Open Thread: Bees

Hosted by a bee

The bees are disappearing!

Actually, no joke, they totally are, and if I were a responsible adult I would be concerned for real live environmental reasons.  Because I'm not,  however, I'm concerned because I like honey and because I think bees are cool.

In high school, our campus was invaded by bees (actually Carolina yellow jackets).  In short order, I became the bee (read: yellow jacket) whisperer: the girl who could have five wasps crawling on her face and not freak out; the one who could swipe a panicked yellow jacket out of the air mid-classroom, calm it down, and deposit it outside.  At the height of the invasion, they would swarm anyone who dared eat lunch outside; I was one of the few who negotiated a truce, filling my soda bottle cap full of sugar water and placing it a few feet from my food, thus letting them drink their fill while I enjoyed my lunch unmolested.  Somehow other kids felt this was giving in.  Wevs, I got to eat my cookies without worrying about getting stung.

Open thread!  How do you feel about bees?  How do you feel about wasps?  Are there any insects you have a particular affinity to?  If you're allergic to bees, does that give you more incentive to stay calm around them, or make you more afraid of them?  Any cool stories regarding bees or wasps?  Have you ever made an uncanny connection to a wild animal?

~ Kristycat


Wednesday Reminder!  Open threads are meant to be fun, chatty places to discuss anything that doesn’t “fit” into a deconstruction or other regular thread.  This can be something totally off-the-wall and random, or it can be something interesting that a deconstruction prompted you to think of, but which would be derailing to get into in the deconstruction thread.  When in doubt, move it over here - that’s what it’s for!  

And as always, please post new comments, rather than replying to other comments!