Comment by johnisgood

3 months ago

I love bees and ants, but I love bees the most. I would recommend people to study the behavior of bees and ants. Additionally, honey, propolis, etc. are super healthy, and we can thank bees for that.

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johnisgood

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rootbear  3 months ago

Agreed! Bees are my favorite social insect (we share a love of hexagons, for one thing) and they seem to be especially intelligent.

  • jbnorth  3 months ago

    The hexagon is the best-agon

    • hackable_sand  3 months ago

      This thread is awesome.

      I had a miniature war with some wasps staking a claim on my porch

      Let me say, wasps are incredibly endurant creatures. I have much respect for them.

      Their architecture though... I have the remnants of their enclave. It is so stable and uniform and cozy.

      I wish wasps were friends.

      1 reply →

SoftTalker  3 months ago

Yellowjackets can go to hell though.

  • johnisgood  3 months ago

    Well, kind of. :D Wasps do not produce honey, they just collect nectar and sugary substances for immediate consumption, and propolis is specifically a bee product made from tree resins.

    That said, wasps are still quite intelligent for insects with regarding to spatial memory, individual recognition, learning, problem-solving, and social cognition. In fact, their intelligence is comparable to honeybees in many respects.

    Contrary to popular belief, wasps are not mindless aggressors, their defensive behavior is calculated based on threat assessment. :)

    • cj  3 months ago

      > wasps are not mindless aggressors, their defensive behavior is calculated based on threat assessment.

      Can confirm.

      I had a yellow jacket infestation in my kitchen wall this fall. Every day I'd wake up to dozens of bees flying around my kitchen. But they didn't care about me, all they cared about was getting outside.

      I probably killed 200-300 yellow jackets with a fly swatter over the course of 2 weeks. Somehow I wasn't stung once.

      1 reply →

baxtr  3 months ago

Not that I want to curb your enthusiasm for bees, but…

I recently read that honey bees in particular get the most attention from humans lately, so they are kept in high numbers.

This has some adversarial effect on other pollinators, which hurts ecosystems more than it helps.

  • johnisgood  3 months ago

    Why would what you said curb my enthusiasm for bees though?

    Can you provide me more specifics on this by the way?

    > This has some adversarial effect on other pollinators, which hurts ecosystems more than it helps.

    What are those adversarial effects, what other pollinators, and how does it hurt the ecosystem more than it helps?

    I do not mind bees having kept in higher numbers, and beekeepers can do it anywhere without affecting the ecosystem, I believe.

    • filoeleven  3 months ago

      European honeybees do not behave the same way as their native solitary counterparts. They gather honey by visiting every flower on a plant, then moving to the next plant. Native bees OTOH visit only one or two flowers per plant. So if imported honeybees outcompete natives (and studies show they do), it very much affects the viability of monoecious plants, which experience a drop in genetic diversity. I don't want to find out the long-term results of that experiment.

      I don't think that's a reason to eradicate honeybees in the US or anything like that, but it does point to a misplaced focus on "just" solving colony collapse disorder while ignoring the plight of the native pollinators.

      If you don't keep bees, or if you do but have a large enough property, you could put up a bee hotel. They can be bought or constructed pretty easily, and you'll get to see a wide variety of who's around your area!

      https://bugguide.net/node/view/475348