For Our Beekeepers

[xoxoxoBruce]

Don't need no fancy store bought hives...

[Gravdigr]

Pine Mountain, Ky - Been there.

Pine Mountain is on a high ridge in eastern KY that runs SW-NE almost forever. It's a very prominent land feature, this ridge. High, steep, and it literally runs for a hundred miles or more. You should give it a look on GoogleEarth. It's kinda impressive.

Moonshine country, still. Among, ahem, other things.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, I checked it out on Google Earth, that ridge is impressive.

[glatt]

Me too. Flew the length of it in the F18. Nice

[Gravdigr]

Collegamento

[BigV]

Yeah, whatever. I'd like to see if it burns in pretty colors. Now THAT would be interesting.

[xoxoxoBruce]

When wasp is art The construction of structures in nature is very widespread and very few ones who stop to think about how to make an animal to build such structures. Just to quote Richard Dawkins: Just imagine the newspapers if a marine biologist discovered a species of dolphins weaving fishing nets large, complex securities with a diameter of twenty dolphins! And yet we take for granted the cobwebs, considering them as a nuisance in the house rather than as one of the wonders of the world. from The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins As the cobwebs even the wasp nests represent a nuisance that happens every year in spring. Before you drive them away, stop watching the perfect geometry of the nest. The building material varies greatly in different species, not just wasps but also in bees. The masons of wasps Sceliphron kind are actually bees (in fact belong to the superfamily Apoidea and not vespoidea) and build nests using mud, inside which the larvae grow by eating paralyzed spiders.

Let's focus on cellulose nests, built in Italy by various species of Vespids belonging to the genera Vespa, Vespula, Dolichovespula and Polistes.
The other genera distributed a little 'everywhere in the world leave no brake to the imagination, first of all Stenogastrinae, a subfamily of wasps of Southeast Asia that build nests rather bizarre.

Returning to native species, we come to the real purpose of this article: to show how, with a little 'color and imagination, these buildings can appear even the least artistic insect lovers.
Below you can see a small colony in the founding of Polistes dominula. The species has an interesting behavioral repertoire, very well designed, and is used as a model species for studies on dell'eusocialità.
This nest was found with two founding in mid-April, then unfortunately one of them died.

To individuals placed in captivity has been provided food and paper for nest building, at first only yellow, then colored.

A worker recently sfarfallata remains holed up in the cell.

In the lower left you see two wasps while doing trophallaxis.

Right some larvae are exposed on the outside of the cells.

You're welcome.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I was reading about ancient chemical warfare when I found this.

Another case of mass poisoning took place in the first century BC. Knowing that rhododendron was poisonous and that when bees made honey from rhododendron nectar, the honey contained alkaloids that could severely sicken humans, the Heptakomotes (who lived in what is now Turkey) used it to defend themselves against the Roman legions led by Pompey the Great. They left batches of the toxic honey near the path of Pompey’s advancing troops, and the soldiers, who thought they’d found abandoned spoils of war, ate it all. The fierce Roman soldiers— now suffering from delirium, vomiting, and diarrhea— were easily defeated by the weaker Heptakometes.

That surprised me because I though all honey was safe if you're lost in the wild.

[Griff]

People still eat this honey for its hallucinogenic qualities. The poison is in the dose.

[Griff]

Nepal has a similar product. There is also a moment in here that will remind you how evil the ChiComs are.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The bees love you.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Gathering pollen the hard way, when they could just shovel it off my car.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Don't mess with a bee that can pull a nail from a brick wall.

[Gravdigr]

From AP, via YahooNews

Millions of bees released in interstate crash

LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) — A semi carrying beehives crashed on a Wyoming highway, unleashing millions of bees that hovered in a giant swarm over the roadway.

The Laramie Boomerang reports beekeepers were called out to handle the buzzing mass, which Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper Aren Peter said stretched a football field length in every direction.

Peter says the driver apparently fell asleep at the wheel and the truck veered off the roadway, landing on its side. Peter said the driver refused medical attention and was more worried about recovering the bees and getting back on the road.

Peter says he remained in his car while responding to the crash for fear he would get stung.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Trooper needs help from the hive mind for a solution.