Or at least that’s what they tell you at the company’s Bee Care Center on its sprawling campus here between Düsseldorf and Cologne. Outside the cozy two-story building that houses the center is a whimsical yellow sculpture of a bee. Inside, the same image is fashioned into paper clips, or printed on napkins and mugs. […]

ON the first of November, when Mexicans celebrate a holiday called the Day of the Dead, some also celebrate the millions of monarch butterflies that, without fail, fly to the mountainous fir forests of central Mexico on that day. They are believed to be souls of the dead, returned. This year, for or the first […]

The European Commission has taken the strongest action yet in global efforts to protect bee colonies. In May, the commission enacted a two-year moratorium on some uses of some pesticides known as neonicotinoids, which remain in the tissues of plants as they grow and in the pollen harvested by bees. The moratorium is scheduled to […]

Decades ago, young viewers of “Romper Room” were introduced to characters named Mr. Do-Bee and Mr. Don’t-Bee as shoppers were asked to buy Bit-O-Honey candy, Honey Maid grahams and Pine Brothers honey glycerin tablets. And a brand mascot named Buffalo Bee peddled “the most bee-licious cereals ever” with this jingle: “I’m Buffalo Bee, take my […]

UP AT 8 I wake up around 8, and yes, it is in my childhood bedroom. I bought the apartment for my parents a few years ago when the West Village Houses finally went co-op. I could pay rent, but I always think it’s a sucker’s game. I’s like in Europe: We live in a […]

At One Bryant Park last summer, Richard Kohlbrecher, who is allergic to bee venom, first saw hundreds of honeybees darting in and out of the sprawling sedum ground cover on the green roofs he was inspecting. He turned his initial alarm into a housing plan for the secret tenants. “I had never seen that before […]

Developments ENVIRONMENT Poison Pollen Agricultural chemicals may be killing the honeybees that are essential for a successful harvest. Researchers at the University of Maryland and the Agriculture Department collected pollen from commercial beehives and found them polluted with as many as 35 different pesticides, often from fields other than the ones in which the bees […]

Berry J. Brosi, an assistant professor at Emory University in Atlanta, and Heather M. Briggs, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, both in environmental science, studied 20 plots of meadow at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte, Colo., each about 22 yards on a side. With help from a […]

Bumblebees and other insects use buzzing to shake pollen out of flowers for food — and they fertilize flowers along the way. Scientists are exploring this acoustic feat to figure out how it has evolved, and how it helps sustain our own food supply. Flowering plants typically reproduce by delivering pollen to each other to […]

Dave Taft A close-up of a prickly pear cactus flower. N.Y.C. Nature Portraits of local flora and fauna. The flowers of the prickly pear cactus (Opuntia humifusa) are evolution’s answer to a bee’s dreams. They are filled with pollen, abundant in season, and easy to locate. For humans, they are also stunningly beautiful, if ephemeral. […]