Research questions old bee assumptions

Research from the University of Freiburg, Germany, appears to show that bees follow individual flight paths when foraging.

My summary: The waggle dance is imprecise ("there's nectar about X distance away at this approximate bearing") but when an individual bee has found a nectar source it can navigate very accurately to-and-from the source.

Here's one of the diagrams from the paper. 

On the left, the purple lines are next to the green lines. In the middle, the four sets of green lines are labelled blue,
green, orange and yellow. Are you paying attention? Some of the flights are from the hive (outbound) and some of the
flights are to the hive (inbound), which is a relief for all concerned.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)00084-9 

Researchers from the University of Sussex publish new learnings that beekeepers already know

Yep, a study from the University of Sussex has discovered that honeybees struggle to gather nectar in late July and in August. 

In other news, the Pope is said to be Catholic, and ursines are known to defecate in sylvan areas.

Read the research here: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.70429 

A 60-year-old theory about ants, bees and wasps may be wrong

How about this: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260813045552.htm 

In short, being a social insect is probably only partly explained by genetics and may be explained by biology - which is, of course, explained by, er, genetics.

From another context, "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that..."

Asian Hornet in Portugal

Plenty of Asian hornets in Porto, Portugal, buzzing us both in the centre of town and in the botanical gardens.

Waggle dance may be part genetic, part learning

Early research based on a very small sample of five colonies with five control colonies: ecoportal.net/en/experiments-waggle-dancer-found-every-american/30786/

Researchers raised 5 colonies of young bees with no experienced dancer to copy, and the waggle dance those bees invented carried a distance error they never corrected in 38 days of life

Read up on the waggle dance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance

France permits use of acetamiprid and flupyradifurone

Draw votre own conclusions...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/26/french-beekeepers-fury-lifting-of-pesticides-ban