So today we were lunching on the patio and a couple of bees were very interested in my Pepsi. Since it was diet and therefore Not Good For Bees, I was preventing them from getting into the can. So they landed on my hand and head-butted my knuckles, exactly like the cats do when they think I have treats. We went inside and made wee dish of sugar water and I carefully deposited the ladies on the side of the dish, whereupon they daintily chugged that shit down like frat boys at a kegger. Well, being bees, those ladies went back to tell their friends. So soon there were more bees. And they were HUNGRY. Soon the first dish was drained. Then the second. I think the warm weather means the bees can’t really bed down for winter yet, but very few flowers are blooming in mid-November. I remember seeing a post over the summer about making a bee waterer by putting “stepping stones” in the liquid to keep them from bumbling in and getting their wings wet. And by the time I found something to use for that, they’d drained another two dishes. So now, um, here we are. I present: THE BEEZENING.
Witchy tip: this is a great way to charge your citrine.
Portuguese designer Susana Soares has developed a device for detecting cancer and other serious diseases using trained bees. The bees are placed in a glass chamber into which the patient exhales; the bees fly into a smaller secondary chamber if they detect cancer.
Scientists have found that honey bees - Apis mellifera - have an extraordinary sense of smell that is more acute than that of a sniffer dog and can detect airborne molecules in the parts-per-trillion range.
Bees can be trained to detect specific chemical odours, including the biomarkers associated with diseases such as tuberculosis, lung, skin and pancreatic cancer.
Oh look!!! Yet another reason why bees are rad. Let’s save them.
