Archive - October 2019

beekeeping equipment

Slatted racks: everything you need to know

1 year ago

61 Comments

7 min read

attracting wild pollinators

Distinctive domiciles for solitary bees

1 year ago

2 Comments

5 min read

publications

Want 2 Million Blossoms delivered to your door?

1 year ago

3 Comments

2 min read

wild bees and native bees

Immigrant bees that colonized North America

1 year ago

2 Comments

14 min read

feeding bees

How to feed stacked nucs in winter

1 year ago

24 Comments

6 min read

honey bee nutrition

Is high-fructose corn syrup bad for bees?

1 year ago

31 Comments

5 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!