Book #8/2019 The Honey Bus: A Memoir of a Girl Saved by Bees

The Honey Bus: A Memoir of a Girl Saved by Bees by Meredith May
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Everyone should read The Honey Bus, a parable for our time, a beautifully composed memoir of, for the most part, a young girl - Meredith May - who, with her younger brother Matthew, experiences the despair of a broken home, separated parents and a dysfunctional mother. Moved away from their father and Rhode Island to live with grandparents in California. Step-grandpa is a beekeeper, has been for many years. A fount of knowledge about honey bees and their invaluable contribution to life. Uses an old military bus converted for use to harvest honey. Meredith is captivated and comes to learn everything about the husbandry of bees from grandpa, who loves her and her brother, unconditionally. Meredith's personality will be shaped by the life lessons learned in a bee yard. Every child should have that same opportunity to grow.

A story of love, hope, despair, redemption - a wake up call to help honey bees live closer to the way nature intended - bees that are threatened with Varroa destructor and a host of newer diseases such as Nosema gut pathogen and the Slow Bee Paralysis virus.

Meredith does her small part - she owes her Grandpa at least that much to continue his work - and she owes it to the bees...

The Honey Bus has left a lasting impression on me and has been an education about the vital need for us to help honey bees survive. Without them we are lost...

The highest possible recommendation from me. I urge you to read The Honey Bus.

My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

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New study shows how bumblebees can be infected by honeybee diseases

A new study published in the Nature journal has shown that bumblebees are being infected by pathogens that are normally associated with honeybees.

The work, carried out by Matthias Furst, Mark Brown and colleagues, looked at bumblebees through Great Britain and the Isle of Man. They found that 11% of bumblebees sampled tested positive for Deformed Wing Virus (DWV). DWV reduces the life expectancy of infected bees, and can produce bees that have shrivelled wings.

The study also looked at another pathogen called Nosema ceranae. This is a microsporidian - a kind of fungus - that has been implicated in the decline of honeybees. It also does not normally occur in bumblebees and work is under way to understand how they become infected with it.

The study found clear links between the strains of the pathogens present in bumblebees and honeybees in some areas, indicating that the disease in bumblebees most likely comes from honeybees. However, more work is needed to fully determine the role that wild pollinators have in transmitting the pathogens among themselves.

The study recommends that tighter controls of imports of honeybees and more stringent hygiene checks are put in place. Beekeepers are also asked to control the diseases in their colonies - both for their own benefit, and that of the wider pollinator community. 

Bees Losing Sense of Smell

It has been reported by neuroscientists at the University of Southampton that traffic fumes render the scent of flowers barely recognisable to honeybees and could have a serious impact on their ability to find food. The report states that reactive pollutants in diesel destroyed key chemicals in the odour of oilseed flowers making them smell different to the bees.

Honeybees have a sensitive sense of smell and an exceptional ability to learn and memorise new odours. The effect of diesel fumes on flower scent could have serious detrimental effects on the number of honeybee colonies and pollination activity.

Three quarters of the world's food crops rely on bees and other natural pollinators, a service valued at £135bn a year globally. But there have been serious declines in natural pollinators in recent decades. A combination of factors has been blamed including the huge loss of the flower-rich habitats that sustain bees as well as disease and the impact of agricultural insecticides. And now it appears that traffic fumes are adding to the problem.

Honeybees are very, very selective on what they home in on. They do not go randomly from flower to flower. The team of scientists found that it was the highly reactive nitrogen oxides (NOx) that chemically altered the smell by removing key chemicals within a minute of exposure in the laboratory environment.

Emissions from diesel regularly exceed the limits for nitrogen dioxide and emissions from petrol vehicles often contain even higher levels of NOx. These nanoparticle pollutants, already known to harm human health, may also be affecting bees.