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Archive - August 2010

English for beekeepers • infrequently asked questions • miscellaneous musings

Honeybee or honey bee? Which is correct?

11 years ago

2 min read

bee forage • varietal honey

Buckwheat: a casualty of American agriculture

11 years ago

3 min read

honey bee behavior • video

Washboarding bees arockin’ and alickin’

11 years ago

2 min read

beekeepers • bees and agriculture • pollinator threats

More Than Honey—a film about bees and bee people

11 years ago

3 min read

beekeeping equipment • propolis

Autumn: the time for harvesting propolis

11 years ago

2 min read

attracting wild pollinators • bee forage • honey

Goldenrod: a late-summer feast for the bees

11 years ago

2 min read

bee forage • pollination • wild bees and native bees

Plant a garden and they will come

11 years ago

2 min read

honey • how to • varietal honey

How to determine the purity of honey

11 years ago

4 min read

bees and agriculture • pollinator threats

National Honey Bee Awareness Day

11 years ago

2 min read

Beware of false varietal honey

11 years ago

4 min read

The trouble with canola honey

11 years ago

2 min read

diseases

Chronic bee paralysis virus

11 years ago

2 min read

beekeeping equipment

Confusion about escape boards

11 years ago

2 min read

bee forage

Field bindweed as a pollinator plant

11 years ago

2 min read

apiary creatures • photographs

Another denizen of the apiary

11 years ago

1 min read

bee biology

It’s not a good time to be male

11 years ago

1 min read

Regardless of dictionaries, we have in entomology a rule for insect common names that can be followed. It says: If the insect is what the name implies, write the two words separately; otherwise run them together. Thus we have such names as house fly, blow fly, and robber fly contrasted with dragonfly, caddicefly, and butterfly, because the latter are not flies, just as an aphislion is not a lion and a silverfish is not a fish. The honey bee is an insect and is preeminently a bee; “honeybee” is equivalent to “Johnsmith.”

—From Anatomy of the Honey Bee by Robert E. Snodgrass

The non-native European Honey Bee is the state insect of:

Arkansas
Georgia
Kansas
Louisiana
Maine
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
New Jersey
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Tennessee
Utah
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Not one native bee is a state insect. The closest relative of a North American native bee to make the list is the Tarantula Hawk Wasp, the state insect of New Mexico.

Update! Minnesota now has a state bee as well as a state insect. Bombus affinis, the Rusty-Patched Bumble Bee, has been so honored. Good work, Minnesota!