Is it true about bees?

2

Comments

  • dunkman
    dunkman Posts: 19,646
    GreenTeaDisease wrote:
    bees yes, wasps, no.


    yeah i knew that.. i was pointing out the irony that a bee will only sting someone or something when it feels its life is threatened... only to then die as a reuslt of using its sting.

    which seems kinda strange.

    i aint no dumb-dumb :):D
    oh scary... 40000 morbidly obese christians wearing fanny packs invading europe is probably the least scariest thing since I watched an edited version of The Care Bears movie in an extremely brightly lit cinema.
  • Snake
    Snake Posts: 2,605
    GreenTeaDisease wrote:
    bees yes, wasps, no.
    Man wasp are mean.
    I have a story, a true story:
    I was sitting minding my own business, then a wasp flew up. I was scared, but I knew that if one was threatened then it would sting. So I was really still and was gona just let it fly away when it was ready.... Well after a couple seconds it just came up and stung me! :mad:

    It was a hit and run, no weapon left at the scene. So I guess she lived to tell the tale. (only female wasps have stingers).
    Pirates had democracy too.

    "Its a secret to everybody."
  • even flow?
    even flow? Posts: 8,066
    dunkman wrote:
    that they only sting people if they feel threatened? but then after they sting dont they die anyway?

    seems kinda pointless to me

    or is it a bee martyr who dies to save all the other bees?


    It is like killing the burglar in your house and going to prison for life. ;)
    You've changed your place in this world!
  • jamie uk
    jamie uk Posts: 3,812
    dunkman wrote:
    yeah i knew that.. i was pointing out the irony that a bee will only sting someone or something when it feels its life is threatened... only to then die as a reuslt of using its sting.

    which seems kinda strange.

    i aint no dumb-dumb :):D

    Bees get a raw deal because of wasps, they are not aggressive in their behaviour, bees serve a purpose, they do a job, and the stinger as you rightly say is a last form of defense...for obvious reasons.
    Wasps are just vermin, they deserve to die in old jam jars with the lid screwed on, on a really hot summer day.
    I came, I saw, I concurred.....
  • catefrances
    catefrances Posts: 29,003
    dunkman wrote:
    that they only sting people if they feel threatened? but then after they sting dont they die anyway?

    seems kinda pointless to me

    or is it a bee martyr who dies to save all the other bees?

    well if you lost your primary source of defense tis only right that you die, dont you think?
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  • urbanhippie
    urbanhippie Posts: 3,007
    jamie uk wrote:
    Wasps are just vermin, they deserve to die in old jam jars with the lid screwed on, on a really hot summer day.
    :eek:
    Jamie... Thats cruel...
    A human being that was given to fly.

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  • butterfliesrfree
    butterfliesrfree Posts: 15
    I guess I'm very nonthreatening. I have yet to be stung.
    So you buried all your lover's clothes
    and burned the letters lover wrote,
    but it doesn't make it any better.
    Does it make it any better?
  • catefrances
    catefrances Posts: 29,003
    you know sometimes bees are just stupid. the last time i was stung it was on the bottom of my foot. as i was walking along the footpath, the silly critter had somehow got between my foot and my flipflops. i don't know he did it, but he did.
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
    hold my hand
    lie beside me
    i just need to say
  • Spunkie
    Spunkie i come from downtown. Posts: 7,095
    failedpersephone wrote:
    I guess it is a form of Bee Martyrdom. They sting when threatened because they must protect the queen...so, yeah they don't WANT to sting...

    Silly social drones.

    Alas, it comes to be
    the bee
    girl dies.
    I was swimming in the Great Barrier Reef 
    Animals were hiding behind the Coral 
    Except for little Turtle
    I could swear he's trying to talk to me 
    Gurgle Gurgle
  • Spunkie
    Spunkie i come from downtown. Posts: 7,095
    Ah what the hell...

    Once I gave 100 percent to something. It was a great eight science class assignment. (hehe Dunkman!-ya that's right, grade eight.) It was a series of independent studies and us students were allowed to pair up. There was a 20 year old boy in my class, and he picked on me to be his partner, primarily because I was a smarty pants. He didn't meet me at the library to help on our project, so with much defiance, I decided not to do the work alone, and we got a poor grade.

    To keep my Straight A status, for the second assignment, I smartened up and worked alone. That jerk, chose another smart girl to be his partner. When we were getting our papers back, she pulled hers up to me and said 24/25, then gloated. I got my test and what did I get for giving 100 percent to the project? Well, I got 100%. Maybe the first and only time I really gave my all at that point in time.

    And the moral of the story is... well, the second project was about the social insect "honey bees". I learned a great deal about the little fuckers, including the answer to your question.

    Now if I had to write about them, I'd point out our social parallelisms with the US army.
    I was swimming in the Great Barrier Reef 
    Animals were hiding behind the Coral 
    Except for little Turtle
    I could swear he's trying to talk to me 
    Gurgle Gurgle
  • gobrowns19
    gobrowns19 Posts: 1,447
    I read recently when a wasp stings you, 'alarm pheremones' are released and the others can sense it and will kind of flock to that area in an alert mode, crazy huh?

    But yeah, wasps are mean. My dad was trying to get a nest down from the basketball hoop and one came right to me really fast and got me right in the neck. It hurt so bad.

    My last one was last summer, which was understandable, I accidentally stepped on it. I didn't have an arch in my foot for a week.
    Happiness is only real when shared
  • dunkman
    dunkman Posts: 19,646
    http://www.cookingtime.co.uk/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=621

    i bought one of these :)
    oh scary... 40000 morbidly obese christians wearing fanny packs invading europe is probably the least scariest thing since I watched an edited version of The Care Bears movie in an extremely brightly lit cinema.
  • jamie uk
    jamie uk Posts: 3,812
    That looks pretty handy dunk, do you think it would work on dogs? Not zapp them dead, just give them a little jolt, enough to get them to piss off :)
    I came, I saw, I concurred.....
  • eMMI
    eMMI Posts: 6,262
    dunkman wrote:
    http://www.cookingtime.co.uk/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=621

    i bought one of these :)

    I absolutely hate being around people who are handling one of those. :eek: scares me to death, no matter who that other person is, I'm always sure they're gonna zap me. :o



    those are handy though. :D
    "Don't be faint-hearted, I have a solution! We shall go and commandeer some small craft, then drift at leisure until we happen upon another ideal place for our waterside supper with riparian entertainments."
  • eMMI
    eMMI Posts: 6,262
    jamie uk wrote:
    That looks pretty handy dunk, do you think it would work on dogs? Not zapp them dead, just give them a little jolt, enough to get them to piss off :)

    :eek:
    "Don't be faint-hearted, I have a solution! We shall go and commandeer some small craft, then drift at leisure until we happen upon another ideal place for our waterside supper with riparian entertainments."
  • ClimberInOz
    ClimberInOz Posts: 216
    Only a few species of Bees die when they sting you (out of 20 000). Those that do have barbs on their stingers that hook into your tissue. Unfortunately for the bees, when the stinger is lodged and they fly away, they tend to leave the majority of their gut behind as well as the stinger.

    The entire reason why this works on an evolutionary level is because you need to think of it at a colony level, and not at an individual bee level.

    A queen bee will lay two different types of eggs- unfertalised and fertalised. Unfertalised eggs develop into drones, which are capable of reproducing. Fertalised eggs develop into worker bees which are not capable of reproducing.

    Now it is the worker bees that sting and die, but since they are already sterile, their evolutionary pathway has already been cut off. But their being able to sting is of benifit to the colony and the queen bee, as it can protect the colony.

    So the gene for stinging and dying is subject to natural selection... just at a queen bee/colony level, not at the worker bee level.

    When this evolutionary pathway developed, those queen bees that produced stinging workers would have had an evolutionary advantage over those that didn't, and therefore it was their genes that passed from generation to generation.
  • TrixieCat
    TrixieCat Posts: 5,756
    jamie uk wrote:
    That looks pretty handy dunk, do you think it would work on dogs? Not zapp them dead, just give them a little jolt, enough to get them to piss off :)
    You stick to GENTLY tapping them on the nose with your rolled up newspaper!
    Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome
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  • nowayimfaithfull
    nowayimfaithfull Posts: 2,051
    bees suck
    Some people have religion I have Pearl Jam.


    no more shows
  • urbanhippie
    urbanhippie Posts: 3,007
    Wasps suck...

    One just flew in my window and stung my arm :(
    A human being that was given to fly.

    Wembley 18/06/07

    If there was a reason, it was you.

    O2 Arena 18/09/09
  • dunkman
    dunkman Posts: 19,646
    i lost my wasp sting cherry last Sunday..

    34 years of life and i'd never been stung.

    little fuckers
    oh scary... 40000 morbidly obese christians wearing fanny packs invading europe is probably the least scariest thing since I watched an edited version of The Care Bears movie in an extremely brightly lit cinema.

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