OXON HILL, Md.—Fifteen months ago, Dev Shah spent a miserable five hours spelling outdoors in chilly, windy, damp conditions at a supersize regional competition in Orlando, Florida, only to fall short of his dream of returning to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. “Despondent is the right word,” Dev said. “I just didn’t know if I…

SAN DIEGO—The size of a honey bee colony will impact how the colony makes potentially risky life-or-death decisions in the face of changing conditions, according to findings published Nov. 10 by researchers from the University of California–San Diego’s (UCSD) Division of Biological Sciences and Institute for Neural Computation. Working at a UCSD apiary, the researchers—including one from the Westphalian…

A rare species of bee unique to Australia has been rediscovered by a researcher in Queensland. The species has not been seen since 1923 and was thought to be extinct. Known as Pharohylaeus lactiferous, the bee is the only species in the genus Pharohylaeus. A total of only six have been spotted before in Australia,…