#saving bees

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[reasonsforhope]

"A Scottish field once home to mono-crop barley has become a pollinator’s paradise after intervention from a local trust saw bumblebee numbers increase 100-fold.

Entitled Rewilding Denmarkfield, and run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the project has also seen a sharp increase in the number of species passing through the rolling meadows after they were reclaimed by dozens of wildflower species.

The area north of Perth is about 90 acres in size, and surveys of bumblebees before the project began rarely recorded more than 50. But by 2023, just two years of letting “nature take the lead” that number has topped 4,000, with the number of different bee species doubling.

“This superb variety of plants attracts thousands of pollinators. Many of these plants, such as spear thistle and smooth hawk’s beard, are sometimes branded as ‘weeds’. But they are all native species that are benefiting native wildlife in different ways,” Ecologist Ellie Corsie, who has been managing the project since it began in 2021, said.

“Due to intensive arable farming, with decades of plowing, herbicide, and pesticide use, biodiversity was incredibly low when we started. Wildlife had largely been sanitized from the fields. Rewilding the site has had a remarkable benefit.”

Similar increases have been recorded in the populations of butterflies, with a tripling in the number of these insects seen on average during a ramble through the field.

The numbers of both insects are now so high that Rewilding Denmarkfield offers bee and butterfly safaris to visitors.

Local residents told the Scotsman that on spring and summer days, the field is awash with color, and hums with the sounds of bees and birds. Even as multiple housing developments expand around the Denmarkfield area, the field is a haven for wildlife."

-via Good News Network, December 2, 2024

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

i liked repairing space bridges

[soapbbox]

Ooough I just know op is gonna take Meg to everyone else and elita is gonna be pissed while bee is just OMG HIIII ITS SO NICE TO SEE YOU!!! Bc that's his friend even if he is evil

That’s one of his first ever friends, of course he’s happy to see him!! Continuing from this comic.

[rooniearts]

The Little Yellow Sidekick Club

[politijohn]

Source

[doomedyurii]

i’m suffering so espio has to suffer too

[michaelnordeman]

Bumblebee/humla. Värmland, Sweden (May 17, 2020).

[fuusart]

THE BRAWN 🏏

[headspace-hotel]

There is so much we don't understand. Springtime, out in the meadow. Everybody all over the dandelions--- flies, ants, tiny bees, even tinier bees so minuscule they're like black and jewel-colored particles without a closer look.

Get down on hands and knees--- you start to see the world. The tiny bees, a glittering blue-green color, slide down between the pollen-coated anthers of the dandelions into the crevices of the petals like miners sliding down into narrow shafts. The big bees make it look so simple. For the tiniest bees, a dandelion is a place more than it is a food. The bee's body is sleek like a suit of armor, and solidly shiny blue-green instead of having the distinctive stripes of many other bees.

Can I learn the name of this bee? To see the bee and to know it, you have to look very silly lying on the ground among the dandelions, looking closely at the things too small to be important. It is a mere particle, just a Bug, rather than a stereotypical fluffy yellow and black bee. It is complex and beautiful; its metallic and glittering exoskeleton, its transparent wings, its articulated and sensitive antennae.

"We have to save the bees, they are important," people say, but if we don't look closely, who is to say what is a bee and what isn't? And when we do look closely, isn't everything important?

[reasonsforhope]

"In 2021, scientists in Guelph, Ontario set out to accomplish something that had never been done before: open a lab specifically designed for raising bumble bees in captivity. 

Now, three years later, the scientists at the Bumble Bee Conservation Lab are celebrating a huge milestone. Over the course of 2024, they successfully pulled off what was once deemed impossible and raised a generation of yellow-banded bumble bees. 

The Bumble Bee Conservation Lab, which operates under the nonprofit Wildlife Preservation Canada, is the culmination of a decade-long mission to save the bee species, which is listed as endangered under the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation...

Although the efforts have been in motion for over a decade, the lab itself is a recent development that has rapidly accelerated conservation efforts. 

For bee scientists, the urgency was necessary. 

“We could see the major declines happening rapidly in Canada’s native bumble bees and knew we had to act, not just talk about the problem, but do something practical and immediate,” Woolaver said. 

Yellow-banded bumble bees, which live in southern Canada and across a huge swatch of the United States, were once a common species.

However, like many other bee species, their populations declined sharply in the mid-1990s from a litany of threats, including pathogens, pesticides, and dramatic habitat loss. 

Since the turn of the century, scientists have plunged in to give bees a helping hand. But it was only in the last decade that Woolaver and his team “identified a major gap” in bumble bee conservation and set out to solve it. 

“No one knew how to breed threatened species in captivity,” he explained. “This is critically important if assurance populations are needed to keep a species from going extinct and to assist with future reintroductions.”

To start their experiment, scientists hand-selected wild queen bees throughout Ontario and brought them to the temperature-controlled lab, where they were “treated like queens” and fed tiny balls of nectar and pollen. 

Then, with the help of Ontario’s African Lion Safari theme park, the queens were brought out to small, outdoor enclosures and paired with other bees with the hope that mating would occur. 

For some pairs, they had to play around with different environments to “set the mood,” swapping out spacious flight cages for cozier colony boxes. 

And it worked. 

“The two biggest success stories of 2024 were that we successfully bred our focal species, yellow-banded bumble bees, through their entire lifecycle for the first time,” Woolaver said. 

“[And] the first successful overwintering of yellow-banded bumble bees last winter allowed us to establish our first lab generation, doubling our mating successes and significantly increasing the number of young queens for overwintering to wake early spring and start their own colonies for future generations and future reintroductions.”

Although the first-of-its-kind experiment required careful planning, consideration, resources, and a decade of research, Woolaver hopes that their efforts inspire others to help bees in backyards across North America. 

“Be aware that our native bumble bees really are in serious decline,” Woolaver noted, “so when cottagers see bumble bees pollinating plants in their gardens, they really are seeing something special.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, December 9, 2024

[yuukirita]

Grief

B-127

Brother

Friend

Warrior

It's not exactly how it happens but Someone asked about Optimus being the one to acidentaly kill Bee so.......

yeah...

the last image IS a scene that happens tho :D

[maneskinwh0re]

[lulla-bee]

let's pretend that this is the most violent they have ever become

[kirsicca]

Looking for residents for Happy Home Hills! 🏡

Open call for sims and/or sim families to move into a hippy community Happy Home Hills in Ravenwood's Whispering Glen! This isn't as much as a community challenge as Take a Hike was, but to simply look for neighbors for certain sims I will be playing on this lot. I won't yet say too much who those people are, but let it be known that the bee🐝 save is involved…. 👀

🏵️What are we looking for?🏵️

Families or singles of 1-8 sims, of all ages and genders and whatnot! No occults but pets are definitely welcome as part of the family.

The whole family should have at least 1 outfit for each category, and they can have as much skills and preferences and jobs as you just want to give them! The richer the backstory, the better!

cc is allowed: maxis mix, no alpha hair, no cc traits or aspirations (other than from the mods mentioned below⬇️)

I use Wicked Whims, Lumpinou’s Relationship & Pregnancy Overhaul Collection and Basemental drugs, so sims can have traits and other features based on them. (Such as wicked attributes, thoughts on kids etc.) Sliders and presets are fine! I have my own defaults so please don’t include any override cc though!

And what comes to dlc packs i own almost every one, excluding Sweet slumber party, Business chic and Sweet allure kits so try avoid using those.

No deadline atm, I'll close the submissions if need be. I'm going to add the families into my savefile as I get them for a natural gameplay. Maximum capacity for families is around 12 so there's room for all! I plan to renovate rest of the Whispering Glen's lots accordingly so there's a lot of flexibility.

Tag #HappyHomeHills and @kirsicca

🌻🌼