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Upcoming Events: CANPOLIN's final AGM will be held in conjunction with the Entomological Society of Canada Annual General Meeting at the University of Guelph, October 20-23, 2013. Stay tuned for more details!
News from CANPOLIN: CANPOLIN Researchers in the News
“Thieving" Bees Serve as Window to Health of Bee Communities
Bees in Space: Will Bees Pollinate an Extraterrestrial Crop?  CANPOLIN researchers determine that bumblebees can forage at atmospheric pressures as low as 50kPa, which means they may someday be used during long term space missions to grow plants. CANPOLIN Launches New Website on Crop Pollination
Click here to explore the website. CANPOLIN Hosts Workshop on Pollination and Land Rehabilitation On September 29 & 30, CANPOLIN hosted a workshop in Columbus, Ohio, dedicated to exploring the role of pollination in land rehabilitation. This event provided a timely and valuable opportunity to assess the current state of knowledge and to identify research priorities. Approximately 30 pollination biologists, conservationists, and restoration ecologists from academia and non-governmental organizations participated. The final report from the workshop is available here.
Fungus Fights Deadly Bee Mites in a Two-Pronged Attack
 Secrets of the Museum: Historical Insect Collections Reveal Several Bee Species in Decline A new study of North American bumble bees by CANPOLIN researchers has identified 11 species indecline and recommends immediate conservation efforts for the most endangered species.
Cross-Atlantic Researchers Collaborate on Analyzing CANPOLIN mathematicians and their colleagues in the European research Network STEP (www.step-project.net) joined forces for a three day workshop at Aarhus University in Denmark August 22-24, 2012 to address
Bees + Math = x ? This years Annual Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Biology, being held July 26 in Knoxville, Tennessee, will feature a mini-symposium on bees and pollination. Presentations Further information is available from the Society's website
Special Issue of Botany Showcases CANPOLIN Research A special issue of the journal Botany is set to showcase to the world the multipronged-approach that Canadian researchers are bri Read the full press release here Botany (July 2012), vol.90 no. 7
Watch the video on CBC news here.
Last week, the 2012 Muskoka Environmental Summit brought together prominent scientists and influential policy makers to discuss critical questions about biodiversity and the environment.
Bees are remarkable among insects. They can count, remember human faces, and communicate through dance routines performed entirely in the dark. But are they intelligent? Even creative? Bee aficionado and former CANPOLIN writer-in-residence Stephen Humphrey, along with a hive of leading bee researchers and scientists, investigates the mental lives of bees on the CBC radio program "Ideas".
Disease
spread from commercial greenhouses,
Bees in the Neighbourhood WG5 Research Associate Tom Woodcock was featured on the CBC radio program Ontario Today, where he advised gardeners how to deal with ground nesting bees. To listen to the interview, click here
WG7 Launches New Monitoring Tool for Pollinators eButterfly is a new online interactive Lepidoptera database that invites contributions from butterfly enthusiasts across the country. The data will help researchers understand and mitigate impacts of global change on Canadian butterfly diversity, and help conservation biologists decide where conservation efforts should be focused. Read the full press release here or connect straight to eButterfly.ca
CANPOLIN’s Pollinator ID Course held at the Canadian National Collection in Ottawa wraps up! This year’s course was highly successful, with 19 students from various institutions attending five days of bee and five days of syrphid identification. We received very positive feedback on this year’s course and our thanks goes out to everyone for their participation. Tremendous gratitude as well to instructors Chris Thompson and Jeff Skevington (Syrphids), Corey Sheffield and Jason Gibbs (Bees), and TA’s Andrew Young and Michelle Locke, whose expertise was invaluable in making this year’s course a worthwhile experience.
In the News: WG4 Researcher David Greene discusses the impacts of a warming climate on pollen allergies
Read the full article in the Montreal Gazette
Read about new developments in pollinator biovectoring in field and greenhouse crops in a recent article in The Grower. 
CANPOLIN researcher Elizabeth Elle discusses British Columbia's native bees and their importance to BC agriculture in "Profitable Pollinators"
New Audio Bee Booth Installed at Greenway Blooming Centre  With financial support from TD Friends of the Environment, NSERC-CANPOLIN is pleased to have facilitated the installation of an “Audio Bee Booth” at Greenway Blooming Centre, a CANPOLIN partner. The Audio Bee Booth is an amplified nesting cabinet which provides habitat for wild solitary native bees (which are not social insects such as honey bees or bumble bees) while providing an accessible window to the public to enhance our understanding and appreciation of our local pollination ecology. Aesthetically compelling, immersive and informative, the Audio Bee Booth melds habitat interpretation, bio-art, sound-installation and sculpture, providing a unique public outreach and education tool.
CANPOLIN Hosts Joint Canadian-Latin America Crop Researchers from NSERC-CANPOLIN met with their Latin-American counterparts at a workshop held in Cholula, Mexico, on June 30. The workshop, held in conjunction with the X International Symposium of Pollination, was designed to bring together pollination experts to assess the state of knowledge on pollination on crops of mutual interest, and to establish a foundation for future collaborative research. Funding for the workshop was provided by NSERC’s Strategic Network Enhancement Initiative.  Participants at the Crop Pollination Workshop held at the Cholula Ethnobotanical Gardens.
CEC Urged to Consider Importance of Pollinators  Melanie McCavour, an associate of CANPOLIN at Concordia University, was invited to speak to federal environment ministers of Canada, Mexico and the United States about importance of
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Laurence Packer is interviewed by 
A recent study by CANPOLIN researchers offers a new perspective on how to judge the health of bee communities: use cleptoparasitic bees as ecological indicators. Cleptoparasitic bees or "cuckoo" bees don't collect pollen, instead parasitizing the nest of other bees. Their dependence on other species makes them especially useful in evaluating the health of the overall bee community.
NSERC-CANPOLIN is pleased to announce the launch of a new website dedicated to best management practices for crop pollination in Ontario. The site is packed with information about pollinators and plant mating systems, and how to maximize pollination and production in over 35 crops. The website was created with the financial support of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the University of Guelph through the Knowledge Translation and Transfer (KTT) program. Seeds of Diversity is hosting the website.
Bee researchers at the University of Guelph have found that fungi used in the biological control of Varroa mites may protect bees by both infecting the mites and preventing suppression of the bees' own immune response.
the important topic of how to interpret and analyze data from plant and pollinator network studies. This workshop featured a day of public presentations, followed by two days of brainstorming sessions and identifying joint projects. The workshop was hailed by all participants as a great success, and will result in a real synergy between the two research groups. 
include "Modelling plant-pollinator interactions with mixtures of linkage rules" by WG5 grad student Liam Callaghan, and "On honeybees, varroa destructor,and deadly diseases: A mathematical approach" by WG2 researcher and symposium
nging to the study of pollination biology. The journal's July issue features articles from NSERC-CANPOLIN researchers examining topics that range from the effect of flower structure on pollinator activity to the impacts of recent climate change on pollinator ranges.
Feeding honey bees double stranded RNA can protect them against the destructive Deformed Wing Virus, a pathogen linked to colony losses.
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