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‘Robber bees’ invade apiarist’s shop in attempted honey heist
- jjk166 1y agoThinking about it from the bee's perspective, this is like raiding the lair of an eldritch horror for gold. A beekeeper is just a funny looking bear-thing that takes honey sometimes, but the shop of a beekeeper is full of devices beyond a bee's comprehension, more honey than a bee would ever see in its lifetime just all sitting around, its own sun which can turn on and off. To find yourself in such a place by accident must be a crazy experience, convincing your brethren to attack it by shaking your butt is on another level.
- gessha 1y agoIt’s funny that reading the following quote “more honey than a bee would ever see in its lifetime just all sitting around” made me remember the painting “It has come to pass” by Sergei Lukin.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y agoI sometimes wonder when we see their weird behaviors like this, if there isn't a new dance "word", that just happens too infrequently to have been documented. The syntax/grammar for butt-dancing is pretty simple, and I don't think there's any documented that could lead them to sneak in through a broken door and search interior spaces.
- afandian 1y agoThey have excellent smell. Not only foraging for plants but hive smells and pheromones which are socially important. I’m sure that would be enough to get them to follow the smell inside a building.
- themafia 1y ago"Bob's over by the entrance. He's sweaty and agitated. He's furiously pointing to a place in the field near our home." What would any social creature do?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago"Nah, I checked that place out 20 minutes ago... there are no flowers. It's not a real place at all!" I mean, given how little study bee dance language has gotten, if there's another unknown word and was only performed once a year by a typical hive, no one would have ever seen it. And their vocabulary isn't taught, it's instinctive, so low frequency usage wouldn't be an impediment to transmission.
- themafia 1y agoWhat communication occurs to draw bees to the location of a fallen hive member? They seem to do that without the dance at all. So there's clearly multiple communications layers. I'm assuming that those layers work in concert to convey more complex ideas. It's not just the finger pointing, it's the look on his face, and the smell of his sweat.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago>What communication occurs to draw bees to the location of a fallen hive member? Pheromones. Some people claim to be able to smell those themselves, some of them at least.
- hydrogen7800 1y agoIs there a genre of fiction or collection of stories in this style that presents a fairly normal thing from a horrifying perspective? Maybe the story describes the thing in this horrific manner, and the reader slowly realizes what the "normal" thing actually is, all the while using factual basis for the phenomena. In the case of honey bees, I'm imagining the worker bees selecting a female to become queen, per wikipedia: >"Queens are developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed in order to become sexually mature." This has much horror potential.
- nanomonkey 1y agoNot quite the same, but in anthropology this is known as Nacirema. "Body Rituals of the Nacirema" was the first example.
- defrost 1y agoand followed and flipped a little to reach Babakiueria
- edent 1y agoI can recommend "The Bees by Laline Paull". It attempts to show the world from a bee's perspective. It is terrifying, confusing, and horrific. An excellent story.
- Jun8 1y agoNot fiction but I love this part in Feynman’s The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: “When he was very small we used to rock him to bed … and tell him stories, and I’d make up a story about little people … they lived in the ventilator; and they’d go through these woods which had great big long tall blue things like trees, but without leaves and only one stalk, and they had to walk between them and so on; and he’d gradually catch on [that] that was the rug, the nap of the rug, the blue rug …”
- shoo 1y agoyou may also enjoy "Same mama, different species" - "Iberian harvester ant queens clone males of a different species in a never-before-seen case of reproduction and domestication. " https://www.404media.co/the-biological-rulebook-was-just-rewritten-by-ants/?ref=the-abstract-newsletter https://www.404media.co/the-biological-rulebook-was-just-rew...
- themafia 1y ago> that takes honey sometimes To them it's stealing the life blood of the hive. > more honey than a bee would ever see in its lifetime Bees move around the hive. They see all the honey. They individually _produce_ very little of it, but the total extent of it is surely known to them in some way. > an eldritch horror That's unironically how I view small winged creatures that follow their own rules and then inject me with venom, without warning, for not following them.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- gus_massa 1y agoIn a bakery like 3 block away from my home, most days there are like 20 bees trying to steal the sweet cover over the pastries. But the front wall of the business is almost completely made of glass, so they can't escape.
- vardump 1y agoFrom a bee's point of view humans are the robbers.
- Kye 1y agoHumans provide a sturdy, safe place to build hives and all they ask for in return is some of the excess honey. Bees make way more than they can use. Humans will also cart them around to food sources so they never have to worry about finding it. Seems like a sweet deal.
- yesfitz 1y agoThis is a bad take on the farming of an invasive species. Bees don't make more honey than they can use. They make what they can and have reserves for Winter and growing in the Spring. Do you pay your landlord everything you'd otherwise save? I've never seen a bee colony "worry" about finding food. They'll travel within a one mile radius for foraging, and four to five miles for water. Colonies will also leave a hive, or swarm (split into 2 colonies) if there is not enough resources for them. It's not a deal. They don't understand what's happening. If you're going to take their honey, at least don't make up some weird fantasy where they're happy about it.
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoI agree with everything you're saying. But I am a bully who likes the taste of honey. A prisoner to desire, no doubt I will not be liberated from saṃsāra anytime soon.
- taneq 1y agoAh, but would you want to?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y agoProtection from predators and (as best can be managed) from disease. Supplemental food when foraged resources are insufficient. Protection from extreme weather. We spend millions of dollars researching how to combat bee diseases. They've been glorified since antiquity (go look up all the old manuscripts where they've illustrated people dressing up like bees). Nothing weird about it even if it is a fantasy. Humanity likes the honey bee. >It's not a deal. We will spend fortunes and invent new science to prevent their extinction. Whether they understand it or not, they grabbed a real bargain.
- russellbeattie 1y agoNew word for me today: "apiarist"/"apiary". Never knew bee keepers had a more formal name, though it makes sense. Dad joke: It would be more apt if instead of a-piary, it was "b-piary".
- duskwuff 1y agoBonus word: if you want to sound all fancy, beekeeping is also known as apiculture.
- throwup238 1y agoAnd soldiers who use bees in battle are called the apilry
- taneq 1y agoOh, like the way the cavilry use guinea pigs?
- throwup238 1y agoI think the Incas mostly used guinea pigs as incendiaries so technically it would be cavillery like artillery.
- grilledchickenw 1y agoJason Statham in "The Apiarist" doesn't have the same ring to it
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y agoIf you'd seen the movie, you'd realize that it couldn't have been more ridiculous even if that had been the title.
- nilamo 1y ago
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoIs it just me or would anyone else buy a video game based on this premise? It sorta reminds me of "Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees."
- afandian 1y agoLike Untitled Goose Game.
- em-bee 1y agothere ought to be two versions. in the adult horror version you are the shopkeeper being attacked by thousands of bees. in the kids version you are a bee-general leading your bee-army on a heist.
- Balgair 1y agoMultiplayer version where the bee side is in a cutesy bubble primary colors bright animation style. And the apiarist side is grimdark raining gothic horror style. Release it as two separate games, tie the back ends together, never actually tell the players that the other side isn't AI.
- em-bee 1y agobrilliant! and then dad comes out of his room: "damn! that bee stung me right on my nose" at the same time the kid comes out of the kids room: "yay, i stung that shop keeper right on the nose!" they both look at each other: "wait! what?"
- afandian 1y agoCan confirm. When you’re removing honey frames or hive parts that have had honey spilled on them you have to be on the lookout for scouts. One or two can quickly escalate into dozens. And they have no qualms about coming indoors.
- bregma 1y agoWe always leave our harvested frames outside until after dark because (a) the bees go to "sleep" at night and (2) at the time of year we're usually harvesting the temperature drops into the single digits (Celsius). But the problem is not usually robbers, it's defenders from the hive you just harvested.
- xandrius 1y agoBasically protecting their strage from the real robbers, from their perspective.
- afandian 1y agoDon’t you find cold stowaways hiding between the frames the next day? I have in the past, when I’ve missed one or two.
- cryptonector 1y agoThere's always stragglers who stuck with the honey rather than going home. It's sad.
- cryptonector 1y ago> And they have no qualms about coming indoors. Bees don't like small, dark indoor spaces. But a honey house can easily be large and well-lighted, and they might not notice that it's indoors.
- TZubiri 1y agoCBE 2025-833
- pogue 1y agoPlease tell me there's a video of this somewhere
- pavel_lishin 1y agoTo the bee-mobile!
- j45 1y agoThis reads like a future kids animated film. Look forward to it.
- Balgair 1y agoPerfect Wallace and gromit film right here
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]