In Bees and Food Production, a group gathers around the breakfast table to enjoy a breakfast made of food that isn’t impacted by bees. But, aside from a pot of tea and some toast, the table is bare. What foods do bees help us enjoy? Everything from fruit to dairy!
In Bees in Decline, visit a collection of bee specimens at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. There are more than 250 species of bees, and they help pollinate everything from apples to flowers. But bees are in decline, and one reason is the varroa mite, a tiny bug that causes a big problem.
Beekeeper Nick was confused when his bees kept dying off. He kept his hives being stocked with food, so why did he still lose around 75% of the colony? The answer was in what was (or wasn’t) in his bees’ food.
In the wild, bees take what they need from flowers to make honey, and then feed off this honey in the winter. When we take this honey for ourselves, beekeepers replace it with supplementary food in the form of sugar and water, and scientists now say that bees can’t subsist off of just sugar and water, as the simple combination was missing key nutrients. Your parents probably said the same thing about why you can’t just have cake for dinner!
After years of testing different foods for bees, scientists have finally discovered how to make the core ingredient, called “sterole.” Oxford scientists have been developing the best foods for bees, and have found that the bees who consumed the food with sterole were healthier, and had up to 15 times more baby bees! This breakthrough is incredibly important — it means bees can still thrive without floral pollen, which would also help our food security, since bees are so important for pollinating crops.
In The Life of a Honeybee!, host Rory Crawford is about to buzz into the exciting world of honeybees! These social creatures live in hives filled with worker bees and one big queen bee who lays all the eggs. Learn how to care for these busy pollinators safely, including using a smoker and wearing a bee suit, while discovering the sweet treasures of honey and beeswax found in their hives! This video is excerpted from BBC’s My Pet and Me, a children’s show that introduces kids to the rewards and responsibilities involved when having a pet.
In Bees and Food Production, a group gathers around the breakfast table to enjoy a breakfast made of food that isn’t impacted by bees. But, aside from a pot of tea and some toast, the table is bare. What foods do bees help us enjoy? Everything from fruit to dairy!
In Bees in Decline, visit a collection of bee specimens at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. There are more than 250 species of bees, and they help pollinate everything from apples to flowers. But bees are in decline, and one reason is the varroa mite, a tiny bug that causes a big problem.
Beekeeper Nick was confused when his bees kept dying off. He kept his hives being stocked with food, so why did he still lose around 75% of the colony? The answer was in what was (or wasn’t) in his bees’ food.
In the wild, bees take what they need from flowers to make honey, and then feed off this honey in the winter. When we take this honey for ourselves, beekeepers replace it with supplementary food in the form of sugar and water, and scientists now say that bees can’t subsist off of just sugar and water, as the simple combination was missing key nutrients. Your parents probably said the same thing about why you can’t just have cake for dinner!
After years of testing different foods for bees, scientists have finally discovered how to make the core ingredient, called “sterole.” Oxford scientists have been developing the best foods for bees, and have found that the bees who consumed the food with sterole were healthier, and had up to 15 times more baby bees! This breakthrough is incredibly important — it means bees can still thrive without floral pollen, which would also help our food security, since bees are so important for pollinating crops.
In The Life of a Honeybee!, host Rory Crawford is about to buzz into the exciting world of honeybees! These social creatures live in hives filled with worker bees and one big queen bee who lays all the eggs. Learn how to care for these busy pollinators safely, including using a smoker and wearing a bee suit, while discovering the sweet treasures of honey and beeswax found in their hives! This video is excerpted from BBC’s My Pet and Me, a children’s show that introduces kids to the rewards and responsibilities involved when having a pet.