bees

Duchess of Cornwall becomes president of Bees for Development charity

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Duchess of Cornwall becomes the first president of Bees for Development as she announces funds raised from sales of honey from her own hives will go to the charity Duchess of Cornwall has become president of the charity Bees for Development It champions beekeeping as a way to combat poverty and highlights the important role … Read more

Mowing your lawn just once a month could attract 10 times as many bees

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Mowing your lawn just once a month could attract 10 times as many bees by boosting flowers like daisies and white clover, according to new research. Simple changes in mowing habits can increase the available nectar for bees and other pollinators tenfold, findings from conservation charity Plantlife reveal.  The charity’s annual citizen science project found … Read more

The scent of spring: The first bees are bumbling among sprays of blossom like fireworks…

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Thank goodness that’s over! So long, wettest-February-on-record; good riddance, miserable winter. For the first time in ages, the forecast in some parts of Britain is predicting sun for several days. The bright months are back again, and how welcome they are. As David Hockney recently put it, in a caption of a painting of butter-golden … Read more

Researchers create a working dictionary of 1,500 dance moves that bees use to communicate

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Researchers build a working dictionary of 1,500 dance moves that bees use to communicate with each other while flying in formation Scientists in Minnesota studied two bee colonies in reconstructed prairieland They found the bees used a complex system of dance ‘waggles’ to communicate The bees communicated about pollen location, direction, distance and more By … Read more

Tiny antennae that record how bees navigate may help perfect steering for driverless cars and drones

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They are not just cute and stripy, but devastatingly efficient when it comes to locating the best pollen-rich flowers. As a result, the humble bee is at the centre of a £4.8 million project to create drones and driverless cars. In a unusual experiment, scientists painstakingly stuck tiny radar transponders to hundreds of bumblebees and honey … Read more

Why birds and bees are our best neighbours: Author reveals the beauty of our natural world 

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NATURE TURNING THE BOAT FOR HOME By Richard Mabey (Chatto £18.99, 262pp)  As a young man working in publishing, Richard Mabey would use his lunch hour to go for a walk, observing kestrels wheeling overhead, sand martins burrowing in a sandbank and the profusion of plants such as Canadian fleabane and Indian balsam. Far from … Read more

The bee’s knees of British B&Bs! Ten incredible lodges from around England, Scotland and Wales 

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B&Bs are perfect for the millions of us who enjoy this singularly British way of staying a night or two away from home. It all comes down to being treated as guests, not clients. True, B&Bs all over Britain have had a fight on their hands in recent times, with budget hotel chains making inroads … Read more