My dad has bees. Today, I went to his house and he showed me all the honey he had gotten from the hives. He took the lid off a 5-gallon bucket full of honey and on top of the honey there were 3 little bees, struggling. They were covered in sticky honey and drowning. I asked him if we could help them and he said he was sure they wouldn't survive. Casualties of honey collection I suppose.

I asked him again if we could at least get them out and kill them quickly, after all he was the one who taught me to put a suffering animal (or bug) out of its misery. He finally conceded and scooped the bees out of the bucket. He put them in an empty Chobani yogurt container and put the plastic container outside.

Because he had disrupted the hive with the earlier honey collection, there were bees flying all over outside.

We put the 3 little bees in the container on a bench and left them to their fate. My dad called me out a little while later to show me what was happening. These three little bees were surrounded by all their sisters (all of the bees are females) and they were cleaning the sticky nearly dead bees, helping them to get all of the honey off of their bodies. We came back a short time later and there was only one little bee left in the container. She was still being tended to by her sisters.

When it was time for me to leave, we checked one last time and all three of the bees had been cleaned off enough to fly away and the container was empty.

Those three little bees lived because they were surrounded by family and friends who would not give up on them, family and friends who refused to let them drown in their own stickiness and resolved to help until the last little bee could be set free.

Bee Sisters. Bee Peers. Bee Teammates.

We could all learn a thing or two from these bees.

Bee kind always.

also: the bees aren't strong enough to pull the drowning ones out, and the humans aren't delicate enough to clean them off afterwards. helping takes a lot of forms.

(via @wojit )

I dont know if it includes bees but hummingbirds do supplement their nectar diet with insects so this is basically a brave knight protecting her kingdom from the diabolical hoverdragon.

and this is why baseball is the best sport (see also: these baseball sidequests)

as he deserves!!!

@unpretty I LOVE THIS

That cool bee book I was talking about a while ago mostly refrains from philosophical digressions (which I think is a strength, I appreciated how the author had total confidence that just clearly presenting the facts about his subject would be enough to make a fascinating book without the need for any "...and here's why that should blow your mind" editorializing, and he's totally right), but there was one towards the end I've found myself thinking about a lot, which is: he wants people to stop using "self-consciousness" (i.e. the concept exemplified by the mirror test but used implicitly or explicitly in tons of other contexts) as a criterion for which animals can be considered sentient/morally relevant/having significant inner lives/however you want to describe it. Not, as you might expect, because he thinks it's an unreasonably high bar to meet, but because it's such a low bar that it produces no distinctions: he argues that basically any animal with any kind of developed central nervous system has to have some kind of self-consciousness almost by definition.

The example I remember best is: imagine you can see an object in your visual field getting closer to you. No matter the specifics, it's obviously always going to make a huge difference to how you evaluate this situation whether the cause of the object getting closer is a] the object is moving towards you, or b] you are moving towards the object. If a, then something might be pursuing you or falling on you or a thousand other things that are just not even worth considering in the case of b. But visually the two cases are indistinguishable; if you're going to be able to track the difference, your brain has to be putting at least some work into keeping tabs on what your own intentions are and what choices you're making as you move through the world, predicting the expected consequences of those choices, and maintaining a fairly tidy mental separation between stuff in the world that you're making happen and stuff in the world that's just happening of its own volition. Otherwise, every time you walk towards a rock you'll freak out and think the rock is rolling into you, or vice versa.

And it's not hard to see how this applies to your entire sensory world right, it applies to sounds and tactile sensations and even feelings internal to your body to some extent, if you're going to both perceive the world and take actions in the world then it's mandatory to mentally separate yourself and the world before that's going to yield even an ounce of helpful information, you just can't function successfully on the most basic level if you're processing stuff that you're doing on the same level as stuff that's happening, if you're in that state then you simply don't have a usable model of the world at all, you just have chaos.

So you can very easily eliminate a certain seductive narrative about the evolution of consciousness, which starts with very primitive animals who are mentally processing nothing but basic sensory inputs, then as you rise up the chain more complex animals are forming concepts of objects and building up a more nuanced understanding of the world, until finally you approach humans and the mind becomes so subtle and sophisticated that it gains access to this special advanced meta-level of thought where it can even understand itself! No, the self is precisely the one idea that has to be in place from the very beginning, before any of it has even the most rudimentary practical value. Self-consciousness isn't the pinnacle of the mind's evolution, it's one of the lowest, most basic foundations that everything else builds off of.

I think this is really cool stuff! I don't know enough about the relevant academic philosophy of mind debates to say how far all this does or doesn't speak to that, maybe someone will tell me the "self-consciousness" concept being attacked here is a strawman somehow, I don't know. But it's definitely impacted the way I (just a dumb guy who likes creatures) think about our small small cousins and what their lives might be like and I think it's super interesting. If you think it's interesting too then maybe you wanna buy The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka and read it. It's mostly not about this stuff, as I say it's light on philosophy and heavy on bee-life immersion, but if you actually read this whole post then you're probably in the market for that I feel like.

it's true

bee real, my senior thesis

Get a Free Digital Book About Our Native North American Bees:

Native bees are a hidden treasure.  From alpine meadows in the national forests of the Rocky Mountains to the Sonoran Desert in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona and from the boreal forests of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska to the Ocala National Forest in Florida, bees can be found anywhere in North America, where flowers bloom.  From forests to farms, from cities to wildlands, there are 4,000 native bee species in the United States, from the tiny Perdita minima to large carpenter bees.

Most people do not realize that there were no honey bees in America before European settlers brought hives from Europe. These resourceful animals promptly managed to escape from domestication. As they had done for millennia in Europe and Asia, honey bees formed swarms and set up nests in hollow trees. Native pollinators, especially bees other than honey bees, have been pollinating the continent’s flowering plants since long before the arrival of honey bees.  Even in today’s vastly altered landscapes, they continue to do the yeomen’s share of pollination, especially when it comes to native plants…

https://efotg.sc.egov.usda.gov/references/public/SC/Bee_Basics_North_American_Bee_ID.pdf

I wanted to share my video here as well, thank you for all the love and kind comments I’ve received so far ~ by katharinawallen

Original audio

This warms my heart ...

Random bee behavior fact for those who wish to read, just because I feel like it and because it’s late and I’m stalling on sleeping:

Bumblebees may seem like passive, cuddly, and docile creatures, but they won’t hesitate to defend themselves if they feel as if their warnings aren’t being read or taken seriously.

I.e. the photos and diagram below, when a bee feels threatened they will raise one or more of their legs into the air, signaling to whatever or whomever may be bothering them as a message essentiality saying: “hey, back off, too close!”

species pictured: bombus pascuorum, bombus impatiens

If their defensive posture goes unnoticed or ignored, they may be pushed into defending themselves by stinging (which is also a stressful experience for not only one such as yourself, but also for the bee.) If you ever find yourself getting close to a bumblebee while taking pictures, walking close to them, or just admiring them, remember this posture! If a bee does this, it is simply asking you to take a step back as it feels it is being threatened.

Now you can understand and use this knowledge to your advantage if you ever come across one in the future. (Of course, because it’s very hard not to anthropomorphize animals, I do have to admit that they do look pretty cute when doing it. Just remember to respect them though!)

If you’re looking at this, you are one of the first in the world to see the brain cells of the Australian stingless bee (Tetragonula carbonaria).

I’ve been learning the isotropic fractionator method to count brain cells in the brain. The plan is to apply this method to Australian bee species to find out the number of neurons in their brains.

while percy was playing skyrim he found a single bee in a cooking pot

Dried plant collage by Helen Ahpornsiri

The western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis), one of the focal species of the conservation strategy, is currently under review for listing under the Endangered Species Act. This specimen was collected on western mountain aster (Symphyotrichum spathulatum) at a site on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest south of Cle Elum and photographed as part of the Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas. After recording information about the bee it was released, unharmed. (Photo: Ed Lisowski.)

Am I blind or does this article never actually say what the plan is?

Here’s an idea: require all government buildings to have an apiary and sell honey to cover costs.

Bumblebees are in need of saving in this case and they don’t produce honey, nor would they nest in apiarys. (Actually honeybees are an invasive species driving the extinction of native bumble bees, but that’s not going to go away.)

Bumblebees need people to start gardening with at least 70% native plants in their yards. All new development should require a certain minimum of native plantings, since these bees are often specialists on native plants.  We could replace the majority of lawn on public land with native plants. Leave just as much lawn as people actually USE. They’ve simply lost too much habitat to human development, but theres no reason why our habitat cant still be their habitat too. We could also legislate against leaf blowing and/or removal of leaf litter from planting beds, since bumblebees need to nest overwinter under leaves. We can initiate public education programs starting in elementary school teaching kids about the life cycles of native bumble bees, mason bees and carpenter bees…as well as teaching kids how best to create habitat for these animals, and why that’s so important. Putting the western bumble bee on the endangered species list would help the state and advocates protect habitat where these bees live from further development, so that possibility finally being explored is what’s being celebrated in this article.

this little freak keeps sneaking into my garden and rubbing himself all over my flowers??Hello?????

Real, male bees don’t go after flowers they stay home, that freak is a herself

googling ‘bee genders’ as I dictate this post

The more you google bee reproductive biology the more absurd it is that we’re applying the words male and female to them. Their actual genders are worker, drone and queen. The queen is capable of both asexual and sexual reproduction. Bees born of unfertilized eggs become drones that are capable of fertilizing eggs. Bees born of fertilized eggs become workers, but can also potentially become a queen depending on how they are fed during the larval stage.

Use whatever the fuck pronouns you want to describe bees because they’re all equally incorrect projections of human worldview onto an insect species. Bees don’t experience mammalian sexual dimorphism in a biological sense nor do they experience human gender dimorphism in a sociopolitical sense.

diversity win, the freak sneaking into your garden and rubbing themselves all over your flowers does not fit into a human biological or sociopolitical framework of sex and gender!

Fun Facts About Honey

- Honey is mostly sugar (WoW!) it is 80% sugar and 20% water (double WoW!)

- There are over 20,000 species of bees, but only 4 make HONEY

-Honey is the ONLY food that contains all the substances you need to survive (Including WATER)

-Children under the age of 1 should not eat honey… why? because sometimes it contains bad stuff called botulism and can cause them to get botulism poisoning (that sucks, even infants should taste the deliciousness that is honey)

-Honey will crystallize under optimum temperatures (this has a lot to do with how you store it)

-Bees produce honey to eat during the winter when there are no flowers and no nectar for them.

-A honeybee would only need an ounce of honey to be able to fuel a flight around the world (this makes for a very cultural bee!)

-A typical beehive can make up to 400 pounds of honey a year! (Wowza!)

This reads like it was written by a bee and I’m 100% here for it

This is singlehandedly THE BEST compliment I have ever received :)

vegans making honey a bee labour issue is the funniest thing imaginable because like, you picked the one animal that has already unionised