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Elephants are scared around bees

nautil.us

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Re: Elephants are scared around bees

#61

Post by hot_gril »

dheera wrote: post #58
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - that was my first thought .. A bee sting inside your trunk would be no joke !

The actual stinger of bees doesn't hurt that much, it's the venom that really hurts. I always wondered whether a bee stinger would get deep enough in an elephant's (presumably very thick) dead skin layer to inject venom.

"Of course, a bee’s stinger can’t penetrate the thick hide of an elephant. But when bees swarm—and African bees swarm aggressively—hundreds of bees might sting an elephant in its most sensitive areas, like the trunk, the mouth, and eyes. And it hurts."

Re: Elephants are scared around bees

#62

Post by cryptonector »

lostlogin wrote: post #56
cryptonector wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not wearing appropriate protection then bees can kill you easy. De minimis you need a) a smoker, b) a veil for your face, head, and neck, c) a long sleeve shirt and long pants both made of fabric they can't easily sting through, and d) preferably tall boots with the pants legs cinched over them so they can't sting your ankles. You need gloves too if you don't know what you're doing. That's if you're beekeep…

All sensible advice. But if you’re careful you can go without PPE, and I have done so for years. The heat and discomfort of a suit and the additional crushed bees from clumsiness is not for me. I don’t have Africanised bees, just nice suburban ones.

I would always wear a veil -- doesn't have to be a full suit. Heck, I'd never wear a full suit as that's a recipe for heat stroke here in Texas. But I have a very airy top-half only suit and that's OK. I also wear an ice pack vest during the hot Texas summer months.

And I would always have smoke except when there is a burn ban in effect. Smoke can make all the difference.

Re: Elephants are scared around bees

#63

Post by nicolas_t »

bitwize wrote: post #26
felipemnoa wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except honey?

And larvae. A honey badger will go right into a house of bees to get some larvae. How disgusting is that?! It eats larvae!

my grandfather who happily let his cheese age on the countertop until larvae appeared because it improved the taste would not be shocked at all by that.

Re: Elephants are scared around bees

#64

Post by Modified3019 »

lostlogin wrote: post #56
cryptonector wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not wearing appropriate protection then bees can kill you easy. De minimis you need a) a smoker, b) a veil for your face, head, and neck, c) a long sleeve shirt and long pants both made of fabric they can't easily sting through, and d) preferably tall boots with the pants legs cinched over them so they can't sting your ankles. You need gloves too if you don't know what you're doing. That's if you're beekeep…

All sensible advice. But if you’re careful you can go without PPE, and I have done so for years. The heat and discomfort of a suit and the additional crushed bees from clumsiness is not for me. I don’t have Africanised bees, just nice suburban ones.

Normally the bees in the hives used to pollinate blueberries don’t give a damn about me while I’m out doing my agronomy job.

However I’ve found that when there are moving clouds that cause conditions to suddenly shift from shaded to full sun, the abrupt temperature/light increase seems to cause what I presume are guard bees to become upset, resulting in me suddenly getting stung. If the full sun condition is constant then no issues.

I definitely prefer the alfalfa leafcutting bee “hives”, used on alfalfa, they are so much more chill. Technically they are “solitary bees” but are gregarious and happy enough to form a sort of colony close together to others, which allows for having boxes of them. They lack both nest guarding instincts and a venomous stinger. Special bees are used for alfalfa because they don’t mind the alfalfa flowers mechanically slapping them with pollen in their face when opening the flowers. Regular honeybees don’t like that and will learn to chew through the base of the flower to get the nectar.

Re: Elephants are scared around bees

#65

Post by lostlogin »

bregma wrote: post #60
lostlogin wrote: post #57

> dry seasons, too, can dampen bee populations in hives as they flee and search for moister climes. This seems unlikely. The bees likely died. Bees don’t just leave their brood and fly off.

Bees don't just leave their queen and fly off. If there's a queen there's brood but if the queen dies the workers begin to disperse, and also start to lay (haploid) eggs that only hatch into drones which also disperse. On the other hand, colonies will migrate if their environmental conditions are not ideal. It's a phenomenon called "swarming" and it happens all the time even with domestic livestock.

Is swarming migration? The original colony remains in place (though can fail and die due to starvation, disease etc). The new swarm could be described as migrating, I suppose, but the OG remains.

Re: Elephants are scared around bees

#67

Post by cushpush »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #14
pharaohgeek wrote: post #9

My son befriended one of the leading African elephant researchers who is now one of the big wigs at Disney's Animal Kingdom. When we met him, he explained how researchers used this knowledge to teach African villages how to become beekeepers. Elephants would often trample their crops or other areas of the village, so they taught them how to keep bees around the perimeter of the village. The elephants stay away and th…

Additional net effect: crops were better - fertilized. Random bee fact: each workerbee trip returns ~40mg nectar to the hive. <3 Not Your Beekeeper

40mg nectar might have to be a new band name

Re: Elephants are scared around bees

#68

Post by simonebrunozzi »

voisin wrote: post #16
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additional net effect: crops were better - fertilized. Random bee fact: each workerbee trip returns ~40mg nectar to the hive. <3 Not Your Beekeeper

> Random bee fact: each workerbee trip returns ~40mg nectar to the hive. And it takes them approximately 1 hour and 1,000 flower visits in order to collect enough nectar or pollen to fill up for the return trip. It is so taxing that the muscles in their wings wear out after around 2 weeks.

> It is so taxing that the muscles in their wings wear out after around 2 weeks.

Wow. I know a lot about bees (and kept bees with my father for several years), but never thought about this and of course didn't know the details of the wear effect on wings.

Re: Elephants are scared around bees

#69

Post by rootusrootus »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #40
eterevsky wrote: post #23

My cats have been bitten by various insects more than once and are still not at all "scaredy" around them.

We have three hives in our yard. My dog still gets a kick out of snapping at bees no matter how many times he's stung. He probably gets stung 5-10 times per year while I have only been stung once in 3 years of having the hives in the yard.

My dog is the same way. I thought maybe she was uniquely dumb, but I guess not. She snaps at bees, and once in a while she actually catches one. And judging from her immediate reaction, it isn't too pleasant. But a few minutes later she's snapping at the next one.

Re: Elephants are scared around bees

#70

Post by inopinatus »

pharaohgeek wrote: post #9

My son befriended one of the leading African elephant researchers who is now one of the big wigs at Disney's Animal Kingdom. When we met him, he explained how researchers used this knowledge to teach African villages how to become beekeepers. Elephants would often trample their crops or other areas of the village, so they taught them how to keep bees around the perimeter of the village. The elephants stay away and th…

Upon reading the phrase “elephant researcher” I visualise a bespectacled pachyderm in a lab coat.
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