4 ms·

Thinking 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

by jjk166 1y ago

Thinking 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 ago
It’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 ago
I 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 ago
  They 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 ago
      What 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 ago
Is 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 ago
  Not quite the same, but in anthropology this is known as Nacirema. "Body Rituals of the Nacirema" was the first example.
  - defrost 1y ago
    and followed and flipped a little to reach Babakiueria
- edent 1y ago
  I 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 ago
  Not 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 ago
  you 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]

by jjk166 1y ago

gessha 1y ago

It’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 ago

I 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 ago
They 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 ago
    What 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 ago

Is 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 ago
Not quite the same, but in anthropology this is known as Nacirema. "Body Rituals of the Nacirema" was the first example.
- defrost 1y ago
  and followed and flipped a little to reach Babakiueria
edent 1y ago
I 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 ago
Not 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 ago
you 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]