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The story of New York’s red honey struck a chord with those already concerned about honey bee health. Bees have been hit hard by a host of challenges ranging from parasitic mites to neonicotenoid pesticides—but could red honey be another sign of bee decline? Could artificial flavors and chemicals in human foods be toxic to bees? Could we be at risk if we eat “local honey”?

The post High-fructose honey and the diet of urban bees appeared first on OUPblog.

I don't review many early chapter books, but I requested this one from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. because it's published by Candlewick Press (always a plus), and Eliza Wheeler's cover illustration sealed the deal.

• Cody's an average kid - Mom works in a shoe store, Dad's a truck driver, she argues with her older brother Wyatt, though it's clear that they love each other.
• Cody is positive and decisive.
• Her new found friend, Spencer, is an African-American boy with a super hip grandma. (The percentage of African American characters in early chapter books is rather slim, so this is a plus.)
• Cody's mom and dad are positive role models.
• Eliza Wheeler's illustrations are simple, soft, and expressive.
• Spoiler alert! Mom gets a promotion at the shoe store. 

     "Want to go to the dog park and pick what dog we'd get if only we were allowed to get a dog?"
     Wyatt put his hands over his eyes.
     "No?" said Cody.  "How about we look for rocks and have a rock stand and use the money to buy a skateboard?"
     Wyatt slowly got to his feet.  He was very tall and skinny.  If he were a building, he'd be a skyscraper, but a droopy one.
     "Silencio," he said.  He toppled back into bed and pulled the covers over his head.  "You are causing me pain.  A big fat pain in my cerebral cortex."
     "Do you want some tea?"
     "No, Brain Pain. I want you to disappear.  Preferably forever."
     "I can't," said Cody.  "I promised Mom to take care of you.  I never break a promise."

I learned a lot about insects this last summer because my son is fascinated by them. We watched documentaries together and paged through books. Once, in a fit of unrealistic ambition, I checked out the pulitzer-prize winning book by E. O. Wilson — entitled, simply The Ants, and approximately the size of a one-story house. We did little more than look at the pictures, though I found an almost Kabalistic calm in reciting the names of the many, many genera and species. I was as awed by the scope of scholarship as I was awed by the mighty conquerors themselves.

Ants, you know, are pretty amazing creatures. They build cities and keep slaves and herd livestock. They adapt to and thrive in practically every environment and will, I am sure, outlive us primates.

And they are eusocial animals, every one of them completely given to the colony. Even the queen is essentially a population generator, so if you imagine an antennaed tyrant presiding over her minions, you’re wrong. The queen ant is a single mom with a million children. Being an ant is no picnic.

I find myself peculiarly envious of this life strategy; this absolutely ego-less society, so harmonious it is called a superorganism, each colony functioning as a single mind and entity. I know, I know. I’m supposed to be horrified, but when you become a naturalist you abandon moral judgments.

Anything I learn about fills my brain with ideas for stories and a desire to read all the existing stories on that topic, and so it was with ants. Somewhere in the brief foray into Myrmecological fiction I came across a wondrous story by Ursula K. Le Guin, which serves as Aesopian fable, as well as a pastiche of anthropology and linguistic scholarship. It feels like an idea that could have been a full-scale novel, a Watership Down style epic. It is a gem, one of many in a brilliant career.

And yet, I find myself scratching my head at the premise. The author (and here, I mean the imagined author within the metafiction of the story, not Le Guin) sees the extremely successful and beneficial organizing principle of her kind to be a kind of villainy, one which she must vainly struggle against.

Is this a parody of dystopian novels, which always show (left, right, or center) a lone egoist chafing against political oppression? Or does LeGuin, like all futurists and fabulists, recoil at the idea of a eusocialism, so offensive to our core values of egoism and individualism?

She’s a good enough writer that I’m not sure, but I feel like there should be a counter-fable for once, showing an ant hill depleted by individualism, each hoarding its seed, cutting off the tunnels from others, shuttling its waste into the next ant’s nook, quite forgetting that their future depends upon one another.

I do love a book full of holes.

Tights with holes? No thank you.

A bike tyre with a hole? What a pain.

But a book with holes? Yes PLEASE!

There are some all-time classic books with holes in them: Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar and the Ahlbergs’ Peepo. More recently there’s the exuberant Peck, Peck, Peck by Lucy Cousins, which I adore. But a new contender to join the ranks of honourably holey hits is It’s an Orange Aardvark! by Michael Hall.

The tale of a small colony of carpenter ants chewing holes in a tree stump, this book covers everything from learning about colours and similes to group dynamics and animal biology. It’s a wonderfully enjoyable read which explores both curiosity and fear. It really packs a great deal within its covers at the same time as being a visual and tactile treat.

A band of formic brothers are creating holes in their stump to look out on the world outside their home. One is enthusiastic to see what lies beyond their threshold. Another is terribly worried about the dangers that lurk beyond their known and safe world. As they make each window their stump is flooded with colour. What could be the cause of this? Is it something to embrace and delight in or could it be a threat?

The naysayer is convinced there is an existential threat to them all in the form of an aardvark waiting to gobble them up. As each different colour floods the stump, this poor ant must come up with increasingly outrageous explanations; could it really be a (blue) pyjama-wearing, (red) ketchup carrying, orange aardvark guiding a group of green geckos?

With a hint of Klassen-style ambiguity in the ending (what really was the source of all the colour?) this book is full of delicious tension, punctured with lots of humour as well as holes which let the colour flood from one page to the next. The bold illustrations appear to be made from collage, mixing watercolour and tissue paper. The torn edges suggesting the tree stump sides give an additional handmade, personal feel to the images, and the use of black and grey pages ensures the colours sing and pulse as they shine through.

The somewhat American language (“Sweet!”, “Neat!”) may niggle some readers elsewhere in the world but this is a small price to pay for such an inventive, enjoyable read. I do hope it will be released as a board book so that it can be fully explored with the fingers, hands and mouths not just of aardvarks but also of the youngest book devourers.

Taking the lead from the concentric rings of colour flooding through each hole as it is created in the tree stump, we used tissue paper circles of various sizes to create suncatchers which explored colour depth. You can buy ready cut shapes of tissue paper, but we used regular sheets and cut out a series of circles of various sizes using plates, bowls and mugs as our templates.

We layered our circles over a sheet of contact paper large enough to then fold back over the concentric circles to enclose them entirely in see-through plastic. An alternative would have been to use laminator sheets, if you have ones which are larger enough for your largest circle.

Once a we had a selection of coloured tissue paper/contact paper circle sandwiches we stuck them on our patio doors and let the light flood through them.

Whilst making our concentric sun catchers we listened to:

Other activities which would go well with reading It’s an Orange Aardvark! include:

What’s your favourite book with holes in it? What’s the most annoying (non book) hole you’ve ever discovered?

Disclosure: I was sent a review copy of this book by the publisher.

EXCUSE ME, BUT I DO BELIEVE AN ANT’S IN MY PANTS!

There is an excellent chance that a situation such as this could cause a wee bit of anxiety and might even make a person feel, ahem, well… darn right antsy.

So one must remember to remain calm. You see, the attention span of an ant is quite short so feigning nonchalance is best. In roughly 10 to 15 minutes the novelty of wearing  your jeans will have warn off. The bored ant will soon run along to find spilt milk or some sugar to walk through.

Possession of your pants and your sanity, regained!

Maybe.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Reworked an old bit of silliness in honor of the ant trails now taking over our home. They might as well be giant, as intrusive as they are.

Oh well, at least the flies (Amityville Horror) are gone.

Bugs, eh? So rude!

When I was walking Rascal this morning, I noticed a bunch of ants on the sidewalk, all gathered around a piece of candy. My mind flashed back to last night. I was sitting at an outdoor concert, put down my pop can beside me on the ground, and before I knew it, the ants were swarming onto it.

If only it were that simple to attract readers!

Here are some methods, some of which I admit to be lax about, some I do faithfully.

1. Updated website - I confess to not getting around to changing mine in a while.
2. Personal and/or group blogs - I belong to quite a few. That's good and bad, because I can't focus on them all at once.
3. Social networks - I pay more attention to Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, although I'm also on
others.
4. Egroups - I belong to quite a few, try to keep up with them, but usually don't succeed
5. Updated Amazon Author Central Page - Yes, I've done that
6. Using KDP Select program at Amazon - No, because my books are all over the place and it would be too hard to reign them in. I plan on trying it for my next book.
7. Blog Book Tour - Yes, I've done that for each book.
8. Book Launch Party - Yes, I've done that each time I have a book in print. The last one was for Forever Young: Blessing or Curse. It took a while since I made it available as an ebook first. The one for Killer Career was the opposite, since I put it in print first.

What about you? Do you use any of these methods, or can recommend others?
What works best for you?

By Corina Logan

It’s 4:00 am and I can’t believe I’m (just barely) awake. Not only that, but I have to go out there in the cold and rain. It’s so cold! I’m in the tropics – it’s not supposed to be cold in the tropics. I pull on my clothes (quickly, while still hiding under the covers), grab my gear, and head out into the darkness. I hurriedly walk up the muddy path; time is of the essence. I find the trail into the woods, which is marked with flags, and I hike across the hilly terrain through the dense tropical forest, arriving at my field site about 30 minutes before dawn – just in time. I go over to the army ant nest (called a bivouac because it is made from the interlocked bodies of the ants themselves) and look for activity, being careful not to step near any ants (I learned that lesson a couple of days ago when I decided that I could watch the ants while wearing trainers and not Wellington boots. Ouch. The soldiers have very strong mandibles and they leave a pheromone trail on you which attracts more soldiers by the masses). Just a few ants milling around outside of the hole. I walk about 5 meters away and sit down on a piece of plastic so I stay dry, then I open my umbrella above me. I hold as still as I can while searching the darkness around the army ant nest with my bare eyes and binoculars. My prize? Bivouac-checking birds.

I happened upon bivouac-checking birds when I agreed to be a field assistant for Sean O’Donnell, a professor at the University of Washington (now at Drexel University). We spent a month in a high-elevation Costa Rican cloud forest (which is why it was so cold) studying army ants and the migrating birds that come to the tropics over the winter and eat insects that flee from the thousands of army ants raiding through the forest. After we got to our field site, Sean told me about the bivouac-checking behaviour that is performed by some of the birds that attend army ant raids. After foraging at the front of the raid, some birds follow the column of army ants that connects the raid front to the bivouac (the column is a two-way highway: ants at the raid front bring prey to the bivouac and then return to the raid front to collect more prey) from the raid front to the bivouac and check the location of the bivouac. Then they fly away. The next morning when the ants start raiding again (after retreating to their bivouac for the night), usually just after dawn, these birds will come back to check the bivouac again: if the ants are already raiding, the birds will follow the ant column to the front of the raid for another meal, and if the ants are not yet raiding, then the bird flies to another army ant colony that it is tracking to check their raiding status.

For a biologist, this is a very interesting behaviour because it appears that some birds are able to track army ants in time and space which allows them to consistently encounter abundant food resources, which are patchily distributed throughout the forest making army ant raids difficult to encounter by chance. At this point I was a biologist but I was preparing to start a PhD in experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of animal cognition expert Professor Nicola Clayton. I had read some of Nicky’s papers on episodic-like memory (the ability to remember the what, when, and where of a personal experience) and future planning in western scrub-jays (a bird in the big-brained crow family) by the time I joined Sean in Costa Rica so I was starting to also think in terms of psychology. What struck me about bivouac-checking bird behaviour was that it looked like these birds might need to remember the past event of checking the bivouac location (episodic-like memory) to be able to return to the bivouac the next morning to see if the ants are raiding (planning for a future meal). This seemed like it could be a perfect system for merging my past in biology with my future in psychology. Had I not been exposed to both fields before I went to Costa R

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Congratulations to Melanie Mitchell, who received the 2010 ΦBK Science Book Award for her book Complexity: A Guided Tour! In honor of this, Michelle and Lauren talk with Mitchell about ants, robots, the economy, and more.

Melanie Mitchell is Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University and External Professor and Member of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute. Her research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning and complex systems.

Subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes!

From the Phi Beta Kappa Society:

Amazing feats of collective intelligence, such as the colony of army ants that link themselves together to cross daunting precipices, are having an unconventional effect on the future of science. The “complexity” of these naturally occurring events cannot be explained by the traditional method of breaking science down into its most basic parts, in this case, the individual army ants. Instead, the study of complex systems, those made up of simple components with limited capacity for communication, provide a much broader illustration of the science of self-organization and adaptation.

In Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press, 2009), Melanie Mitchell draws on her background as a computer scientist and her work with the Santa Fe Institute to study the complex systems that have evolved in nature and how they may contribute to the future of computer programming, specifically with regards to artificial intelligence. Mitchell also looks at the human brain’s ability to create consciousness from a complex network of electrically charged neurons, axons, and dendrites, as well as the immune system’s unique collection of cells, which work together in an effective and efficient way without any central control.

The song featured in this podcast is “In the Middle” from the album Can’t You See by The Ben Daniels Band. Get it here.

Ant update: the ants are - wait for it! - GONE.

I've never, in all my years as a renter or a homeowner, had to hire an exterminator. I only have vague recollections of one or two exterminators coming to any of the apartments my mom and I lived in when I was a kid. Exterminators were people you saw on commercials, or in movies with gimongous cockroaches that refused to vacate the premises. Exterminators weren't people I needed to know.

Until this summer.

I tried everything I could. Scratch that: WE did. Because Joe was my partner in this. He did more than his fair share. He's the one who started by filling spray bottles with the vinegar and water mix. He cut down the Weed that Won't Die, like, a dozen times. He's the head of Grounds Maintenance here, because grass is my biggest allergen and every single time I mow the lawn I get sick. (It's true! I once had a friend who couldn't do dishes because the skin on her hands was so sensitive that she was allergic to dish soap AND rubber gloves. So someone always had to do dishes for her. It *sounds* convenient, but it's really not!) But yeah, he really was by my side during the Battle of the Ants.

So we started out with the vinegar and water stuff. We tried a bleach and water mixture. At one point, I had half the kitchen covered in cinnamon, trying to create barriers so that I could make dinner without having to deal with ants. It was during this period that we solicited opinions via Facebook and learned about Terro. Terro reduced our ant population significantly, but once we removed the Terro baits (after two and a half weeks - the box says two should be more than enough), a stubborn faction kept on returning. So we bought two dozen conventional traps and set them up in the kitchen and bathroom (more on this in a bit). This was when we discovered the holes near the poorly installed cabinets - holes I tried to shim with cinnamon sticks (since ants hate cinnamon). When both of those measures failed to produce results, we decided to give in and hire an exterminator. In the interim, I set out more Terro baits to at least localize the ant population so I could, you know, cook in my kitchen.

Friday, at 1:30 p.m., the exterminator arrived. He works for Maguire Professional Pest Control, based out of Claymont, DE. My mom uses him and recommended his company. We were not disappointed. The exterminator was in and out in less than twenty minutes, and at least five of those was spent telling us about his bloodhound and how everyone loves his dog and he hates little dogs (Skitty was out of earshot, thankfully) and yeah.

But what I really wanted to write about was some of the wisdom I've acquired about ants, so that some of you may benefit from my experience:

1. Ants seek out water. This is why you find them in around the sink and in the bathroom.

2. Ants seek out food - any food. This is why, when you're having an ant problem, you must adopt a No Crumb Left Behind policy. You must also rinse your dishes before putting them into the dishwasher (though, ahem, I think when you have an older dishwasher, like we do, you should ALWAYS rinse the dishes) and you must never EVER leave dirty dishes in the sink. This provides a buffet for your ants, and will keep them strong and healthy.

3. Terro is great ... if you don't have a massive ant population. Joe calls it ant crack, because they will descend on your liquid dots of death as if they were possessed. But if you have an out-of-control ant population, this won't do the trick.

4. Traditional ant traps are pretty much useless, unless your ant "problem" is so small it doesn't even warrant a trip through Terro Land. But if you're stuck on using them, go with

Laurent Keller is Professor of Ecology and Evolution, and Head of the Department of Ecology and Evolution, at the University of Lausanne. In 2005 he was awarded the E. O. Wilson Naturalist Award. Elisabeth Gordon is a freelance journalist and writer. Together they wrote, The Lives of Ants, which provides a state-of-the-art look at what we now know about these fascinating creatures, portraying a world that is rich and full of surprises, and still full of unsolved mysteries. In the excerpt below we learn a little bit about ants in human culture.

Since time immemorial, human beings have been fascinated, amazed, intrigued, and captivated by ants.  And yet, at first glance, there is nothing particularly attractive about the tiny creatures.  Unlike butterflies, they don’t have wings with vivid colour patters; they cannot boast the iridescent wing-cases seen on many beetles.  Nor do they produce things which human beings like to eat or wear, such as honey or silk.  They don’t even chirp or sing like crickets or cicadas; and, unlike bees, they never go in for dancing.

They do, however, have other characteristics which, in their way, are much more remarkable.  For one thing, their social arrangements are quite extraordinary, almost unique among living creatures, and have often been compared to human society.  William Morton Wheeler, the founder of American myrmecology, wrote in Ants (1910): ‘The resemblances between men and ants are so very conspicuous that they were noted even by aboriginal thinkers.’  For another thing, ants are not only efficient, they are hard-working and thrifty, qualities which have always seemed like good reasons for seeing them as virtuous role models.

In c. 1000 BC, King Solomon recommended them, in the Old Testament, as models of wisdom: ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest’ (Proverbs 6:6-8).  The same way of seeing them turned up centuries later in La Fontaine’s fable ‘The Cicada and the Ant’.  They are also mentioned in the Koran, which presents them as a highly developed race of beings, and in the Talmud, again as synonymous with honesty and virtue.

The Greeks, too, Aristotle, Plato, and Plutarch, for instance, praised these social insects as wise and clever.  The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder devoted a whole chapter of his Historia naturalis to them, expatiating on their bravery and strength.  He even mentions ants as big as dogs found in India or Ethiopia: they acted as guards outside gold-mines and killed any men who attempted to make off with the precious metal.  These accounts are of course closer to fiction than to fact; but they do attest to the human appeal of ants, as well as to the fears they could engender.  These figments of Antiquity’s imagination show that there was an awareness of how aggressive the insects could be.  But what was uppermost in the ancient world’s appreciation of ants was how they could communicate with one another, devise their division of labour, and construct nests of such architectural complexity – which the natural historian Aelian compared to palatial residences.

The effect of these tiny creatures on human imagination was such that they inspired many a myth and became incorporated into belief systems.  The Dogon peoples of West Africa saw them as the wives of the god Amma and the mothers of the first humans.  They were also central to traditiona

Samuel Johnson, The Idler 88, "Idleness", 18 November 1758:

But Idleness predominates in many lives where it is not suspected; for being a vice which terminates in itself, it may be enjoyed without injury to others; and is therefore not watched like Fraud, which endangers property, or like Pride, which naturally seeks its gratifications in another's inferiority. Idleness is a silent and peaceful quality, that neither raises envy by ostentation, nor hatred by opposition; and therefore no body is busy to censure or detect it.

Dr. Dornhaus is breaking new ground in her studies of whether the efficiency of ant society, based on a division of labor among ant specialists, is important to their success. To do that, she said, “I briefly anesthetized 1,200 ants, one by one, and painted them using a single wire-size brush, with model airplane paint — Rally Green, Racing Red, Daytona Yellow.”

After recording their behavior with two video cameras aiming down on an insect-size stage, she analyzed 300 hours of videotape of the ants in action. She discovered behavior more worthy of Aesop’s grasshopper than the proverbial industrious ants.

“The specialists aren’t necessarily good at their jobs,” she said. “And the other ants don’t seem to recognize their lack of ability.”

Dr. Dornhaus found that fast ants took one to five minutes to perform a task — collecting a piece of food, fetching a sand-grain stone to build a wall, transporting a brood item — while slow ants took more than an hour, and sometimes two. And she discovered that about 50 percent of the other ants do not do any work at all. In fact, small colonies may sometimes rely on a single hyperactive overachiever.

(via Jenny Davidson)

SOLD

2 - ACEO sized pieces (so, altogether its 2.5 x 7)
Polychromos on bristol board

Bloody ants, I swear. I also knitted an homage to them, and blathered on about my traumatic experience here.

I accidentally used 400 series bristol board instead of 500 series illustration board because when I pulled a new piece to cut, I pulled the wrong thing. But it didn't matter. There aren't too many layers, and the bristol had just enough tooth.

Tomorrow is another day, hopefully ant-free! (and thanks anyway Wendy Edelson for the tip about using cinnamon or cayenne, which worked for a while, but when they're set on an invasion, nothing will stop them...)

To see all the Yarn pieces in this series side-by-side, please go here. Or visit my ebay store to see which are available for sale.
All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.