Knowing the honey bee : a multispecies ethnography : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Multispecies scholarship argues that the non-human has been relegated to the background of discussions about who and what inhabits and shapes the world. This thesis engages with this discussion as an experimental multispecies ethnography with honey bees in Manawatu, New Zealand. I aim to centre the honey bee in ethnography through engagement in the practice of fieldwork as well as the representation of the findings of this engagement. The honey bee is commonly known as an introduced, domesticated species, kept by humans in beehives in apiculture. This conceals the agency of the honey bee, rendering it passive, productive and compliant to the desires of humans, or in need of human intervention for survival. To view the agency of the bee I undertook embodied, performative ethnography, interviewing beekeepers and becoming one myself. My methodology, which was shaped by the bee, traced the networks that honey bees were enrolled in. Encounters were awkward, one-sided, and sometimes dangerous. The representation of honey bees demands an approach which attends to multiple, distinct accounts of honey bee worlds, because the bee is a lively agent, contributing to, experiencing, and communicating about the multiple networks in which it is engaged. As such, the findings of this thesis are presented in three accounts of encounters with honey bees. These accounts are distinct, capturing the honey bee in different networks, but are also distinct in their narrative styles, progressing from a description of honey networks in the spirit of Actor-Networks, to writing with honey bee narrator in poetry. Ethnographic representation is inevitably partial and an act of imagination. However, becoming sensitive to the ‘bee-ness’ of the bee; the waggle, hum and sting, and employing narrative inspired by the multisensory apiary, in other words, shaping representation with honey bees in mind, is an act of privileging honey bees in writing, and exploring what more can be said of, and with, the bee

The Effect of Urbanization on Bumble Bee Communities in Greater Philadelphia

Bumble bees (Bombus spp.) are among the most important wild pollinators in temperate ecosystems in North America and Europe, and are believed to be vital to the functioning of the pollination networks in which they occur. Accordingly, evidence of their overall decline in Europe and more selective decline in the U.S. has raised concern about the long term persistence of many species. Human-induced changes in land use, including the loss of natural and semi-natural habitat and associated floral resources, are purported causes in several cases. Declines prompted an investigation of this potential trend in the urbanized landscape in and surrounding Philadelphia, PA. We surveyed the species richness and abundance of bumble bee communities in ten half-ha plots located in restored, managed meadows along a gradient of urban and suburban development in the Philadelphia metropolitan area from June 1 to August 15, 2006. In conjunction with collections, we measured floral density within each plot. We calculated the proportion of developed land at differing spatial scales ranging from 500 to 4000 m from survey sites. General linear models were used to test the effect of developed land, local meadow size, and floral resource density on overall bumble bee species richness and abundance. 
Development did not have any detectable effect on species richness at any tested spatial scale. Bee abundance was best explained by a model that included the proportion of developed land at the 2500 m scale. In contrast to our expectations, total bumble bee abundance was significantly higher in plots with a higher proportion of developed land surrounding the site (F1,5 = 8.13, P = 0.04). Local floral density did not significantly affect richness or abundance (F 1,5 = 0.93, P = 0.34), nor was local resource quality associated with development (r = 0.52, P = 0.12) . We hypothesize that gardens maintained in urban and suburban landscapes may provide an important and consistent food supply to bumble bees throughout the duration of their colony cycle. Forested habitats, which were the other dominate habitat type, may actually be relatively poor in bumble bee resources following closure of the canopy in late spring. This research indicates that restored meadows are excellent habitat for bumble bees and may promote pollination services in urbanized settings.
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Insight into the Community: Bee Similes in the Iliad and the Aeneid

This paper offers a comparative analysis of the bee similes in Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid to demonstrate that there are significant thematic connections between the similes in the two epics. In both works, bee similes illustrate the structure of the ideal society, as a close reading of each simile reveals. This paper demonstrates that both Homeric and Virgilian bee similes focus on the concept of community. In the Iliad, Homer’s first extended simile compares the Greek forces to a colony of bees. This prominent placement foreshadows the significance of bee similes in the Homeric epic. As a Greek poet, Homer demonstrates that his understanding of community has been influenced by the social structure of the individualistic Greek city-states. In the Iliad, his bee similes exemplify a tension between unity and self-interest within the Greek camp. Homer’s bee similes emphasize the need for mutual interest and cooperation, lest the Greek forces disintegrate. For Homer, the ideal community is not homogeneous, but it is unified. Unlike Homer’s similes, Virgil’s three bee similes exalt homogeneity as a central characteristic of the ideal society. Individuality is erased in the bee similes of the Aeneid. The wellbeing of the hive transcends the purpose of the individual. This paper examines these similes as a unit to provide a unique perspective on the two poets’ worldviews, thus contributing to the analysis of the relationship between the epics. Clearly, Virgil is well aware of the Homeric epics, and intentionally provides further commentary on the ideal society through his bee similes. When compared with each other, Homer’s and Virgil’s similes artfully depict two divergent portraits of the ideal society

The Bee, A Natural History, by Noah Wilson-Rich (2014, Princeton University Press. ISBN: 9780691161358. US$27.95)

(excerpt) Upon receiving “The Bee, A Natural History”, by Noah Wilson Rich, I was drawn in by the title and the beautiful rust and grey front cover featuring a nearly 3-D photo of a honey bee. I immediately felt twinges of excitement—this is the book I have always wanted to have available for my university course, Apiculture and Honey Bee Biology—and disappointment—I did not write it! The “bee”— singular—accompanied by the high-resolution photo, suggested that this book focused on the world’s best understood insect that my course is centered around, Apis mellifera

Geron Calvus (Diptera: Bombyliidae), a Parasite of Solenobia Walshella (Lepidoptera: Psychidae) in Michigan

Excerpt: Very little is known of the biology of bee-flies in the genus Geron; the few available records show that the larvae are parasitic on Lepidoptera larvae. Mik (1896) noted that Geron gibbosus Meigen had been reared from larvae of the pyralid Nephopteryx sublineatella Strg. and the psychid Fumaria crassiorella (Bruand) in Europe, while Maxwell-Lefroy and Howlett (1909) recorded the tortricid Laspeyresia jaculutrix Meyrick as a host of Geron argentifrons Bru. in India. The present paper appears to be the first report on the biology of any North American Geron

Bee Work | Departure

How do we get closer to the nature of the bee’s, or any non-human\u27s, experience, mystery that it is? This essay is a lyrical meditation on the power (and challenges) of poetry and language to access non-human worlds

Stability evaluation of a bee bread and honey mixture

Bee bread is a bee product prepared in honeycombs by fermenting bee pollen collected and partially processed by bees. The interest in bee bread is justified by the fact that it is a nutritionally rich food with potential biological activity, often being classified as a functional food. However, due to the difficulty normally associated with its production, beekeepers have not properly valued bee bread.Thanks to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020 and UIDP/00690/2020) and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2021). Thanks also to the project GreenHealth, Norte-01-0145-FEDER-000042 and project BeeLand, PRR-C05-i03- I-000081.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Bee conservation is not ‘child’s play’

2openInternationalItalian coauthor/editorThere are concerns among conservationists in Italy about the sale of solitary bee species, under the purported aim of supporting pollination and to raise awareness about these bees, mistakenly defined as ‘at risk of extinction’. The marketing campaign aims to educate the public about the plight of the bees and threats to pollinators. These issues affect honey bees, and therefore beekeepers, but more so all other bee speciesopenFontana, P.; Bortolotti, L.Fontana, P.; Bortolotti, L

The interaction of syllabification and voicing perception in american english

The current paper explores these two sorts of phonetic explanations of the relationship between syllabic position and the voicing contrast in American English. It has long been observed that the contrast between, for example, /p/ and /b/ is expressed differently, depending on the position of the stop with respect to the vowel. Preceding a vowel within a syllable, the contrast is largely one of aspiration. /p/ is aspirated, while /b/ is voiceless, or in some dialects voiced or even an implosive. Following a vowel within a syllable, both /p/ and /b/ both tend to lack voicing in the closure and the contrast is expressed largely by dynamic differences in the transition between the previous vowel and the stop. Here, vowel and closure duration are negatively correlated such that the /p/ has a shorter vowel and longer closure duration. This difference is often enhanced by the addition of glottalization to /p/. In addition to these differences, there are additional differences connected to higher-level organization involving stress and feet edges. To make the current discussion more tractable, we will restrict ourselves to the two conditions (CV and VC) laid out above