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A bit more about VSH

A reader asked how the VSH bees detect mites within the cell. So far, I cannot find a detailed explanation. Many scientific papers discuss various aspects of mite removal and efficiency, but the ones I read didn’t answer this specific question. Varroa sensitive hygiene was originally discovered by the USDA Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and […] Read more

Wednesday wordphile: hygienic behavioral disorder

Let’s back up for a moment and first define Varroa sensitive hygiene or VSH. VSH is a trait found in some honey bees that causes them to remove Varroa-infected pupae from the brood nest. A number of breeders around the country have developed lines of honey bees with enhanced VSH. When these bees detect the […] 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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