"Bee rustlers have been an expensive problem for beekeepers in countries like Britain and New Zealand, where secondhand hives can sell for $300 each on the black market. But until recently, there has been relatively little news of bee rustling in the U.S."

In case you missed it, the bees of Brooklyn enjoy maraschino cherry juice. It's a funny old world.

"Tropical Storm Irene moved through New York City on Sunday knocking out power, causing flooding in some neighborhoods and knocking over many trees. In one corner of Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, the storm also set off a fight — over bees. In a gale wind from the storm, a hollowed-out branch of an enormous tree was ripped off, exposing a hive of 30,000 to 40,000 honeybees. The hive’s discovery was a jackpot for the beekeeping community and word spread quickly on Facebook and Twitter that a feral hive was up for grabs. Two beekeepers jumped at the chance to claim the bees, unknowingly setting off a feud between [...]

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This is actually pretty cool: how bumblebees fly.

"An organism on your back that's about the size of a dinner plate, which creates a hole through which it can feed and through which its family can feed. The hole doesn't seal up—they drink blood through it and inject viruses into it." —Dr. Giles Budge from the National Bee Unit in Yorkshire, describing the human equivalent of the Varroa destructor, the parasitic mite that has been a major factor in the worldwide decline of the European honeybee over the past decade (often referred to as "colony collapse disorder.") Scientists have developed a methodology called RNA interference to combat the mites, introducing genetic material that will cause their [...]