Evidence for declining populations of both wild and managed bees has raised concern about a potential global pollination crisis. Strategies to mitigate bee loss generally aim to enhance floral resources. However, we do not really know whether loss of preferred floral resources is the key driver of bee decline because accurate assessment of host plant preferences is difficult, particularly for s...

Bees pollinate most of the world's wild plant species and provide economically valuable pollination services to crops; yet knowledge of bee conservation biology lags far behind other taxa such as vertebrates and plants. There are few long-term data on bee populations, which makes their conservation status difficult to assess. The best-studied groups are the genus Bombus (the bumble bees), and b...

BACKGROUND Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a key regulator of pathogenic angiogenesis in diseases such as cancer and diabetic retinopathy. Bee products [royal jelly (RJ), bee pollen, and Chinese red propolis] from the honeybee, Apis mellifera, have been used as traditional health foods for centuries. The aim of this study was to investigate the anti-angiogenic effects of bee produc...

In this paper, we present a new Artificial Bee Colony algorithm to solve the non-unicost Set Covering Problem. The Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is a recent metaheuristic technique based on the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bee swarm. Computational results show that Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is competitive in terms of solution quality with other metaheuristic approaches for the...

Here we report the cases of five patients with a late onset of acute urticaria after a bee sting. The ages of the five Japanese patients ranged from 33 to 86 years (median: 61). All patients had no history of an allergic reaction to bee stings. The onset of urticaria was 6-14 days (median: 10) after a bee sting. Although four of the patients did not describe experiencing a bee sting at their pr...

Crabgrass overview Crabgrass was introduced to the United States in 1849 for use as a forage species. The majority of its forage production in Georgia occurs between mid June and early September. Crabgrass can produce relatively large amounts of high quality forage, but is an annual and must produce seed to persist. Pure stands of crabgrass have reportedly produced three to five tons of forage ...

Bermuda grass [Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers.] is a major forage for grazing and hay production in the southern United States. The objectives of this study were to determine effects of nitrogen (N) fertilization rate (0, 112, 224, 336, and 448 kg ha−1), split spring and summer applications of N at the 224 and 448 kg ha−1 rates, and harvest periods (spring and summer) on forage yield, crude protein...

California sea lions increased from approximately 50 000 to 340 000 animals in the last 40 years, and their pups are starving and stranding on beaches in southern California, raising questions about the adequacy of their food supply. We investigated whether the declining sea lion pup weight at San Miguel rookery was associated with changes in abundance and quality of sardine, anchovy, rockfish ...

Many field experiments require the collection of forage yields in addition to grain yield (small grains). ln smal! plot research, mechanized grain harvest is common. However, forage harvest is often accomplished by hand which is time consuming and labor intensive. Sample heterogeneity increases when forage harvest is obtained by hand. The objectives of this study were to construct a mechanized ...

OBJECTIVES The current study was performed to compare the bee venom pharmacopuncture skin test reactions among groups with different sexes and Sasang constitutions. METHODS Between July 2012 and June 2013, all 76 patients who underwent bee venom pharmacopuncture skin tests and Sasang constitution diagnoses at Oriental Medicine Hospital of Sangji University were included in this study. The ski...