After record losses last year, beekeepers report a warm winter has led to bees ‘waking up earlier’ this year
After a series of record-breaking US heatwaves, the 2026 bee swarm season in North America has started 17 days earlier than last year, pushing beekeepers to adapt to a rapidly shifting season while raising new questions about how honeybees are responding to the climate crisis.
According to a new report published by Swarmed, a tracking network of more than 10,000 beekeepers, focused on safe and ethical honeybee relocation, this year’s unusually early swarm season follows several years of record colony declines worldwide.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/17/2026 - 07:00
05/17/2026 - 05:00
The 2022 World Cup failed to deliver on its environmental promises. From air travel emissions to heat-related dangers, the 2026 edition will be even worse
Soccer fans are increasingly watching preparations for the 2026 World Cup through their fingers. The most popular sporting event on the planet is awash in controversy, whether it’s the eye-watering ticket prices, the question of Iran’s participation while the president of one of the host countries threatens war crimes against it, or the role that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement may or may not play in policing the event. And yet, lost in the political pyrotechnics is a fiasco that carries as much long-term peril as any: the tournament’s staggering contribution to runaway climate change.
The 2026 World Cup is not only the most politically combustible tournament in modern history, but it is also on track to be the “most polluting” World Cup ever, with total greenhouse gas emissions hitting nearly two times the historical average. Scientists conservatively project that the tournament will generate around 9m tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Air travel comprises approximately 7.7m tons of this carbon budget, and more than four times that of the average for tournaments held between 2010 and 2022. The researchers note that the worst-case upper estimate for air transport is about 13.7m tons of CO2. That may sound bad, but that’s just because World Cup emissions have never been worse.
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05/17/2026 - 03:00
Despite the ban on disposables, waste professionals say the mountain of discarded devices is a £1bn-a-year issue
It is 2pm and Ana, 47, has just started the afternoon shift at the Suez recycling plant near Birmingham city centre, standing beneath a sign reading “Non-ferrous sorting station” with a bucket of vapes in front of her. Sorting and dismantling them is part of her job as a site operative.
Recycling them is not simple. Each bucket holds between 40 and 50 devices, and over the course of a shift, she gets through about half a bucket. Using a hammer, she has to smash each vape open, pry out the batteries and separate each component into a different container.
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05/17/2026 - 01:00
Eden Project founder wants to inspire councils to build community gardens so young people can grow vegetables
Local councils should “rip up asphalt” to build community gardens so young people can grow vegetables, a co-founder of the Eden Project has said.
Tim Smit, who opened the giant biomes in Cornwall in 2000, has designed an “edimental” garden for the Chelsea flower show with the landscape designers Harry Holding and Alex Michaelis. The concept behind it is that plants such as cabbages and strawberries are beautiful but edible and should be placed alongside traditional bedding plants.
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05/16/2026 - 22:35
Rivers around the world are quietly running out of oxygen — and climate change is emerging as the main culprit. A sweeping global analysis of more than 21,000 river systems found that nearly 80% have been steadily losing dissolved oxygen over the past four decades, threatening fish, biodiversity, and the overall health of freshwater ecosystems. Surprisingly, tropical rivers are being hit the hardest, even more than rivers in rapidly warming polar regions.
05/16/2026 - 12:22
Humpback had been found deceased on Friday after rescue attempt criticised as ‘pure animal cruelty’
Timmy the whale has been confirmed dead by Danish authorities two weeks after the beached humpback was transported to the North Sea in a rescue attempt criticised as “pure animal cruelty”.
Denmark’s Environmental Protection Agency said a whale had been found dead on Friday near the small island of Anholt in the Kattegat, a broad strait between Denmark and Sweden, and confirmed it was Timmy on Saturday.
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05/16/2026 - 07:00
The centers are diverting much-needed resources from regular people. Local resistance has the industry playing defense
Back in 2016, Marco Gutiérrez, the Mexican-born founder of Latinos for Trump, issued an ominous warning to the US. “My culture is a very dominant culture,” he said on MSNBC. “It is imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”
A decade later, I regret to inform you there is not a taco truck on every corner. But I am here to issue my own ominous warning about the takeover of America: not by immigrant culture but by AI culture. To echo Gutiérrez: it is imposing and it’s causing problems. And if we don’t do something about it, we’re going to have datacenters on every corner.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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05/16/2026 - 07:00
With Punta Marina residents loving or loathing the incomers, ‘peacock rangers’ have been appointed to defuse tensions
Federico Bruni was sitting on a bench, eating a piadina romagnola (flatbread sandwich) and minding his own business, when a peacock strutted up in the hope of a few crumbs. High-pitched squeals emanated from the direction of a disused military barracks across the road. “That would be the call to love,” Bruni said. “The male peacocks are courting the female ones – we’re in peak mating season.”
As another couple of peacocks wandered by, their iridescent trains sweeping the pavement behind them, this could be mistaken for a wildlife park. But the scene is Punta Marina, a seaside town on the Adriatic coast of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region that has been colonised by the birds, to the delight – or despair – of its approximately 1,000 residents.
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05/16/2026 - 06:45
Mohamed Mahudhee suffered decompression sickness after searching for scuba divers in Vaavu Atoll and died in hospital
A Maldivian military diver has died during a high-risk operation to recover the bodies of four of the Italian scuba divers who drowned while exploring a deep underwater cave in the Maldives.
The diver suffered underwater decompression sickness after searching for the bodies of the Italians who, according to Italy’s foreign ministry, had “apparently died while attempting to explore caves at a depth of 50 metres (164ft)”.
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05/16/2026 - 06:00
Enthusiasts say mycology offers connection, nourishment and a deeper tie to the land – and the African diaspora
On her typical walk in the woods in Newton, Massachusetts, something stopped Maria Pinto in her tracks. She spotted what appeared to be a glowing yellow figure with a metallic sheen among the pine needles on the ground. It was the first time Pinto was enthralled by a mushroom – the American yellow fly agaric, a poisonous fungus that is relatively common where Pinto lives in Massachusetts.
“It forced me down on my knees to examine it further, because it didn’t look real,” Pinto, a naturalist and writer, said. “It looked like it was from another dimension.” On that day in 2013, she captured the mushroom from dozens of angles on her phone.
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