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Issue 14 Content:

(Click/tap the section pic to view!)

Fireside with John Russell

John Russell's regular State of the Hive: Includes an update on how the bees are faring, odds and ends pertaining to the beekeeping industry, plus my unasked for opinions. (It's my newsletter, darn it.)

A Video Game???

What were we thinking, we make jars of honey not video games! Give it a try, send in your high score and win a prize it's THAT easy 👾

Solstices: What and Why and Finding Polaris 🌟

Just what is it, why it is and what you can do about it!

Space Bees II: Wrath of John 🖖

Growing food in space: harder than it sounds! What are the options for giving bees what they need in order to succeed in zero G?

New Stuff 🥳 (click or tap to view):

View our new (and fairly new!) products collection:

Bee News!

Electric Beegaloo ⚡️🐝⚡️

• As mentioned in the previous issue, bees have an interesting relationship with electricity
• Researchers fairly recently discovered the some bees can detect changes in electric fields around flowers and this is very helpful for them in their efforts to forage for resources 🌼🌷🌺🌻
• For example, the field around a flower may indicate that it's been recently visited already by a bee (and therefore contain less pollen and nectar! 🍯)
• More recently, it's been found that pesticides and fertilizers can interfere with a flower's electrical field, and disrupt this natural sensory adaption bees rely on 👎
• Research around this is very new, so the exact nature of what is happening is still being uncovered
• Find the full story on the Popular Science website here
• Stay tuned for details on yet another sense bees make heavy use of: magnetism! 🧲

BEE FACTS

• The Violet Carpenter Bee, also known as Xylocopa violacea (Apidae Xylocopa violacea: Family Genus species)
• This is a Big Bee, usually around 2.5cm to 3cm in length compared to a honeybee which is usually around 1.5cm in length, and considered to be as large as the largest bumblebees.
• Like bumblebees, they are the gorillas 🦍 of the bee world, but unlike gorillas they possess a unique type of alien beauty (no offense to any gorillas reading this!)
• Native to Asia, they have also been fairly recently found in Europe
• As a Carpenter Bee 🔨, the VCB will set up fort in dead wood by boring tunnels and creating small cells for eggs
• They are solitary bees and, after mating, the females will seek out a suitable piece of wood and set up their new home themselves
• Each egg cell is supplied with a single "pollen ball" and with nothing more than that, it must survive long enough to make it into adulthood, hibernation and then the mating season to begin the cycle again

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