April 2026
Much of what bees do are reactions to chemical signals. One of the lectures at the UBKA conference this year had some very interesting information about the brood pheromones that trigger actions in the workers, although it only touched on the subject. I decided to search for a bit more information and I found the paper “Detailed chemical analysis of honey bee worker brood volatile profile from egg to emergence” by the folk in INRAE, the French agriculture research institute. This paper lists an enormous array of substances that the brood uses to signal different things. One set of chemicals, known as Varroa-Parasitization-Specific (tricosan-2-one, pentacosan-2-one, tetracosyl acetate, heptacosan-2-one, hexacosyl acetate and nonacosan-2-one) is believed to trigger hygienic behaviour. In all they determined that there were 32 different chemicals involved, five of which were classed as pheromones. The paper also describes the development stages where the various compounds were found, so it’s clear that they each have some function in the hive, although we don’t yet know what that might be.
The Guardian had an interesting article about the rise in corporate beekeeping. It appears that office apiaries stem from two modern anxieties: the scramble to improve workplace wellbeing, and the need to be seen acting as nature declines. While the latter is often categorised as greenwashing, giving employees the opportunity to look after bees is a rather unusual perk, and one that is enormously popular. A number of beekeepers have stepped up to help and have had to take on employees to manage the demand for their services. Perhaps some enterprising Irish beekeepers could sell this idea to the Irish corporate world – I imagine it would be a nice little earner.
When testing insecticides on bees, the only possible outcome is not good for them. In the paper “Assessment of genotype-specific sensitivity to three insecticides in honey bees via acute oral exposure” they tested three commercially available insecticides on five different bee types – the European dark bee (most common in Ireland), Buckfast, Carniolan, Italian and a bee local to their home institution. The idea was to determine if any of the bee types were better at handling being sprayed by these insecticides. While the dark bees were the least well able to handle Sivanto Prime, they were better than the others at resisting the other two, Karate Zeon and Minecto One. Since Sivanto is one of Bayer’s newer creations, asking the farming community to avoid it and use one of the other less harmful treatments instead may be a possible bee-friendlier option.
The paper “A comparison of concept learning ability in honeybees and bumblebees using matching-to-sample tasks” looked at how the different bees processed tasks. The traditional view is that honey bees are better learners, but this was based on a particular type of task where the bee sees a sample, waits, and then chooses a matching target. Bumble bees failed to complete this task while honey bees quickly learned how to do it. This new experiment has the sample and target in the same view, but the honey bees could not resolve it while the bumble bees could. Apparently bumble bees can take in the entire scene at a glance, while honey bees serially process the view, scanning the environment item by item. Ultimately, it’s a matter of visual processing rather than intelligence: both bees can complete tasks when they fit into how they see the world. This probably means that in a quiz, you’ll need both a honey bee and a bumble bee on your team to cover all possible questions.
The American Bee Journal had an article in the March edition on the Bee Museum in Rhodes. This is especially appropriate because legend has it that the Greek Aristaeus, son of Apollo, introduced mankind to beekeeping. The museum looks beautiful and is clearly a must-see for visiting beekeepers. It reminded me of the plans for something similar in the old St. Munchin’s Church in the centre of Limerick. The Irish Bee and Heritage Foundation plans to provide information and classes on traditional skills including bee-related subjects, in the promotion of Ireland's cultural heritage.
Players (including top seed Australian Talia Gibson), umpires, and spectators at a tennis match in southern India fled to shelter when a swarm of bees arrived in the stadium. Play was suspended while the bees moved through. There were no reports of stings or other injuries, and Ms Gibson went on to easily win the match 6-0, 6-0 in less than an hour.