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ScienceDaily: Ancient bee fossil found embedded in amber

ScienceDaily: Ancient bee fossil found embedded in amber:

"THACA, N.Y., Dec. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say a 100-million-year-old bee fossil and a DNA study suggest bees may have originated in the Northern rather than the Southern Hemisphere.

The discovery of the ancient bee embedded in amber -- perhaps the oldest bee ever found -- pushes the bee fossil record back about 35 million years, said Bryan Danforth, a Cornell University associate professor of entomology.

Danforth and George Poinar of Oregon State University found the bee embedded in amber from a mine in northern Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

Until now, many researchers believed the most primitive bees stemmed from the family Colletidae, which implies bees originated in either South America or Australia. However, the work by Danforth and colleagues suggests the earliest branches of the bee's evolutionary tree originate from the family Melittidae. That would mean bees have an African origin and are nearly as old as flowering plants, which would help explain a lot about the evolutionary diversification of such plants."

UI busy with several new honey bee studies

UI busy with several new honey bee studies: "Honey bees probably would have been near the top of the list of species whose genes scientists wanted to map even if they weren't so sociable.

They are, after all, the premier pollinating insect on the planet and have a hand in producing billions of dollars in U.S. food crops every year, University of Illinois entomology Professor Gene Robinson said recently.

'It is vital to agriculture and the environment,' Robinson said of the bees' pollinating role.

But it is the honey bee as 'social behavior extremist' with 'one of the most complex animal societies on the planet' that really interests Robinson, who also directs the UI neuroscience program, and a lot of other scientists.

The molecular mechanics of bee brains may tell us something about how genes affect behavior and vice versa, social behavior in particular, and a society itself. Bees' social behavior and society for sure."

UNLV researcher studies the secret lives of honeybees

UNLV researcher studies the secret lives of honeybees:

"The genome project places the European honeybee alongside only two other insects that have had their genetic blueprint mapped, the mosquito and the fruit fly.

Honeybees originated in Africa, Asia or the Middle East about 300 million years ago.

From there, humans carried them worldwide because of their ability to make honey, and they now live on every continent but Antarctica.

Part of that adaptability can be attributed to the honeybee's resistance to different, and extreme, environments.

Honeybees, it turns out, have the same muscle tissue and heat-shock proteins as people, although they use them slightly differently.

When humans are subject to extremely hot temperatures, the body starts producing more heat-shock proteins, which absorb some of that stress.

'I guarantee you, when you get into a hot car, you have a heat-shock response, and so do I,' Elekonich said.

But honeybees can survive temperatures up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit without producing significant amounts of those proteins.

Instead, the heat-shock proteins are produced mostly while the bees are in flight."