Bees

Soccer question of the day: What do you do when a swarm of bees takes refuge inside a goal mouth? At Azteca Stadium on Sunday, a World Cup qualifier between Mexico and El Salvador was interrupted for about six minutes as officials used fire extinguishers to drive away the insects that had invaded the El Salvador goal. Once the bees were cleared, the match resumed -- and the only things invading the El Salvador goal from that point on were soccer balls. Mexico won the match, 4-1, and clinched a spot in the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.

Cocaine repels most insects -- which is why the coca plant makes the chemical in the first place. But in a surprising new finding, U.S. and Australian researchers reported Friday that honeybees are susceptible to the drug's insidious lure. They become addicted, and even suffer withdrawal symptoms when they no longer have access.

A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production and possibly crops that need bees for pollination. Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder. Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some commercial beekeepers have reported losing more than 50% of their bees.

As the epitome of sociability, the honeybee is a living engine of selfless domesticity, caretaking colonies of kin that have fascinated generations of behaviorists. Like any employee climbing the corporate ladder, honeybee workers go through changes in behavior with each new assignment in the hive, transforming from housebound nest nurses into field explorers that may travel more than 550 miles in a lifetime in search of pollen and nectar.

SOMETHING strange is happening to honeybees. They're vanishing. In parts of the country, bees are leaving hives and not returning. The phenomenon, dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, has wiped out a quarter of the hives of commercial beekeepers since last summer, according to the American Beekeeping Federation, and set off a flurry of debate about how to stop it, whatever it is, and what it all means.

A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday. Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.

IT'S like a scene out of a Stephen King novel: One sunny day, the happy buzzing sound of bees doing that spring thing that bees do fades to silence. The bees disappear, abandoning hives and leaving flowers unpollinated, never to bear fruits and vegetables. Gradually, the world starves. That's the picture some are painting this spring in the wake of heavier than normal losses by beekeepers.

The dead bees under Dennis vanEngelsdorp's microscope were like none he had ever seen. He had expected to see mites or amoebas, perennial pests of bees. Instead, he found internal organs swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees' intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection.

A mysterious disorder that has killed millions of bees could cause $75 billion in economic losses in the U.S., Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said. Colony collapse disorder already threatens $14.6 billion in pollinated crops in the U.S., Johanns said.

A queen bee needs to keep her subjects calm and quiet, and she does so by secreting a scent that prevents worker bees from learning, according to new research. The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that a component in the queen's pheromone inhibits the sterile worker bees' ability to learn from negative experiences. The active scent element is similar to the brain compound dopamine, which is involved in learning and memory in humans and insects.