Bees
 

Howdy y'all,
I have an upcoming presentation to give for English and it is about the plight of the honey bee (since I keep 'em,) here's where you lot come in (and I'm sure I'll regret it) is there anything you've ever wanted to know about bees? If so ask here and I'll answer, hopefully it'll give me some practice for the examination.

What is the average volume of a Bees beenis?

How many bees are eaten by injured spiders every month?

Where are they going?

I can answer you Disgruntled Intern, (and fuck you to the rest) the bees have been disappearing due to colony collapse disorder, there are many possibilities as to where CCD comes from but we speculate that the bees (which appear to simply vanish) migrate away from the hive and die, some people have even seen the bees literally walking out of the hive which is completely unusual because bees have a hive mentality meaning they shouldn't ever leave the queen (revolution is almost impossible.)

oh and Josh, a beenis is roughly 40-50 milligrams in weight a beegina of a worker is about 10-20 (so bigger than yours Max)

how long does a bee live for once its stung something? or does it die within seconds?

oh ho! he PWNED yo ass, Max!

Can bees from other colonies [I don't mean hives that are only two feet away from each other, I'm talking miles here] co-mingle, or are they like ants? I mean, will they go batshit and wage war if they catch a whiff of a stinky new bee that don't belong?

A bee from another hive gets pushed out because he has a diffent queen's pheremone, but he probably won't be hurt too badly if he doesn't resist.

Well that brings about another question:

Why would he even come around? If bees really are the little robots that they're made out to be, why go dicking around another colony at all?

My actual knowledge fades out at this point, but I'm guessing that if the invaded colony is recently established the smell of nectar and honey may be stronger than the smell of bees, meaning it just appears to the bee to be a big patch of flowers or whatever.

That's just a guess. More likely is that they get messed up in the head by infection or cold (bees really don't like cold) and they lose their navigation abilities. Or in the case of man-made hives, swapping places of hives may confuse them.

I should hope so, because otherwise it would imply I am a bee and have a vagina.

Nice try, Maxine.

I saw a documentary about this once.
A much larger species from a rival colony infiltrated the hive. I forgot how he managed to sneak in, something to do with mucking up the other bees' sensory chemicals. In any case, they found him out and executed him by swarming him and vibrating their bodies. By doing this they increased their body temperatures and basically "cooked" the bee that didn't belong.

Ok, I'm gonna answer you awalll!

@ Disgruntled Intern question 2 - Bees do get around, in the summer a bee will be let in if she has enough honey and the guard bees don't think she smells bad (pheromone)
Like a little bee bouncer at a beeight club -

"Alright hun are you getting here?"
"Plz, I haz gucci numba four on!"
"Ok then fine, only coz u smells nice and haz lots uf honnee,"
"Kthxbi"

Bees aren't little robots like people make out they are, they do sniff around and have regular breaks between work where they meet up (sort of) eat and have a good lick of the queens face! ;)

@ Mollucks Assisstant - depends, if your hard core like me and a bee stings you, you can let it dig its stinger out of your arm/face/lower areas, but if it pulls it's sting off then it will die in a few minutes since it's basically ripped it's lower torso off!

@ Sekto Springs - You may have watched asian bees killing hornets or bees killing wasps with this method, bees I think just sting other bees, its one of the few things they can survive.

They fled back to their home planet when they sensed that the Daleks were destroying reality.

I heard that There was some sort of colony collapse disorder in Beehives. Any update on that?

How many chromosomes does a bee have?

And it's supposed to be off the top of your head. So don't you google search it you naughty boy, you.

Yeah, if you're going doing that, tell us now we go asking all these questions.

But please yourself.

I saw what you did there, you.

Who the hell pronounces behave bee-hi-v.

Oh and why do i keep ending my post in you?

Asstroylyins.

i bet you spent ages doing that. aww.

If a bee was given a large supply of honey and isolated from other bees, would it continue to collect nectar?

What differences are there between a honey bee and a bumble bee besides their appearance?

How much honey does a bee consume in a lifetime?

These are all questions I just thought of and decided I would like to know the answer to. It's not really important, but it's interesting to know.

How independant is a bee outside of the hive?

What is the pheremone scent of a female bee?

Do you like your beehive like you like your coffee?

Do you like your beehive like you like your martinis?

Only honey bees have serrated stings, and only the workers at that. Serrated stings stick in the skin of birds and mammals and are thus torn out, so they are only stung when the nest as a whole is threatened. Queen bees have smooth stings like wasps, so can sting many times. The serrations are thought to enhance the sting's ability to pierce insect exoskeletons, useful for bee-to-bee combat.

Solitary bees can sting as many times as they like. If they have a sting, that is. Many do not.

The way that bees typically deal with violent intruders (such as wasps) is to surround them with dozens of bees, encasing the intruder in a ball. They will then begin to furiously vibrate their wings, eventually raising the body temperature of the intruder to a deadly level.

I think that's pretty darn cool.