State of the Hive, May 11 1917

May 8, 2017 1:22 AM

100 years ago: feast leaves bees lethargic and sleepy
posted by Joe in Australia (5 comments total)

I like the central placing of this. "If we touch them gently they raise an expostulating leg, one of the second pair, waving away the approaching finger." In other news: "Though it is abundantly clear that Germany cannot continue or end the war as an annexation war, the Chancellor still cannot be induced to make a declaration in accordance with the plain facts of the case."
posted by hat_eater at 3:59 AM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

If we touch them gently

I used to train honeybees for my phd experiments, and I used a very strong sugar solution so as to ensure they would remember where to fly to. When they were drinking from this, they became so passive and lethargic, that yes, I could stroke them and they wouldn't even budge.
posted by dhruva at 4:05 AM on May 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

So, they're not just interested in a fist bee-ump or a hive-five, just for being a good bee?
posted by steef at 5:04 AM on May 8, 2017

What beautiful, poetic prose. Compare it to this recent essay in the same section, which is not nearly as evocative.
posted by AFABulous at 6:38 AM on May 8, 2017

A few months ago, a Twitter bot that randomly generates the sigils of demons generated a demon of “sorrowed bumblebees”. Thinking about this, the most plausible explanation was that, in the age that people believed that misfortune was attributed to demons in Hell, the kind of disease that is killing off bee colonies now did exist, but was known as “the Sorrow”, or perhaps “the Sorrowing”, with it believed that hives succumbed to a sort of contagious fatal melancholy. (“Who comes here?”, “I am a poor beekeeper, whose bees are sorrowed.”)
posted by acb at 7:16 AM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]