Welcome to The Buzz, our monthly newsletter coming to you straight from the 🍯honeyverse🍯 featuring a wide selection of stories, articles, links, product updates and much more!

Haven't subscribed yet? Click here to sign up for an account and select the Subscribe option to make sure you receive the email version and are eligible for Buzz Club discounts!

Read more about the Buzz Club here

Calling all fundraisers, calling all fundraisers! If you or someone you know are fundraising for an important cause, we'd love to hear about it! Find out more about our 2023 fundraising options here!

🐝 This Month's Features:

News and Miscellany

Pollinators And You: Gardening Ideas

• The BBC has published a fascinating read on how many types of beautiful flowers are not usable for pollinators, and the proliferation of this category of plants actually reduces available options to our bee friends 🐝
• They posit "We're often tempted to add flowers to our gardens to attract bees and promote biodiversity. But what if this is sometimes a bad idea?"
• Very informative article for anyone interested in gardening and in the future of pollinators in general!
• Find the in depth BBC piece here

Clark College Steps Up For Pollinators!

• At a public community college in Vancouver, Washington, staff are working hard to help local pollinators by dispersing wildflower seeds (link to our new seed packet item!)
• Crucial is that the wildflowers are native to the area as this allows them to thrive without much human intervention
• More than just honeybees and other types of bee, butterflies, moths and the birds who appreciate such insects will also benefit tremendously!
• Read more in The Columbian's article here

Simplified Fundraiser Overview

• For anyone feeling overwhelmed by the idea of organizing a fundraiser, we've got you! Check out our brand new and simplified John Russell Fundraising overview here

Science and Tech

9th Annual Winnipeg Brain Bee! Canadian National Brain Bee website (external link)

• You've heard of a spelling bee but have you heard of a brain bee? We'd like to think of bees as being very brainy, but these competitions test students on their knowledge of neuroscience, which is increasingly helpful information as medical science unravels the mysteries of the brain in humans and other species'
• This year, the Winnipeg competition is being held March 11th with the winning student going on to represent Manitoba at the national event!
• Read this informative article from Brown University about the Brown Brain Bee qualifier event happening in Rhode Island this year for more information about brain bee competitions

Anatomy Article: "Do bees have knees?", Live Science (external link)

• It's the bees knees! A common enough phrase at one point in time, but what does a knee look like for a bee?
• This article explains that bees, like other insects, have exoskeletons (as compared to mammalian internal skeletal structures)
• While bees have a tibia and fibula like human legs, joining these two segments is a chitin joint (Wikipedia piece about chitin, a material common to insects and fungi among other groups) rather than a kneecap!

Research Paper: "Robotic bees and roots offer hope of healthier environment and sufficient food", Phys.org (external link)

• Blade Runner (Wikipedia) for bees, the University of Durham in the UK is making progress on some very practical robotics research: "We plan to affect a whole ecosystem by interacting with only one single animal, the queen,"
• This could have a massive positive impact on pollinators that face major challenges with changes environments such as the honeybee which among others is a massive contributor toward the crops grown for feeding humans around the world
• By pampering the queen with a synthetic support staff, researchers hope to boost the overall health of the colony and thereby the health of the local environment

Did You Know?

• March: from Latin Martius after the Roman god of war! ⚔️ (Wikipedia page)
• For 2023 the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere is March 20, which is also called the March Equinox (from Latin aequus for equal and nox/noctis for night) which is simply one of the two mid points as the Earth travels between each solstice point (read more about equinoxes on Wikipedia here)
• You may be familiar with the classic The Ants Go Marching, but did you know that ants and bees are fairly closely related? Read this article from cornell.edu
• According to the Canadian Honey Council, some farmers will harvest over 300lbs of honey from a single colony! Read their bee facts page on their website here

Let us know how we did!

We want to build a newsletter worthy of your interest. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions about The Buzz or absolutely anything else, we'd love to hear about it! Find our contact info here