Tag - spring management

spring management

When to remove quilt boxes and feeders

5 years ago

35 Comments

how to • making increase • spring management

How to make a simple split

10 years ago

47 Comments

feeding bees • spring management

Should you trust your bees to Phil?

10 years ago

14 Comments

muddled thinking • swarming

To gleefully bludgeon a beemudgeon

11 years ago

4 Comments

spring management • swarming

The catch-22 of beekeeping

11 years ago

23 Comments

spring management

Measuring the bone pile: death in the hive

12 years ago

7 Comments

spring management

Reversing brood boxes: is it necessary?

12 years ago

41 Comments

feeding bees • spring management

Spring caution: handle the brood nest with care

12 years ago

9 Comments

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.