No, I don't have a thing for entomology; I loathe wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets. Spiders make my skin crawl; moths make me shiver and shriek; and grasshoppers and crickets make me jump. Don't even get me started on stink bugs.
But I like bees. Oh sure, the fact that I've never been stung helps endear them to me, but I also just find them interesting. My favorite is the aptly named bumblebee. All fuzzy and chunky; dusted golden with pollen from swerving flower to flower like a toddler just learning to walk.
A few "fun" facts about bees:
- Bees are highly social insects, and each colony has a unique odor to help identify the members of that colony.
- To keep their hive cool in summer, bees collect and deposit drops of water in strategic places and fan the drops with their wings to increase cool air flow, and ...
- to keep warm in the winter, they form a cluster in the center of the hive and vibrate their bodies to produce heat. They take turns being on the inner and outer parts of the cluster so that no one bee gets too cold.
- Honey bees cooperate to find food and use an intricate pattern of "dancing" to communicate directions to a new food source to the rest of the colony.
- They are tireless workers (well, the females, male bees are only useful for procreation - they have no stingers, cannot feed themselves and die immediately after mating); bees never sleep.
- Workers bees progress through a series of jobs in the hive - such as working in the nursery, building the honeycomb, etc. - before taking their orientation flight and finishing out their lives as gatherers.
No, the reason for all that, is this:
"Everyone, except the bumblebee itself, knows that a bumblebee can't fly. Its body is too big for such small wings and furthermore it isn't particularly streamlined. But no one told the bumblebee - it flies anyway"
Now, the whole "bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly thing" has been shown to be false ... because while it is true that if an airplane had the same construction as a bee it would never get off the ground, bees aren't like airplanes at all. Their wings work on the same principle as helicopter blades, and a moving airfoil, whether it's a helicopter blade or a bee wing, generates a lot more lift than a stationary one. It isn't just sheer force of will that takes them airborne.
But I still like the sentiment behind the story, which is essentially that no one, and no circumstance, should stop you from accomplishing what you set out to do. To me, that is inspirational. It has become a mantra when I've faced certain challenges in my life. It reminds me to just pick myself up and keep flying.
So, I like bees. And now you know why.