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Monday, January 12, 2026

Extreme heat waves disrupt honey bee thermoregulation and threaten colony survival

University of Chicago Press Journals

Although honey bees have the ability to regulate hive temperatures, new research published in Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology shows that extreme summer heat can overwhelm these critical pollinators' cooling systems, leading to significant colony population declines.

The research in “Negative Effects of Excessive Heat on Colony Thermoregulation and Population Dynamics in Honey Bees,” conducted during a hot Arizona summer, monitored nine honey bee colonies through three months of temperatures that frequently exceeded 40°C (104°F). The results indicate that intensifying heat waves worldwide represent a significant threat to honey bees and the pollination services they provide.

"Honey bee colonies have well-documented mechanisms to cope with heat exposure," write authors Jun Chen, Adrian Fisher II, Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, Cahit Ozturk, Brian H. Smith, Jennifer H. Fewell, Yun Kang, Kylie Maxwell, Kynadi Overcash, Keerut Chahal, and Jon F. Harrison. "However, there have been no studies to date that have assessed the limits of such thermoregulation or how natural heat waves affect the capacity of honey bees colonies to thermoregulate and grow."

The research team discovered that while colonies maintained average brood temperatures within the optimal 34-36°C range necessary for healthy development, significant daily temperature fluctuations still occurred. Developing bees in the brood center experienced nearly 1.7 hours below optimal temperatures and 1.6 hours above them each day. Conditions were even more extreme at the brood edges, where young bees spent almost 8 hours per day outside the optimal range.

These temperature swings had measurable consequences. Higher maximum air temperatures and greater temperature fluctuations within hives led to population declines. The study found that "excessive heat, with maximal temperatures exceeding 40°C, can reduce colony populations by impairing the thermoregulation of brood or by exposing adults to temperatures that shorten their lifespans."

Colony size emerged as a critical factor in thermal protection. Larger colonies maintained more stable internal temperatures, with the smallest hives experiencing daily temperature swings of up to 11°C at the outer edges compared to 6°C in the largest colonies. This enhanced stability meant that developing bees and adult workers in larger colonies spent far less time exposed to potentially harmful temperature extremes.

Beyond Arizona, "Climate projections indicate that global average temperatures could rise by approximately 2.7°C by the end of the century, with potential increases up to 4°C under higher emission scenarios," the authors note. Such warming would intensify heat wave frequency and severity worldwide. Additionally, high humidity may compound these challenges in many regions. The authors note that "high humidity significantly reduces the effectiveness of evaporative cooling—the primary mechanism honey bees use to regulate hive temperatures—potentially making thermoregulation even more difficult."

The research has practical implications for beekeepers and agricultural systems that depend on honey bee pollination. The authors suggest that implementing effective management strategies, such as supplemental water provision, shading of hives, improved hive structure and materials that provide greater insulation, and ensuring high-quality forage will become increasingly important to mitigate impacts of high temperatures and maintain colony stability in a warming climate.

Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology primarily publishes original research examining fundamental questions about how the ecological environment and/or evolutionary history interact with physiological function, as well as the ways physiology may constrain behavior. For EEP, physiology denotes the study of function in the broadest sense, across levels of organization from molecules to morphology to organismal performance and on behavior and life history traits.

Journal

Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology

DOI

10.1086/739493

Article Title

Negative Effects of Excessive Heat on Colony Thermoregulation and Population Dynamics in Honeybees

INDIA

‘Save Last Honey Bee Before Human Existence Inches Toward Extinction’

D N Singh | 09 Jan 2026

Botanists in Odisha are trying hard to promote beekeeping, as the impact of pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change lead to their disappearance.

The forests, once resonating with the music of chirping birds, rustling leaves, humming of insects and animal steps, have gone silent.

Forests are disappearing fast, rivers drying up, the homes of millions of species are in total jeopardy, to say the least. In the altar of development, these are being sacrificed for over a century. Every tree felled is just not wood lost, but a feather of heritage being plucked.

None other than, perhaps, scientist Albert Einstein predicted that with the end of the last honey bee from Earth, human existence too would come to an end.

Although this quote from Einstein remains unconfirmed, going by a post from USDA published in Natural Resources Defense Council. However, the threat to insects is seemingly growing faster than ever thought, as in all the spheres of the Earth, insects are on rapid decline. Both the creeper and the feathered species.

Amid all this lies a question: why are the homes of bees being taken away, and how can they escape extinction?

While the real-time numbers vary, Odisha has thousands of beekeepers, with significant efforts by bodies like the Odisha Khadi Board and the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) training hundreds of farmers, and pioneers, such as Bikash Patra, empowering over 30,000 rural individuals, showing a growing, but still developing, beekeeping sector focused on tribal and rural livelihoods.

In late 2025, CSIR-NBRI trained 78 farmers in Koraput and Sambalpur and distributed 350 hives, notes a Facebook post from CSIR & National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI).

The Odisha Khadi Board and CYSD supported 60 farmers with training and equipment in Keonjhar, with plans to reach 600 farmers.

Tribal Focus

Traditional tribal communities in Odisha have long collected honey, and efforts now focus on integrating modern techniques for better income, as detailed by The New Indian Express.

The most notable beekeepers in Odisha include Dr. Patra, a scientist leading the stingless bee revolution, and farmer-entrepreneurs like Bijay Kumar Bir, known for his successful Minibala Beekeeping Unit and training initiatives, and Rajesh Biswal (Mahua Mitu), a young guide in honeybee cultivation, all championing sustainable, profitable apiculture

Modern technology and monoculture have destroyed 75% of the world's biodiversity. The number of beneficial bees is decreasing rapidly. Einstein warned the people, "When the last bee disappears, there will be no human society “.

Biologists have identified one million species of insects on the planet. Insects are the most abundant in the Kranti (turmoil) region. Because they get more food there. Their number may be 10 times more than scientists have calculated. Amid the destruction going on for the past 100 years in the name of development, these tiny creatures are being sacrificed in large numbers.

Insects and moths play a significant role in the balance of biodiversity. Moths are more or less found all over the world. Scientists have realised that their protection is essential for the well-being of mankind and the protection of nature.

India is one of the 12 biomes on the planet. Some species of these insects and moths help in the reproduction of fruits and seeds of plants. This process of reproduction is called pollination.

Birds, butterflies, bees, flies, bats, moths, small and large insect species do pollination. The fruits or seeds of plants can be pollinated in two ways. Pollination and angiosperm. Some species like cassava, potato, yam and banana are propagated by the vegetative process.

There are two types of pollination -- self-pollination and cross-pollination. Rice, wheat, maize, barley, oats, millet, and small grains reproduce by self-pollination. About 85% of the fruits and seeds of plants are produced by cross-pollination. Most fruits or seeds of flowering plants are produced by pollination. This work is done by insects like bees, bats, butterflies, and moths. Botany experts say that about 2% of plant reproduction is done by wind. As much as 73% pollination of cultivated or wild plants is done by bees. Isn’t this enough to understand the miracle of honey bees?

Simply put, the disappearance of bees would be devastating – from a biological, societal and economic standpoint. If we lose bees, we lose far more than honey; our crops, ecosystems and food systems all depend on their pollination. There is no species on earth, including us, that can do their job.

“When bees fly from flower to flower and suck honey, pollen sticks on their legs, hair and wings. The male carries pollen from the flower and sits on the female flower and collects honey, while the pollen gets stuck on the stigma of the flower. There is a tube from stigma to the stigma. When the pollen reaches the uterus through the tube, it becomes fertilised. The uterus then swells and produces fruits and seeds. Bees collect honey from about 700,000 species of plants that have been identified. There are about 60,000 species of bees in the world” Natabar Sarangi, a veteran botanical researcher and nature lover., told this writer.

We know that wild bees or tiger bees (wild bees), seven-horned, stinging, scorpion, and cored bees are some species. No bee is predatory. When some creatures like humans, bears, and foxes eat honey from the honeycomb, the bees become restless. Some of sting in self-defense. Engineer Amit Godse, founder of the Baskot Foundation in Mumbai, holds a tiger bee honeycomb in his hand and takes care of them. "We are afraid of bees without understanding them," he says. "We set fire to them to get honey. They attack us and sting us", he adds. Humans need to revisit the world of bees.

What Humans Must Learn From Bees

The Odisha Khadi Board is doing beekeeping promotion and propagation work. If you see the work of bees up close, you will be amazed. What an architect, craftsperson, an engineer is each of them! The way they make foam from wax, build cells is amazing.

All the cells are the same. Perfect measurement. Each has a queen bee, who is 2/3 times bigger than the worker bee. The humpback moves like an elephant. Thousands of worker bees guard it. Bees are a beautiful creation of nature. A bee can collect 100,000 times its weight in honey in a year. For this, three lakh flowers are required. They fly long distances and return to their hives with honey and pollen. Timeliness, discipline, and team spirit should be learned from them.

Why is the number of bees decreasing so rapidly? Why do hundreds of pumpkin flowers or lotus flowers bloom but no fruit remains? Why do farmers go to war with seed sellers? Answer: Chemical agriculture, green revolution and pesticides.

Diminishing Honey bees

In many parts of the world the decrease in the honey bee population can be simply attributed to the modern methods for better yield of produces, be it fruits, vegetable, grains, flowers and many other things.

Honey bee populations globally face significant threats, with alarming losses reported, averaging around 40% annually in the US, though numbers fluctuate, and some regions see concerning drops, like a potential 70% loss in 2025 predicted by some researchers, alongside regional declines in Asian honeybees and threats to native species.

Overall trends point to unsustainable losses driven by mites, pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change, impacting food security and biodiversity.

There are significant figures showing honey bee declines in many Asian countries, especially for the native Apis cerana (a native honey bee specie), with some reports indicating over 50% decreases in occupied hives and honey production in regions of Nepal, and widespread severe losses in countries like Thailand, South Korea, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, though some Asian nations like China and India have somehow managed bee populations increase due to commercial beekeeping.

“Also figures on honey bee decline in Odisha exist, with a significant 2017 study in Koraput and Rayagada districts showing four out of five native bee species declined by up to 90%, highlighting severe losses impacting crops like mustard, brinjal, and cucumbers, though precise state-wide, recent numbers remain difficult to pinpoint due to data gaps, emphasising impacts from pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change”, says S N Patra, a botanist.

Until 1840, indigenous farming was done on the Earth, with ploughs. land was fertilised by applying manure and fertilisers. Farmers used to sow indigenous seeds and harvest crops. In 1840, John von Liebig invented chemical fertilisers. Farmers in Europe and America poured fertiliser instead of manure on the land. Soon pests and diseases started destroying crops. Pesticides were sprayed on the land. The bees, too, began to die in the process. In 1934, Swiss chemist Hermann Muller invented DDT, which helped control pests in crops”, but also affected bees, laments Sarangi.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Odisha with over 40 years’ experience in the profession.

Tuesday, January 06, 2026

House sparrows in northern Norway can help us save other endangered animals

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

image:
The house sparrow is about 15 centimeters long and weighs about 25–35 grams. It has brown and black striped upperparts and gray undersides. The male has a black throat patch and gray skullcap, while the female has a brown skullcap.
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Credit: Photo: Thor Harald Ringsby, NTNU

Researchers are trying to understand why some wild species do better than others over time, as the environment changes.

Researcher Kenneth Aase's research focuses on a new mathematical approach that could shed light on this question, which in turn could move us closer to understanding the loss of biological diversity. Aase is a statistician and a PhD research fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU's) Department of Mathematical Sciences. He is associated with the GPWILD project, funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant. The project involves using biology and mathematics to understand more about a species' adaptive evolutionary potential, and relies on genetic and body data from tens of thousands of house sparrows who live in the northern Norwegian district of Helgeland.

Why house sparrows?

House sparrows turn out to be the perfect critter for research like Aase’s.

"Because our island populations are small and delimited, they are exceptionally well suited for research. Biologists can record and follow almost all individual sparrows from birth until they die,” Aase said.

NTNU researchers at the Department of Biology and the Gjærevoll Centre have been studying these house sparrows for more than 30 years, and have an enormous database of information, he said.

"They can investigate what affects their survival, and how many young they have. We have been collecting such data for over 30 years, and have produced long-term datasets that are both unusual and completely invaluable. They help us understand the consequences of changes in the environment, as well as genetic and ecological development over many generations,” he said.

And what’s more, “what we learn is transferable to many other species,” he said.

Genomic prediction as a tool

Aase’s work focuses on a technique called genomic prediction, or GP.

This is a statistical method for finding out how an individual's genes affect a trait in an individual or a human being. The trait can be anything that can be measured, such as height, illness, or body weight. The method can be used to predict how much yield a grain plant can yield, or whether a person is genetically predisposed to certain diseases, Aase said.

"The method can also tell us whether the genes of a given house sparrow will give it a higher or lower body weight. This is important for the sparrow's ability to survive. GP is widely used in plant and animal breeding, but so far it has not been used much in research on populations of wild animals and plants,” he said.

As the researchers have gained more and more access to genetic material from wild populations, Aase and his colleagues, led by Professor Stefanie Muff, will investigate how useful the method can be in ecology, evolution and conservation biology.

From a training group to an individual

All of this genetic information enables the researchers to use hundreds to millions of genetic markers spread across the genetic material, and link them to measurements of the trait from a “training group”.

The statistical model works even if the trait they’re interested in hasn’t been measured in the given individual – it is enough to have measured it in the training group.

"As long as we have information from the same genetic markers in both the training group and the individual, we can calculate how the genes affect the trait. The accuracy depends in part on how many individuals are in the training group, the number of genetic markers, and the heritability of the trait,” Aase said.

Tested in different populations

The researchers wanted to know how accurate their statistical model would be if their training group consists of sparrows from a different population than the individuals they were interested in.

“This is important in order to be able to investigate crucial natural processes in new and more efficient ways. For example, we can save a lot of fieldwork, because the researchers do not need to obtain measurements of traits from each individual population they are interested in,” Aase said.

Here’s where the house sparrow data from Helgeland was perfect for the researchers to test their model on.

"In the new study, we used measurements of body traits from wild house sparrow populations from islands along the Helgeland coast. Because the islands are more or less clearly separated, we could answer the research question by making predictions across different islands and archipelagos,” Aase said.

Aase and his colleagues found that making predictions with a training group from one sparrow population for other, different sparrow populations in the islands didn’t work as well as when they made predictions with a training group from the exact same sparrow population.

"We found that predicting across different populations works less well than within populations. This was expected, based on previous studies in breeding and medical research. However, we were the first to demonstrate this in wild populations. We also provided new insights that can be useful for improving GP across populations,” he said.

Wild populations challenging

The technique of using GP was developed for use with domestic animals, where researchers have access to all the genetic information they need. That’s not always the case with wild populations, Aase said.

“For us statisticians, perhaps the biggest challenge is that field datasets are often incomplete. We do not always get genetic data or measurements of all individuals. In addition, we usually do not have data from controlled trials, for example because environmental conditions change over time and space,” he said.

"Studies of wild animals are often exploratory rather than confirmatory. There are few such thorough and long-term studies of wild populations in the wild, but the house sparrow data made this new study possible,” he added.

That’s where the Helgeland house sparrow data offer clear advantages, because it is almost complete, he said.

"As a statistician, I am fortunate to have the data served on a silver platter by the biologists I collaborate with at the Gjærevoll Centre and the Department of Biology at NTNU. They have been working on collecting this unique dataset for more than three decades. So there is a lot of field and laboratory work involved before I get to play with the end result,” Aase said.

"In addition to data from the house sparrow populations, I also use computer simulations where you can test model assumptions. My everyday life is spent programming statistical analyses. For the most challenging computations, I use NTNU’s supercomputer IDUN,” he said.

Facing the “sixth mass extinction”

Natural resource managers and conservation biologists need to know how changes in the environment, either from a warming planet or from loss of habitat – or both – will affect wild populations.

That’s where using GP as a tool can make a difference, Aase said.

"Climate change and increased land use mean that many populations of wild animals and plants are exposed to increased external pressure and faster environmental changes. Understanding both the genetic and ecological consequences of this is necessary for nature managers and conservation biologists to be able to prioritize measures, such as which populations need protection and how,” he said.

"GPs can tell us about how viable individuals are under given environmental conditions. Thus, it can be used to reintroduce or strengthen populations. This knowledge also helps to increase our basic understanding of natural processes, and how evolution actually plays out in nature,” he added.

In this way, “studies of house sparrows in populations along the Norwegian coast can help us preserve populations of other species that are threatened with extinction due to the changes we humans make in nature,” he said.

The world is facing a biodiversity crisis, where human activity is causing what is called the “sixth mass extinction”.

“If we want to stop this development through targeted measures, we need both good analytical tools and basic knowledge about how evolution in nature works. I would also argue that there is an intrinsic value in such a basic understanding,” Aase said.

From house sparrows to Svalbard reindeer

As he proceeds with his PhD research, Aase will continue to investigate how genomic prediction can be used in wild populations.

“In GPWILD, we're going to put these questions into a broader framework. The project will work with several other animal species, such as Svalbard reindeer, deer from Scotland, arctic foxes, and several bird species,” he said.

But he isn’t quite done with house sparrows just yet,

"Currently, I am working on an applied study where GP is used to investigate how certain genetic processes affect the fitness of the house sparrow,” he said.

Reference:
Kenneth Aase, Hamish A Burnett, Henrik Jensen, Stefanie Muff, How accurate is genomic prediction across wild populations?, Evolution, Volume 79, Issue 12, December 2025, Pages 2612–2628, https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpaf202

Aase's academic article was as an "Editor's Choice" article for December in the academic journal Evolution.

The house sparrow feeds on grains, seeds and insects, but also eats leftovers, buds, flowers and berries. It often visits bird feeders in winter.

Credit

Photo: Thor Harald Ringsby, NTNU

Helgeland has many islands - with their own limited populations of house sparrows. This makes the region particularly suitable for research. Biologists can record and follow the life cycle of almost all individual sparrows.
Credit
Photo: Hamish Burnett, NTNU