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9:36pm
July 17, 2014
Beneficial Bug of the Day: The Earwig (Order Dermaptera)
Sometimes call “Pincher Bugs” these little uglies are harmless to us and even beneficial to a balanced garden. Their favorite food is dead matter, they eat dead plants and create nutritious mulch for the rest of the garden. If you have a well balanced garden, they will rarely eat healthy plants. Some species are even predatory, eating snail eggs and aphids! Bonus!
The name Earwig came from the belief that these insects would burrow into peoples’ brains through their ears.. that is so silly and very not true!
Earwigs are also very good moms! They are one of the few insects that care for their young. They guard the nest and feed the babies until they can fend for themselves.
Ask before you smush!
Mama earwig with a nest!
137 notes
10:19pm
July 7, 2014
gallifreyanconsultingdetective:
This is not a tasty gummy sweet but a Jewel Caterpillar found in Amazon Rainforest. They are covered with sticky goo-like, gellatinous tubercles that provides protection from its predator like ants until they metamorphosise into winged moths.
HAVE YOU SEEN IT GROWN UP THOUGH
literal pokemon
have you seen the cocoon it makes though?
it’s so pretty as a baby, it looks like an actual gem. then suddenly it pupates into a net thing and when it comes out it looks like the fucking Lorax
dude
jadeneternal zomg
I knew of the moth, but that caterpillar is amazing!
5:45pm
June 28, 2014
Xylocopa caerulea “Blue Carpenter bee”
HOLY SHIT THEY’RE BLUE
Blue carpenter bees are the best
… COBALT THIS NEEDS YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION
OMG they’re so pretty! I had no idea there were blue bees! I wish to be surrounded with them at all times.
And a giant mythical subspecies is available as familiars in Flight Rising, apparently?
Coral carpenter bee familiar. I pet mine every day. (Yes, in FR you can pet bees.)
8:32am
June 16, 2014
nge:
beep beep
What is that!
mim its a lighting bug or whatever they light up
WHAAAAAAT THATS SO COOL HOW DOES HE DO THAT! ITS JUST A BUG BUT IT LIGHTS UP
lol it had never even occurred to my that there were parts of this planet where lightning bugs are not indigenous
I AM SO JEALOUS I WANT TINY LITTLE BUG LANTERNS
Its a chemical reaction that creates bioluminescence. They have an organ that processes chemicals with oxygen and the result is natural lummination. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-and-why-do-fireflies/
7:06pm
June 12, 2014
Story idea: Witch who turns into a ladybug when she travels or otherwise has to be discreet. Her broom becomes a dandelion seed.
3:34pm
June 8, 2014
➸ Report: Honeybee Death Rate is Currently too High for Survival of the Species
A government report released last week surprisingly admits that the honeybee species are dying off at a rate too high to ‘guarantee their long term survival’.
It has been well proven that the primary factor leading to this extinction is the presence of neonicotinoid poisons, of course present in insecticides sold by and/or used by corporations such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dupont and their products. A recent study from Harvard, published on March 27th of this year, has definitively confirmed what scientists outside the US have been saying for years: neonicotinoids are the [emphasis added] cause of colony collapse disorder(CCD). The study showed that 50% of colonies populated by bees who had been in contact with these pesticides collapsed, compared to only 1 in 6 who were not in contact with neonicotinoids.
The European Union understands that the death of honeybees is an unprecedented death for human beings and mother earth, as they have banned neonicotinoid poisons.
However, American powers refuse to believe the problem is neonicotinoid insecticides and they continue to be in use here.
These corporations with armies of lobbyists and politicians bought and paid for, like Monsanto, are playing dumb and suggesting that ‘mites’ are the cause for the death rate of honeybees, a problem so bad that it means their extinction if they continue on this path. This is dangerous anti-science rhetoric, borderline scientific denialism from the American agro-chemical establishment.
Well, did mites cause the honeybees to go extinct in the approximate 14 million years they survived here before humans invented neonicotinoid chemicals? Of course not. It seems only things as foreign to Earth as neonicotinoids can cause such a drastic loss of crucial life on our planet and the solution is obvious; inform people that if we keep allowing the honeybees to die at this rate, we will be literally without almost all of the fruits we enjoy. Oh and stop using neonicotinoids.
If we don’t seriously stop this soon, then a corporation like Monsanto would likely take advantage of the lack of bees to pollinate and create fruit, and attempt to monopolize the products of nature because the fruits will then require individual, manual pollination or more complex measures. While this may seem far fetched, in the absence of honeybees and acknowledging that manual pollination is highly labor intensive, micro pollinator drones may be in our future if something is not done to save the bees.
If you are reading this, there is a good chance absolutely none of this information is new. If the bees are not nursed back to health as a species, say goodbye to these things- (unless you want genetically modified, manually pollinated products of Monsanto in the wake of the extinction of the honeybee): Apples Mangos Rambutan Kiwi Fruit Plums Peaches Nectarines Guava Rose Hips Pomegranites Pears Black and Red Currants Alfalfa Okra Strawberries Onions Cashews Cactus Prickly Pear Apricots Allspice Avocados Passion Fruit Lima Beans Kidney Beans Adzuki Beans Green Beans Orchid Plants Custard Apples Cherries Celery Coffee Walnut Cotton Lychee Flax Acerola – used in Vitamin C supplements Macadamia Nuts Sunflower Oil Goa beans Lemons Buckwheat Figs Fennel Limes Quince Carrots Persimmons Palm Oil Loquat Durian Cucumber Hazelnut Cantaloupe Tangelos Coriander Caraway Chestnut Watermelon Star Apples Coconut Tangerines Boysenberries Starfruit Brazil Nuts Beets Mustard Seed Rapeseed Broccoli Cauliflower Cabbage Brussels Sprouts Bok Choy (Chinese Cabbage) Turnips Congo Beans Sword beans Chili peppers, red peppers, bell peppers, green peppers Papaya Safflower Sesame Eggplant Raspberries Elderberries Blackberries Clover Tamarind Cocoa Black Eyed Peas Vanilla Cranberries Tomatoes Grapes
Ok, I have a pet peeve here and I’m gonna vent it for a minute, so bear with me.
I love honeybees. Love ‘em. I’d keep them, but my neighbor has three hives, so I basically just try to make my garden as hospitable as possible.
However.
European Honeybees are not the only pollinators on the planet, nor even the only bees.
Some of the plants on that list are native to the Americas. Somehow they grew just awesome and fed a whole bunch of peoples with, y’know, civilizations and everything! before the European honeybee showed up.
(In the 1600s. Shakespeare had been dead like five years when the bees showed up. Not before.)
Potatoes? The Inca had 3000+ varieties. They did not, until after the Spanish showed up, have European honeybees.
Tomatoes? I don’t doubt many modern cultivars are indeed pollinated by honeybees, but at the risk of anecdata, I have native bees all up in mine. And they grew somehow. Chili peppers too. All those centuries, and nary a honeybee in sight.
Prickly Pear? Article, did you, with a straight face, just tell me that goddamn prickly pear is honeybee pollinated? For the love of the Incan potato goddess, NO. LONG-TONGUED NATIVE BEES. And that’s just my local variety—they got some in the desert pollinated by BIRDS.
Look, colony collapse sucks. I will sign any petition you like to get the damn pesticides banned—I think they’re monstrous. There’s a No Monsanto sign on my garden fence.
But get your damn facts straight. The situation is bad enough with dressing it up in more panic. Humans lived for thousands of years in a European honeybee-free continent. Those were real people eating real meals made of real food, pollinated by real native pollinators.
There are more bees in heaven and earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your apiology.
I agree it’s important to acknowledge and support native bees in the Americas, and recognize other pollinators besides honey bees (I’m raising some mason bees now in my yard to supplement the work our wild honey bee hive does). But, you’re still missing an important complication.
Though we love European honey bees, they’re an invasive species. There’s debate about how much they affect native bees, but studies have shown that native bees aren’t as successful when they’re competing with European honey bees. This could mean that the populations and coverage of native bees is much reduced from pre colonial times. So if honey bees go extinct, native bees may not be ready to take over the work for them.
And, while honey bees have become the poster children of bee decline, they’re not the only species at risk. In China, some orchards have to be hand pollinated, because bees and other insect pollinators have been killed off by insecticides.
And, yes, there are birds and bats that pollinate some plants, but they are also in danger. Their populations have been severely reduced by humans. If you take all this and add to it the fact that there are a lot more crops being grown in the Americas, and lot more people to feed, then it is not unreasonable to be pretty panicky about the potential extinction of honey bees.
If we don’t address the honey bee problem, then we won’t be doing anything to help other bees and pollinating insects. I’m totally OK with the majority of people out there not understanding that the issue is bigger than just honey bees, if it means they’ll do something about it. If people are boycotting Monsato products, signing petitions, contacting their representatives, or whatever else to help honey bees, with no understanding that there are native pollinators out there, then I’m not going to complain.
5:23pm
May 26, 2014
This Blue Morpho tried to hide from me…
6:33am
May 13, 2014
“Strange tradition from the forgotten rural years.” Bees attend keeper’s funeral, 1956.
always reblog bees
important bee news
7:48pm
May 7, 2014
things about Hufflepuffs #313
I like to think that most Hufflepuffs are unable to squish a bug intentionally (well, excluding potions ingredients. But even then, they don’t love the idea of loss of life). Instead, they are the type of people who would trap it in a cup, slip a piece of paper underneath, and walk it outside to let it fly free.
4:27am
March 23, 2014
Who’s a pretty boy? You are, yes you are!
Bee covered in pollen resting in the heart of a crocus flower.
Nature-loving photographer, Boris Godfroid, uses macro photography for close-up shots, posted to his website boris.godfroidbrothers.be
Happy 1st Day of Spring!
Plant some flowers for the bees.
4:14am
March 14, 2014
Honey Bee and Honey Drop Necklace
Crafted with a vintage, faceted, pear-shaped amber glass jewel and an antique brass bee charm. This necklace is hung on a bronze cable chain. Don’t worry, the bee won’t sting you. Sold on Etsy.
12:58am
January 2, 2014
➸ Bayer is suing a whole continent for saving the bees?
And it says a ban on its bee-killing pesticides is “disproportionate”?!?Followers, friends of followers, friends of THOSE friends, sign this now!
If the bees aren’t saved, our lives..ALL of our lives, for that matter, are going to take a huge turn for the worse.
Please, sign this petition. I’m begging you, followers. It only needs 400k signatures. It’s so, so close to being completed.
Please, sign it. We have to save the bees.