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Save Bees

@allthe.buzz

340 followers 180 following 290 posts

Bees can bee playful! Bees can learn from one another. Bees sleep and likely dream... of flowers? Bees are thinking, feeling creatures, akin to us. 💛🐝✨ Occasionally I'll touch on old-growth forests, logging, and wildfire. Close to my heart too 💔🔥

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Nov 9

Bees ask for so little: a variety of seasonal flowers, undisturbed nesting sites (in soil, under leaves, in stems and logs), a relatively poison-free life, a generally predictable climate. Helping pollinators helps so many other plants and critters 🐝💛
savebees.org

Save Bees • Pollinator decline and how to help

Learn why pollinators are in trouble and how you can help. Healthy, happy bees need good homes with plenty of food and no poisons. Take simple steps today!

savebees.org

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Aug 13

When it’s this hot out (the Pacific Northwest has been *baking*), I stitch bees for a little break… meet Micro Buzz (stuffed with kapok seed pod fluff, sporting antennae worthy of a male long-horned bee!) 💛🐝✨

A fluffy little bee sits in my hand (a bee in the hand is worth two unstitched…!)

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Aug 13

We tipped over 103F day before yesterday, and today over 101F… I grieve for our once temperate rainforest climate in the PNW.

Reposted by Save Bees

Andy Zahn @andyzahn.bsky.social · Aug 11

I don't think hardly anyone in the Pacific Northwest fully grasps what climate change/ecological collapse is doing to our region, & what the ramifications are for us in the near future. No one in power is taking the catastrophe seriously, even though they'll live to see the consequences. #wawx

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Phil Stevenson @philstevenson.bsky.social · Aug 10

This is devastating. We’ve lost most Lowland Heath in England. It supports unique flora & fauna & healthy bees. Our work @rbgkew.bsky.social w/ @cminnaar.bsky.social & @markjfbrown.bsky.social studies heather nectar for compounds that protect bumblebees from parasites www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Major heath blaze at Holt Heath brought under control

More than 100 firefighters have worked to get the fast-moving fire under control.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Aug 10

It’s hard to say w/o observing (even then, hard to say w/ any certainty). I’d definitely keep an eye on the area where you’ve seen bees acting oddly. With acute pesticide exposure, you’d expect to see some # of bees exhibiting odd behavior. Does strike me as amiss, given buzzing bees not far away.

Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Aug 10

Are the erratic bees moving in repeated circles on the pavement? If so, it might sadly be a symptom of acute pesticide poisoning (ruling out weather related sluggishness, since bees within a short walk appear normal). I’d think that if the bees were healthy, they’d fly to the area nearby w/ flowers.

Reposted by Save Bees

Tom Astle @tjalamont.bsky.social · Aug 5

🌿🐙 A male longhorn bee at night. Males of many solitary native bees clamp onto stems or tuck themselves inside flowers at night, often with other males who likewise have no nest to sleep in. Also, see the flat, orange-yellow thingies (science word) stuck to his feet? Those are pollinia from--

A macro photo, vertical orientation, of a fuzzy bee, head down, jaws clamped onto a thin dry plant stem. The background is black. The bee has a dark body with a coating of off-white hair, changing to yellow orange hair on the top of the thorax. It has spotted, green compound eyes and long orange antennae. There are several orange, flat, smooth, paddle-shaped structures attached to the bee's feet - these are called "pollinia," and are how some plants, in this case milkweed, package their pollen instead of producing it in loose grains.

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Aug 3

Have you happened to read “What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees” by Stephen Buchmann? I love his coverage of research, and I agree completely w/ you… observing bees closely convinced me of their individuality & consciousness 🐝💛 islandpress.org/books/what-b...

What a Bee Knows

islandpress.org

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Nick Isaac @drnickisaac.bsky.social · Jul 30

Dont be a badger when wasps come visiting
theconversation.com/what-to-do-w...

What to do when wasps crash your picnic – a scientist’s guide to dining safely with these insects

Did you know wasps switch from ham to jam foraging during the late summer?

theconversation.com

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Dave Goulson @davegoulson.bsky.social · Jul 30

New research from Pesticide Action Network reveals the extent of pesticide use by UK councils. These are poisons being sprayed in your street, your local park. Pls share.

For links to the full report & to find out what you can do, follow the link below
www.pan-uk.org/pesticide-fr...

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Dave Goulson @davegoulson.bsky.social · Jul 29

Be Kind to Wasps! A plea for tolerance of these fascinating and useful creatures.
youtu.be/bhAgza_E3ww

Be Kind to Wasps

YouTube video by Dave Goulson

youtu.be

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jul 27

I remember the thought distinctly after our wildfire, that I miss a place that no longer exists… sigh… and as I learned more of logging’s role in wildfires in PNW temperate rainforests, I felt even sadder, as I miss a place that in some ways never existed… a tree plantation that I saw as a forest.

Reposted by Save Bees

Zach likes bees @zachportman.bsky.social · Jul 20

Do you see the bee?

A pale yellow bee (species Perdita perpallida) camouflaged on flowers of silky prairie clover (bee is on the lower right of the flowers)

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Evan Frost @wildwoods.bsky.social · Jul 15

"Our kindred species on Earth are not playthings, here for us to use and consume however we wish. They are the foundations of life, and the real world...We are going to be learning this now in the hardest way it can be learned." ~Stephen Buhner #thicktrunktuesday

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jul 15

Thanks for the ID! I never saw them in the 16 years before the fire here in 2020. The thimbleberry are doing better than ever 5 years post-fire. But the invasive blackberries (Himalayan?) are so hard to control… even the ones burned to the ground are ~8ft giants now.

Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jul 15

Thimbleberries are ever so tasty… and friendly too, with their soft fluff!

Do you happen to know what these dark purple ones are? Almost delicately thin vines, more similar in leaves to blackberry, but almost raspberry in structure? I’m in SW Oregon (on wildfire-scarred land).

A glass leaf dish holds a surprisingly large haul of bright ripe thimbleberries, with a very few dark purple unknown berries to the side.

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jul 10

Hopefully you continue to see more! Weather certainly affects bees, compounding effects of their many other stressors. Abundance has been declining precipitously. Great to hear you intermingle wildflowers with veggies! (I lived for awhile in a town with so few bees, had to pollinate veggies by hand)

stressors.ee

Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jul 8

“While varroa typically infects honeybees, not wild bees, the diseases that they spread can kill other pollinators – research has shown that the viral outbreaks among honeybees often spill over to wild colonies, with potential knock-on effects on biodiversity.”

Phil Stevenson @philstevenson.bsky.social · Jul 8

Could become a death spiral’: scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of US honeybees - it’s amitraz resistance www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘Could become a death spiral’: scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of US honeybees

Experts scrambling to understand losses in hives across the country are finally identifying the culprits. And the damage to farmed bees is a sign of trouble for wild bees too

www.theguardian.com

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jul 8

“Modern” agriculture: stripping soil of its fertility, water of its purity, pollinators of their existence… all to produce less nutritious crops with a side of multiple organ damage 😔

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🇨🇦Ⓥ🇨🇦 @doomrick.bsky.social · Jul 8

If we need a bunch of chemicals and genetic modification to grow enough food(poison), that really should tell us something.

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jul 8

Despite being “200 times more toxic than glyphosate in terms of chronic exposure” [according to EPA’s own data] “Still, the EPA has resisted calls for a ban, and Roundup formulas with the ingredient hit the shelves last year.”

Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · Jul 8

Glyphosate was the “safe” replacement for atrazine. Now diquat is the “acceptable” fallback for glyphosate. We’re not managing risks—we’re trading poisons and calling it agriculture.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Weedkiller ingredient widely used in US can damage organs and gut bacteria, research shows

Diquat is banned in the UK, EU, China and other countries. The US has resisted calls to regulate it

www.theguardian.com

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Jen Cross @jencross.bsky.social · Jul 6

Happy #WorldFireflyDay

A female Common Eastern Firefly watches males flashing in the sky. If she sees a suitable mate she discretely flashes back at him. You can help conserve fireflies by turning off lights, not using pesticides, keeping some long grass, and leaving some leaves in the fall.

Photinus pyralis firefly. She is standing at the end of the stalk of a plant with her wings outstretched.

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jul 6

I love lacewings! Living in a wildfire-scarred landscape, I still meet new plants and critter friends daily. It’s a comfort to provide a home for them simply to be, in a world where there are ever fewer such places.

Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jun 24

Aww, that’s lovely to hear! 👑🐝💛

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Save Bees @allthe.buzz · Jun 24

Sigh… he was my neighbor of 16 years (he’d been in this place far longer). He always felt himself a guardian of this place and its wild denizens. The despair I felt from him was so palpable when we met a month or so after the 2020 wildfire here (from which we’d all fled so hurriedly that one night).