The worst thing about having emotional support bees (ESBs), really, is getting them on the plane. Last Thursday was no exception. It was a rough day all around—trying to pack clothes around the hive without getting everything sticky, then arguing with the cab driver about putting bees in his trunk, and then the TSA dude […]
bees
The following was inspired by my recent purchase of the clever and entertaining book, The Bees, by Laline Paull. All characters are fictional and should not be confused with real scientists. I especially ask that no bee researcher take offense, as 80 percent of science writers would shrivel up and die if you stopped talking […]
My commute is the best part of my day. I know this is not normal. I live in the Northeast megalopolis. Commuting means drivers who are great at texting but unfamiliar with turn signals. Commuting means listening to people paid to be “funny” on drive-time radio. Commuting means waiting on a crowded platform for a […]
You remember Bees – Part 1, right? The waggle dance they do to show other bees where the flowers are? If not, go back there and click on those links, which explain everything. I’ve just looked through LWON’s archives and we apparently are preoccupied with bees. Them and corvids. Meanwhile, AG poses another little mystery, […]
A bee really does this little dance — called a waggle dance because it waggles its little butt — to tell other bees where it’s found food. An Austrian named Karl von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for figuring this out. To distract you from making a judgment about whether AG is a dick or […]
Earlier this week I was tickled by a study about dancing insects. European honey bees perform a rump-shaking ‘waggle dance’ in order to tell their hivemates where they’ve found food. The new research showed that when the bees don’t get any sleep, their dance moves become spasmatic and repellent; they clear the floor like a […]
I thought I’d made the case against parasitic wasps with evidence and eloquence. I thought that would be the end of it. But no: counter-arguments were made (even if insects did evolve first, Josie, I can still feel superior), gauntlets thrown down, aspersions cast (you think I didn’t notice “delicate flower,” Heather?), and lines drawn […]