A honey bee worker hovers over a flower.
Credit: © Shutterstock

Tomorrow, May 20th, is World Bee Day! This day, designated by the United Nations, celebrates bees and raises awareness of how important bees are to our daily life. Bees and other pollinators are endangered by human activities. Nearly 75 percent of all food crops depend on pollinators. They are necessary for food security and biodiversity throughout the Earth. World Bee Day is a cause to learn more about bees and support causes that protect bees.

Bees are insects that live in almost every part of the world except near the North and South poles. Bees are one of the most useful of all insects. They produce honey, which people use as food; and beeswax, which is used in such products as adhesives, candles, and cosmetics. There are about 20,000 species (kinds) of bees. Only the kinds known as honey bees make honey and wax in large enough amounts to be used by people.

Flowers provide food for bees. The bees collect tiny grains of pollen and a sweet liquid called nectar from the blossoms they visit. They make honey from the nectar, and use both honey and pollen as food. During their food-gathering flights, bees spread pollen from one flower to another, thus pollinating (fertilizing) the plants they visit. This enables the plants to reproduce. Numerous wild plants and such important food crops as fruits and vegetables depend on bees for fertilization.

The rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis).
Credit: © Rich Hatfield, The Xerces Society

Both young and adult bees sometimes fall victim to such diseases as European foulbrood and American foulbrood. These diseases may turn the bees into a gummy, lifeless mass. They are caused by bacteria. Diseases caused by fungi, such as Nosema disease, are also a threat to bees.

Human activities also harm bees. Insecticides meant to kill other insects kill thousands of bees each year. Weed-killing sprays take away an important source of bee food by destroying weeds and their flowers.

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is an unusual condition that destroys hundreds of thousands of honey bee colonies each year in the United States. When a colony is affected by CCD, most of the adult bees disappear from the hive. The colony still contains a queen, immature bees, and honey. Experts are not certain what causes CCD. Mites and agricultural pesticides may contribute to CCD. Pesticides are chemicals used to kill insects and other pests.

April 1, 2020

Today is the first day of April, the fourth month of the year according to the Gregorian calendar, which is used in most of the world today. In the Northern Hemisphere, April is the first full month of spring. (In the Southern Hemisphere, April occurs in autumn.) Many flowers bloom in April, including the pink phlox, a type of garden plant with brilliantly colored blossoms. The profusion of blooming pink phlox gives April’s full moon its name. The “Pink Moon“—the second of three consecutive supermoons—rises on April 7. A supermoon occurs when the moon is at perigee, the point when it is nearest the Earth and thus appears slightly brighter and larger in the sky.

The full moon of April is known as the “pink moon” because of the widespread blooming of pink phlox during the month. Credit: WORLD BOOK illustration

The name April comes from the ancient Roman word for the month, Aprilis. This name might have come from a word meaning to open, or from the name of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love (called Venus in Roman mythology). April was the second month in the early Roman calendar. However, it became the fourth month when the beginning of the year was moved from March to January. On the first of April, April Fools’ Day, people all over the world cause mischief and play tricks on each other.

Many cultures celebrate the arrival of spring, or other aspects of the natural world, in April. Walpurgis Night is a spring celebration held in Germany, Finland, and Sweden on April 30. People there welcome spring with bonfires, singing, and parties. The Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival Sakura Matsuri takes place in April. In the Netherlands, flower parades are held toward the end of April, when the tulips are blooming. Many people plant trees on Arbor Day, which occurs on different dates in different countries. Many nations celebrate Earth Day on April 22. This holiday was organized in 1970 to raise awareness of the environment. The Angolan Feast of Nganja, a celebration of the corn harvest, always occurs in April.

Some cultures welcome the New Year in this month. Nava Varsha, the Nepalese New Year, falls on or near April 13. Several countries in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand, also celebrate the New Year at this time. In Thailand, the holiday is called Songkran.

Chakri Day, April 6, marks the date in 1782 when King Rama I took control of the government of Siam (now Thailand). Matatirtha Aunsi, Nepalese Mothers’ Day, also falls in April. The Christian celebration of Easter often occurs in this month, as does the Jewish festival of Pesah, also known as Passover.

A team of Russian scientists has grown living plants from a flowering plant that died 32,000 years ago. The plant was a type of narrow-leaf campion. Campions, also called catchflies, are a group of flowering plants that have five petals, often cleft or notched (partly divided at the top). Scientists were able to recover fruits of the campion from a squirrel burrow in Siberia, where they had remained frozen for thousands of years. The fruits were collected by an Arctic ground squirrel, which buried them the way modern squirrels do. In this case, the burrow became covered by earth, and the fruits were preserved in permafrost (permanently frozen soil). Scientists recovered the fruits a few years ago and were able to coax cells within them into growing. These cells grew into clones of the long-dead flowers.

Moss campion (far right) is a type of campion that grows in areas too cold and dry for trees to grow. The campion that Russian scientists were able to clone from a frozen seed was a type of Arctic campion. World Book illustration by Kate Lloyd-Jones, Linden Artists Ltd.

The flowers are by far the oldest plants grown from ancient tissue. The previous record was held by a date palm, which was grown from a seed that was 2,000 years old. Seeds usually do not germinate (sprout) after many years.

The scientists tried unsuccessfully to grow flowers from the campion’s seeds. Instead, the researchers were able to grow cells recovered from the fruit. Many plants can grow from tiny parts of a parent, a form of reproduction known as vegetative propagation. The fruits were preserved by the frozen soil. In fact, the fruits were probably frozen shortly after they were buried, because arctic ground squirrels deliberately dig their burrows near frozen soil. In this way, the soil acts as a freezer.

The research will enable scientists to compare the ancient flowers with their living relatives. This work should help scientists understand how the plant has evolved (changed over many generations). The research also raises the possibility that scientists may be able to grow other plants from tissue that has been frozen in soil. It might even be possible to grow plants that have become extinct.

Additional World Book articles:

• Arctic
• Endangered species
• Earth (History of Earth)