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Archive - May 2015

beekeeping equipment

Who reuses old frames?

6 years ago

111 Comments

2 min read

beekeeping equipment

What do you smoke?

6 years ago

64 Comments

2 min read

bee biology

Dead bees rising

6 years ago

29 Comments

3 min read

other pollinators

Pollinators on the night shift

6 years ago

12 Comments

2 min read

honey bee management

Taranov split in photos

6 years ago

19 Comments

4 min read

guest posts

A wall of bees

6 years ago

6 Comments

4 min read

bee biology

Honey is not bee vomit

6 years ago

16 Comments

2 min read

swarming

How to clean wireware

6 years ago

23 Comments

2 min read

swarming

Home is the bee, home from the tree

6 years ago

26 Comments

3 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!