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."
10/07/10 03:58 AM
Sahba said...
Hahaha, very funny :)
10/25/10 05:10 PM
cetan said...
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