Senor Parrot's Perch

Those amazing little bees appear to learn how to navigate from their hive to pollen sources and then back again. In today’s Cool Science News we repeat a little article from the New York Times, Training Flights for Bees, science writer C. Claiborne Ray reports that scientists have monitored the flying patterns of young bees and determined that they appear to learn how to navigate between food sources and the hive.

Each flight is a little longer in distance, taking the 3-week old bees on more complicated trips into the wild. These result in the bees learning to navigate their environment and become fledgling food finders for the whole hive.

It’s interesting what careful observation teaches us. Using radar techniques, the scientists were able to track the bees as they learned to navigate the environment around their hive. This shows that bees have the capacity to learn complex behaviors that (more…)

Each spring My wife fills the deck with flowers. We enjoy their beauty until the fall frosts kill them off. But we’re not the only ones. Bees are everywhere, flying about from flower to flower in the hunt for more pollen. Hundreds of bees. We’ve never been bothered by them and they’ve never seemed bothered by us. It’s a happy coexistence.

Bees, specificly Honey Bees, are the subject of Jay Hosler’s graphic novel Clan Apis. Taking the graphic novel approach, author Jay Hosler encapsulated the life cycle of honey bees within a coming of age story and found an interesting and effective way to teach kids about the ecology of honey bees. Hosler’s approach is to imagine a hive, or clan, of honey bees endowed with human motivations, through them telling the amazing story of the Honey Bee. The illustration is excellent, lively, and entertaining. I’ve included a few panels from the book that I snagged from Hosler’s website for you to see.

It’s surprising how much actual detail and information Hosler conveys through this method, while keeping the interest in the story high. Beginning with a young larva and it’s older sister, Hosler details in clear and interesting detail the growth cycle and social lives of bees. As the young larva, Nyuki, grows into a young bee she absolutely buzzes with questions. Her older sister, Dvorah, is always there explaining to her the ways of bees and their jobs and duties.

Like a child eager to grow up, Nyuki is eager to find her own way, against the advice of her older sister, landing herself in the middle of dangerous straits. This opens the doorway (more…)