The BEEginnings of the Bee 14
KingArthur10 writes "The Register-Guard is reporting about the discovery of the oldest known relative of the insect providing sugary goodness to the world. From the Article: 'It's as old as the dinosaurs for sure, and just as extinct. As for size, well, the tiny fossilized bee recently uncovered by an Oregon State University scientist is decidedly unlike a dinosaur, but that hasn't kept it from becoming the buzz of the entomology world.
That's because this little bee dates to 100 million years ago, making it the earliest known member of the insect line that later became today's familiar honeybee and the first to show signs that it pollinated flowers. It is helping cement the theory that bees long ago developed a taste for nectar and branched off from meat-eating wasps to pursue a life among the petals.'"
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Oblig. Ralph Wiggum (Score:3, Funny)
I choo-choo-choose to post this logged in, thus risking my karma.
Now here's a picture of a train.
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The divergence isn't as far as it seems. (Score:3, Interesting)
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So you think if they were fed masticated insects their behavior would change?
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It also makes me wonder about african bees. These
I disagree. Especially regarding the africanized (Score:1)
Workers, fed royal jelly for the first three days or so will be the baseline. After three days they are fed pollen/nectar mixture (sometimes called bee bread). This results in a generic worker with undeveloped ovaries. This worker will not take a mating flight and thus will only lay drones in the absence of a true queen.
Queens, on the other hand, are fed continuously for the ten days that it takes them to develop. Raised in a long
News for nerds. Stuff that matters. (Score:1)
Voice of the Hive (Score:1)
There's a beekeeper who posts on kuro5hin from time to time, his page http://www.voiceofthehive.com/ [voiceofthehive.com] is great for learning about bees. The guy's a great writer, my favorate story is 'Jose's Swarm', but they're all pretty good.
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