Tag - sugar cakes

feeding bees

What’s wrong with this picture?

July 8, 2015

24 Comments

bee stories • wintering

Too many bees for the middle of winter

January 9, 2013

39 Comments

A brood box sliced horizontally to make ekes or feeder rims for mountain camp feeding or baggie feeding.

feeding bees

Mountain Camp feeding: what it is, how to do it

January 5, 2012

29 Comments

Bees and their queen on a honeycomb. Pixabay

feeding bees • physics for beekeepers

Physics for beekeepers: Why bees can eat solid sugar...

December 14, 2011

5 Comments

feeding bees • honey bee nutrition

Snacking on sugar cakes: it’s a bee thing

February 13, 2011

13 Comments

feeding bees • spring management

Spring caution: handle the brood nest with care

February 1, 2011

9 Comments

feeding bees • how to • wintering

How to make protein-enriched candy boards

January 27, 2011

16 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.