The whole fabric of honey bee society depends on communication~
on an innate ability to send and receive messages, to encode and decode information.
~The Honey Bee~
Bees are a sisterhood of workers,devoted to each other and to the work that is so important to them. Bees have a unique kind of communication called the "Waggle Dance" This type of communication is very sophisticated and unique to the Honey Bee.
Sadly something is going on world wide with our bees…they are disappearing and the scientists do not know why. It is becoming increasingly more important to raise bees and help, if even in a small way. Here is a little segment on a tv special that was done recently, explaining the sad situation. Hopefully the Beekeepers and the Scientists can unlock the mystery of CCD (colony collapse disorder)
Ok….so I bet you are wondering where the contest part is?
Leave a comment with your favorite good or bad bee story. If you do not have a bee story, then a simple Buzzzzzzzzzz….will do. The contest prize will be a skein of my new Bambino yarn in Tupelo honey with a Marie Antoinette pattern, a braid of Tupelo Honey angora blend roving and this sweet little Bee pin made by Rachel Badeau .
I will use a random calculator to pick a winner on Halloween (Friday). I am looking forward to hearing from you!
Lastly, for you Manise, my friend, a favorite little bee ditty…. "Community" (send them scurrying…)
The Woolen Rabbit 
My favorite story is one from childhood. Remember, when you used to collect different insects in Mason Jars?! One day, my brother caught a honey bee (my father had bees on the west side of our 10 acre farm) in a jar without a lid and decided his hand would work as the lid. Well, I think you know what happened!! After that, my brother respected the bees and never tried to catch one again! He wasn’t allergic, but still learned a powerful lesson about respecting nature! Thanks for including something so important in your blog!
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Well, my granddaughter, who is now 9, has always been known as my little bumblebee since she was a baby. She loved the bzzzzzzzz sound so I’d sing her a little song ‘Teagan’s my little bumblebee, bumblebee, bumblebee; Teagan’s my little bumblebee, bzzzzzz, bzzzzzz, bzzzzzzz’ and she’d love the bzzzzzzz part each time. Since then, I’ve created bumblebee jewelry and collected bumblebee things for her as that is our special little thing together.
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Hmmm. A bee story? I stepped on a bee once. It hurt.
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my bee entry is not a story, and I suppose I’m technically ineligible to win, BUT…
:)))))
I’d like to title my entry “Bee All you can Bee” and I’ll donate my winnings back to the house, please.
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The first and only time I have ever been stung by a bee was when I was fairly young (maybe 5 or 6?). I was running around our yard barefoot while my parents made shishkabobs on the grill. To this day I can’t eat shishkabobs because my subconscious connects them with pain.
not afraid of bees though – I’m always that person who just rolls their eyes at the (non-allergic) people screaming about a little tiny bee.
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I love bees. I’ve been reading bee blogs for the past couple of years, wanting to get first hand accounts from keepers on how things are going. I love the products we use (honey, wax) as well as all the things they pollinate and keep growing for us. One of my happiest memories from this past summer is sitting on the steps, petting the stray kitty as we both sleepily watched a couple of sister bees gently but industriously move from blossom to blossom in the sun.
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When my brother was a toddler; he called all striped yellow and black insects, “Hunky bees”. Made me pause and think: attractive and fit? Bees? Well… Sure! : )
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I can only go BZZZZZ! but gosh are those colors beautiful and they look like honey. I love them.
I too stepped on one when I was young. And in Virginia our bees seem to be dwindling. I hate it. We need them for so much. Go watch the Bee Movie.
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More along the lines of yuck! When I was a little girl a bee flew into my mouth! Fortunately I opened back up and he flew out again without stinging me! I love bees because without them we would have no flowers, fruit, honey….
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A friend recently saw a swarm of bees fly into her yard and settle on a tree. She made a call to a Beekeeper group she found in the phone book and they sent out a keeper who had lost half his bees in the last year. He was thrilled to have a new swarm. He scooped them into a cardboard box with his gloved hand and went away a very happy man.
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I was pretty young the first time I visited the Smithsonian museum, and saw the live bee colony display (it’s upstairs – the hive is on the outside of the building, viewable through a Plexiglas window with some magnification inserts…) I was enthralled, and I remember looking at the little bee “faces” and thinking how, up close, they kind of looked like teddy bears…
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I’m glad I don’t more than one bee story…. so many of them are stories of getting stung. I did get stung once walking barefoot in our backyard as a kid…. it hurt.
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It is so sad that we are losing bees. There will be so many unforeseen outcomes of this problem! (I just finished reading Where the Wild Things Were about predator decrease, but I think the same effects apply to any living creature in a system.)
Anyway, my long and circular bee story is one I may have mentioned to you before, but not in detail. Napoleon Bonaparte’s symbol or crest was a bee (for many reasons including industriousness–industry?). It then became (and still is) a very popular motif in textiles and decor, referred to as the Napoleonic Bee. As a young adult, I decided that my calling or interest was in the field of design so I got a tattoo of a honeybee to cement the decision. I’m still in the field and it’s still my favorite tattoo!
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I have seen several mating dances between bees (the males swarming and dieing off until one is left) but only once I saw bees actually mating. Mid-air. Very cool.
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I’m allergic so when I was little, I learned the “caution: bees!” dance from my mom! It was a very slow walk away from the bees and toward her… and I would wiggle my bum ( i was 3). I still do this when I am near bees and need to remember to react s-l-o-w-l-y. But, I like bees and their honey (1 tsp per day, from a local source) is an excellent pollen desensitizer… we use it instead of allergy meds now!
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I also stepped on a bee and was stung as a child…But I’ve never held that against the bees…I love bees. They are beautiful and graceful and give us so many lovely flowers!
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Oh dear. When my sisters and I were small, a bee stung our poor Springer Spaniel on the ear and got stuck in his fur. We were afraid to pick the bee off so I got the bright idea to get the garden hose and try to blast the bee off. What a scene! The poor dog was running around yowling in pain from the bee sting and we were hosing him down on top of that. I can still see it all after all these years.
Yes, the bees are in trouble. I hope the scientists can figure out what’s going on because we really need those little darlings.
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My dad was a beekeeper when I was young. He loved honey and made jars and jars of it (that only he ate–no one else liked it). One day I looked out the window, and he was laid out spreadeagled on the ground in his full beekeeping outfit, covered with swarming bees. I was terrified, but it turned out that for some reason the bees had been angry when he opened a hive, so he simply got down on the ground and stayed still until they went away. More patience and fortitude than I would have had!
And a two-fer: some of my favorite poems ever are from Sylvia Plath’s bee cycle.
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Ahhh – bees, this brings back a memory of a drafty 250 yr old farmhouse . . . When I was little my parents bought a dilapidated old farmhouse & proceeded to slowly remodel. For much of my life the back “wing” of the house was unheated & largely uninhabited. Finally my mom decided that something needed to be done about the bottom level & started ripping out plaster & lathe. Imagine her surprise when she noticed honey dripping down the walls & heard buzzing. It turns out there was a huge colony that had established a hive in the ceiling and walls of this room. A friend whose own colony had mostly died from mites, came and re-populated his colony with the house bees. My folks are still using the honey & the descendents of these hardy bees are still going strong.
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My favorite bee memory is stroking the bumblebees in the Tetons. Even in summer it is too cold for them to fly early in the morning so they each sit inside a flower waiting. While they are immobilized you can gently stroke their fur.
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Ah, I just posted my favorite bee story the other day. It’s how in the fall the bumblebees would sleep in the caryopteris in front of my house overnight. In the morning, they’d be sluggish from the cold and dew, and could barely move. The bushes looked like they were growing bumblebees.
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I was buying local honey at a Fall Festival here and asked the owner (they have a gift shop with an indoor colony you can watch, very interesting) about the bee problem. They have lost about 1/3 of the ones they have on their farm. No idea what’s causing it.
My only bee stories involve stings and aren’t very entertaining! But really, for as many as I see outside gardening every year, the stings have been very few and only when I was careless. I love watching them.
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One of my mother’s friends used to keep bees. As a child, I was fascinated by the whole process! I loved the beekeeping headdress and gear, as well as the whole smoke thing. She also taught me how to make beeswax candles and lip balm.
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When I was a kid I spent all my summers with my grandparents. They had a garden plot in one of those communal gardens and the pathways everywhere were grass. I spent all my time barefoot then and got stung twice by stepping on a bee. Now I’m always careful when walking around barefoot in the grass!
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I wish I could keep bees, but I’m allergic. However my fiancee has said he’d be willing to do it, so once we get property, it may well happen that I get to call some honey mine.
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When I was a kid, my dad traveled a lot for business. One time when he was gone, a bee got in the house. It wasn’t a happy bee, or a healthy one. It decided to live on the staircase into the basement. Not me, nor my brother or sister, nor my mother, would, ummm, help the bee out, in any way. He lived on the stairs for the whole week until my dad got home. We all jumped over whatever step that poor guy happened to be on for the entire week.
Maybe if we’d got him back outside he could have contributed to the race. I’m feeling guilty now.
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When my girls were little, life was a quite crazy. We stuck pretty much to one room where I could corral two toddlers with ease. There was nothing too high for them to climb on and fall, no small objects to swallow, no pointy furniture edges to injure sweet little heads. Despite my attempts at safety they still managed to find trouble. One day as Isabella sat playing innocently, I noticed Sofie chewing happily on something. I couldn’t find anything in her mouth, but when I looked in her sweaty little fist I found half a bee.
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When I was 12, my dad took my brother and me to a company picnic. This was before the days of sugar-free soft drinks and the bees were all over the opened cans of soda. One was perched on the rim of my can and my father flicked it off – it landed on my right arm and proceeded to sting me. The bees continued to come, and dad flicked off another one, telling me it would just fly away! – This one landed on my left arm and stung me too. I threw away my soda in an act of defiance to my dad. He continued to tell me they wouldn’t bother me.
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No bee stories for me…I’m allergic so I avoid them like the plague. But I’ve always liked big, fat, bumblebees!
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I have fond memories of the honeycomb – a rare treat we received from the old bee keeper in our moshav (a small coop community in Israel). He was the grandfather of my best friend.
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HI KIM – 2 things – wonder if the infiltration of the giant bees has some how affected the bee colonies – have you ever heard the expression -its the ‘bees knees’ – think this means its great or perfect – anyone know more about this expression and where it comes from??
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HEY – forgot to say yummy , yummy roving and yarn —my favourite colour
pat
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I don’t have any personal stories, I’ve been stung but it hasn’t been awful – I don’t mind them one bit and usually my aloofness keeps me safe:) My husband on the other hand…my daughter did get stung just below her eye though and I made an entire scrapbook page on it – she looked like a little prize-fighter, I couldn’t resist!
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When we were little kids we weren’t afraid of bees. We had a lot of clover growing in our grass and we used to sit and watch the bees. When one would stop on a clover flower we would carefully pick the flower and carry the bee around while he was busy. When he was done he would fly away as though it was only natural to be carried around on a flower. Beautiful yarn and aptly named.
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My oldest son took a girlfriend to a college football game where he purchased the biggest rice krispie treat ever. He was showing her how he could fit the whole treat into his mouth. He didn’t notice until it was too late that a bee had landed on the corner and it stung him several times before he could crunch and swallow!! He’s older and wiser now and we laugh about some of those crazy things!
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I’ve never been stung by a bee…in fact, I’m so afraid of that happening. But, I’ve always thought they were sooo cute and I know they are so important. I’ve been wondering why I keep seeing them dead on sidewalks and on the beach the past couple of years. I guess it must have something to do with this bee mystery. Thanks for sharing those videos. I’m definitely going to keep up on this story. Bzzzzzzzzz!
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When my son was about five years old, he came inside from the backyard complaining about bees. I told him that they’d leave him alone if he left them alone, and sent him back outside. A few minutes later I peeked outside to see him standing in a blizzard of bees–they were swarming!! I rescued him before he was stung, and the bees hung in a giant bee-ball on a tree branch for a couple of days before moving on.
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My favorite bee story… okay.. it hasn’t happened yet… is that Gramps says yes when I ask him at Thanksgiving if he’s interested in having hives up on the mountain with you. 🙂 Don’t put me in the contest though… that’s gotta be conflict of interest or something. You can just send me honey from your hives!
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I have always loved bee shapes (one of my first (of many) rubber stamp purchases was a bee) and I always have had a deep desire (as of yet unfulfilled) to get a bee tatoo. But, alas, no bee stories. I just like em! And I like honey. A LOT! Thanks for the contest!
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Friday at my sons school I saw the biggest bee I have ever seen. It was easily the size of a quarter. It was buzzing along the bricks on the side of the building where it was warm. I watched for about 5 minutes. It was amazing.
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No bee story, so Bzzzzzz!
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My bee story is riding my bike out in the country from Davis, Ca to Winters, Ca along Putah Creek Road and having a bee hit me in the neck. Ouch.
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I am very lucky in that my best friend is a beekeeper. She has hives she rents out every spring to orchards and at Christmas or, if I whine very muchily, during the fall, I inevitably am the lucky receipient of a jar of beautiful honey. Now there isn’t really a way to foresee what type it will be, even taking the same hive to the same orchard, you will get a different taste and color to the honey but year before last, I got a jar of darkest honey amber liquid, labelled sourwood clover. It was like the nectar of the gods. I was very saving with it and would only use it to treat myself but the inevitable happened and the jar was empty. It still amazes me that such industrious little creatures buzzing about created such a lucious nectar. And that each succeeding batch will be unique.
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Here in Florida we worry about aggressive Africanized bee swarms. Nobody trusts honey bees anymore yet we need them desperately in North Florida to pollinate the Tupelo trees, and in central Florida to pollinate the orange trees. Tupelo honey and Orange-blossom honey: Yummmmmmm – Bzzzzzzzz.
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Whenever I think of bees, I remember a wonderful and dear teacher who taught Latin at the high school where I worked. He had a wonderful way of connecting with his students and also had a very positive philosophy of life. One of his great passions was beekeeping and every year I would buy the most delicious honey from him. He has been gone several years now & is missed by many, many people.
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I don’t really have a specific story – but fond memories of my late father-in-law, a devoted bee keeper. I always thought his bees were really interesting, altho I never did get into the whole eat-the-honey-AND-the-comb thing. Whenever someone had a cold, his first response was to make them eat a giant spoonful of his honey (yum) with the comb (ick).
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bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….. I love the book, Secret Life of Bees! I love Tupelo Honey! I actually kept bees while I was in high school…. went to an Amish farm to get the bees and the supplies…. I HATED the buzz but loved the honey……and I really want some yarn! Peg
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I ran into a bee when I was around 8 years old. I slid down a metal handrail by some outside stairs and ran smack into the stinger end of a poor bee that was resting on the rail! I was sad we didn’t have the chance to avoid meeting one another.
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Taking care of my son after his first bee sting, poor baby! That was one to remember!!
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As a sensitive buxom lass of 14 years, my doting parents brought me a tshirt from Amsterdam with 2 bees emblazoned right across the chest… I only wore it once!
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