Alan Wade The mighty mites All this talk about honey bee mites and other honey bee pests taking an easy ride: ‘How and when were they discovered?’ And ‘how did they learn to hitch a […]
Alan Wade How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished! 2 Samuel 1:27 KJV Canada Bill [1847-1887], born in Yorkshire William Jones, migrated to North America first working on the Mississippi River […]
Alan Wade If ever there were a cringeworthy national anthem, the original version of Advance Australia Fair would have to take the cake. Scribed in 1879 by Scottish composer Peter Dodds McCormick,i it reminds us […]
Demonstration of hive splitting: Tetragonula carbonaria colony at a Eurobodalla Botanical Gardens pollination workshop, New South Wales far south coast 12 October 2023:(a) upper and lower spiral brood nest occupying separate brood chambers; and(b) filled […]
Alan Wade What do we really know about the social lives of the corbiculate bees we keep, the honey, the stingless and the bumble bees, assuming we are not also keepers of orchid bees?i Quite […]
The facultative eusocial carpenter bee, Exoneurella tridentata. Alan Wade Until recently it was widely supposed that carpenter bees, though possessing exceptionally rich and variable social bee taxa, had no eusocial species. There is new evidence […]
Alan Wade A remarkable feature of members of the social stinging wasp family is that they behave very much like the social corbiculate bees. However to obtain any semblance of how these two social groups […]
Facultatively eusocial great banded furrow-bee Halictus scabiosae:(a) female with pollen on whole body, Toulouse, France;i and(b) contiguous 1-5 queen nests, Geneva, Switzerland.ii Alan Wade Social bees, not honey bees Sometimes we might ponder about how we […]
Muttabuttasaurus when the first social bees emerged.Australian National Museum, 16 June 2023.Photo: Alan Wade Alan Wade In the beginning In the beginning were the insects: And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand […]
Frontispiece Aggregated not social mud wasp nests Alan Wade Combs and narrow passageways are the hallmarks of the social members of the giant insect order Hymenoptera. The ants and social wasps and bees that occupy […]