Your honeyfuggling habits will not work with me.
Your foreplay is of no effect—just makes me want to pee.
If you want to romance me, you’ll have to get more physical.
This flittering and buzzing just makes me slightly quizzical.
You promise that your tactics will become more auspicious,
but then you call me “Honey” and make me more suspicious.
Your strategies of courtship are too fluttery and free.
I fear that our love story was just not meant to “bee.”
The prompt word for word of the day is honeyfuggle.
Oh that hurt~!!! but I liked it anyway~!
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The dangers of collecting honey.
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Ah! What a fun poem! That bee apparently got told to ‘buzz off”, didn’t he?
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Sure did.
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I’ve always thought of bees as female, but this is so cute.
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Only the queen is female. Workers are male and I think drones are asexual, but not sure.
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Now that you say it, I guess I have known that, but in Russian the word itself is feminine; I think that’s why I had this image. Also, my Hebrew name, Devorah, means a bee, but not a queen bee.
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Okay.. read below. You were correct, and so is the Russian language!!
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Just did, Judy. We are both correct, in a way.
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Beautiful name, I wonder why we do not see it more often. Is the accident on the middle syllable~? like De VO rah This would make a beautiful, song, (bet someone beat me to this). Must find a way to use it~!
Thanks Devorah for your informative post, they are always almost like a worker bee fanning my hive to give me a cool productive day~!
And thanks Judy for your “honeyfruggling” poems which keeps us talking and thinking. They are always most welcome too.
As to the bees, I had a couple of hives, but killer bees took over one of them, so I gave them to a friend who had a large apiary. I have often thought about a science fiction scene where humans took over the same control of clone child birth and we became somewhat like bees, with the majority only being workers and the queen deciding who would be “drone” from the white hive. (white house~?)
The transformation is made at the laying of the egg, The queen can control whether the egg is fertilized or not (birth control?) the size of the cell and what the larva is fed. So you have egg, larva, pupa, and adult. In the construction of the size of the brood chamber, “cell”, and whether of not it gets enough of that great “royal Jelly”. The queen is the fastest to produce, all they need to do is feed her (it) a lot of great food.
I remember back in the 50’s royal jelly was a product sold at very high prices, and ladies paid for it~! I wonder if this is still produced for the market~?
With modern science working on cloning, why not….?. Can you picture one rather BIG young woman running away from home, “the hive” with a huge bunch of “dronnies” chasing after her, and only one winning the prize, ONE TIME for the rest of her life, and then her setting up house keeping elsewhere else~?. Wait, it seems like I may have seen this and the reason I said that your poem hurt~! Now give us another poem~!
In the meantime as for “beeing” edified on the subject, go here, because “hive” gone as far as I know~! Pay attention to the list of all the responsibilities the “worker” has to do in relation to the others~!
https://bees.techno-science.ca/english/bees/life-in-a-hive/stages.php
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After writing the above I was curious to know if “royal Jelly” was still “the thing” of the rich. I had a cousin many years ago who ran an apiary primarily for harvesting that “miracle stuff”. She had a special building which had openings from the outside into fake “hives” where the process was done. (hard to describe). Anyway I went looking for more information and I found the attached interesting.
https://www.beeculture.com/royal-jelly-worker-bee-produced-protein-rich-mothers-milk/
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https://www.wired.com/2015/09/royal-jelly-isnt-makes-queen-bee-queen-bee/
Maleszka has delivered a stinging rebuke to the idea that a single compound in royal jelly is the “switch” that makes a queen, though. In 2008, his lab was able to create queen bees without any royal jelly consumption, by turning off (silencing) a set of genes. Other bee researchers have questioned the “one molecule to rule them all” idea of queen development. The reality is likely that, like everything else in biology, it’s complex and many factors are involved.
The real power of this new research may be in explaining why worker bees don’t become queens. Instead of chemical castration by denying workers royal jelly, this elaborate feeding process provides chemical protection for the queen’s ovaries. She is sheltered from the potential toxic or metabolic effects of plant chemicals. As we continue to improve our techniques, hopefully we will come closer to a firm answer about just what honey bees eat in their hives, and why.
Postscript: Um, Why Are Humans Eating Royal Jelly?
When we thought royal jelly was magic queen stuff, stealing and eating phlegm produced in insect heads made a kind of warped sense. Royal jelly proponents claim the stuff cures all sorts of human problems, infertility in particular. By deduction, the stuff that makes queen bees baby machines, laying up to 2,000 eggs a day, should increase human fertility. I am compelled to say this is not how scientists deduce cause and effect.
Royal jelly also is sold as an aphrodisiac, and like most erotic insect products, it’s applied with “vigorous rubbing.” That makes it hard to say just how firm evidence for this erectile remedy really is. Also, actual honey bee reproduction involves penis detachment and death, which doesn’t sound like a good time to me, if we are sticking with that whole “what works for a bee will work for humans” analogy.
Royal jelly does have antibacterial and antifungal properties, since it’s the gunk developing bees float in until they metamorphose. It’s marketed in many cosmetics as an anti-aging ingredient; queen bees live 40 times longer than worker bees. So far, there isn’t much evidence of royal jelly having medical significance in humans. It’s probably a good moisturizer, though. Especially if you don’t think about where it comes from.
My best guess is that about 600 tons of royal jelly is produced and sold yearly; East Asia is the main producer. Prices vary widely, but based on a trip to my local health food store, seems to run about $1 per gram. The market value of royal jelly is based on what we thought we knew about its magical properties; that doesn’t seem likely to change in the foreseeable future.
But now you can have a lot of fun telling people where their royal bee goobers came from.
Wenfu Mao, Mary A. Schuler, and May R. Berenbaum. 2015. A dietary phytochemical alters caste-associated gene expression in honey bees. Science Advances 1(7).
#INSECTS
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https://www.wired.com/2015/09/royal-jelly-isnt-makes-queen-bee-queen-bee/
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I guess I have not tried to figure all of this out, (who can say~?) I was only stating what others have said going back to ancient times, and my cousin did became rather well off from her little queen factory. My opinion is that there are always more ways than one to get from my house to the store, and this must be the way Bees are doing it. Drones and workers are also fed the jelly but only a much smaller amount and in a smaller size cell. I can’t can’t picture a “doctor bee” performing any type of orchiectomy on a tiny worm~! Like I said about Isaac Newton there are more ways to explain science than an apple falling on our head~!
I never tried Royal Jelly, at the time that it was popular I did not need such things as I had a libido which was far out running my abilities. But in my old age I may be interested if someone can prove that that rubbing on thing really works………
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I’m reading a book I bet you’d like called “The Murmur of Bees.” In it, the adopted brother who is part bee, part boy, feeds royal jelly to his baby brother..I thought of you.
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Did you ever notice a bee “face on”~? It looks like they have a cleft palate. Maybe this is where she got that idea…While I am interested in the terrible problems of Mexico during that period, I have only read reviews of this book in “good reads”.
I once saw high up on a hill over the road in Mexico a gun emplacement, much like you still see in parts of Europe. I asked a native why it was there…. He replied, “if that were not there, you would not be here”. Funny how such statements stay with you for years.
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I visualize a science fiction film you are describing so well, Sam. Write a script, why don’t you? It’s a great concept.
As to my name and how I got to be Dolly, I have explained it here:
https://koolkosherkitchen.wordpress.com/contact/about-kookkosherkitchen/
As to spelling, it is a matter of reading the Hebrew letter בּ as a B or a V (with or without the dot in the middle). And yes, every Debby is a bee!
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Don’t listen to anything I say… at least in this particular comment. It is fake news!!!! Read on….
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Well only the QUEEN, and she will decide who will be drone, The rest are really Eunuch, Just like real life, work, work, work, but ask for a little honey and she says to buzz off~!
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LOL That’s a nice politically correct way of explaining it, Sam.
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Oops.. Forgottenman to the rescue. Worker bees are sterilized females! Drones are male..You were right! Mea Culpa…
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Sterilized? Who does that to the poor bees?
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hahahahha…I actually had a mental image of that myself.
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So did I – great minds think sideways…
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Hahahaha ha.
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