Bees are your most ignored life partner. I heard recently that if bees were to disappear, we'd have about four years to find an alternative or humans would die off.
Last night, right at the deepest part of dusk, I saw an extraordinary thing as I was watching a sugar maple as I listened to the Yankees lose in 13 innings on the radio through the rolled down car window. It was swarmed by honey bees. But it was not in flower. This being June, the whole of the green world is packed with sweetness and the air was full of it last evening. I think the bees thought the whole tree was a flower and they were looking for the mother lode of nectar that must have been there. The were not swarming in a pack but spaced out, one to each leaf or two, animating the entire tree.
Comments
gary - June 24, 2007 12:26 pm
I am reminded, Alan, of 'Eric the Half a Bee' from Monty Python
A one... two-- A one... two... three... four...
Half a bee, philosophically,
Must, ipso facto, half not be.
But half the bee has got to be
Vis a vis, its entity. D'you see?
But can a bee be said to be
Or not to be an entire bee
When half the bee is not a bee
Due to some ancient injury?
Singing...
La dee dee, one two three,
Eric the half a bee.
A B C D E F G,
Eric the half a bee.
Is this wretched demi-bee,
Half-asleep upon my knee,
Some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric the half a bee!
Fiddle de dum, Fiddle de dee,
Eric the half a bee.
Ho ho ho, tee hee hee,
Eric the half a bee.
I love this hive, employee-ee,
Bisected accidentally,
One summer afternoon by me,
I love him carnally.
He loves him carnally,
Semi-carnally.
The end.
Cyril Connelly?
No; semi-carnally!
Oh.
Cyril Connelly.
[whistling]
Gorthos - June 24, 2007 4:30 pm
I have heard a different side of things related to bees that I think hold some water. Prior to we people inhabiting this land, there were no apiaries. There were also invariably not so many honeybees. Most bees that are in apiaries are european strains. Without semi-domesticate apiary bees, only wild bees will thrive as they have for innumerable millenia. Others flying critters will also pollinate in lieu of the foreign bees because they eat nectar and seek it out quite handily.
All in all, short term evolution will produce more other flying critters as there will be more nectar to go around (lacking the competition from the flying invasive species known as honeybees).
Methinks that the four years warning is just fear mongering brought about by the beekeeping folk to encourage some sort of gvernmental payout or at least governmental assistance in keeping their business afloat.
My epipen and I welcome the mass extinction of bees.
Mike - June 25, 2007 7:56 am
This could well be your most beautiful, nature-is-poetic-(you-know-what-I-mean)-sense post ever at GenX40. And the Yankees lose. Well done.
There's a big, lone sign as you drive from NB into NS warning against the importation of honey bees (no warning signs relating to any other industry). How many vehicles have turned themselves around at this point, we may never know but the sign displays the awesome power of the NS beekeeping industry. Misguided anarchists may deride 'Big Honey' but where would we be without it?
Alan - June 25, 2007 8:00 am
He is who is against honey is against life.
Mike - June 25, 2007 9:07 am
Hmm, you could rename this "A Good Bee Blog".
Chris Taylor - June 25, 2007 3:42 pm
I am okay with eradicating the entire <i>Hymenoptera</i> order including bees, wasps, ants and sawflies.
Got stung by a single fire ant at the beginning of June and the stings produced these gigantic red pustules the size of a thumbnail. It looked like I was growing two extra nipples out of the crook of my elbow. They took about three weeks to go away and there is a little scarring from where the skin was most irritated. I've been stung by a whole nest of yellowjackets and they were no more painful than a mosquito bite. No pustules either.
Since the whole stinging insect mess is related to fire ants, I say death by association. Science can breed a better honey bee without stinger-modified ovipositor.
gorthos - June 25, 2007 11:15 pm
Chris is my new best friend. Nice response old bean.
In honour of his post, I destroyed an entire three hives of some sort of scary blackish bee things hanging inside my shed precariously above my Briggs and Stratton grass cutting device.
I was promptly stung by a deerfly. It too died.
w00t
portland - June 27, 2007 12:25 am
dude,
not kidding. i saw the same thing tonight. the hornbeam at the school. it was buzzing. very cool. not seen anything like it before.
Alan - June 27, 2007 8:07 am
I say this whole bee crisis is them packing it in. Some Martin Luther Bee spread the word to go sniff the maples and it's ruined bee society forever.
Mike - July 20, 2007 3:37 pm
Latest buzz. Important bee conference going on in northern NB. Researchers swarming there from as far away as Pennsylvania. Things are looking up for the bees, too, you'll be glad to know.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2007/07/20/nb-beeconference.html