Tell it To The Bees....

[jdmidwest]

There is an old tradition from a long time ago.  There is a bond between a beekeeper and their bugs.  When you start beekeeping, they sting you until you learn to react to their actions and let them do their thing.  Then you wade amongst them and become one with them.

The tradition is when a beekeeper dies, someone has to "tell it to the bees".  Beekeeping has been tied to religion and all sorts of mystical things.  Bees themselves are interesting bugs.

Grant Gilliard passed away suddenly a week ago Thursday.  I became friends with Grant when I started bees, he was a friend, mentor, and an all around great guy.  He preached my wedding 4 years ago when me and the missus decided to make it official after 17 years of living in sin.  We shared a similar look at life, and not enough time in it.  He left his church of  25 years and moved away to be with his kids a few years back.  I have not seen him since.  When I seen it in the newspaper Monday, it hit hard.  Someone will have to tell my bees one day.

Grant Gilliard
 

[fishinwrench]

Sorry to hear about your ol'friend.  That's too bad 😔 

There's alot of BS biology related to bees.   My favorite is the thing about the scouts coming back and performing a dance that allegedly communicates information to the rest of the hive occupants.    But when this mystical dance happens 99% of the hive occupants aren't even looking.   They are either buried under 40 other bees, or are just generally doing other things and not even watching "Dance fever boy" or paying attention at all.  

I witnessed a cool bee thing once.  This girl that was a genuine snotty brat was sitting on a horse when a bee started buzzing its nose.  The horse shook it head and snorted, and the bee let him have it right on the snoot.   The horse went batshit crazy, reared up and dumped ol' snotty pants right on her keester HARD.  😅

 

 

[MoCarp]

Used to help my father in law with his bees, I miss that and the honey....def a labor of love....he used to have a heart attack when I bought bee larva for bait...old cabin shop in Carthage catered to bees as well as guns...still in shock what happened to Bob Sheldon, his wife and dog...used to shoot the breeze with bob on arrowheads, bees and such...got all the bee supplies there

 

[jdmidwest]

He was a fellow beekeeper with over 200 hives.  Served as President of the Missouri State Beekeepers.  Wrote several books on it.

At the wedding he made references to the Queen bee as he spoke to my wife.  I reminded him later that the male Drone either dies after mating or is expelled by winter.  We had a good laugh.  He was the pastor of a beautiful little Presbyterian Church in Jackson, an old historical place.  We held bee meeting in the basement every 4th Tuesday.

 

[jdmidwest]

20 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

There's alot of BS biology related to bees.   My favorite is the thing about the scouts coming back and performing a dance that allegedly communicates information to the rest of the hive occupants.    But when this mystical dance happens 99% of the hive occupants aren't even looking.   They are either buried under 40 other bees, or are just generally doing other things and not even watching "Dance fever boy" or paying attention at all.  

 

Since there are 10k to 60k bees in a hive, 1% gets the message across.

Move the hive 5 feet and they get lost coming back.  Put a bush in front of the opening of a night and move them 5 feet, they come out in the morning, see something different, re-orient themselves and find the way back.

[fishinwrench]

2 hours ago, jdmidwest said:

Since there are 10k to 60k bees in a hive, 1% gets the message across

So then it's inevitable that any one of the remaining 99% will come into the hive an hour later..... doing the same stupid dance, and in essence reporting the same news.  

Now I understand why nobody in the hive is paying attention.  They are already sick of hearing about it.  😅