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Three hives containing more than 180,000 bees in total were found intact on the cathedral’s roof despite the devastating blaze Following the tragedy of Monday’s fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, news came on Friday of a miracle as sweet as honey. The hundreds of thousands of bees that lived in hives inside Notre Dame’s roof are alive and well, according to the beekeeper, or apiculteur, that oversees them.... ...Three hives that are home to an estimated 60,000 bees each – 180,000 bees in total – are located on a lower roof atop the cathedral’s first floor.

EAST MONTPELIER – Producers of pure maple syrup and honey aren’t sweet on a plan to label their pure natural products as containing added sugars. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be requiring updated nutrition labels for products that are expected to say that pure maple syrup and honey contain added sugars, which the producers and officials say is misleading and confusing and could hurt their industries. "There are no added sugars. Maple is a pure product," said U.S. Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont, the top maple producing state in the country.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence's wife, Karen, has installed a beehive on the grounds of their government residence in Washington. Mrs. Pence says honey bees play an important role in agricultural production in the United States. She says one out of every three bites of food consumed in the U.S. are made possible with the help of pollinators such as bees, butterflies, birds and bats. But managed bee colonies are in decline, posing a challenge to agricultural production. The Pence's beehive has 15,000 to 20,000 honey bees, including the queen bee. Mrs. Pence says honey the bees produce will...

A Texas homeowner found herself in a sticky situation after calling for help with what she thought was going to be a simple roof repair. When roofers went out to Latanja Levine's Houston-area house, they made a startling discovery, according to KIAH. "They discovered there was a bee problem, told me that (they) couldn't do anything on the roof until something was done with the bees," Levine said. Levine said professionals were able to remove much of the hive and close off the bees' access to the home, allowing the roofers to get back to work. But, when Levine returned...

ANCIENT BEVERAGE BREWED IN MILWAUKEE MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN — NPR reports that archaeologist Bettina Arnold of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her research team worked with Lakefront Brewery to try to re-create an alcoholic beverage that had been placed in a bronze cauldron and buried in a grave sometime between 400 and 450 B.C. in what is now Germany. The recipe was based upon the research of paleobotanist Manfred Rösch, who analyzed the residues in the Iron Age cauldron. He found evidence of honey, meadowsweet, barley, and mint—ingredients in a type of beverage known as a braggot.

Brain imaging reveals how neural responses to different types of music really affect the emotion regulation of individuals. The study proves that especially men who process negative feelings with music react negatively to aggressive and sad music.

A bee farmer in Southwest China's Sichuan Province found himself helpless as a wild panda helped itself to honey straight from his hives, media reported on Wednesday. The Baoxing county villager called local authorities Tuesday after he discovered the sweet-toothed panda dipping into 10 box beehives. Authorities arrived to find the panda crouching in the corner, completely absorbed with his desert and undeterred by their presence. "This panda didn't fear people standing a meter away," said Jiang Xiandong, a local official. Concerned about how to handle China's most protected and treasured animal, the nonplussed officials eventually left the panda to...

One of the most unique things about grassroots movements that a lot of people don’t realize is that they have the potential to pick up some pretty incredible, and oftentimes unexpected, allies as they grow in size and scope. Along the way, these new allies lend their own talents, perspectives, advice and more the movement. And sometimes, these allies end up being pretty influential simply by being themselves, as many people have especially noted with celebrities. Most celebrities, love ’em or hate ’em (and love or hate the system for that matter), are one-man or one-woman media outlets with the...

Special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have seized since October illegally imported Chinese honey valued at $2.45 million destined for U.S. consumers. HSI and CBP have stepped up efforts regarding commercial fraud investigations that focus on U.S. economic, and health and safety interests. Anti-dumping schemes create a divergent market that negatively affects legitimate businesses.

A ruthless Mexican girl gang is accused of using their prettiest member to lure men to secluded spots where a female body builder would put him in a headlock so the others could beat him up and rob him. Mexican police arrested the gang of six women who they suspect targeted dozens of men, many of whom were thought to have been too ashamed to report the matter to police. The gang, operating in the popular tourist city Cancun in the southeast Mexican state of Quintana Roo, used attractive Maria Sierra, 20, who targeted single men or at the most...

Anyone with a basic knowledge of how ecosystems work knows how important the role of the humble bee is. But a study suggests that climate change may be making male bees too easily distracted by females to bother carrying out pollination. According to research by the University of East Anglia, warmer springs have resulted in both bees and flowers emerging earlier than usual, meaning they do not coincide with each other. This means that by the time the flowers bloom, the bees are too busy mating with females to help fertilise plants. ‘Warming by as little as 2C causes the...

<p>When Mike Kurtz, a 32-year-old Brooklyn resident, was traveling in Brazil several years ago, he stumbled upon a tiny pizzeria and found chile-infused honey on each table.</p>

One of America’s earliest food crops – almonds – is also one of the most important for commercial beekeepers. Almonds depend on bees for pollination, but the explosive growth of this bumper crop taxes the very honeybees the industry needs to thrive. California’s Central Valley produces over 80% of the world’s almonds, valued at over $4 billion in 2012. The boom is poised to continue, with new food products and expanding overseas markets increasing demand to the point that no young almond trees are available for purchase until 2016. Demand for almonds translates into demand for pollination. So every year...

DIXON (CBS13) — The price of honey has jumped in the last decade, leading to a jump in beehive thefts. That has beekeepers turning to technology to try and stop crooks from taking the hives. Keepers like Phil Hofland hoping the latest technology will sting those thieves trying to make off with the valuable hives. “You can come in here with a forklift and snag—I’ve seen people steal 30,000 to 50,000 in a half an hour,” he said. Beekeepers have always been concerned about theft, and have long tried to develop ways to prevent that from happening. But the age-old...

Digging this summer at the ruins of a 1700 B.C. Canaanite palace in northern Israel, archaeologists struck wine. Near the banquet hall where rulers of a Middle Bronze Age city-state and their guests feasted, a team of American and Israeli researchers broke through to a storage room holding the remains of 40 large ceramic jars. The vessels were broken, their liquid contents long since vanished — but not without a trace. A chemical analysis of residues left in the three-foot-tall jars detected organic traces of acids that are common components of all wine, as well as ingredients popular in ancient...

World famous English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and unrelenting critic of religion and the religious, Richard Dawkins, has turned his anger on airport security rules after he had a jar of honey confiscated. Dawkins, who is no stranger to Twitter controversy following alleged anti-Muslim comments he made back in August, declared on the micro-blogging site that “Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day” after security took away his jar of honey. …

Diesel pollution makes it harder for honeybees to find flowers by changing the chemical make-up of their scent, scientists have found. Honeybees use floral odors to find flowers that will give the best yields of pollen and nectar, but diesel fumes can affect their ability to locate and recognize the plants, potentially affecting pollination and ultimately global food security. British researchers took eight chemicals found in the odor of oilseed rape flowers and mixed them both with clean air, which had no impact on the scent, and air containing diesel fumes. When mixed with diesel fumes, six of the eight...

Magnus von Buddenbrock and Stefanie Giesselbach arrived in Chicago in 2006 full of hope. He was 30, she was 28, and they had both won their first overseas assignments at ALW Food Group, a family-owned food-trading company based in Hamburg. Von Buddenbrock had joined ALW—the initials stand for its founder, Alfred L. Wolff—four years earlier after earning a degree in marketing and international business, and he was expert in the buying and selling of gum arabic, a key ingredient in candy and soft drinks. Giesselbach had started at ALW as a 19-year-old apprentice. She worked hard, learned quickly, spoke five...

Under pressure from Congress and the honey industry, the EPA is ordering an immediate reduction in the use of widely used pesticides, an admission that bug killers approved by the agency are partly responsible for the disappearance of honey bees. The Environmental Protection Agency is changing the labeling on pesticides to reduce their use in fields when bees are present, the first significant concession provided to the honey industry which has reported bee kills of over 50 percent among some commercial beekeepers. It comes too late for many honey bees that pollinated blueberries, nuts and fruit trees earlier this year,...

<p>Oh, pity poor 9/11 defendant Ramzi Binalshibh. The man implicated in the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans and currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay angrily told a judge that during a pre-trial hearing that "there are big problems with the food that was provided — it is a form of psychological torture." Binalshibh's specific complaint? That the government was withholding "condiments such as olives and honey." Binalshibh is accused of having helped finance the 9/11 attackers as well as coordinating their flight training.</p>