Why Bees Were Dying — And the New “Super Food” That Could Save Them
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.
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As much fun as the beach can be, it can also be dangerous. Ocean conditions can change rapidly, turning waves from calm to catastrophic in a matter of moments. It’s one of the reasons why lifeguards are so important, and a witness recently caught video footage of a lifeguard — ahem, hero — in action at Seabright State Beach in Santa Cruz, California, where the waves seemed normal at first, then seemingly suddenly turned rough enough to challenge even strong swimmers.
A 10-year-old boy was swept about 15 yards offshore before 16-year-old rookie lifeguard Ryder Williams reached him. Several beachgoers also joined the effort, and the entire rescue lasted just over two minutes. That might not seem like a long time when you’re scrolling on your phone or hitting the snooze button in the morning, but think about fighting against the ocean to save a life for 120 seconds. That’s a lot of pressure!
Williams has since been invited to the White House to receive a high civilian honor for his actions, but the rescue is also important for awareness in general, because it shows why lifeguards matter even when things seem calm.
They say “it’s always darkest before dawn,” but that may just have a nicer ring than “it suddenly gets really dark if you’re in the path of totality during a solar eclipse, which happens somewhere on Earth about once every 18 months.” Yup, first one definitely stitches better onto a decorative pillow.
A total solar eclipse happens when the Moon completely blocks the Sun. Although a total eclipse occurs somewhere on Earth roughly every year and a half, only people inside a narrow strip called the “path of totality” get to see the Sun completely covered. This path is created as the Moon’s shadow moves across Earth while both Earth and the Moon change position.
This mid-August eclipse started off over northern Siberia at sunrise, then crossed the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, Iceland, northern Spain, and a small part of Portugal before ending near the Balearic Islands at sunset. Those outside of the path could see a partial eclipse, but a lot of the world missed out on the full experience.
Eclipses are amazing to watch, but partial eclipses can be especially dangerous! Even as much as 95% coverage of the Sun is not close enough when it comes to eye safety. If any bright part of the Sun is still visible, you should use certified eclipse glasses, since looking directly at the Sun can permanently damage your eyes.
It’s been a summer of fires all over the world, and Canada is no exception, as wildfires swept through western Canada, officials say some of them spread with frightening speed.
Thousands have been forced to leave their homes as fires move through remote areas. One resident described watching a fire grow from about 50 hectares to 5,000 hectares — that’s about 0.2 to 20 square miles — in only two to three hours. Think about something growing to 100 times its size in the time it takes to watch a movie!
Of course, these are scary by themselves, but they're part of an even larger problem. Earlier in the summer, about 200 fires burned around Ontario, and smoke traveled hundreds of miles, affecting places as far south as Minnesota and New York. In British Columbia alone, officials said there had been 70 new fires in seven days and 105 active wildfires across the province.
The fires triggered a massive response — more than 2,000 people across many different jobs, including firefighters, aviation teams, heavy-equipment crews, and people protecting buildings — have been working to help contain the damage. It’s great there are brave individuals helping, but they may not have so much time to rest. Wildfires aren’t new, but they are becoming more common and more severe as the climate changes.
Big news for bird lovers: white storks have returned to Willington Wetlands near Derby, England, for the first time in 600 years.
Just how long is 600 years? Long enough that if the storks had stuck around, they could have watched every Harry Potter movie back-to-back more than 2.5 million times — with plenty of bathroom breaks left over. In American terms, storks disappeared from this area around the time Christopher Columbus was still a kid, decades before he ever sailed to the Americas.
Storks used to be a common sight across the UK, kind of like how you might spot herons, egrets, or bald eagles near lakes and rivers in North America. But they disappeared centuries ago — and now conservationists are trying to bring them back.
Three New Arrivals
Earlier this year, three young storks — one male and two females — hatched and grew to full adult size in just about 12 weeks (for comparison, humans take about 18 years). They've now been moved into a specially built enclosure at the wetlands, complete with its own pond, and have already started exploring their new digs.
As much fun as the beach can be, it can also be dangerous. Ocean conditions can change rapidly, turning waves from calm to catastrophic in a matter of moments. It’s one of the reasons why lifeguards are so important, and a witness recently caught video footage of a lifeguard — ahem, hero — in action at Seabright State Beach in Santa Cruz, California, where the waves seemed normal at first, then seemingly suddenly turned rough enough to challenge even strong swimmers.
A 10-year-old boy was swept about 15 yards offshore before 16-year-old rookie lifeguard Ryder Williams reached him. Several beachgoers also joined the effort, and the entire rescue lasted just over two minutes. That might not seem like a long time when you’re scrolling on your phone or hitting the snooze button in the morning, but think about fighting against the ocean to save a life for 120 seconds. That’s a lot of pressure!
Williams has since been invited to the White House to receive a high civilian honor for his actions, but the rescue is also important for awareness in general, because it shows why lifeguards matter even when things seem calm.
They say “it’s always darkest before dawn,” but that may just have a nicer ring than “it suddenly gets really dark if you’re in the path of totality during a solar eclipse, which happens somewhere on Earth about once every 18 months.” Yup, first one definitely stitches better onto a decorative pillow.
A total solar eclipse happens when the Moon completely blocks the Sun. Although a total eclipse occurs somewhere on Earth roughly every year and a half, only people inside a narrow strip called the “path of totality” get to see the Sun completely covered. This path is created as the Moon’s shadow moves across Earth while both Earth and the Moon change position.
This mid-August eclipse started off over northern Siberia at sunrise, then crossed the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, Iceland, northern Spain, and a small part of Portugal before ending near the Balearic Islands at sunset. Those outside of the path could see a partial eclipse, but a lot of the world missed out on the full experience.
Eclipses are amazing to watch, but partial eclipses can be especially dangerous! Even as much as 95% coverage of the Sun is not close enough when it comes to eye safety. If any bright part of the Sun is still visible, you should use certified eclipse glasses, since looking directly at the Sun can permanently damage your eyes.
It’s been a summer of fires all over the world, and Canada is no exception, as wildfires swept through western Canada, officials say some of them spread with frightening speed.
Thousands have been forced to leave their homes as fires move through remote areas. One resident described watching a fire grow from about 50 hectares to 5,000 hectares — that’s about 0.2 to 20 square miles — in only two to three hours. Think about something growing to 100 times its size in the time it takes to watch a movie!
Of course, these are scary by themselves, but they're part of an even larger problem. Earlier in the summer, about 200 fires burned around Ontario, and smoke traveled hundreds of miles, affecting places as far south as Minnesota and New York. In British Columbia alone, officials said there had been 70 new fires in seven days and 105 active wildfires across the province.
The fires triggered a massive response — more than 2,000 people across many different jobs, including firefighters, aviation teams, heavy-equipment crews, and people protecting buildings — have been working to help contain the damage. It’s great there are brave individuals helping, but they may not have so much time to rest. Wildfires aren’t new, but they are becoming more common and more severe as the climate changes.
Big news for bird lovers: white storks have returned to Willington Wetlands near Derby, England, for the first time in 600 years.
Just how long is 600 years? Long enough that if the storks had stuck around, they could have watched every Harry Potter movie back-to-back more than 2.5 million times — with plenty of bathroom breaks left over. In American terms, storks disappeared from this area around the time Christopher Columbus was still a kid, decades before he ever sailed to the Americas.
Storks used to be a common sight across the UK, kind of like how you might spot herons, egrets, or bald eagles near lakes and rivers in North America. But they disappeared centuries ago — and now conservationists are trying to bring them back.
Three New Arrivals
Earlier this year, three young storks — one male and two females — hatched and grew to full adult size in just about 12 weeks (for comparison, humans take about 18 years). They've now been moved into a specially built enclosure at the wetlands, complete with its own pond, and have already started exploring their new digs.