Eddy's Good News: The triumphs of Canada and the buff tailed bumblebee

Virgin Radio

9 Oct 2023, 10:09

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Be sure to listen each day between 10am and 1pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Tuesday 10th October 2023

How many great Canadian things or people can you think of? In a recent poll, it was discovered that the majority are unaware of Canada’s many triumphs, making them one of the most underrated countries in the world.

OK we probably all know that Alanis Morissette is Canadian, and that they invented maple syrup…but did you know they invented peanut butter? I know, right!? Mind-blowing! Most people either don’t know or just plain forget that people like Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Ryan Reynolds or Mike Myers aren’t American, they’re Canadian.

So in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, here are the top ten things you probably didn’t know were Canadian:

1. Insulin
2. The Pacemaker
3. Peanut butter
4. Alkaline batteries
5. The Walkie Talkie
6. Hockey
7. Basketball
8. Keanu Reeves
9. Leonard Cohen
10. Pineapple on a pizza (so they also invented something incredibly controversial and divisive)

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org

Researchers at the University of Exeter have discovered that despite humans being apex predators and doing clever things like inventing the internet, we are not the most successful animal at fighting the invasive asian hornet, that would be the buff tailed bumblebee. Yellow legged asian hornets are a huge problem for beekeepers in the4 UK and Europe.

Here over a thousand beekeepers across the UK are part of a network of ‘Hornet Hunters’, they track them back to their nests then report them to DEFRA who have a dedicated team that destroy the nests. This admirable effort notwithstanding, researchers monitored 120 hornet attacks on bumblebees and in every single case the bumblebee won the fight. Either by sheer persistence or by grabbing the hornet and dragging it to the ground just by stopping their wings, these amazing bees have a 100% success rate against these big bullies but we still need to help as much as we can because this must be incredibly draining for them and UK asian hornet numbers were at an all time high this summer.

More than 1,000 beekeepers across the country are part of elite teams trained to provide emergency support to the National Bee Unit's (NBU) hornet hunters. Hornet sightings are filtered by the NBU, part of Defra, and teams of bee inspectors deployed to track hornets back to their nests which are then destroyed.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org