#honeybees — Public Fediverse posts

Today, my prose/almost-poem piece "Apistry" appears in Hyacinth Review:
https://hyacinthreview.org/david-milley-apistry/

This piece shows Warren caring for his honeybees through the four seasons. It's brief and readable.

#prose #writing #queer #queerwriters #lgbtq #apiary #honeybees #beekeeping #seasons

Mapping Sleeping Bees within Their Nest: Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Worker Honey Bee Sleep
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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4100802/ <-- shared paper
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H/T Dimitrios A. Karras
“Bees are not only very important for all ecosystems... They are very cute too....
However, bee societies are very complex and different sleep patterns exist for the other kinds of bees in the hierarchy..
In general, bees actually sleep, and many species spend around 5-8 hours resting each day, usually at night when they're not foraging.
Some solitary bees have been photographed sleeping inside flowers, where they cling onto the petals or stamens with their tiny legs and sometimes even their jaws.
One of the cutest parts is that tired bees can look almost like they've fallen asleep at work, curled up inside a flower with pollen still covering their bodies…”
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“Patterns of behavior within societies have long been visualized and interpreted using maps. Mapping the occurrence of sleep across individuals within a society could offer clues as to functional aspects of sleep. In spite of this, a detailed spatial analysis of sleep has never been conducted on an invertebrate society. [The authors] introduce the concept of mapping sleep across an insect society, and provide an empirical example, mapping sleep patterns within colonies of European honey bees (Apis mellifera L.). Honey bees face variables such as temperature and position of resources within their colony's nest that may impact their sleep. [They] mapped sleep behavior and temperature of worker bees and produced maps of their nest's comb contents as the colony grew and contents changed. By following marked bees, [they] discovered that individuals slept in many locations, but bees of different worker castes slept in different areas of the nest relative to position of the brood and surrounding temperature. Older worker bees generally slept outside cells, closer to the perimeter of the nest, in colder regions, and away from uncapped brood. Younger worker bees generally slept inside cells and closer to the center of the nest, and spent more time asleep than awake when surrounded by uncapped brood. The average surface temperature of sleeping foragers was lower than the surface temperature of their surroundings, offering a possible indicator of sleep for this caste. [They] propose mechanisms that could generate caste-dependent sleep patterns and discuss functional significance of these patterns…”
#bee #insect #hive #sleeping #sleep #patterns #monitoring #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #spatial #mapping #sleeppatterns #behaviour #society #community #honeybees #ecosystem #colony #infrared #remotesensing #temperature #instrumentation

Women Work to Save #NativeBees of #Mexico

A happy story about #bees, #BeeConservation, and empowering women in Mexico.

Mar 5, 2014

Excerpt: "Spaniards introduced European #honeybees to Central America around 1620, and they are now well established. European honey bees (and their Africanized form) do compete with gentle #NativeBee species for pollen and nectar on flowers. #MeliponaBeecheii is a #ForestBee, so if they could find flowering trees and shrubs, competition with honey bees might not be a problem. Alas, #Yucatan is heavily logged.

"The Yucatan peninsula sits right in the path of a lot of big storms; quite a few hurricanes, floods, and droughts have caused beekeepers to lose all or most of their hives. Native stingless bees are quite sensitive to #pesticides, so that isn't helping either."

Learn more:
https://www.wired.com/2014/03/women-work-save-native-bees-mexico/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/C5qzc

Link to video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c4v1E2mRhw

#WorldBeeDay #SaveTheBees #EmpoweringWomen #YucatanBees #IndigenousWomen

National Urban Beekeeping Day.

#urbanbeekeeping #beekeeping #bees #savethebees #honeybees #beekeeper #bee #honey #backyardbeekeeping #beekeepersofinstagram #beesofinstagram #beehive #honeybee #beekeepers #beekeeperslife #apiary #beekeepinglife #apiculture #pollinators #beekeeperlife #lovebees #honeycomb #beeswax #beehives #imkerei #urbanbeekeeper #nature #hive #queenbee #naturalbeekeeping

https://itsmostamazingindia.wordpress.com/2025/07/19/national-urban-beekeeping-day/

Bees & moths, buzzing around catmint flowers.

https://youtu.be/woR1xqk5Cuk

#Pollinators #bees #WeLoveBees #bumblebees #honeybees #moths #pollination #nature #W̱MÍYEŦEN #Wsanec #VancouverIsland #vanisle #PNW #PacificNorthwest #NatureVids #NatureLovers #MillstreamWatershed #DistrictOfHighlands #greenbelt #yyj #conservationArea