In the end, Wang Dalin won the bee-wearing competition, by attracting 26 kilograms of bees onto his body, while his younger fellow beekeeper only manged to attract 22.9 kilograms of live bees. Despite their valiant efforts, the two weren’t able to break the world bee-wearing record, of 39.5 kg (350,000 bees), set by American Mark Biancaniello.
Curiously unmentioned is if and how many times the bees stung their wearers. And how long does it take to unwear all those bees?
Occasionally, queen bees decide to up and leave their hives. When they do this, they take much of their hive’s population with them. Which is a big bummer for beekeepers.
Some researchers have found a way to use an accelerometer — like one found in the iPhone — to figure out when a queen bee might decide to take off.
“The method relies on the computer learning the language of the buzzing hives,” says Bencsik. The team found several signals in the vibrations – for instance, vibrations peak at sunrise – which could be used to monitor the health of a colony. Crucially, about 10 days before swarming, the hives produced a distinct vibration.
If a beekeeper anticipates the queen’s departure, he can set up another well-positioned hive for her to move in to.
A military/scientific collaboration has taken a big step towards figuring out why all the bees are dying. They studied many wrecked colonies and found a certain virus and fungus combination in every one.
[T]he bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction from the hive, then die alone and dispersed.
They still don’t know exactly what the combination does to kill them or how it emerged.
