On Bees

I was driving to the notary today when a thought occurred to me:

"How the hell do bees evolve?"

I man really, how does that work? Normally one member of a species develops a trait that helps it survive better or at the very least have more children. Passing on those mutant freak genes is how complex life evolves. So how the hell do bees do it?

For one thing, bees have the wonderful defense mechanism of the stinger. Except they die when they sting you. So it's beneficial for other bees if one bee mutates and gets a stinger. Other animals learn not to eat bees, remaining bees thrive. Except now the only bee with a stinger is dead and there's no one to pass on the trait.

So maybe they all develop stingers. Then everybody protects everybody else. Great, except now we're talking simultaneous, parallel evolution of an entire species for the benefit of the species instead of individuals within that species. Cooperative evolution. Oh man.

Then of course we have to raise the issue that none of the bees who ever sting you get to reproduce. They have queens for that. The simplest answer, I suppose, is that it was evolutionarily beneficial for a specific queen bee to birth crazy, stinger-equipped mutant offspring to defend her and help her personal colony.

These bees ended up dominating all nee life until no other bees were left. Yes. Good.


You know, most people think about normal things in the car.

On Bees

This afternoon a bumble bee sort of floated up to my second story window all gentle like, fat and slow and happy like an Air Hogs^TM brand personal aircraft toy.

I fucking hate wasps, and yellow jackets, and even those regular skinny bees that are just essentially tiny wasps or yellow jackets. Any way I try not to freak out, but I always keep to bobbing and weaving and keeping the damned things from landing on my at all. I've only been stung once and I'm not allergic, it just sucks to get stung by a bee.

But bumble bees?

Shit, they're my buds. We get along like flowers and, well, bees.

They're just so damned cute. All round and fuzzy. Where do they get off, really? I see a bumble bee floating around me, my first instinct isn't, "OH FUCK OH FUCK OH GEEZE GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF AAAAAHHHHHHGH!!!!"

It's more like, "Aw maaaa, yeeeaaaaahh…. Hells yeah, little guy! Or girl. You're all girls, right? That's cool. I'm down with equal opportunity insecting. Whatchu up to today, girl? You got some pollen off a dandy-lion or somethin'? That's pretty sweet, yo."

People freak out around bees and go spastic and put all those fear pheromones into the air and that just scares the bee. It lands on you and goes nuts and stings you and then it dies and you're in pain.

But a bumble bee lands on me it doesn't sense fear. All it says is, "Oh! Hey. That's a thing. Alright. Peace out, weird big thing," and flies off.

Hells yeah. I'm a thing.