Talk:Bee

Larvae

Should a page be made for bee larvae? On the larvae page there is a link to this non-existant page. Or should information on larvae be added and the link come back to this page instead? (ApostleJoe (talk) 13:32, 4 January 2008 (UTC))

There is nothing unusual or different about bee larvae, and no reason to create a separate page; the non-existent link was to a word not used in English, and has been corrected. Bee larvae are called either "grubs" or "larvae" in English, as are ant larvae, wasp larvae, and beetle larvae. Dyanega (talk) 21:28, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, alright. I don't know anything about bees, which is why I checked. Thanks for responding! :) (ApostleJoe (talk) 23:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC))

Pictures

These are some amazing photos. I'd like to congratulate all the people who worked on making this such a vivid article. Especially on a HiDef monitor :). Phillip Shaw (talk) 05:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Vandalisim

Can you protect this page please?

Or my enemies will continue to vandalise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.1.104.29 (talk) 13:38, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

"Your enemies"? There doesn't seem to be too much vandalism going on at the moment, from the page history. --McGeddon (talk) 14:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Taxobox

Is there any way to list the superfamily Apoidea above the Anthophila in the bee taxobox? Presently, I think the listing implies that Apoidea is included within Anthophila and is as such misleading. I tried playing around with "unranked_something" parameter, but nothing else than unranked_superfamilia works. --Yerpo (talk) 08:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Sections

Needs a "lifecycle" section — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.172.244.110 (talk • contribs)

I'm not sure how you would do that since the lifecycle of different kinds of bees are often so radically different. If you're thinking just of the honeybee, you might want this or even this. It depends on which species you are considering. Rossami (talk) 21:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Honey bee decline

The honey bee decline seems to me a massive enough problem with such significant consequences for agriculture (and thus human existence) that it deserves mention here, though this page is about bees generally. Do people agree? I have added the Bee#Pollination#Depopulation section; I encourage others to help with this.

The danger of extinction in the USA and Europe seems significant and I have added this back in specifying that the problem is severe in those two areas. Hgilbert (talk) 10:39, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

No. That problem is unique to the honeybee and even more specifically, to the Western honey bee, only one of the roughly 20,000 species that are covered in this article. You also have your facts wrong. While there has been a reported decline in some commercial beekeepers' operations, there is nothing in the scientific literature to suggest that there is any realistic danger of extinction of even the one species, much less of all of them. Rossami (talk) 13:31, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Not only domesticated bees: wild bees are also in severe decline. World-wide extinction is unlikely but I have provided two citations expressing the level of concern about the USA and Britain. These are from notable newspapers that should be acceptable as sources, especially as there is certainly nothing in the scientific literature that contradicts the noted decline. Hgilbert (talk) 13:55, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

The general decline that you talk about is already better discussed in Pollinator decline where you will find that there are scientific studies which refute the inflammatory claims made by those newspapers. (They may be notable but they are not especially reliable on topics outside their area of expertise.) According to the actual literature, the dominant reasons for the decline are thought to be the introduction by man of foreign pests and diseases to populations without existing immunity, habitat loss and pesticide misuse (that is, spraying by individual farmers against label instructions, not the approved use via the seed coatings). Toxic side-effects of approved chemicals used in accordance with the label instructions has not been substantiated as more than mere speculation in any study to date. If you want an authoritative and very up-to-date discussion of the specifics around those two pesticides, I suggest you look up some of the recent postings of Dr James Fischer on BEE-L. Rossami (talk) 15:26, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your efforts towards accuracy and avoiding an inflammatory tone. Note that one newspaper report cites a Minister of Agriculture, the other a Professor at the Universität Würzburg specializing in bee research: both of these are quoted referring to the danger that the bee will be extirpated. Both gentlemen cited are well within their areas of expertise. Hgilbert (talk) 17:30, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

What sources have demonstrated that wild bees (other than feral exotic Apis mellifera and bumblebees) are in "severe decline"? I see no quotes from any Ministers of Agriculture in the articles you cite, and the actual comment from the professor in Würzburg was "It is not a sudden problem, I has been happening for a few years now. Five years ago in Germany there were a million hives, now there are less than 800,000. If that continues there will eventually be no bees." - and all that is referring to is managed honey bees, not WILD honey bees, nor any other bee species (note that even if the rate is constant, we still have at least 20 more years to go). I note also that you have suddenly switched from using the word "extinct" to using the word "extirpated" - they are very different terms. The decline of feral exotic Apis populations is - in the New World, an ecologically beneficial thing, as it should reduce the pressure on native pollinators (the concern people have is not ecological, it is over the impact on agriculture, which is a different matter entirely). In the Old World, I'm not aware of documented declines outside of managed beekeeping operations (i.e., decline of wild Old World Apis). Can you cite any sources showing this? The decline of bumblebees, on the other hand, is a real phenomenon and a legitimate concern, but much of it (if not all) appears to be traceable to the commercial movement of diseased bumblebees from one continent to another, transmitting those diseases to wild populations when the bees are released - it evidently has nothing to do with GMO's, pesticides, or cell phones. Aside from those two phenomena, there are no "severe declines" that I'm aware of - and given that I'm a world authority on "wild bees", if anything else were happening, I honestly expect I would have heard about it by now from one of my colleagues. Has it never occurred to you that none of the people making these dire statements in front of the press are actual bee biologists? Dyanega (talk) 17:38, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Bees

Wow the testmaster learned alot about bees by reading this article. I am very allergic to bees so this topic of bees is important to me. I had a bees nest in my car and got stung so i'm surprised to learn that bees are non aggressive in most times. I am still very afraid of bees though. But good work, the testmaster highly likes this article Testmasterflex (talk) 04:04, 19 September 2008 (UTC)