The Telegraph - Victorian gardeners were familiar with the alkaloid nicotine as a pesticide, and very good it is too at killing almost anything that moves.
Unfortunately that includes people – the nicotine in three or four cigarettes would kill you if you absorbed all of it. As a result, nicotine has not been available to amateur gardeners for some time, and approval for professional use was withdrawn in 2009. But in the Seventies chemists developed a new class of insecticides that, although not closely related chemically to nicotine, share the same mode of action and were thus christened neonicotinoids.
Like nicotine, neonicotinoids are extremely effective nerve poisons, but unlike nicotine they are really only toxic to insects and are very safe to use. Neonicotinoids have several other desirable features.
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The Telegraph – Honeybees face a double whammy from insecticides and disease, according to a new study that could explain the global decline in the insects.
The sudden drop in honeybees in recent years has led to widespread debate over the cause, with many blaming intensive farming methods that use more pesticides.
However this was dismissed by other studies that found disease is just as damaging.
Now a French study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that it could be a combination of both, as pesticides weaken honeybees and they then die of disease.
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New York Times - Scientists have long wondered why honeybee queens, compared with other social insects, are so promiscuous — why mating with many males seems to result in a healthier hive.
Queens that mate with many males have more “good” bacteria in their bodies and their hives.
Researchers from the United States and the Netherlands, reporting in the journal PLoS One, say the most promiscuous queens have more “good” bacteria in their hives, and this probably improves the health and nutrition of their colonies. They did their study by inseminating queen bees with semen harvested from either 15 males or a single male.
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The Guardian - Apiarist numbers in New York city have surged since the ban on keeping bees was lifted two years ago.
The number of beekeepers in New York city has quadrupled since the ban on keeping bees was lifted two years ago, figures show.
NYCBeekeeping, the city’s largest beekeeping group, reports that membership has grown from around 325 to more than 1,300 people and there are now hives on skyscraper rooftops, in community gardens, and school backyards across the five boroughs.
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