By: Brandon Keim

A controversial type of pesticide linked to declining global bee populations appears to scramble bees’ sense of direction, making it hard for them to find home. Starved of foragers and the pollen they carry, colonies produce fewer queens, and eventually collapse.

By: Susan Milius

What does not kill them does not in fact make them stronger when it comes to bees and pesticides. Two unusual studies with free-flying bumblebees and honeybees find that survivable exposure to certain pesticides can lead to delayed downturns in bee royalty and a subtle erosion of workforces.

By: Marian Lyman Kirst, High Country News

This December, the Xerces Society celebrated its 40th anniversary. Not bad for a group that champions the spineless.

By: Mary Flaherty, The San Francisco Chronicle

Monarch butterfly naturalist Adrienne De Ponte had a surprise waiting for her this fall when she arrived in the San Leandro grove where she’s been leading tours for 11 years.

After witnessing fewer and fewer butterflies appearing each autumn to overwinter in the grove, this year she found 5,000 of the orange- and -black butterflies clustered in the eucalyptus trees – up from 3,000 at their peak last year.

By: Associated Press, The Washington Post

Dozens of farmers in California and other states have started replacing some of their crops with flowers and shrubs that are enticing to bees, hoping to lower their pollination costs and restore a bee population devastated in the past few years.

By: Rachel Nuwer, The New York Times

“If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change,” the biologist E.O. Wilson once wrote. But if invertebrates were to vanish, he said, “I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months.”

By: Daniel Newberry, Jefferson Public Radio

The state of Jefferson is home to one of the oldest species on earth, yet relatively little is known about it. The black petaltail dragonfly (Tanypteryx hageni) is a member of a dragonfly family that predated the dinosaurs.

By: Kathy Keatley Garvey, UC Davis, Western Farm Press

Franklin’s bumble bee on edge of extinction

By: Paul Fattig, Mail Tribune

Agency seeks to put Franklin’s bumblebee on endangered list

Published by Environment News Service

HONOLULU, Hawaii, September 8, 2011 (ENS) – Listing for seven species of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees as endangered is warranted, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined, but the listing “is not possible at this time due to higher priority actions,” the agency said. The Service has added these seven species of Hawaiian bees to its candidate species list.