Having my own daughter, I have become very much the worry wart that I used to make fun of when watching other parents. In my youth of 28 years ago, I used to live the life of high adventure on my parents small 11 acre parcel in New Jersey. We had horses, goats, cats, dogs, fish, ticks, hermit crabs, lawn tractor, barn rafters, and metal swing sets with ropes. All of the necessary elements for a boy to grow into a man or reach an early demise from an accidental pony kick to the abdomen.
In today’s safety conscience world of bicycle helmets and life jackets it is no wonder the earth’s population is booming into a Malthusian catastrophe from all of the added children that should have been taken out by their tire swing. If my father had let me do today what I did then he would have been dragged off to prison for child endangerment. Bicycle helmets? Phffffffft! All we had were training wheels and maybe an orange flag swinging from our rear bike axle. I fondly remember at the age of 8 walking freely through our woods, exploring foundations of old houses on our property, climbing up into the barn’s rafters over the horse stalls, and riding my bike miles down the road to buy a soda. Those were the sepia toned days of my imagination.
Then came the bane to gym teachers around the world. The Atari 2600. Instead of roaming the wilds of the outdoors or playing sports, children could now sit on their ass all day and grow fat playing Pong while chugging down carbonated high fructose corn syrup. What is this world coming to?
The icing on the cake was when I read that children under the age of one should not ingest honey as recommended by the CDC. HONEY? Your kidding? Apparently there is a slight risk of infants developing infant botulism. This life
The little bastards.
threatening disease is caused by the bacterium known as Clostridium botulinum. Up until the age of 6 months, infants are at a greater risk of developing this disease as their intestinal tract has not built up the ability to safely move the spores through the body. Symptoms of the illness include:
Fortunately it is very treatable and only about 100 cases occur each year. Apparently water, dirt, dust, and contaminated honey are the likely sources of this bacterium.
After doing a little Google research I came across a few articles that discuss why honey is a real risk. First, it is true that honey will inhibit the growth of bacteria and spores. Spores need to have just the right environmental variables for them to germinate and spread. In honey the variables are not all there. In the adult human body the high acidity and natural bacterial flora also prevent these spores from activating. However in an infant human body the acidity levels are low enough in combination with a lack of natural bacteria which adults have, allowing the spores to germinate and cause illness.
So as much as I like to tout the benefits of honey I would have to say I would follow the conservative course of action and just wait until my child was at least 2 before I started putting honey on her toast. So let me get back to heli-parenting around my daughter she is about to put her hands in the toilet water.
Ok, well maybe not zombie hunters but at least they could be under the right circumstances. I just read an interesting article in Bee Culture about the caste structure within a honeybee hive. All beekeepers know there are three primary castes of honeybees in the hive. The queen at the top, followed by the workers, and lastly the slacker group we all know as the Drones.
Oh Noo! Zombeeeees!
Just as a refresher for those not in the know. The drones are the male honeybees in the hive. Their sole purpose is to find themselves a queen and then have their genitalia explode from their body during copulation with them. If they are lucky that is how they will die. Usually drones will either be killed while flying about searching for a soul mate or when they are thrown out of their hive to starve by the workers honeybees come the end of the season. So if the drone is lucky he can have one last hurrah before he moves on to Fiddler’s Green.
The workers and Queen of course are female and do all of the heavy lifting while in the hive the Drones sit back and chug honey in their loungers all day. But within the worker caste there are several sub castes. And these sub castes are primarily determined by the age of the bee. So when a worker bee emerges from the comb she will typically begin house keeping activities within the hive. Including being a nursemaid, construction worker, guard, and most interestingly an undertaker. After about 21 days of this type of activity they will graduate into the Honeybee Air Patrol and begin gathering resources outside of the hive in the form of nectar, pollen, water, and propolis.
The undertaker behavior is simply the process of removing dead honeybees from the hive. What is interesting about the undertaker caste is that there are two types. The first variety are only intermittent undertakers. If they arrive upon a corpse within the hive they will be less than likely to do something about it and move along following their other housekeeping duties. Sort of like the New York city bystander who notices someone on fire running down the street and then checks his watch to see if he is late for a meeting. If the normal worker does arrive upon a corpse and does take action it will only occur for a brief span of time. They may only move the dead bee a few inches from its current location. Comparable to the NYC bystander calling the Fire Department and then continuing down the sidewalk.
The second variety seem to be solely focused on the undertaking activity as they arrive upon the bee corpse. They will spend most of their pre-foraging activities undertaking rather than any of the other housekeeping activities. This undertaker class is comparable to the Guard class of honeybees. Only a small percentage of the worker population will fall in either of theses two castes. Researchers have hypothesized that the undertakers and guard bees are actually more advanced than the normal population in that they graduate to the Honeybee Air Patrol faster than the rest of the worker bee population.
This undertaker activity also seems to be initiated via chemical response from the release of oleic acid by the decaying corpse. Researchers, Gould and Gould (1988), applied this acid to the bodies of live bees and the undertaker class actively hunted them down to be thrown out the door. They could not differentiate between live and dead honeybees. It was the chemical emitting from their body that began the corpse removal process. To the undertakers, they basically saw a walking corpse and took action to remove the offending undead. Once the acid had evaporated, the former “undead” were allowed back in by the undertakers.
In the end who likes zombie’s. We don’t and neither do honeybees.
For more detailed information please read the current issue of Bee Culture. Pages 13-14, September 2009.
Ever press all the wrong buttons in just the right order. Well that is what I did today resulting in a completely fouled up web blog. Trying to rebuild it was folly so I decided I would just redo it. In Autumn colors none-the-less. I have also changed the name of the blog and website from www.weekendbeekeeper.com to www.theweekendbeekeeper.com. Notice the word “THE” in front. Either way if you connect again to the older site you will be immedietly directed to the new one automatically. For the comments that were on the board, they are lost. I will have the forum up and running this weekend. Sorry.
jpbellavance
Site will soon be back up. Making some changes.
A bee suit is to a beekeeper what a pressure suit is to an astronaut. OK, maybe not that dramatic but you get the point. Wearing a suit allows the hairless ape to work amongst thousands of bees with nary a sting. I have bought several suits in the past, each with their own merits.
The holy veil of Aquilonia
My first suit was actually a 35.00 dollar painter’s jump suit and I have to say it was probably the most durable of all of the suits I have bought. Not sure where it was made but its cotton was heavy enough to repel the golden hive army from attacking my soft parts. Of course I had to buy a veil to go along with it and making the two come together to provide a bee proof shield barrier was always a hassle. But this was my graduate school days when money was not always available for luxuries.
Where is that zipper lad?
Later when I landed my first job I swallowed hook line and sinker B.J. Sheriffs advertisements in the issues of Bee Culture. This was folly. The British made suit worked
great for two seasons and then zippers and threading began to slough off like parts on a Fiat. Maybe I bought the summer weave suit but the material felt thin and downright cheap. Like washing your T-shirt a thousand times with bleach. I never use it anymore except for a backup suit for when I bring a guest out. Don’t worry I give them my good suit and I wear the holy garments. One aspect I did like about the suit was how its veil situated on my head. It did not limit my view all that drastically or cause my head to overheat.
My current suit was purchased from Dadant. Bee Suit It has served me well for the last five years. I really like the wide hat brim. The mesh falling from its edges gives your head plenty of breathing space for when the honeybees are trying to sting through the mesh. It is made from a nice thick cotton which can be steamy in our Virginia summers but protects you well from the bees. The zippers feel much more sturdy compared to my B.J. Sheriff suit and most importantly the zipper connection between the suit and veil is almost hermetic.
Buying a bee suit maybe a life saving event for you especially if you are susceptible to bee venom reactions. I would always go for the heavier suit. Heavier suits usually are accompanied with sturdier assemblage in the form of solid zippers and teeth and better threading. However if on the other hand you overheat quickly than I would recommend the B.J. Sheriff suit and some needle and thread for when it begins to disintegrate.
jpbellavance
