A closer look at the medical applications of honey, another recipe, bee behaviour, Japanese beetles, a big collections of bugs, and pawpaw trees.
The BeeWire
- Waikato Honey Research Unit: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Waikato. This website contains a profusion of medical honey information—including a nice summary of the MRSA article previously mentioned here.
- Broiled pork tenderloins with a honey-chipotle glaze: A recipe from the Boston Globe.
- ‘Humans, bees share risk-taking mechanism’: “The researchers [at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University] discovered that people are more prepared to gamble on risky action rather when the differences between the various possible outcomes are well defined. However, if the different outcomes are hard to distinguish, they are much more likely to select a safe option, even if the probability of the risky choice failing has not changed at all.” For reasons that aren’t immediately clear, the team also tested honey bee behavior in these two situations, and concluded “that people and bees use the same decision-making mechanism and make the same mistakes when they have to decide between a sure reward and a bigger, but riskier reward.”
- No Scent, No Sex For The Japanese Beetle: Aided by Michael Klein, “UC Davis chemical ecologists, led by Walter Leal, have isolated, identified, cloned and expressed a pheromone-degrading enzyme” that could ultimately prevent the procreation of Japanese beetles.
- UK’s largest insect department opens doors: To celebrate (British) National Insect Week, the Entomology Department at the Natural History Museum (London) is having an open house today and tomorrow. The public has access to “a staggering 170,000 drawers” containing “28 million insect specimens [that] have been gathered over the last 300 years.”
- Pawpaw tree making a comeback: “Ohio State University Extension researchers at OSU South Centers at Piketon are teaming up with the Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association to help establish a pawpaw industry in Ohio, not only as a landscape species but also as an additional fruit crop.” Don’t forget to mark your calendars for the Tenth Annual Ohio Papaw Festival this September.
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