# data[].attributes.body
go here to see our bee house design

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
RoomSketcher Home Designer is an easy-to-use floor plan and home design app. Draw floor plans, furnish and decorate them and visualize your home in 3D. Perfect for large volume professional use, and smaller scale DIY home improvement projects.

# data[].attributes.body
students will learn about the bees and the bee hive by examining it and an expert visit

# data[].attributes.body
The first step to mating bees is to first find the queen. The queen bee is the only bee who can produce offspring, she is the only one that can mate and make more bees. That is why the bees protect her under all cost. She is the mother of most of all the bees of the hive, if not all. Drones are the male bees of the colony, they do not have stingers and don't pollinate. The primary job is to mate with other bees (the queen) to produce offspring. Drones can usually mate between 7 to 10 times before they die. You can see the website on by clinking our box. Bees mate by flowing over to something called a drone site where are thousands of drones and she mates with several other drones. I feel like in order to protect bees and keep them alive is to protect the queen like the bees in the colomt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When a virgin queen flies to a site where thousands of male honey bees may be waiting, she mates with several males in flight. A male drone will mount the queen and insert his endophallus, ejaculating semen. After ejaculation, a male honey bee pulls away from the queen, though his endophallus is ripped from his body, remaining attached to the newly fertilized queen.

The next male honey bee to mate with the queen will remove the previous endophallus and eventually lose his own after ejaculation. Male honey bees are only able to mate seven to 10 times during a mating flight, and after mating, a drone dies quickly, as his abdomen rips open when his endophallus is removed. Even drones that survive the mating flight are ejected from their nests, as they have served their sole purpose by mating.

Virgin queens mate early in their lives and only attend one mating flight. After several matings during this flight, a queen stores up to 100 million sperm within her oviducts. However, only five to six million are stored within the queen's spermatheca. The queen uses only a few of these sperm at a time in order to fertilize eggs throughout her life. If a queen runs out of sperm in her lifetime, new generations of queens will mate and produce their own colonies.

Honey bee queens control the sex of their offspring: as eggs pass through the ovary into the oviduct, a queen can determine whether a particular egg is fertilized or not. Unfertilized eggs become drone honey bees, while fertilized eggs develop into female workers and queens. Female workers do not mate, but they can lay infertile eggs, which in turn become male honey bees.

Queens lay their eggs in structural oval-shaped cells, which stick to the nest ceiling. Worker honey bees fill these cells with royal jelly to prevent larvae from falling. Soon-to-be workers are fed royal jelly during the first two days, while future queens are given royal jelly throughout the entire larval period. The development of each member of a colony differs depending on caste: male honey bees need 24 days for proper growth from eggs to adult, while workers need 21 days and queens require only 16.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mechanics of Honey Bee Mating: Honey Bee Mating Habits

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When a virgin queen flies to a site where thousands of male honey bees may be waiting, she mates with several males in flight. A male drone will mount the queen and insert his endophallus, ejaculating semen. After ejaculation, a male honey bee pulls away from the queen, though his endophallus is ripped from his body, remaining attached to the newly fertilized queen.

# data[].attributes.body
We are going to split up STEM. The way we are going to do this is explain each part of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). So for the S part it will be about closely studying bee hives in person and tracking bees. The T part we would explain our research. Also, designing through an online designing program. The E part physically building and designing ways to better bee population. Last, the M part would be the calculations that we do on the data from the population of bees, materials in the garden, and the overall costs of this project.

# data[].attributes.body
Bees help- 19 million $ worth of agriculture crop in us

# data[].attributes.body
Shows what honey bees do for us.

# data[].attributes.body
Sign the petition to save the bees

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Love in Action during COVID- 19: Building power for a more just recovery

Our systems are failing workers. We need swift and deliberate action to demand solidarity across race and class in order to create the future we all n...

Greenpeace talks with Denis Hayes: 50 years of Earth Day, and where we go from here

Once you've seen the country fundamentally restructure itself through grassroots efforts, you simply have to believe that that sort of thing can be do...

Protect Indigenous sovereignty-demand profiteers defund the Coastal GasLink pipeline

I stood up to Wall Street billionaires once before, and I'll do it again to stop them from ruining our Mother Earth and the sovereignty of my Indigeno...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Love in Action during COVID- 19: Building power for a more just recovery Our systems are failing workers. We need swift and deliberate action to demand solidarity across race and class in order to create the future we all n...

# data[].attributes.body
1/3 of all fruits and vegetables are produced and pollinated by honey bees. Without them, the quality of fruits and vegetables would be much worse.

# data[].attributes.body
This shows what the certain types of bees do.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An international group of scientists, beekeepers, farmers and technology companies is using cutting-edge technology to help find out why honey bee populations around the world are crashing.

Minuscule sensors have been glued to the backs of 10,000 healthy honey bees around the world to help understand why huge numbers of bees are dying.

Like electronic tags that track the movement of cars through toll roads, these tiny trackers send information back to receivers half the size of a credit card that are strategically placed at bee hives.

Australian researchers involved in the global research project compare the sensor to an adult carrying a backpack, weighing about a third of what a honey bee can carry.

But unlike the average backpacker, this extra load will remain in place for the rest of the bee's life.

Mass deaths

The microscopic technology has been developed in Tasmania by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) over the past two years as part of an international research project investigating bee health.

Around the world, wild bee populations have plummeted thanks to habitat loss, pesticides and diseases, say scientists.

That puts crops that need to be pollinated at risk, says CSIRO Science Leader Professor Paulo de Souza.

"In some parts of the world, a healthy hive of bees can be like clockwork one day, and then every single bee is dead the very next day, and we have no idea why," Prof. de Souza told the BBC.

"It's happening so frequently that it's now a syndrome called colony collapse disorder, and no scientist working alone would be able to solve this," he says.

A predatory mite called the Varroa destructor has killed many colonies over the past decade.

Australian honey bees have so far remained immune to the devastating mite, putting Australia in an ideal position to coordinate a global research effort, says the CSIRO team.

The tiny sensors they have developed weigh just 5.4 milligrams. They contain a battery that generates energy by vibration, and record a bee's time away from the hive and the distance each bee travels.

Each sensor will record a bee's exposure to pesticides, air pollution and water contamination, as well as taking note of the insect's diet and the weather.

Bees are normally predictable creatures, so changes in their behaviour can indicate stress factors or a change in their environment, says Prof. de Souza.

"The bees fitted with sensors aren't able to carry as much pollen, but we do learn a lot about the bees by doing this," he says.

'Constant fear'

Australia's honey bee industry lives in constant fear that border protection authorities could fail to detect diseased bees in containers entering the country.

Australia's horticulture and agricultural industries are particularly vulnerable to declines in honey bee populations because they rely on unmanaged feral honey bees for much of their crop pollination.

CSIRO pollination researcher Dr Saul Cunningham says Australia's managed bee pollination services would find it difficult to meet the extra demand required to replace the key role unmanaged honey bees play in pollinating crops.

"So the outcome would likely be a drop in crop production and a rise in prices of popular food staples like fruit and vegetables," he said in a statement.

The Tasmanian honey bee was tagged first, while scientists in Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand and the UK have joined the initiative in recent months.

The research findings will be shared with the global scientific community, next year.

"It's not just the Varroa mite that's an issue; other stressors could be wiping out honey bee colonies," says Prof. de Souza.

"We just don't understand the combination of stressors that affect honey bees, and we don't know why bee numbers are declining around the world. They might go through extinction; we just don't know," he says.

"There are many interesting aspects that make honey bees so interesting and attractive to us.

"How they are organised, the way they are devoted to the queen and their hive, and how they collaborate. There are many lessons to learn about how these insects work, live and strive."

Nina Hendy is a Tasmania-based writer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How a tiny backpack could solve the mystery of mass bee deaths

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An international group of scientists, beekeepers, farmers and technology companies is using cutting-edge technology to help find out why honey bee populations around the world are crashing. Minuscule sensors have been glued to the backs of 10,000 healthy honey bees around the world to help understand why huge numbers of bees are dying.

# data[].attributes.body
Bee-killing pesticides in particular pose the most direct risk to pollinators. The main reasons for global bee-decline are linked to industrial agriculture, parasites/pathogens and climate change. The loss of biodiversity due to monocultures and the wide-spread use of bee-killing pesticides are particular threats for honeybees and wild pollinators.

Although the relative role of insecticides in the global decline of pollinators remains poorly characterised, it is becoming increasingly evident that some insecticides, at concentrations applied routinely in the current chemical-intensive agriculture system, exert clear, negative effects on the health of pollinators – both individually and at the colony level. The observed, sub-lethal, low-dose effects of insecticides on bees are various and di

# data[].attributes.body
The winter lost in bee population

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Just like the seven million honeybees that populate his 120 or so hives, Greg Fischer is feverishly busy. Head beekeeper for the Morton Arboretum and the rooftop hives at the Chicago Marriott, he doesn't want a repeat of last winter's massacre, when 80 percent of his colonies perished. "Everybody went into December really healthy and full of honey," he says. "Then when the real cold weather hit, it just wiped them out."

It's no secret that America's honeybees are dying: The media have been full of stories about their demise. But what you might not know is that the situation is especially dire in Illinois. Beekeepers here reported that 62 percent of their colonies died last year, the second-highest mortality rate of any state and far exceeding the 42 percent reported nationally (which is already plenty troubling). Think it's a problem just on the farm? Chicago has 142 registered beekeepers.

While no hard data are available, beekeepers say that honeybees generally do better in Chicago than in rural areas. There's more bee food here, for one thing, thanks to the city's plentiful vacant lots, rooftop gardens, and protected parkland, which offer up an all-you-can-eat buffet of weeds and wildflowers that are (mostly) pesticide-free. (Honeybees don't pollinate corn or soybeans-the main crops in Illinois-which makes millions of acres of farmland more or less a food desert.) Plus, because 86 percent of local apiaries are hobby operations, they don't stress bees out by trucking them around to pollinate farms, as most large businesses do.

Last year, however, even a good diet wasn't enough to boost city bee survival. Thad J. Smith, who owns the beekeeping service Westside Bee Boyz, says that only eight of his 131 colonies in and around Chicago survived. Jana Kinsman, who runs the organization Bike a Bee, lost all but two of her 20 hives on the South and West Sides. (Undeterred, she's tending 35 this year.)

By the Numbers

3,500
beekeepers in Illinois tend to a total of ...

30,000
colonies, each of which contains ...

50,000
honeybees, adding up to ...

1.5 billion
bees statewide, a figure hampered by ...

930 million
deaths last year.

"People would like a nice simple story with a guy in a black hat as the bad guy, but it's complicated," says May Berenbaum, head of the entomology department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The polar vortex that slammed Illinois the past couple of winters was just one nail in the hive-size coffin. Just like humans, honeybees don't poop where they eat. And just like humans, they don't like going outside when it's below 40 degrees, Kinsman says. If a cold spell lasts too long, their health suffers. (How would you feel if you had to hold it for a month?)

Simply moving the hive to a less harsh spot-near a warm-air vent, for example-or rigging up a bee-heating system won't work. It's cost prohibitive for most beekeepers to lug dozens of 200-pound hives from a place that's good for summer pollination to a location with electricity. Plus, if hives get too warm, Kinsman says, bees will think it's time to collect nectar. They'll fly in search of flowers, find nothing in bloom, and return hungrier, which further depletes their stores of honey.

Winter varies from year to year, of course. But beekeepers know they always have to fight a tick-like parasite called the varroa mite. The pinhead-size insects have been waging full-scale war on honeybees and their larvae ever since they came to the United States from Asia in 1987. They transfer disease, cause deformities, and just plain suck the life out of bees. "They're probably our biggest nemesis," Fischer says.

When colonies croak in massive quantities, it's not just honey that's at stake. Illinois-grown watermelons, cucumbers, blueberries, and pumpkins all depend on bees for pollination. (Illinois is the nation's No. 1 producer of pumpkins, in fact-who knew?) When beekeepers have to buy new bees each year, the cost gets passed on to you through higher fruit, veggie, and, of course, honey prices.

Since beekeepers can't control temps, they focus their battle on the mites. They could blast the buggers with chemicals, but those can weaken bee immune systems and taint honey. So they're experimenting with natural treatments such as HopGuard, a product approved this year for use in Illinois that controls mites with compounds from the same hops used in beer brewing. Fischer says he hasn't seen any mites since he began applying the stuff in the spring. Smith is sprinkling hive entrances with powdered sugar, which coats the bees and coaxes them to groom each other (thereby plucking off the mites). Yet another strategy: Split colonies in two, which ensures that one of the colonies won't have a queen laying eggs for about 30 days. No new bees equals nothing for the mites to feed on.

If you've got a little land or even a window box, you can do your part: Plant flowers that bees love to pollinate (see sidebar). The more calories bees store in honey form, the more energy they have to cluster and shiver-which is how they survive cold weather. "The whole system is fueled by honey," explains Berenbaum.

As temps begin to drop, Smith, for one, is optimistic: An excellent summer has left his bee population robust. "So goes the health of the honeybee," he says, "so goes the health of the planet."

How You Can Help Bees

Plant five native flowers that thrive in the fall and keep colonies well fed.

Aster A garden speckled with blue blossoms in November? Believe it.

Coneflower No need to deadhead: Birds will chow down on the seeds all winter.

Goldenrod The bad rap for allergies is undeserved. Its sticky pollen doesn't blow around.

Hardy Ageratum Most pests aren't into it, so it's a good pick for organic gardens.

Witch Hazel Don't be fooled by yellow-turning leaves: This plant blooms into October.

SOURCE: BeeSpotter, Burpee, Chicago Botanic Garden

This article appears in the September 2015 issue of Chicago magazine. Subscribe to Chicago magazine.

Edit Module

Other City Life stories
Edit Module

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Are Illinois's Honeybees Dying? It's Complicated

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Just like the seven million honeybees that populate his 120 or so hives, Greg Fischer is feverishly busy. Head beekeeper for the Morton Arboretum and the rooftop hives at the Chicago Marriott, he doesn't want a repeat of last winter's massacre, when 80 percent of his colonies perished.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You've probably noticed the unusual lack of honey bees buzzing around your garden this year.

Sure, there are plenty of other spring-time insects. But those fuzzy, docile insects that occasionally plagued your childhood with a sharp sting are strangely absent.

Beekeepers in the United States first noticed that their bee colonies were dying off in 2006. Since then, scientists have been desperately trying to figure out what's causing the collapse.

Now, if you think this doesn't concern you, think again!

The honeybee plays the most significant role in our ability to produce the basis of our diet: fruits and vegetables.

In fact, Albert Einstein once prophetically remarked, "Mankind will not survive the honeybees' disappearance for more than five years."

Joachim Hagopian from the Center for Research on Globalization reports that "in the last half decade alone... 30% of the national bee population has disappeared, and nearly a third of all bee colonies in the United States have perished."

Things are getting desperate...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture provided $3 million to help reseed pastures in the Midwest with plants like alfalfa and clover, which provide food for bees.

And last year, Newsweek reported that the agriculture industry resorted to "migrating" honeybees in trucks to various regions in order to pollinate an estimated $40 billion of produce.

New Research Highlights Elevated Threat

Researchers have pointed to multiple reasons for phenomenon, which is known as Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Pesticides, habitat destruction, and global warming (with the incredibly harsh winters) have all been considered culprits.

But a specific parasite has proven particularly damaging to the honeybee population. And based on recent findings, the magnitude of the problem could be astounding.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego discovered that this microsporidian parasite, called Nosema ceranae, causes adult bees to die early. And the parasite spreads easily through the air on spores.

Making matters worse, the new research indicates that the parasite doesn't just target adult bees. It can kill honeybee larvae before they can fully mature!

This parasite is not easy to treat, either.

"One puzzling aspect of Nosema ceranae... is that infection in adult bees usually decreases after medication is given by beekeepers to a colony, but can later resurge," said James Nieh, a professor of biology at UC San Diego who headed the research effort. "Some of this resurgent infection could be due to transmission between bee colonies or to adult bees that have a low, but resistant level of infection."

Many questions remain about the cause of CCD and the effects it could have on our food supply. But the biggest question is, will we survive?

Good investing,

Samantha Solomon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Honeybee Population Shrinking in the U.S.: Mankind Will Suffer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You've probably noticed the unusual lack of honey bees buzzing around your garden this year. Sure, there are plenty of other spring-time insects. But those fuzzy, docile insects that occasionally plagued your childhood with a sharp sting are strangely absent. Beekeepers in the United States first noticed that their bee colonies were dying off in 2006.

# data[].attributes.body
Jordan keeley

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You've probably noticed the unusual lack of honey bees buzzing around your garden this year.

Sure, there are plenty of other spring-time insects. But those fuzzy, docile insects that occasionally plagued your childhood with a sharp sting are strangely absent.

Beekeepers in the United States first noticed that their bee colonies were dying off in 2006. Since then, scientists have been desperately trying to figure out what's causing the collapse.

Now, if you think this doesn't concern you, think again!

The honeybee plays the most significant role in our ability to produce the basis of our diet: fruits and vegetables.

In fact, Albert Einstein once prophetically remarked, "Mankind will not survive the honeybees' disappearance for more than five years."

Joachim Hagopian from the Center for Research on Globalization reports that "in the last half decade alone... 30% of the national bee population has disappeared, and nearly a third of all bee colonies in the United States have perished."

Things are getting desperate...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture provided $3 million to help reseed pastures in the Midwest with plants like alfalfa and clover, which provide food for bees.

And last year, Newsweek reported that the agriculture industry resorted to "migrating" honeybees in trucks to various regions in order to pollinate an estimated $40 billion of produce.

New Research Highlights Elevated Threat

Researchers have pointed to multiple reasons for phenomenon, which is known as Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Pesticides, habitat destruction, and global warming (with the incredibly harsh winters) have all been considered culprits.

But a specific parasite has proven particularly damaging to the honeybee population. And based on recent findings, the magnitude of the problem could be astounding.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego discovered that this microsporidian parasite, called Nosema ceranae, causes adult bees to die early. And the parasite spreads easily through the air on spores.

Making matters worse, the new research indicates that the parasite doesn't just target adult bees. It can kill honeybee larvae before they can fully mature!

This parasite is not easy to treat, either.

"One puzzling aspect of Nosema ceranae... is that infection in adult bees usually decreases after medication is given by beekeepers to a colony, but can later resurge," said James Nieh, a professor of biology at UC San Diego who headed the research effort. "Some of this resurgent infection could be due to transmission between bee colonies or to adult bees that have a low, but resistant level of infection."

Many questions remain about the cause of CCD and the effects it could have on our food supply. But the biggest question is, will we survive?

Good investing,

Samantha Solomon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Honeybee Population Shrinking in the U.S.: Mankind Will Suffer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You've probably noticed the unusual lack of honey bees buzzing around your garden this year. Sure, there are plenty of other spring-time insects. But those fuzzy, docile insects that occasionally plagued your childhood with a sharp sting are strangely absent. Beekeepers in the United States first noticed that their bee colonies were dying off in 2006.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Love in Action during COVID- 19: Building power for a more just recovery

Our systems are failing workers. We need swift and deliberate action to demand solidarity across race and class in order to create the future we all n...

Greenpeace talks with Denis Hayes: 50 years of Earth Day, and where we go from here

Once you've seen the country fundamentally restructure itself through grassroots efforts, you simply have to believe that that sort of thing can be do...

Protect Indigenous sovereignty-demand profiteers defund the Coastal GasLink pipeline

I stood up to Wall Street billionaires once before, and I'll do it again to stop them from ruining our Mother Earth and the sovereignty of my Indigeno...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Love in Action during COVID- 19: Building power for a more just recovery Our systems are failing workers. We need swift and deliberate action to demand solidarity across race and class in order to create the future we all n...

# data[].attributes.body
By 1947 the bee was high , but in 2014 the bee population went down