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hardiness zones

USDA updates hardiness zones

Last Wednesday the USDA released its newly redrawn Plant Hardiness Zone Map. The map is based on the average lowest winter temperature in a given area—not the lowest temperature ever—and is calculated from data collected over the last 30 years. The new map was compiled at Oregon State University using GIS software. Plant Hardiness Zones […] Read more

All beekeeping challenges are local

Last night I was fortunate to meet Fritz Haeg, author of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn (www.fritzhaeg.com). After an open-to-the-public lecture on edible landscapes and animal estates, Haeg led our classroom through an informal discussion of art, architecture, and vegetable gardens. Haeg is funny, articulate, and brimming with fresh ideas on Americans and […] Read more

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Bee Wise
Go to the bee, thou poet: consider her ways and be wise.

—George Bernard Shaw
Bee-yond Bees
Bees are more than a hobby; they are a life study, in many respects a mirror of our own society.

—William Longgood
Why Honey Bee is Two Words

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
State Insects
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!
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