October 7, 2010

NY Times on Colony Collapse Disorder

I suspect the NYTimes writer of this piece on the fascinating and disturbing phenomenon of honeybee colony collapse disorder was having a bit of fun w/ this one:

"One perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving it is that the bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction from the hive, then die alone and dispersed. That makes large numbers of bee autopsies — and yes, entomologists actually do those — problematic."

"The first steps were awkward, partly because the Army lab was not used to testing bees, or more specifically, to extracting bee proteins. “I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

The process eventually was refined. A mortar and pestle worked better than the desktop, and a coffee grinder worked best of all for making good bee paste."

"Another possibility, he said, is a kind of insect insanity."

posted at 01:09 AM by raul

Filed under: noted

Comments:

10/07/10 03:58 AM

Hahaha, very funny :)

10/25/10 05:10 PM

Insect Insanity is not really a joke. This happens quite a lot because of different types of fungi to many different species. As evidence, this clip from the BBC documentary series "Life in the Undergrowth"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuopJYLBvrI&feature=related

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