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Here, yellowjackets are lined up on the door to a storage shed, making it difficult to enter. The nest is protected inside the shed.

predators

The ultimate yellowjacket trap is in your trash

12 months ago

32 Comments

8 min read

A robber fly catches a honey bee for dinner. © Erik Luthy.

predators

Robber fly dining on a honey bee

4 years ago

10 Comments

3 min read

Three hives where the varroa drawers were pulled out by rats.

predators

Rats as honey bee predators

6 years ago

16 Comments

2 min read

honey bee threats • predators

Bald-faced hornet nests in New York

7 years ago

5 Comments

3 min read

guest posts • predators

Beekeeping with Asian hornets in France

7 years ago

116 Comments

9 min read

Bees and their queen on a honeycomb. Pixabay

predators

Spiders that eat bees

7 years ago

5 Comments

3 min read

predators

Colony postmortem: a glistening pile of abdomens

7 years ago

47 Comments

3 min read

predators

You’ve never seen yellowjackets like this

8 years ago

10 Comments

2 min read

predators

Colony death by yellowjacket attack

8 years ago

54 Comments

9 min read

predators

The blaming of the shrew

8 years ago

26 Comments

4 min read

predators

Honey bee: It’s what’s for dinner

9 years ago

5 Comments

2 min read

predators

Robber flies grab bees in flight

9 years ago

16 Comments

2 min read

predators

The sign of the sting

9 years ago

5 Comments

1 min read

honey bee threats • predators

Italian mob takes down a wasp

9 years ago

17 Comments

3 min read

honey bee threats • predators

Protect your bees from autumn wasps

10 years ago

40 Comments

3 min read

photographs • predators

Bear crossing

10 years ago

23 Comments

1 min read

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. This book started zillions of people on their path to beekeeping. If you haven't read it, you should.

QueenSpotting: Meet the Remarkable Queen Bee and Discover the Drama at the Heart of the Hive by Hilary Kearney. You have to be a scrooge not to love this book. It even includes 48 queenspotting challenges.

The Bees in Your Backyard by Wilson & Carril. If you have any interest at all in the "other bees," you need this book. These are the bees we need to save.

Manuka: The biography of an extraordinary honey by Cliff van Eaton. The discovery of manuka honey and its medicinal properties.

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.

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!

Connecticut’s state insect is the European “praying” mantis. Although they are beneficial insects, they are not native to North America.