Snowflakes are beautiful decorations on Christmas Day. Why not make your own?
Rowse Honey have a lovely site with two designs.
All you need is a pair of scissors and a grownup to help you.
Make a few if you like. You can colour them in too, or add some glitter to make them even more special.
Make the Christmas Bee Snowflake
Or if you’d like an easier version (that’s not so tricky to cut out), try this Starry Christmas Snowflake.
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I came across this amazing beehive design at a Woodfair recently. Please find the full story of this unique design for a top-bar hive below the photograph with the designer’s contact details if you want more information:
My initial inspiration to create a curved hive was from the curved structure of honeycomb created in top-bar hives.
The design re-appropriates traditional clinker boat building techniques, and celebrates long-established craft practices in the UK; beekeeping and clinker boat building.
The beehive is created using overlapping strips of steam bent oak and chestnut. Chestnut was chosen for the roof and the base of the hive, as it is a species native to Sussex, and has good properties for use outside. The central part of the hive is made from white oak, which is traditionally used in clinker boat building.
The hive is about exploring and expanding the possibilities of existing designs to create an aesthetically satisfying and functional form, which could supplement a contemporary garden space.
Despite using unconventional techniques for making a beehive, I have ensured that the construction adheres to the basic principles in order for a top-bar hive to function effectively. A swarm shall be moved into the hive next spring, and as a continuation of the project, the bees will be documented living in it.
If you’d like to ask anything about the beehive, please contact at: kayleywillcocks(at)hotmail(dot)co(dot)uk
Posted in Bee Present, Beekeeping | 3 Comments »
What colors creatures see has long interested scientists, and aside from us, more is known about what colors bees see than any other living thing. Like us, bees are trichromatic. Whereas we base our color combinations on red, blue, and green, bees base all their colors on UV, blue , and green. Just as color blind people do not see red or green, and therefore experience the world of color differently, bees also perceive the world in colors entirely different from ours. Bees do not see red and have a hard time distinguishing it from surrounding green leaf backgrounds. Bees that frequent red flowers are either perceive them in color they can see, or the red flower is not being lost against a green background. Even though bees don’t see red, they can see other reddish wavelengths such as orange and yellow.
The light spectrum bees see is from 600 – 300 nm. The colors bees see are blue-green, blue, violet, and ultraviolet, with research showing our purple followed by our violet then our blue as their favorites. Mixing ultraviolet wavelengths with the wavelengths of colors they can and can’t see, gives bees a world of color different from our own. If deprived of UV light, bees lose interest in foraging, and remain in the hive until forced out by severe food shortages.
Bees not only see flowers in different colors than we do, bees also see ultra-violet light patterns, invisible to us, at the center that are a different color than the rest of the flower. From a bee’s-eye-view, the UV colors and patterns in a flower’s petals dramatically announce the flower’s stash of nectar and pollen. These UV patterns serve as a landing zone, guiding the bees to the nectar source.
|
we see
|
bees see
|
add in UV
|
| red | black | uv purple |
| orange | yellow/green* | |
| yellow | yellow/green* | uv purple |
| green | green | |
| blue | blue | uv violet |
| violet | blue | uv blue |
| purple | blue | |
| white | blue green | |
| black | black |
*even the experts don’t agree as to what colour the bee sees!
Article Source: http://www.westmtnapiary.com/Bees_and_color.html
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The following animation takes my vote for the best animated bee movie ever:
Here is some background on Dot’s story (running away from her world as it is being destroyed – and saved by a bee!).
It also gives some great insights into the world’s smallest film (even though it is a subtle advert for Nokia mobile phones) and brings together cutting-edge medical technology with 3D printing. Totally awesome!
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CLICK HERE or on the photo below to sign the petition to save bees and our crops and send this link to everyone you know!
Quietly, globally, billions of bees are dying, threatening our crops and food. But a global ban of one group of pesticides could save bees from extinction.
Four European countries have begun banning these poisons, and some bee populations are recovering. But chemical companies are lobbying hard to keep all killer pesticides on the market. A global outcry now for a ban in the US and EU, where debate is raging, could provoke a total ban and a ripple effect around the world.
Let’s build a giant global buzz calling for these dangerous chemicals to be outlawed in the US and EU until and unless they are proved to be safe.
CLICK HERE to Sign the petition to save bees and our crops and send this to everyone.
Posted in Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping | 3 Comments »
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.
The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 19,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.
In 2010, there were 21 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 207 posts. There were 13 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about a picture per month.
The busiest day of the year was November 1st with 197 views. The most popular post that day was St. Ambrose, Patron Saint of Beekeepers.
The top referring sites in 2010 were en.wikipedia.org, bee-hexagon.net, linkedin.com, facebook.com, and thebeespace.net.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for egyptian gods, melissae, aphrodite, top bar hive, and patron saint of beekeepers.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
St. Ambrose, Patron Saint of Beekeepers March 2008
2 comments
Tears of Ra, the Sun god August 2007
5 comments
Symbol of the Bee on Napoleon I’s Coat of Arms January 2008
Aphrodite and her Melissae in Ancient Greece January 2008
9 comments
Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt February 2008
9 comments
Posted in Bee Lore | Leave a Comment »
I just love stories that show that the world of bees is unexplainable, beyond individual intelligence and that even to the most brainiest of scientists can’t explain how they do it!
Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London and Royal Holloway, University of London have discovered that bees learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they discover the flowers in a different order. Bees are effectively solving the ‘Travelling Salesman Problem’, and these are the first animals found to do this.
The Travelling Salesman must find the shortest route that allows him to visit all locations on his route. Computers solve it by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the shortest. However, bees solve it without computer assistance using a brain the size of grass seed. [...]
Co-author and Queen Mary colleague, Dr. Mathieu Lihoreau adds: “There is a common perception that smaller brains constrain animals to be simple reflex machines. But our work with bees shows advanced cognitive capacities with very limited neuron numbers. There is an urgent need to understand the neuronal hardware underpinning animal intelligence, and relatively simple nervous systems such as those of insects make this mystery more tractable.
So long as scientists only think of bees as individual insects, they will continue to miss the point. Same for the planet really. So long as governments continue to see us as individuals, they will also miss the point. Time for more research into swarm intelligence and the subtle energies that allow colonies to survive and prosper.
Story from: http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/10/27/bees-can-solve-the-travelling-salesman-problem/
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