The news reports have been rather breathless. August headlines have rushed to declare salvation, a publicity machine based not just on the Bogaert et al work reported last April and covered in the last Apiarist’s Advocate, but on a newer paper from a UK group[i] led by Elynor Moore, about earlier work on the same project.

Honey bees challenge many of the ideas we have about ageing (imagine doing the most physically demanding work of your life at the very end, or your mother naturally living more than 30 times as long as you…). Science writer Dave Black takes a look at what we know about our honey bees’ ageing process.