Talk:Bee

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	Bee has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result July 16, 2015 Good article nominee Listed February 26, 2026 Good article reassessment Kept
	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on August 9, 2015. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that as flowers developed longer tubes, bees (pictured) coevolved by developing longer tongues to extract the nectar?
Current status: Good article

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The redirect Specialization in bees has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 November 28 § Specialization in bees until a consensus is reached. cogsan _{(nag me) (stalk me)} 11:48, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If bees vanished what will happen 2600:6C67:4AF0:5F00:88CE:895A:7646:A286 (talk) 03:42, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it would be disastrous, but this talk page is not a forum. The article Pollinator decline describes some of the likely consequences. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:29, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Content has been merged from another page, now placing it within the context of a spectrum of chemical stressors and harm to bees, from most to least significant. The section is called 'Chemical stressors and environmental exposures'. Please don't alter the title as it reflects full scope of the underlying issues.Astral highway (talk) 09:39, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for merging. However, any title with "and" in it is automatically doubtful, as it suggests two subjects in one section, which implies a lack of focus. A single title is nearly always preferable. Why, for example, would "Exposure to chemicals" not be just as good, or indeed better? Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:49, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for the thumbs up on the merge. You have a valid point. I'm minded to meet you halfway with 'exposure to chemical stressors'. I want to keep intact at source the idea that it's not just chemicals passively out there, they are stressors on bees. Could we go with that? Astral highway (talk) 10:38, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Right, let's do that. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:45, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good conclusion all round Astral highway (talk) 10:49, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You revert my edit on what Karl von Frisch said on a specific means of orientation, gravity. (This is in his old Nobel Lecture, which I've been familiar with in its primary text form for years, and repeats the content in the book cited.) When you say "polarization patterns are used under cloudy skies, inside a dark beehive" that is missing the point of the edit and is not right. KVF explains that when gravity no longer provided a directional reference, bees became confused and danced in random directions. This is what showed that gravity is essential for orientation within the dark hive, where the sun cannot be seen. That is what you have removed in your edit. It doesn't unconfuse the reader, it misleads on the landmark experiment.Astral highway (talk) 15:01, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is clear, thank you, unlike the previous edit which was incomprehensible even to those who already knew the waggle dance story.

The issue with giving detail here is that it uniquely concerns the honeybee, not other social bees and not any of the solitary bees either. It thus risks worsening the already large conflation of "bee" and "honeybee" in readers' minds. We must take great care, therefore, not to give WP:UNDUE weight to honeybees in this group article. I had kept all mentions brief for this reason, and will trim this mention as necessary. The matter is covered in much more detail already at Honeybee, and at Waggle dance. Chiswick Chap (talk) 01:50, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]