Re: Bees in the City?

As a former beekeeper I can vouch that there is generally nothing to be feared from honeybees. They are too busy to be bothered with humans as long as we stay away from standing directly in front of a hive where one might be perceived as a threat. Even that might be limited to hot humid days.

The only time I've ever experienced aggressiveness by honeybees away from their hives was when wearing a flourescent orange jacket. As soon as I changed the jacket they went away. Some bright colors have a tendency to excite them. One time years ago they even bombarded my old yellow pick-up truck.

Honeybees are incredibly docile for the most part. White faced hornets and wasps can get aggressive if deliberately or accidentally riled. I call wasps little flying battleships. They seldom actually sting but look rather ominous. The ones I have the greatest respect for are yellow jackets, part of the hornet family. These guys are just plain mean, aggressive and persistent. They also resemble honeybees more than other stinging insects and may be the cause for some folks fear of honeybees. Wasps and hornets can sting repeatedly with no ill effect to themselves. Honeybees have a sac of venom that literally gets pulled out of their abdomen when they sting, after which they die.

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tomdisco
As a former beekeeper I can vouch that there is generally nothing to be feared from honeybees. They are too busy to be bothered with humans as long as we stay away from standing directly in front of a hive where one might be perceived as a threat.

Dropping the branch the swarm is clustering on will get one a few stings.

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eeek

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tomdisco
As a former beekeeper I can vouch that there is generally nothing to be feared from honeybees. They are too busy to be bothered with humans as long as we stay away from standing directly in front of a hive where one might be perceived as a threat.

Dropping the branch the swarm is clustering on will get one a few stings.

Has that happened to you? Usually their abdomens are too full of honey during a swarm to sting. When they swarm and leave the hive, either with the old queen or a new one, they take as much honey with them as possible because that's all they have to keep them going in a new hive yet to be built.

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tomdisco

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eeek
Dropping the branch the swarm is clustering on will get one a few stings.

Has that happened to you?

Yes, and I ended up with a $2000 bill from the ER. Seems I've developed an allergy recently. On the plus side I now know my heart can handle a pulse rate of 227.

One real downside to honeybee stings is the feromnes (sp?) they emit. When one stings you this odor is like a bugle call to all the other guard bees. Here he is. Get him. Come on. Right here.

The alarm pheromone surprisingly smells like lemon/banana. Many cities in L.A. no longer allow beekeeping because of the africanized honey bees. Here's a good site on on recent bee attacks: http://www.stingshield.com/news.htm

Eeek- do you carry an Epi-pen and benadryl? I also had a trip tp the ER due to an allergic rxn and although I've never been fearful of bees, it's a scary thought that one sting could potentially be fatal. I've had a few close encounters with bees since then and it convinced me to get bee desensitization therapy. I hope to never have to test its effectiveness!

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quicksilver
Eeek- do you carry an Epi-pen and benadryl?

I should.

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I also had a trip tp the ER due to an allergic rxn and although I've never been fearful of bees, it's a scary thought that one sting could potentially be fatal. I've had a few close encounters with bees since then and it convinced me to get bee desensitization therapy. I hope to never have to test its effectiveness!

I had more than one. Probably around 20 or so.

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quicksilver
The alarm pheromone surprisingly smells like lemon/banana. Many cities in L.A. no longer allow beekeeping because of the africanized honey bees. Here's a good site on on recent bee attacks: http://www.stingshield.com/news.htm

Eeek- do you carry an Epi-pen and benadryl? I also had a trip tp the ER due to an allergic rxn and although I've never been fearful of bees, it's a scary thought that one sting could potentially be fatal. I've had a few close encounters with bees since then and it convinced me to get bee desensitization therapy. I hope to never have to test its effectiveness!

No wonder I could not find pheromone in the dictionary under "f". I tried.

Ouch! Now this would hurt....

Swarm of bees attacks 2 women in north Phoenix, stinging them hundreds of times


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-bee-attack,0,604088.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

Swarm isn't really the right word. More likely they disturbed a hive.

The newspapers seem to use the terms interchangeably, thereby giving reader the false sense that angry 'swarms' are searching for victims

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eeek
Swarm isn't really the right word. More likely they disturbed a hive.

Baggle of bees.

Once upon a time on a hike, a friend and I decided to amuse ourselves by simplifying the English language. One of the items that we addressed was the plethora of (sometimes confusing) terms applied to groupings.
[First person pointing: “Herd of buffalo.” Second person's annoyed response: “Of course I've heard of buffalo.”]

Since the term 'gaggle of geese' has such a nice alliterative touch to it, we decided to use the term '-aggle' as the sole base-designation of a grouping with the first letter of the group's components being attached as a prefix. Hence, aaggle of aardvarks, baggle of buffalo, caggle of crows, etc. Of course this terminology also applies to inanimate objects: raggle of rocks, haggle of highways....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2010 12:16PM by szalkowski.

regarding terms for groupings or collections of animals:

FYI:
Book on bizarre names for groups of animals:
An Exaltation of Larks
~ James Lipton

and wikipedia has a good section just for birds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collective_nouns_for_birds

---

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

Good info/links. Thanks much, Frank.

By the way, we also discovered that a gaggle only refers to geese that are not in flight. If the birds are on the wing, then the appropriate term is a skein or, less commonly, a wedge (a rather cheesy term, if you ask us).

(signed)
The Beaks

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eeek
Swarm isn't really the right word. More likely they disturbed a hive.

That makes more sense.