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Alithographica — Science Fact Friday: Know Your Bees
#bee #biology #bug #comparison #entomology #hoverfly #identification #insect #science #wasp #sciencefactfriday
Published: 2018-05-25 22:45:21 +0000 UTC; Views: 7690; Favourites: 157; Downloads: 33
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Bees! They’re great. As long as you don’t agitate them, they’re not out to get you. Only 7 species produce the honey humans use but the rest are important pollinators and deserve love too.
Meanwhile, wasps may be jerks but they’re ecologically important jerks. Hoverflies are where I see most people get confused, but they are purely beneficial and harmless.
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Comments: 50
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I always think of bumblebees as the teddy bears of the insect world, chubby, fuzzy and cute 🐝
I've been enjoying your gallery by the way, I like the science tidbits, and your art is also very good
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I freaking hate wasps, I have such a huge fear of them.
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I have carpenter bees going through my house last week
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Oops. They're like puppies - cute, pretty harmless, but definitely gonna cause some destruction.
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Yeah they are lol
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I've never been interested in bees, nor wasps or hornets or any of those; but for some reason I found this incredibly interesting and well-done and couldn't stop reading 0:
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Thanks! I always believe that just because a person isn't interested doesn't mean they wouldn't find some aspect interesting. I'm really not into linguistics but I have a friend who is and she always has cool tidbits to share. : D
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100% science fact
(I was going to step in and defend luna moths but nah, moths and butterflies are elegant. Bees are cute.)
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What about asian hornet, tarantula hawk, executioner wasp
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Oooo I should do these individually at some point.
All are wasps though, and therefore aggressive (but important) jerks. I'm deeply curious about how bad all of their stings actually hurt because, as I'm sure you know, those 3 are like...really really painful. I hope I never find out but yet...I really want to know lmao
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There’s some major confusion in the media between Asian hornets (which are specialist aerial hunters and invasive in Europe) and Asian Giant hornets (the huge scary ones that slaughter entire colonies but aren’t invasive anywhere).
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The asian hornet can kill person and animals
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The Asian hornet is NOT the same as the Asian Giant Hornet (which is what you probably are thinking of)
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Because they can kill a human
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This is really nice! ( But don't forget--wasps are evil, I get stung by one at least once a year >:0.))
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At least once a year?! What on earth are you doing :v
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Wandering around my garden or camping. I just have bad luck XD
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I get these giant black bees here what are those?
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Is it a big fuzzy one, much larger than a honey bee? Those are usually carpenter bees.
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Yes! They seem aggressive.
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Like Fractaldragon said, yellow jackets are wasps and definitely fall under the "asshole" category. I don't know about green hornets other than the movie character, but hornets are just large wasps and also tend to be aggressive. Hornet stings also generally hurt more than regular wasps.
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The "asshole" category XD
Yeah, the green hornet stung my knee, the yellow jacket stung my left eye.
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I'm not sure about Green Hornets, but Yellow Jackets are type of wasp. And they ARE aggressive!
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Explains why I was sting in the eye in 2014 or 2015
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It should be noted that when scientists talk about bees declining and causing issues related to lack of pollinators, they are talking about carpenter bees, bumblebees, sweat bees, etc.
Most people only think of honeybees, and most “save the bees” campaigns are focused on them. Which is counterproductive as honeybees are an invasive species in North America, often lead to declines in native pollinators, AND don’t do as good a job pollinating.
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Yes! Definitely true. I feel so bad for our native bees, they've really been given the short end of the stick. Naturally the bee we care about is the one of most immediate economic/food importance rather than the real workers.
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They're just so round and good ;w;
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I've also recently learned that honeybees are an invasive species and that they are actually harming the ecosystem. I feel betrayed! All this time of protecting them, I should have been squishing them, though, I can't bring myself to do it; my sister was right all along.
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Yup! I mean honey bees are still important pollinators, I won't be squishing them...but we should definitely make an effort to support native bees more. There are some plants that apparently attract and help native bees more than honey bees, though I don't know much about what those are/how it works.
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Yeah....the bees that actually are in trouble are the native ones like many bumblebee species
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And those weird green ones that want to lap up our sweat
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I've always heard Bumblebees were the most chill. Maybe people keep confusing them with carpenter bees? That's...the only thing I can assume.
Someone also told me it was the Bumblebee that lost their stinger....whoops (though I always knew it was the honey bee so I just looked at them funny).
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"Aggressive" is still a pretty relative term. It's basically just that if you stress out a carpenter bee vs a bumble bee, the bumble bee will defend itself sooner than the carpenter bee would, and may also stay on "high alert" for longer after being stressed. But it still depends on them being stressed out to begin with - they don't just randomly go after things.
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Bumblebees are quite chill as long as you don't step on or bother them.
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Cool, I never knew carpenter bees and bumble bees were separate species. We have a wisteria in our garden and every spring it's swarming with what I always assumed was bumble bees, but now I'm wondering whether they're carpenter bees... I remember finding it quite interesting that European honey bees are so docile; in Africa you see bees, you RUN XD
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Haha oh man I didn't know the African honey bee was THAT aggressive. Wild.
They could be carpenter bees! There are a lot of different varieties of each though so I can't say for certain.
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Ok, slight overdramatization... Generally if they're just collecting pollen they won't bother you, but if you try to touch one or you're near their nest then you've got it coming
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