Bees may miss pollinating entire species of plants if climate change continues unchecked, according to a study released yesterday by a group of academic and museum collaborators including a York University researcher. The study, led by Rutgers University, finds that bees are emerging earlier each spring, advancing their life cycle by nearly a day per […]
What makes a worker bee a good worker? The answer may be both nature and nurture, says York Professor Amro Zayed, who is studying the genetic basis of honey bee behaviour to create better bee colonies. “A colony lives or dies by how well the workers perform, and there is a tremendous amount of variation,” […]
Celebrate the birds and the bees tomorrow at the Pollinators Festival. Learn why the bees are at risk with York Professor Laurence Packer in the Department of Biology and about the social life of honey bees with the Toronto Beekeeping Co-operative. The Pollinators Festival, part of International Pollinator Week, will take place from 8am to […]
The Three-spot Mariposa Lily is an understated three-petalled white and yellow flower indigenous to some areas of the Columbia Basin. Like all living things, it’s part of the intricate and complex web of life that sustains us all, wrote B.C.’s Revelstoke Times Review, April 12: Recent research by biologist Lincoln Best, [a graduate student] at […]
Professor Laurence Packer in the Faculty of Science & Engineering's Department of Biology spoke to Global News February 12 about the sudden death of the Royal Ontario Museum's bee colony. Over 20,000 bees died in a 48-hour period. You can watch the segment on the Global News website. Packer is a bee expert who has […]
Without bees, we wouldn’t have coffee to drink at breakfast, tomatoes in your sandwich at lunch or fruit for a snack on the go. While bee populations all over the world are in trouble, there are lots of things individuals can do to create bee-friendly gardens — even if your personal green space is limited […]
A York University doctoral student, who discovered a new species of bee on his way to the lab one morning, has completed a study that examines 84 species of sweat bees in Canada. Nineteen of these species – including the one Jason Gibbs found in downtown Toronto − are new to science because they have […]
George Dashwood Sr., a resident at Simon Fraser Lodge, is now the namesake of the rare Lasioglossum dashwoodi bee species in BC, wrote the Prince George Citizen July 7. Lincoln Best, a graduate student at York University, is one of several researchers who found this bee in the Okanangan in 2008: "There are hundreds of […]
Professor Laurence Packer, professor of biology in the Faculty of Science & Engineering, spoke to Bob McDonald, host of CBC's Quirks & Quarks on June 26 about his research on international bee populations. He is the author of Keeping the Bees: Why All Bees Are at Risk and What We Can Do to Save Them. […]
On June 21, Laurence Packer of York’s Faculty of Science & Engineering will discuss what has become a crisis in agriculture – the rapid disappearance of bees, wrote InsideHalton.com June 17: Packer will present findings outlined in his new book Keeping the Bees, which grew out of the Canadian pollination research initiative spearheaded by the […]