The suicide bees
Not killer bees: suicide bees.
Yesterday was a lovely warm day, and I had lunch with a friend. We decided the weather was so nice that we’d sit outside at a restaurant that had some sidewalk tables.
I’d ordered a small bowl of turkey vegetable soup. It had chunks of turkey, a few veggies, and broth, and was served in a styrofoam cup along with a plastic soup spoon.
I’d eaten most of it and left only about an inch in the bowl’s bottom, when along came a bee and alighted on the top of the spoon handle that was sticking out of the soup. As I watched, it slowly—and as best I could tell, deliberately—crept down the spoon handle and slid into the soup.
Well, now I wasn’t going to be eating the last inch of that soup. But I wondered whether bees drown, or whether they can swim. After a minute or so of watching it flail that question was answered: they drown, and fairly quickly, too.
My friend and I continued our conversation, and I thought no more about the bee until along came another bee and began the same approach, although I’d removed the spoon by then and so this bee no longer had an easy gangplank. But it poised at the bowl’s edge, and dropped itself into the liquid to join its fellow.
As I said to my friend, “One’s an accident, two’s a pattern.”
But why? The soup wasn’t sweet; it was a bit salty. I hadn’t thought bees liked turkey, or salt. But there the two little corpses floated, the Romeo and Juliet of the apian set.
And then along came a third. This one had a bit of trouble locating its target and getting a grip on the edge of the bowl, and so it flew away, perhaps thinking better of the whole endeavor.
And then, a few minutes later, a fourth.
By this time we were finished with lunch, and I’d had it with bees. We picked up our utensils and trays to go inside and dump the refuse. But there was that fourth bee on the edge of my bowl, still alive, and I didn’t want to take a live bee into the restaurant.
So I figured I’d dislodge it from its perch and leave it outside. That proved difficult; the thing clung on, tenaciously (and bitterly?), to the bowl’s side. I couldn’t seem to talk it down from the ledge. But finally, with a very firm slap to the side of the bowl, I caused it to fall off and onto the ground.
Then I ran into the restaurant, fast, before it followed me.
NOTE: I just found this online. So perhaps they were community-organizing environmentally-minded Canadian bees?:
OK, that’s just weird. But then again, I’ve put out a bowl of beer in my garden to kill slugs.
To bee, or not to bee, that is the question.
John Kidle:
Of course!
Wish I’d thought of that [slaps hand on forehead].
Slugs like beer. They just can’t help falling in and drowning.
It’s a happy death you’re providing, Lizzy.
Neo- you have solved the great honey bee die-off! They are being undone by turkey soup.
Seriously, though, there is probably some chemical in the soup that attracts them as do flowers.
Looks like your soup had some type of chemical that said- Come Heather Honey 🙂
Detzel and Wink (1993) published an extensive review of 63 types of plant allelochemicals (alkaloids, terpenes, glycosides, etc.) and their effects on bees when consumed. It was found that 39 chemical compounds repelled bees (primarily alkaloids, coumarins, and saponins) and three terpene compounds attracted bees. They report that 17 out of 29 allelochemicals are toxic at some levels (especially alkaloids, saponins, cardiac glycosides and cyanogenic glycosides).[22]
This is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bees_and_toxic_chemicals
I don’t know a whole lot about insects, but that won’t stop me from offering some theories in lieu of actual knowledge. 1.) This is the time of year the drones get to mate with a queen, who gets to survive the winter, but they don’t. They know they’re going to die soon and there’s no one left to mate with, so they end it all. 2.) They’re old and tired female worker bees trying to prove they still have it. Or, 3.) they are not bees but yellow jackets, which are wasps and eat other things besides sweet stuff. As do butterflies, who are said to occasionally feast on manure.
What I have found, as a former hobbyist beekeeper, is that the term “bee” is commonly used for any honey bee or similar looking insect.
I do not know if Neo falls into this category, but if so it would make a lot of sense for carnivorous insects like yellow jackets to be attracted to the soup.
This is just like government tyranny. The first taste is always free and good.
Not too terribly long ago, I had a hornet buzzing around a sandwich of mine, and it ultimately landed in a pool of tabasco sauce… I ended up killing it at that point, so not sure if it would have killed him, but I’d never have thought I’d see a hornet fly into a pool of tabasco. 😮
FRANKLY, everyone here needs to pay more attention to their Kipling:
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Chicken returns to her Coop,
And the drowned bee’s dampened antennae go wabbling back to the Soup;”
I’ve had kamikaze flies in my coffee.
They have a distinctive flavor, that’s for sure.
Vanderleun for 100 pts. Woulda been 101 pts but for the hazardous quotation marks, not that Kipling would care.
Sounds like yellow jackets to me, unless someone near the restaurant is keeping honey bees.
Anyway, at this time of year all pollinators, like honey bees and yellow jackets, have just about run out of food sources in the Northeast. Anything that smells good to them is an attractor and, as “dbp” noted above, yellow jackets would be especially drawn to the scent of the meat.
This why I come to this site.
This little sentence has so much strange goodness packed in to it that I have to read more.
I’ll be tipping the hat soon, Neo, it will be money well spent.