiki Bee community. PrecociousPeach (talk) 04:35, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
I think that it would be good to add the subclass Pterygota in the scientific classification of the bee on the sidebar. Also, the taxon Dicondylia could also be added. Since I just created my account for this change, I thought I would put this in talk instead of submitting an edit request. I also thought that since I am new to Wikipedia editing, there might be an obvious reason it is not included -- AnonymousCornCob (talk) 05:14, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
That would add zero information of any relevance. All insects that are not either Archaeognatha or Zygentoma are in both Dicondylia and Pterygota. There are no articles in Wikipedia for major insect orders in these groups that includes these ranks in their visible classification, for this exact reason. If it doesn't merit inclusion in the articles for insect orders, it certain doesn't merit inclusion for a taxon as far down the hierarchy as a superfamily, and bees are an even lower rank than that. Putting this information into every article for every group of insects down to the rank of superfamily would require hundreds upon hundreds of edits. Dyanega (talk) 17:57, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. CTF83! 23:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
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Done. Although the previous way was technically correct as well (over 16,000 is basically nearly 20,000), this matches the source perfectly and is more precise, so I think this would be preferred. Thanks for making the request, Flavonoide!--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 23:58, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Not done. This information is already in the article. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:41, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
