Dodie Stillman

WASHINGTON, June 15, 2023 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is now accepting
nominations for county committee members for elections that will occur later this year. Additionally, USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) is unveiling a new GIS tool to make it easier for producers to participate in the nomination and election processes for county committee members, who make important decisions on how federal farm programs are administered locally.
All nomination forms for the 2023 election must be postmarked or received in the local FSA office by Aug. 1, 2023.

“Producers serving on FSA county committees play a critical role in the day-to-day operations of the agency, and they serve as the eyes and ears for the producers who elected them,” said FSA Administrator Zach Ducheneaux. “In order for county committees to be both effective and equitable in their decision-making at the local level, they must reflect the full diversity of American agriculture. I am excited that we have another opportunity through this year’s nominations and elections cycle to make our committees more inclusive, and in turn, better equipped to best serve all our customers. I encourage you to consider serving the farmers, ranchers and producers in your community on your local FSA county committee, and I thank you in advance for your public service.”

Elections will occur in certain Local Administrative Areas (LAA) for members. LAAs are elective areas for FSA committees in a single county or multi-county jurisdiction and they may include LAAs that are focused on an urban or suburban area.
Customers can locate their LAA through a new GIS locator tool available at fsa.usda.gov/elections.
“Based on feedback from stakeholders, including the USDA Equity Commission, we are unveiling this new tool to make it easier for producers to effectively participate in the process,” Ducheneaux added.

Agricultural producers may be nominated for candidacy for the county committee if they:

• Participate or cooperate in a USDA program; and
• Reside in the LAA that is up for election this year.

1400 Independence Ave. SW Washington, DC 20250

Contact:
FPAC.BC.Press@usda.gov
Farm Service Agency

A cooperating producer is someone who has provided information about their farming or ranching operation to FSA, even if they have not applied or received program benefits. Individuals may nominate themselves or others and qualifying organizations may also nominate candidates. USDA encourages minority producers, women and beginning farmers or ranchers to nominate, vote and hold office.

Nationwide, more than 7,700 dedicated members of the agricultural community serve on FSA county committees. The committees are made up of three to 11 members who serve three-year terms. Committee members are vital to how FSA carries out disaster programs, as well as conservation, commodity and price support programs, county office employment and other agricultural issues.

Urban and Suburban County Committees
The 2018 Farm Bill directed USDA to form urban county committees as well as make other advancements related to urban agriculture, including the establishment of the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production. FSA established county committees specifically focused on urban agriculture. The urban county committees will work to encourage and promote urban, indoor and other emerging agricultural production practices. Additionally, the new county committees may address areas such as food access, community engagement, support of local activities to promote and encourage community compost and food waste reduction.

Urban committee members are nominated and elected to serve by local urban producers in the same jurisdiction. Urban county committee members will provide outreach to ensure urban producers understand USDA programs and serve as the voice of other urban producers and assist in program implementation that support the needs of the growing urban community.
The 17 county committees for urban agriculture are located in:

• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Atlanta, Georgia
• Chicago, Illinois
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Detroit, Michigan
• Dallas, Texas
• Grand Rapids, Michigan
• Los Angeles, California
• Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
• New Orleans, Louisiana
• New York, New York
• Oakland, California
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Phoenix, Arizona
• Portland, Oregon
• Richmond, Virginia
• St. Louis, Missouri

Learn more at farmers.gov/urban.

More Information
Producers should contact their local FSA office today to register and find out how to get involved in their county’s election, including if their LAA is up for election this year. To be considered, a producer must be registered and sign an FSA-669A nomination form. Urban farmers should use an FSA-669-A-3 for urban county committees. These forms and other information about FSA county committee elections are available at fsa.usda.gov/elections.

Election ballots will be mailed to eligible voters beginning Nov. 6, 2023.
To learn more about FSA programs, producers can contact their local USDA Service Center. Producers can also prepare maps for acreage reporting as well as manage farm loans and view other farm records data and customer information by logging into their farmers.gov account. If you don’t have an account, sign up today.

USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris
administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America and committing to equity across the department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit usda.gov.

#

USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.

Top British scientists at Porton Down lab plan to use Manuka honey’s antibacterial qualities to create specialised chemical attack resistant gas masks

• Ben Wallace has lodged application into use of honey as protective equipment
• Manuka honey is the result of bees foraging on the manuka bush

By Katherine Lawton and Milo Pope

Published: 13:30 EDT, 13 May 2023 | Updated: 13:52 EDT, 13 May 2023

British scientists at Porton Down are making plans to use the antibacterial qualities of Manuka honey to create specialised chemical attack resistant gas masks.

They would harness the antibacterial qualities of the honey – which is seen as a special superfood that can ward off colds and banish sore throats – by creating a ‘manuka gas mask’ to defend against airborne biological and chemical attacks.

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has lodged a patent application revealing that the honey could be used as ‘glue’ to ‘capture and neutralise’ poisonous toxins such as Covid-19.

Manuka honey is the result of bees foraging on the manuka bush (Leptospermum scoparium), a plant that produces a compound with strong antibacterial properties.

The honey could be deployed as one of several ‘sticky’ layers applied to filters fitted to masks or personal protective equipment (PPE), according to the 22-page government document.

The document also explains that ‘maze-like zigzags’ fitted within the gas mask filter can be coated with ‘adhesive layers’ of honey which will ‘neutralise the threat’.

The patent has yet to be tested yet and is only at the concept stage, but in another possible design the honey could be coated onto ‘an absorptive tissue’.

The document says: ‘Passing the dynamic airflow over the absorptive tissue ensures particulate matter in the dynamic airflow is captured by the manuka honey, thus filtering the dynamic airflow.’

Researchers have previously found that manuka honey holds ‘great promise’ in fighting Mycobacterium abscessus, the nasty bug it was tested on.

Made by bees that feast on manuka trees located only in New Zealand and Australia, the product often warrants sky-high price tags.

A-listers Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson and Katherine Jenkins have all extolled the virtues of this ‘liquid gold’ in the past few years.

Mycobacterium abscessus is dangerous to people with weakened immune systems or those with existing lung conditions like cystic fibrosis.

It comes from the same family as tuberculosis and requires a cocktail of antibiotics — known as antimicrobial chemotherapy — to treat.

Patients can experience severe side effects from the drugs, including hearing loss, vomiting, diarrhea, hives and fatigue.

But Aston University in Birmingham experts found using the honey in combination with lower doses of one type of antibiotic could help treat the infections.

This could pave the way for new drugs combining the two substances that would improve the quality of life of patients in the future, they said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12079013/Top-British-scientists-plan-use-Manuka-honey-make-special-chemical-attack-resistant-gas-masks.html

The honey bee has specialized neurons that provide buzz-worthy clues.

By Laura Baisas | Published May 8, 2023 8:00 AM EDT

If humans want to learn more about our higher brain functions and behaviors, some scientists think we should look towards insects—including everything from busy bees to social butterflies to flies on the wall. A study published May 5 in the journal Science Advances found three diverse, specialized Kenyon cell subtypes in honey bee brains that likely evolved from one single, multi-functional Kenyon cell subtype ancestor. Kenyon cells (KCs) are a type of neural cell that are found within a part of the insect brain. These cells are involved in learning and memory, particularly with the sense of smell called the mushroom body. They are found in insects in the large Hymenoptera order from more “primitive” sawflies up to the more sophisticated honey bee.

“In 2017, we reported that the complexity of Kenyon cell subtypes in mushroom bodies in insect brains increases with the behavioral diversification in Hymenoptera,” co-author and University of Tokyo graduate student said in a statement. “In other words, the more KC subtypes an insect has, the more complex its brain and the behaviors it may exhibit. But we didn’t know how these different subtypes evolved. That was the stimulus for this new study.”

In this study, the team from University of Tokyo and Japan’s National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) looked at two Hymenoptera species as representatives for different behaviors. The more solitary turnip sawfly has a single KC subtype, compared to the more complex and more social honey bee that has three KC subtypes.

It is believed that the sawfly’s more “primitive” brain may contain some of the ancestral properties of the honey bee brain. To find these potential evolutionary paths, the team used transcriptome analysis to identify the genetic activity happening in the various KC subtypes and speculate their functions.

“I was surprised that each of the three KC subtypes in the honey bee showed comparable similarity to the single KC type in the sawfly,” co-author and University of Tokyo biologist Hiroki Kohno said in a statement. “Based on our initial comparative analysis of several genes, we had previously supposed that additional KC subtypes had been added one by one. However, they appear to have been separated from a multifunctional ancestral type, through functional segregation and specialization.”

As the number of KC subtypes increased, each one almost equally inherited some distinct properties from a single ancestral KC. The subtypes were then modified in different ways, and the results are the more varied functions seen in the present-day insects.

To see a specific behavioral example of how the ancestral KC functions are present in both the honey bee and the sawfly, they trained the sawflies to partake in a behavior test commonly used in honey bees. The bees, and eventually sawflies, learned to associate an odor stimulus with a reward. Despite initial challenges, the team got the sawflies to engage in this task.

Then, the team manipulated a gene called CaMKII in sawfly larvae. In honey bees, this gene is associated with forming long-term memory, which is a KC function. After the gene manipulation, the long-term memory was impaired in the larvae when they became adults, a sign that this gene also plays a similar role in sawflies. CaMKII was expressed across the entire single KC subtype in sawflies, but it was preferentially expressed in one KC subtype in honey bees. According to the authors, this suggests that the role of CaMKII in long-term memory was passed down to the specific KC subtype in the honey bee.

Even though insect and mammalian brains are very different in terms of size and complexity, we share some common functions and architecture in our nervous systems. By looking at how insect cells and behavior has evolved, it might provide insights into how our own brains evolved. Next, the team is interested in studying KC types acquired in parallel with social behaviors, such as the honey bee’s infamous “waggle dance.”

“We would like to clarify whether the model presented here is applicable to the evolution of other behaviors,” co-author and University of Tokyo doctoral student Takayoshi Kuwabara said in a statement. “There are many mysteries about the neural basis that controls social behavior, whether in insects, animals or humans. How it has evolved still remains largely unknown. I believe that this study is a pioneering work in this field.”

https://www.popsci.com/environment/honey-bee-brain-evolution/

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A multi-institutional team of biologists and ecologists from Chile and Argentina has found evidence suggesting that electromagnetic fields emanating from electrical towers disrupt pollinating honeybees. The research is published in the journal Science Advances.

Prior research has suggested that electromagnetic radiation emitted from power lines may interfere with plants and animals in the vicinity—though some have suggested that the unique habitat of the treeless regions where power lines pass through forests may confer some natural benefit.

In this new effort, the research team focused specifically on the impact of electromagnetic radiation emitted from electrical towers on honeybees—they chose honeybees because prior research has shown they navigate using natural electromagnetic fields. And they chose to use electrical towers rather than power lines themselves because they had access to similar towers without power lines, allowing for comparison purposes.

The researchers first counted the number of poppies flowering around active towers and towers that were inactive—they found there were far fewer flowering around the active towers. The researchers also measured the electromagnetic fields around multiple towers to discover how strong they were at various distances.

They then collected several honeybee specimens flying at different distances from a tower and measured the levels of a protein called HsP70 in their bodies—this protein has been shown to be related to stress in the bees. As expected, they found higher levels in the bees working closest to the electrical towers.

The research team then collected more honeybee specimens at a distance from any towers or lines and brought them back to their lab for study. They exposed them to different amounts of electromagnetic radiation and then measured expressions related to 14 genes known to be associated with navigation, stress and the immune system. They found differences in 12 of those exposed to electromagnetic radiation.

The team finished their study by once more venturing into the field to study the bees working closely to electrical towers—they found that the frequency of visits to a nearest flower that were closest to a tower were approximately 308% lower than in areas where there were no towers.

The group concludes that electromagnetic fields around electrical towers have a detrimental impact on honeybee pollination, and by extension, the surrounding plant community.

https://phys.org/news/2023-05-evidence-electromagnetic-fields-electrical-towers.html

Keeping queen bees chilled in indoor refrigeration units can make storing them more stable and less labor-intensive

February 27, 2023
Source: Washington State University

Summary: Keeping queen bees chilled in indoor refrigeration units can make the practice of ‘queen banking’ — storing excess queens in the spring to supplement hives in the fall — more stable and less labor-intensive, a study found. It may also help strengthen honey bee survival in the face of a changing climate. In a paper published in the Journal of Apicultural Research, researchers compared queen banks stored in refrigerated units to those stored in the conventional way outdoors and an ‘unbanked’ control group. They found that the queens stored at cooler temperatures had a higher survival rate and required less maintenance than those stored outdoors.

Keeping queen bees chilled in indoor refrigeration units can make the practice of “queen banking” — storing excess queens in the spring to supplement hives in the fall — more stable and less labor-intensive, a Washington State University study found. It may also help strengthen honey bee survival in the face of a changing climate.

In a paper published in the Journal of Apicultural Research, researchers compared queen banks stored in refrigerated units to those stored in the conventional way outdoors and an “unbanked” control group. They found that the queens stored at cooler temperatures had a higher survival rate and required less maintenance than those stored outdoors.

This study, and future potential refinement, could be another piece in the ultimate puzzle of reducing the loss of bee colonies each year, said senior author Brandon Hopkins, an assistant research professor in WSU’s Department of Entomology.

“A lot of honey bee losses are queen-quality issues,” Hopkins said. “If we have a method that increases the number of queens available or the stability of queens from year to year, then that helps with the number of colonies that survive winter in a healthy state.”

In the beekeeping industry, queen producers often “bank” queens over the summer by storing them in small cages. Those small cages are then put into a large colony with many workers to care for the caged queens, with as many as 200 queens per bank. A bank of 100 queens has a value of more than $5,000, and producers may have 10 to 20 banks on hand.

For this study, the team prepared 18 banks with 50, 100 and 198 queens per bank. The refrigerated banks matched survival of the outside groups, and in the banks of 100, survival was higher, with 78% of queens surviving the six weeks of storage compared to 62% in the outdoor group. The queens in both groups were of the same quality, showing similar good health. The cooled queen banks also needed less maintenance.

Beekeepers need honey bee queens to sustain colonies that pollinate crops, and there’s a huge spike in demand for queens in the spring. That’s when beekeepers replace their losses from the previous year.

Once queen producers meet that demand, they can’t just turn off queen production. Producers can bank excess queens to help meet the future needs of beekeepers, who often replenish their queen supplies after the summer.

Queens can’t be produced in hot temperatures, Hopkins said. Banking keeps an inventory on hand for when demand returns in the fall.

Keeping a supply of queens available for beekeepers to purchase is growing increasingly difficult. The vast majority of U.S. queen producers are based in California, where rising temperatures and wildfires are becoming more common.

“We heard queen producers in California are having a difficult time banking queens when temperatures are over 100 degrees in the summer,” said Hopkins. “It’s a little scary to be banking 80% of the country’s queen supply in a location prone to wildfires, smoke and high temperatures.”

Hopkins was surprised by how well the experiment worked, considering the challenges of queen banking.

“It’s an art,” he said. “There’s a significant amount of maintenance, skill and care required: managing, feeding and moving resources around.”

The team found that in the refrigeration units, the bees fared well with just food and no human interference.

Hopkins worked on the study with WSU colleagues Anna Webb, Stephen Onayemi, Rae Olsson and Kelly Kulhanek. This project was supported with funding from Project Apis m.

Story Source:
Materials provided by Washington State University. Original written by Scott Weybright. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:
1. Anna Webb, Stephen O. Onayemi, Rae L. Olsson, Kelly Kulhanek, Brandon K. Hopkins. Summer indoor queen banking as an alternative to outdoor queen banking practices. Journal of Apicultural Research, 2023; 1 DOI: 10.1080/00218839.2023.2165747

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230227132612.htm

Posted on May 29, 2023 by Tiffany Dowell

The El Paso Court of Appeals recently enforced a liability waiver against a party injured when she fell off a horse in Green v. Lajitas Capital Partners, LLC. [Read Opinion here.] This case is a great reminder about the law surrounding liability waivers and how they can be an important part of a risk management plan.

Background

In June 2020, Sherri Green and other members paid to go on a sunset trail ride at Lajitas Resort. Prior to the ride, Sherri signed a release that was labeled in bold, capital letters. The release noted a number of potential risks, which Sherri initialed, and then provided that she waived any claims, including negligence claims, against the Resort.

The ride began and ended at the stables. On the return to the stables, the group was walking next to the golf course, when the underground sprinklers activated making a hissing sound that spooked the horses. Sherri fell off her horse, resulting in bruises and a fractured wrist. The guide testified that Sherri’s horse “sped up for a few steps” when the sprinklers went off and Sherri fell off. Sherri and her husband testified that her horse “bucked wildly” and violently threw her off.

Sherri filed suit against the Resort and other related defendants claiming she was an invitee and their negligence caused her injury. In particular, she claimed the sprinklers were a “dangerous latent condition of land” and the defendants failed to guard against the danger by allowing the horses to come close to the sprinklers knowing they were about to activate. The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on two grounds. First, they claimed that Sherri signed a release prior to the ride releasing them from liability for negligence. Second, they raised the Texas Farm Animal Liability Act (FALA) as a defense, arguing that Sherri was a participant in a farm animal activity and her injury resulted from an inherent risk of that activity.

Sherri argued the release was not valid for two reasons. First, she claimed the release only applied to occurrences arising from nature, not man-made conditions like the sprinklers. Second, she argued the waiver was “insufficiently specific” under Texas law.

Sherri argued the FALA did not bar her claim because an exception applied. Specifically, she claimed her injury was caused by a latent condition of the land for which no warning was provided to her, making the FALA inapplicable.

The trial court granted the defendants motion for summary judgment but did not indicate on which grounds it did so. Sherri appealed.

Court of Appeals Opinion

The El Paso Court of Appeals affirmed. [Read Opinion here.]

Release of Liability

Under Texas law, a release must satisfy two elements of the “fair notice requirement”: (1) express negligence doctrine; and (2) conspicuousness. The express negligence doctrine states that the intent of a party to release claims of negligence must be specifically stated in the four corners of the document. The conspicuousness requirement provides that something must appear on the face of the document to attract the attention of a reasonable person to the release language, such as the release language being in larger type, capital letters, contrasting colors, or otherwise drawing attention to itself.

Conspicuousness

First, the court addressed the conspicuousness requirement. The court noted this was not raised at trial, meaning it was not properly presented for review. However, were the court to overlook this procedural issue, it would have found the requirement satisfied. The release was labeled “Liability Release and Assumption of Risk Agreement” in bold, capitalized letters. The liability release paragraph, which she initialed, included bold, capitalized letters and large font for key provisions. These provisions, along with her initials next to each paragraph, were sufficient to alert Sherri that was releasing the defendants from a future claim of negligence with regard to injuries she might suffer on the trail ride. Sherri argued the fact that only some terms, but not the entire release, were in bold, capitalized, underlined letters rendered the release invalid. The court disagreed, noting there is no requirement that the entire release must be highlighted, and the requirement is met if the key terms are sufficiently highlighted to draw the reader’s attention to them.

Express Negligence Doctrine

Sherri argued that the release was overly broad and ambiguous and that it covered only accidents caused by natural conditions. The court disagreed on both counts.

First, Sherri claimed the release was so broad it purported to waive her right to sue for anything. However, the express negligence requires the release clearly state that the party is releasing claims for negligence, as opposed to a general statement that the party releases all claims without specifying the nature of any such claims. Here, the release did expressly state that she waived all claims, including claims of negligence, which satisfied the express negligence doctrine. Courts have held that the mention of negligence is sufficient to satisfy the doctrine.

Second, Sherri argued that the release was limited to claims caused by natural conditions. She based this on a paragraph titled “Wilderness Experience” that says the defendants are not liable for “total or partial acts, occurrences, or elements of nature and/or sudden and/or unfamiliar sights sounds and/or sudden movements that scare a horse, cause it to fall, or react in some other unsafe way.” She claimed that because “elements of nature” is not followed by a comma, it modifies everything after it, limiting the release to natural conditions.

The court disagreed. The lack of comma was irrelevant because of the “and/or” language that follows “elements of nature,” which indicates it applies to both elements of nature and other incidents caused by unfamiliar sights, sounds, and sudden movements. The court also pointed out that another sentence in the “Wilderness Experience” paragraph provides examples of both natural and man-made changes in landscape, indicating it was intended to apply to incidents caused by unfamiliar sights and sounds, regardless of source. Finally, and most importantly to the court, there were several other paragraphs other than the “Wilderness Experience” paragraph describing the negligence claims that Sherri was releasing.

Farm Animal Liability Act

Because the court found that the liability release was valid, it did not address whether the FALA also applied to bar her claim.

Potential Appeal

Do note that the deadline to file an appeal has not yet passed.

Key Takeaways

First, this case is a good reminder that having people sign a liability release before engaging in recreational activities like horseback riding is an important step towards liability protection. To read more about this, see Chapter 5 of my Owning Your Piece of Texas handbook.

Moreover, it is a great reminder of the two main requirements to ensure a liability waiver is valid: the express negligence doctrine and conspicuousness. Because liability waivers are an important part of a risk management plan, and because the law is particular about their drafting, I highly recommend working with an attorney to obtain a good, valid liability release to use for your operation.

Lastly, one takeaway that I will be adding to my own waiver is a requirement that each party sign the waiver and initial each paragraph. The court seemed to rely on the initials here in analyzing the conspicuousness requirement and cited at least one other case where the initials were noted.

Today, the European Commission published two joint reports1 2 on fraudulent practices in imports of honey into the EU. According to investigations, 46% of the collected samples were suspected of being adulterated with added syrups. This dramatic situation has been denounced by Copa and Cogeca for years now. Yet solutions are known and unanimously supported by the sector: it is high time for the EU to act!

Thanks to joint work by DG Sante, JRC and OLAF, the Commission has quantified an alarming reality: of the 320 samples received from competent national authorities, 147 (46%) were suspected of non-compliance with the requirements of the EU Honey Directive. Almost 74% of the Chinese, 93% of the Turkish and 100% of the British honey samples were considered “suspicious”!

1 https://food.ec.europa.eu/safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-network/eu-coordinated-actions/honey-2021-2022_en
2https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news/food-fraud-how-genuine-your-honey-2023-03-23_en
https://anti-fraud.ec.europa.eu/media-corner/news/no-sugar-my-honey-olaf-investigates-honey-fraud-2023-03-23_en

Source: EU Coordinated action to deter certain fraudulent practices in the honey sector, JRC Technical report

Commenting on the JRC’s report, Stanislav Jaš, Chairman of the Copa and Cogeca Honey Working Party said, “The survey clearly shows where problems come from. If almost every second honey product imported into the European Union is adulterated, this means that 20% of all “honey” consumed in the EU is adulterated! If we throw into the mix the fact that “fake honeys” are entering the EU at a cost as low as 1,5€/kg from a relatively small number of countries, one can understand why we are going through a real agricultural disaster in the EU.”

The second report by DG Sante contains important conclusions too. The Commission “confirms that a significant part of honey imported from non-EU countries and placed on the EU market is suspected of not complying with the provisions of the EU Honey Directive but goes undetected”. The report further outlines that “improved, harmonised and generally accepted analytical methods are still needed to increase the capability of official control laboratories to detect honey adulterated with sugar syrups”.

“When will consumers finally know what’s really on their spoon? To make this happen, three matters should be resolved at EU level as a priority. Firstly, better labelling of honey blends with an obligation to mention the respective countries of origin with percentage shares in descending order. Secondly, the European Union must update the official methods available to national control authorities for the detection of honey fraud and establish a community reference centre to continuously improve these methods. Lastly, Member States must reinforce controls and systematically check imported honey batches based on those improved methods combined with proof of traceability from hive to pot.” added Etienne Bruneau, Vice-Chair of the Working Party.

EU decision makers must act now to avoid the wrecking of the profession, which could lead to a substantial decline of honeybees on the continent. Copa and Cogeca call on DG AGRI for an in-depth revision of the EU Honey Directive in the coming months.

About us – Copa and Cogeca are the united voice of farmers and agri-cooperatives in the EU. Together, we ensure that EU agriculture is sustainable, innovative and competitive, while guaranteeing food security for 500 million people throughout Europe. >>> More information www.copa-cogeca.eu

For further information, please contact

Federico Facchin Senior
Policy Advisor
federico.facchin@copa-cogeca.eu

Jean-Baptiste Boucher
Communication Director
+32 474 840 836
jean-baptiste.boucher@copa-cogeca.eu

What pathogens are lurking on city streets? Follow the honeybee’s trail to find out.

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira | Published Mar 31, 2023 4:36 PM EDT

The waste honeybees discard in their hives could hold valuable insight into the public health of our cities. In a study published this week in the journal Environmental Microbiome, scientists shared a new method for collecting microbial information from the environment using honeybee debris. Identifying germs in a city gives researchers a snapshot of the diversity of a city’s microbiome, which could lead to better health outcomes. The technique might also help in surveilling illness-causing bacteria and viruses among bees and humans.

While we can’t see microorganisms, they play a critical behind-the-scenes role in shaping our survival. For example, microbes in the human gut support digestion, help keep our immune system healthy, and are the first line of defense from “bad” bacteria that cause food poisoning and other infections. Typically, the more diverse a person microbiome, the greater their health and well-being. One way to increase said variety is interacting with outside surroundings.

“A lot of [microbes] are beneficial to human health,” says lead study author Elizabeth Hénaff, an assistant professor at the center for urban science and progress at New York University. “The goal of this study is understanding the whole breadth of diversity of microbiomes and the ones we’re interacting with in urban environments.”

Hénaff and her colleagues knew they wanted to create microbial maps of different cities to get a better sense of the diversity in each area. However, they weren’t sure what was the best way to move forward. One idea was swabbing noses, but it would be impractical to swab everyone in a broad and diverse area. The urban microbiomes might also differ from block to block, requiring extensive swabbing. Another option was wastewater surveillance, but the researchers wanted to look at everything urbanites came into contact with—not just what they digested. Then came the aha moment: they could study bee hives.

Because honeybees constantly interact with the environment when they forage for nectar, and they often carry back some bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms from their travels when they return to the hive. “As bees are foraging, they’re traversing all of these microbial clouds related to other aspects of the built environment,” explains Hénaff. “They’ve traversed the microbial cloud of a pond, a body of water, and groups of human beings if they happen to be in the same park where they’re going.”

The scientists used a technique called metagenomic sequencing to study all the genes found in a single environmental sample. This allowed them to match genes to different microbial species related to hive health and, in turn, learn the health status of the bees. But first they had to figure out what sample should be collected from the hive.

In a pilot project in Brooklyn, New York, the scientists worked with local beekeepers. They took swab samples of honey, propolis (a resin-like material used to cover the inside of hives), debris, and bee carcasses—anything that could provide the most information on microorganisms.

Subsequently, they discovered that the microbes found in honey and propolis were similar across hives. “Bees are really good at controlling the microbial environment of their own beehives,” adds Hénaff. The only material that differed from hive to hive was the debris left at the bottom of the hive, and this became the source they collected in the next set of experiments.

To profile urban microbiomes, the team took samples of debris from 17 tended hives from four cities across the world: Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, Tokyo, and Venice. The DNA extracted from the bee debris contained material from different sources, including plants, mammals, insects, bacteria, and fungi in the area.

Each city carried a unique microbial profile that gave a snapshot of how life is like there. The single Venice hive used in the study was filled with wood-rotting fungi. Hénaff says the findings makes sense since most buildings are built on submerged wood pilings. In Australia, the two Melbourne hives had large amounts of eucalyptus DNA, while Sydney’s revealed high levels of a bacterium called Gordonia polyisoprenivorans, that breaks down rubber. Tokyo’s dozen hives displayed genetic hints of lotus and wild soybean—a common plant found in Eastern Asia. There were also high levels of a soy sauce fermenting yeast called Zygosaccharomyces rouxii.

“Most interesting to me was that [the results] didn’t feel like a disjoint metric from all the other things we know about these cities and their culture, but it actually felt like a puzzle piece we didn’t know existed that fit into our general understanding of these cities,” says Hénaff.

The debris were also helpful in identifying microbes involved in bee health. The team found three honeybee crop microbial species—Lactobacillus kunkeii, Saccharibacter sp. AM169, and Frishella perrara—along with five species related to the insects’ gut health. Three honeybee pathogens were also identified across cities.

Next, the study identified the human pathogens bees could pick up when venturing outside. The researchers focused on the hive information collected in Tokyo because it had more hives than the other cities, and so had more data for DNA sequencing. They detected two bacteria: one that could cause bacillary dysentery and another involved in cat scratch fever. They then took the pathogen behind cat scratch fever, Rickettsia felis, and reconstructed the genome. Doing so allowed them to not only confirm the species was in the city, but that it had the bacteria-associated molecules to allow it to spread disease.

Jay Evans, a research entomologist at the US Department of Agriculture who was not involved in the study, says the new approach is “fine” and can help in identifying at least the microorganisms found in urban floral environments. However, he expressed reservations about overvaluing some results. Evans notes that one of the species genome-mapping algorithms used in the study is known to be “a bit greedy,” matching the best microorganism available at the moment. This suggests some genetic matchups to bacteria may not actually be the right fit, and that further tests would be needed to confirm their presence. Because bees can pick up non-living hitchhikers like pesticides, Evans also says it would be nice for the researchers to contrast these biological results with pesticide-specific studies and how that affects hive microbiomes.

https://www.popsci.com/environment/honey-bee-hives-city-microbiome/

By General Aviation News Staff · March 14, 2023

They both fly, of course, but a new study finds that honeybees navigate the same way the earliest pilots navigated: By following landmarks on the landscape below — sometimes referred to IFR: I follow roads.

In the earliest days of human flight, before the invention of the first radio beacons and GPS, pilots commonly navigated by following roads and railways — what researchers say are “striking linear landscape elements at ground level that guide towards a destination of interest.”

A century of research has shown that honeybees can navigate by their sense of smell, the sun, the sky’s pattern of polarized light, vertical landmarks that stand out from the panorama, and possibly the Earth’s magnetic field. They are also clever learners that can retain memories to help them find their way home.

Now, scientists have shown that honeybees tend to search for their way home by orienting themselves in relation to dominant landscape elements, just like the first pilots.

In a study published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, scientists have shown that honeybees retain a memory of the dominant linear landscape elements in their home area, such as channels, roads, and boundaries. When transported to an unfamiliar area, they seek out local elements of this kind, compare their layout to the memory, and fly along them to seek their way home.

“Here we show that honeybees use a ‘navigation memory,’ a kind of mental map of the area that they know, to guide their search flights when they look for their hive starting in a new, unexplored area,” said Dr. Randolf Menzel, an emeritus professor at the Department of Neurobiology of the Free University of Berlin, and the study’s lead author. “Linear landscape elements, such as water channels, roads, and field edges, appear to be important components of this navigation memory.”

Tiny transponders
In the late summer of 2010 and 2011 near the village of Klein Lüben in Brandenburg, Germany, Menzel and his colleagues caught 50 experienced forager honeybees and glued a 10.5-mg transponder on their backs. They then released them in a new test area, too distant to be familiar to the bees.

In the test area was a radar that could detect the transponders at a distance of up to 900 meters (2,952 feet). The most notable landmark in the test area was a pair of parallel irrigation channels, running southwest to northeast, according to the researchers.

When honeybees find themselves in unfamiliar territory, they fly in exploratory loops in different directions and over different distances, centered on the release spot. With the radar, the researchers tracked the exact exploratory flight pattern of each bee for between 20 minutes and three hours. The bees flew at up to nine meters (29 feet) above the ground during the experiment.

The researchers collected bees from five hives. The home area around hives A and B resembled the test area in terms of the number, width, length, and angle of linear landscape elements, especially irrigation channels. The home range around hives D and E was highly dissimilar, while the home area around hive C was intermediate in similarity to the test area.

Other landmarks by which honeybees are known to find their way, such as structured horizons or vertical elements that stand out, were absent in the test area.

The researchers first simulated two sets of random flight patterns, centered on the release spot, and generated with different algorithms. Since the observed flight patterns were highly different from these, the researchers concluded that the honeybees didn’t simply conduct random search flights.

The researchers then used advanced statistics to analyze the orientation of flights and their frequency of flying over each 100 x 100 meter block within the test area. They showed that the honeybees spent a disproportionate amount of time flying alongside the irrigation channels. Analyses showed that these continued to guide the exploratory flights even when the bees were more than 30 meters away, the maximum distance from which honeybees are able to see such landscape elements. This implies that the bees kept them in their memory for prolonged periods, the researchers hypothesized.

“Our data show that similarities and differences in the layout of the linear landscape elements between their home area and the new area are used by the bees to explore where their hive might be,” said Menzel.

The structure of the search flights. (A) Example of a bee’s search flight (Bee 05 from Home Area E). (B) Example of a simulated bee’s flight. Two models were run, Model S with search loops in all directions (black and blue trajectories) and Model R in which fixes outside the radar range (dashed line) were excluded (only blue parts of the trajectories). (C) All fixes of all search flights plotted together with the radar range (green dashed line) with the release site at the origin. The dashed line (red, cyan, magenta and yellow) highlight the edges of the test site. The red dot is the radar site, the red star is the release site, and the green arrows are the direction of flight. (Image Courtesy Eric Bullinger, Uwe Greggers, and Randolf Menzel)

Navigational memory
Machine learning algorithms showed that the irrigation channels in the test area were most informative for predicting the exploratory flights of bees from hives A and B, less so for bees from hive C, and the least for bees from hives D and E, the researchers reported.

This suggests that the bees retained a navigational memory of their home area, based on linear landscape elements, and tried to generalize what they saw in the test area to their memory to find their way home.

“Flying animals identify such extended ground structures in a map-like aerial view, making them highly attractive as guiding structures. It is thus not surprising that both bats and birds use linear landmarks for navigation. Based on the data reported here we conclude that elongated ground structures are also salient components of the honeybees’ navigation memory,” the researchers concluded.

You can read the full study here.

https://generalaviationnews.com/2023/03/14/what-do-honeybees-have-in-common-with-pilots/

by Zhang Nannan, Chinese Academy of Sciences
March 14, 2023

A special group of workers in honey bees (Apis cerana), the undertakers, perform “undertaking behavior” to remove dead bodies. The undertakers rely on a signal associated with death to perform this behavior. However, it remains unclear how undertakers instantly recognize dead honey bees.

In a study published in Entomologia Generalis, researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have investigated the signals used by undertakers to detect death in honey bees.

The researchers compared the body temperature and volatiles of living and dead bees using semi-volatile sampling, gas chromatography (GC), and coupled GC-mass spectrometry. They then analyzed the effect of body temperature on the evaporated cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC emissions, CHEs) using thermal imaging and simulation.

They also tested the antennal perception of bees toward specific cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) using GC-electroantennographic detection. With synthetic CHCs and other honey bee pheromones, they performed inhibition and release bioassays.

According to the researchers, the removal of body parts is related to the cuticle area and not specific to the gland; the instantaneous life/death signal of honey bees is cuticular in origin; the major chemical difference between live and dead bees is the reduced CHEs in dead bees.

In addition, temperature and vapor pressure analyses indicated that the reduced CHEs were caused by the lowered body temperature of dead bees. Bioassays with heating apparatus, CHC regulation, and cross pheromone addition confirmed that body heat-induced CHE is the life signal of active bees and inhibits undertaking behavior.

Heated but CHC-reduced bees (by solvent washing or long heating evaporation) were removed, indicating that body heat alone cannot be a life signal. Heated dead bees coated with different amounts of wax were removed at different speeds depending on the wax quantity, suggesting that the removal was dose-dependent, and bees with lower CHEs were removed faster. Other tactile or non-volatile cues, which were always included in controls, showed no inhibition.

“This study confirms the CHEs as a life signal for sensitive and straightforward death recognition used by undertakers,” said Wen Ping, first author of the study.

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-reveals-honeybees-dead.html