Here’s a little gem I found on youtube about a Louisiana woman who found a swarm of bees (or as she says, “this brown stuff all over my driver’s side window”) on her car and called 911.
While this might seem like a pretty dangerous situation, as Jesalyn told us in class and like Danny talked about in his presentation, bees aren’t likely to sting when they’re swarming beecause they don’t have a hive to protect and defend. Like you can see in Diana’s post below, it’s possible to touch bees when they’re swarming, like the guy who just grabs the handful on the tree, but most people are afraid of them anyway. Who ever thought a trip to Marshalls could end so badly?!
Another reason that a bee might be reluctant to sting you for no reason is beecause it will kill her. A honey bee has a barbed stinger which will stay in the skin if you are stung and when she flies away, she’ll tear her abdomen. Here’s a video of that happening:
One crazy thing about bees is that, as we discussed in class on Thursday, the bees in a hive essentially act as one organism instead of fifty-thousand or so different creatures. Bees are eusocial and act out of the interests of the entire hive instead of individual interests. One reason for this collaboration is the queen bee and the pheromones she emits—like Joey talked about in his presentation, bees put out certain scents which help them communicate to accomplish all of their honey-making tasks and also to help defend their precious hive. For example, bees emit an alarm pheromone (which Jesalyn says smells like bananas) which will alert other bees if one is endangered and they will come to her aid. So basically, if a bee needs to, she will sting and die for her hive without hesitation. Pretty wild.
Here’s a third video about the waggle dance that maybe isn’t the most engaging but is still crazy. It’s about using vector calculus to communicate. Though that may not be entirely accurate, bees would probably do better in calculus than I did!
Watching the last video gave me an "ah-hah" moment: all the things that we learn in life, like calculus (I should say that I unsuccessfully managed that:) are integrated in nature somehow. All the rules of math, language, etc are all interconnected. I knew this as a concept before but never really grasped it until now. Thanks!
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