- India to research bees in detail.
- Yak knob to go with your yak milk, sir?
- George Lucas does his bit to conserve a weird cattle breed, the Japanese wagyu. Well, kinda.
- Was the typical English village founded around 900 AD as a result of monastically-driven agricultural innovation?
- Diverse healthy reasons to drink beer; Luigi unavailable for comment.
Nibbles: Donkey, women, bees, databases
- Archaeological evidence of donkey domestication from Egypt.
- Empower women farmers to ensure food security. Sounds like a plan.
- Good reporter visits good bee research centre. Read all about it.
- Genomics blog discovers CGIAR databases, love at first sight.
Bees in the UK
Another post from Danny. Maybe we should be giving him frequent flier miles. Anyway, it’s on a subject we’ve tackled before, but not, I think, from a British perspective.
Having just been interviewed for a job in Limerick, and with one panel member expressing an interest in biodiversity of ants and bees, I thought it might be interesting to post on this subject. It is also pouring with rain and blowing a gale so I have little better to do as I sit around Limerick railway station awaiting the next train to Dublin. Honey bees ‘wiped out in 10 years’, in yesterday’s Observer reports the threat posed to British bees by devastating diseases, especially the real danger that colony collapse disease will be introduced to the country.
It is estimated that bees contribute £165m a year to the economy through the pollination of fruit trees and other crops and about £12m through the sale of British honey. This is certainly an undervaluation when the other benefits of bees are considered. ‘If nothing is done about it, the honey bee population could be wiped out in 10 years,’ the Farming Minister, Lord Rooker, has admitted in the House of Lords. But, despite this importance of bees to the nation’s economy, the government has said it has no cash left to fund a research project to investigate the ‘killer’ diseases. The amount needed? The British Beekeeping Association is asking for a £8m research project that would run for five years. At a conservative estimate this is about 1% of the revenue that bees generate over the same period!
The article is accompanied by a video describing how the world’s largest pollination event in California’s almond orchards is under threat. The video also describes the interesting occupation of honeybee broker.
Nibbles: Peas, corn, marama, peaches, bees
- Follow along with the adventures of an amateur pea breeder. Mendel comments: “go for it, girl”.
- And the corn (maize) genome is announced, apparently with recipes. Via.
- Namibians domesticate nutritious wild legume. Mendel comments: “what’s wrong with peas?”
- New Zealand (re)discovers square peaches. Mendel unavailable on this one.
- Honeybee evolution summarized.
Nibbles: Honey, seeds, bioprospecting, chocolate
- Haagen Dazs understands. No bees = no honey and no fruit.
- Over-excited about seeds. Jeremy comments, “It’s that time of the year”.
- South Korea bioprospecting in Costa Rica.
- A round-up of recent (bad) news on the chocolate front.
- Namibia: no country for vegetarians.