Via Strange Company’s Weekly Link Dump, we learn that Queen Bees direct the hive through a series of tooting, honking and quacking that researchers were able to record, amplify and interpret. Like a flourish of trumpets, the toots herald her presence as she moves around the colony. The quacking comes from matured queens not yet released into society by the workers so as to prevent a power struggle and will continue to toot until the current monarch either abdicates or absconds in a swarm, splitting the hive.
Friday 19 June 2020
royal fanfare or call-and-response
catagories: ๐
Wednesday 20 May 2020
svetovni dan ฤebel
Born on this day in 1734 (†1773), professionally trained painter become beekeeper to the Viennese Hapsburg court, Anton Janลกa cultivated expert knowledge on their care and maintenance and published authoritative manuals and delivered lectures on apiculture across the Empire in order to maximise their yield of honey and wax and pollination of crops. In addition to the rotation of hives in pastures, Janลกa’s designs for bivouacs with stacked combs (see also) are the still the modern standard today, and since a bid to the United Nations from Slovenia was accepted in 2017, Janลกa’s birthday has been memorialised as World Bee Day.
Sunday 3 May 2020
9x9
horsefly stretches so much time: learning French with these near homonyms that sound like (near) idioms, you know—taon temps tant tends
the lord hardened pharaoh’s heart: as scary as “murder hornets” sound, if they destroy the bees, US agriculture will be in shambles
making muppets: Jim Henson presents a tutorial on creating one’s own puppets in 1969, shortly before the debut of Sesame Street
jukebox: a neural network that’s getting quite good at imitating musical genres and syndicating wholly artificial songs, via Memo of the Air
plastique fantastique: these face shields from Isphere have a certain Avengers’ spy-vibe
do not make me fight you: reminiscent of this montage, stunt choreographer Zoรซ Bell takes on Hollywood
headspace: cranial collages from Edwige Massart and Xavier Wynn
catamaran: this floating shelter in Amsterdam, de Poezenboot, finds new forever homes for our feline friends
www: this was the internet we were promised—why did it take the collapse of civilisation to bring it?
Saturday 11 April 2020
der honigdieb
Though perhaps best known for his iconic portraits of contemporary celebrities, like this one of Martin Luther that’s become synonymous and defining, the imagination, which takes a rather lurid turn at times, of the painter and printmaker Lucas Cranach the Elder (*1472 – †1553, confusingly from the village of Cronach) also has a legacy worth contemplating—especially after the accusations and misapprehensions that the shock of the naked body in classical and Renaissance art wasn’t some soft smut for the elite with the intrinsic value, patronage and support system not accorded to the prole material made by machine and put out by Pornosec for the masses. We are confronted with this question by a new exhibit in the Compton Verney Gallery in Warwickshire—encapsulated by the some twenty known versions of Cupid complaining to Venus (1526, Venus mit Amor als Honigdieb)—all of which portray the two classical love deities gossiping, nude but Venus naked in a wide-rimmed hat with ostrich plumes and Cupid assailed by bees for having snatched a bit of honeycomb from the apple tree that they’re standing under. The subject was popular enough, based off a bucolic poem by Theocritus called ฮฮทฯฮนฮฟฮบฮปฮญฯฯฮทฯ (Keriokleptes, same meaning) for Cranach to sell basically two dozen copies with slight variation with Venus laughing off Cupid’s lament and comparing the stings of the provoked bees to his own smitten arrows. One has to wonder what was informed by carnal experience and what was moralising and emendating in his portfolio. Visit the entire collection online at the link above.
catagories: ๐จ, ๐, Bavaria, libraries and museums
Friday 7 February 2020
6x6
multiplicands: an interesting demonstration of an ancient method of numerical decomposition that intuits algorithms base-two number systems
still life with daishi: the exquisite three decades of detailed food diaries of a soba chef
bee space: a look at how apiculture informs architecture
enhance: artificial intelligence applied to an 1896 film upscales the Lumiรจre Brothers’ l’Arrivรฉe d’un train en gare de La Cioatat significantly
mergers and acquisitions: a clip of two Chinese young men lip-syncing the Back Street Boys’ I Want It That Way in 2006 convinced Google it the YouTube platform could be a promising investment
from sack to shift: Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic Mondrian-inspired dress (previously), including one for Lady Penelope
Friday 13 September 2019
7x7
alltid รถppet: McDonald’s franchises in Sweden (previously) install insect hotels in their signage and billboards
glory to hong kong: protestors create their own anthem and rallying cry
metallic wood: researchers create a porous nickel-based matrix (see also) as strong as titanium though exceedingly light
schism: Pope Francis unafraid of conservative groups calling his leadership too progressive
k2-18ฮฒ: astronomers detect water vapour in the atmosphere of a distant super earth that could harbour life as we know it
gravy train: bug-based pet food better for canine and feline companions and for the environment
Friday 23 August 2019
ฮ9
Saturday 27 July 2019
hov lane
Via Design Boom, we learn about a simple but effective intervention that the city of Utrecht has instigated to create sanctuaries—bees stops (Bijstopt), for urban insects by planting grasses and wildflowers on top of bus shelters, some three hundred of them throughout the city. This is a step we could all encourage where we live. Much more to explore at the link above.
catagories: ๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐, ๐, environment
Sunday 14 July 2019
endonymy
From one of our favourite weekly features, Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links, we are invited to ruminate over the fact that while most countries are named after one of four things—often tautologically, especially in translation—that are sometimes not very consequential to present geopolitics, there are some notable mavericks that defy or really lean into categorisation.
With nearly all countries named in deference to either a cardinal direction, a distinguishing geographical feature, a tribe or clan or an important personage, we’d wish that the campaign to make America great again was an effort to improve scholarship on the Latinised name of a fifteenth century Florentine cartographer from the Vespucci family but alas and alack. There are nonetheless some notable (and notably disputed too) outliers as well. Our favouites being Malta named for bees (ฮฮตฮปฮฏฯฮท, honey-sweet), Mexico after a simplification of an Aztec city (Mฤxihtli) that meant in the navel of the Moon and the Pacific island nation of Nauru, possibly derived from the native conjugation anรกoero, I go to the beach.
Sunday 7 July 2019
fruchtfolge
Though maybe I am just doing a better job paying attention—which certainly counts for something too—and being engaged with the consequences of our behaviour for the environment or maybe it’s the recently adopted legislation and agricultural reforms made to be more sustainable and friendlier for pollinators, while I’ve noticed that crop-rotation and allowing fields to be fallow for a season, recharging the soil by sewing clover or grasses and letting it rest, I don’t think I’ve seen before sections of land, vast swaths of it, wholly given over to wildflowers like I am seeing now.
It isn’t just the margins and shoulders along tractor trails that are teeming with blooms but also deep into the interior of grain crops, thick with cornflowers (Cyanus segetum, Kornblume—considered endangered due to over-use of pesticides), poppies (Papaver rhoeas, Mohnblume), baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata, Schleier-Gipskraut—that is, chalk-loving), thistles (Silybum marianum, Disteln) and daisies (Bellis perennis—pretty everlasting, Gänseblümchen), the fields are droning with the buzz of bees.
catagories: ๐ฑ, ๐, Bavaria, food and drink, Rhรถn
Sunday 9 June 2019
pollinators’ corner
Here is a selection of various insects visiting flowers in bloom, mostly daisies, around the backyard, taken in quick succession—and not including the elusive ones that were harder to photograph at the moment. What celebrity bug friends can you find and identify near you?
Thursday 6 June 2019
apis and bombus
Via Slashdot, we learn that the same Australian-French collaborative team of researchers that determined that honeybees understand the concept of zero, can recognise human faces and perform basic arithmetic also can understand numerals as stand-ins to symbolise numerical values.
Separate studies suggest that bumblebees (which also live in nests and hives as colonies with a queen and division of labour—albeit on a much smaller scale) are capable of a similar level of communication and learning, they just don’t dance like their more agile cousins, a fact that sounds funny given that they’ve garnered the reputation of being too heavy to fly, which they manage quite well on the contrary. Insights into how smaller brains process such abstractions are not only humbling and point to the eusocial insects and their cohesion as drivers of culture but could moreover led to new and innovative ways to mimic Nature with artificial intelligence.
Thursday 25 April 2019
le forรชt
As debate continues on how the iconic landmark ought to be rebuilt and restored, true to its former self or romanticised memories or rather a showcase of innovation in building material and technique as it has been over the centuries, Studio NAB puts forward its proposal to replace the ancient wooden roof with a green house that hosts educational and outreach programmes and is reflective of challenges facing contemporary times. What do you think about that? The burnt oak timbers known colloquially as the Forest would be fashioned into planters and fertilise new growth from the ashes and the spire would be raised again as an apiary, accommodating a number of beehives.
catagories: ๐ซ๐ท, ๐ฑ, ๐, architecture
Wednesday 24 April 2019
telling the bees
Not exclusively a British custom but perhaps more concentrated than on the continent, the very endearing custom of ‘telling the bees’ recorded in Ireland, France, Germany and Bohemia as well probably has ancient origins in the mythological belief that the helpful insects could bridge the natural and supernatural realms.
catagories: ๐, ๐, ๐ง , myth and monsters, ⓦ
Friday 19 April 2019
apiculture urbaine
Understandably not the first concern to leap to mind, but thanks to Parisien correspondent extraordinaire Messy Nessy Chic, we are happy to report that rooftop colony of bees kept in three hives (ruches) at Notre-Dame de Paris has miraculously also survived the fire, residing on a portico one level below the ancient wooden timber frame that was engulfed in flames. The hives are part of a very successful network of some three hundred kept in the city to contribute to the urban ecosystem, pollinate plants and offer humans surplus honey, populated by a docile breed of honey bees developed at the Buckfast Benedictine Abbey (also for its fortified tonic wine) in Devon in the 1920s. Learn much more at the link up top and spread the consoling news.
catagories: ๐ซ๐ท, ๐, environment
Thursday 4 April 2019
wir retten die bienen
Breaking developments on a story we’ve been watch for a few weeks now from TYWKIWDBI, the state legislature of Bavaria (previously) has announced that it will enact a petition to save vital pollinators and insect populations in general by reforming agricultural practises, boosting organic farming, reducing run-off and providing more oases for bees and butterflies, fully adopting the demands without setting it before a plebiscite—as its popularity and political will have already been sufficiently demonstrated. Protests begun in February have resulted in a rather landmark shift in attitude translated to real change in the course of a couple of months, passing unanimously through parliament.
catagories: ⚖️, ๐, ๐ฆ, Bavaria, environment
Saturday 12 January 2019
field notes
Though the verdict is still out on whether plants can vocalise, it seems that a research team has demonstrated that flowers act as ears and can distinguish the buzz of an approaching pollinator over the general din and sweeten its nectar. The less conclusive part of the study looked into whether plants communicated distress or well-being at ranges above what humans can hear and how this might be interpreted by arboreal creatures and insects.
Humans are being humbled all the time and we have far more empathy for the natural world and our place in than we did in the past—even a decade ago, most regarded animals as having no interior lives or feelings, but as the latter smacks a bit of the pseudoscientific methods that probably set back our collective willingness to examine and consider plant communications, it’s probably a bit of a treacherous claim that we are not quite ready for. For better or worse, regardless of the veracity and rigour, sometimes we are just not receptive to ideas that can change our world view, like the parable of Clever Hans, a stunt that set back the cause of animal rights significantly but no we not only know that bees can do simple arithmetic but that plants do communicate to and socialise with their neighbours through chemical signals and via a complex and poorly understood network that connects whole forests through their roots.
catagories: ๐ฑ, ๐, ๐ฌ, environment
Monday 19 November 2018
inflorescence
Via Fast Company, we learn that in response to the shocking, precipitous drop in flying insect populations and the consequence that has moving up the food-chain, designer Matilde Boelhouwer—with the consultation of entomologists—has created and installed oases for urban dwelling pollinators who might otherwise find themselves in a food desert.
Rather than copying Nature with her artificial flowers, Boelhouwer has instead studied the ways that butterflies, moths, honey bees and bumblebees feed and created a composite morphology that maximises attractiveness and access. The stations are even self-sustaining, replenishing the food supply with a catchment for rain water and operating through capillary action. It’s hard to say what the long term outcomes of such interventions might be but surely this act of kindness for the small and similar efforts are a step in the right direction to rehabilitate our stewardship of the planet.
Sunday 2 September 2018
le syndrome d’effondrement des colonies d’abeilles
France has announced a ban—restrictions that go above what the European Union has deemed allowable, permitting the use of some members of this class of pesticides for greenhouse farming only where cross-contamination is less likely—on all neonicontinoids, long suspected of being a contributing factor to colony collapse disorder and the general loss of insect life that plays a vital role in maintaining the food chain. This class of pesticides were introduced in the 1990s as a less toxic alternative to existing products on the market, and structured on the nicotine molecule, the companies pitched their new formulations as safer and targeted without lingering in the environment.
Not quite able to pinpoint the lethal mechanism, the pathology, the industry invoked other factors like cell phone signals, monoculturing and noxious automotive emissions—which cannot be ruled out—but also possibly served as a cover and distraction for the real dangers of this substance. Researchers have now taken a nuanced, holistic approach to their field studies and suspect that they may have been overlooking the addictive property that these chemicals have for insect neurology and behaviour, making the bees exposed to it chemically dependent on the substance and thus overriding the instincts of the individual and the hive to make good choices about where to forage and how to defend the hive. It’s like Drone Dad that flew off to get a pack of cigarettes and never returned. If science is only getting wise to this consequence in bees, just imagine how disruptive introducing an addictive substance could be for less-studied bug lif, even when they are considered pests. I hope other places follow France’s lead and not enter into large-scale experiments prematurely and uninformed.
catagories: ๐ซ๐ท, ๐, environment
Friday 27 July 2018
biลกu ลกลซnas
catagories: ๐ฑ๐ป, ๐, ๐, ๐, environment