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The oldest known depiction of the bee in art is The man (or woman) of bicorp an (at least) 8000 year old cave painting in the Coves de l'Aranya in Bicorp, Valencia, Spain.
posted by donut_princess on Sep 12, 2023 - 2 comments

Honeycomb Hotel (gameplay video) is a traditional logic puzzle: given a honeycomb of 7, 19, or 37 cells, determine which icon should appear in each cell, and which nonbranching path connects every cell. There are ~65000 different puzzles, each with only one right answer. Clues are simple ones like "Mouse is in the same diagonal as Tulip" or "there's a wall between Cherry and Cat," but graphical: from these individual clues you solve the entire puzzle. Solving shows a brief animation of bees flying around, like in Solitaire. No time limit, no storyline, no microtransactions, only pick-up-and-play logic puzzles by Everett Kaser, one of the nearly 40 different logic games he has made since 1991: [more inside]
posted by one for the books on Sep 12, 2023 - 7 comments

Bees are capable of social learning to solve new problems. Social species of bees show the ability to learn from each other. In fact, a bee that's new to a particular pollen-retrieving problem, for example, will learn faster from an experienced fellow bee than it will on its own. [more inside]
posted by rabia.elizabeth on Sep 11, 2023 - 4 comments

The worker bee has been a symbol of Manchester (England) since it attained city status in 1842. Does it represent the diligent productivity of the city's mill workers during the Industrial Revolution, the solidarity and committment to the common good of the Co-operative Movement, or something else? One thing's for sure, there are lots of them around. [more inside]
posted by sudasana on Sep 11, 2023 - 1 comment

Among the virtues of bees you may not be aware of is their knack for detecting bombs. How? Science! Also: Pavlov
posted by chavenet on Sep 11, 2023 - 1 comment

... the bee-52s in 1978!! This is a grainy black and white video, but the sound's decent and the vibes come right through
posted by pyramid termite on Sep 11, 2023 - 10 comments

"Telling the bees is a European tradition in which bees are told of important events, including deaths, births, marriages and departures and returns in the keeper's household. If the custom was omitted or forgotten and the bees were not "put into mourning" then it was believed a penalty would be paid, such as the bees leaving their hive, stopping the production of honey or dying." The most high profile recent practice of this was last year at about this time but it's also historically been the subject of poetry and paintings. More about John Chapple, who was the royal beekeeper until retiring in May. [via]
posted by jessamyn on Sep 11, 2023 - 21 comments

CT scanning could help researchers understand how pollinators benefit soil, find new ways to protect them
posted by Etrigan on Sep 11, 2023 - 0 comments

Ask A Bee!!! In other buzz Queen Reminds Worker Bees - Declining Bee Population Linked To - Bee Wishes It Could Hang Around Open Soda Can - Bee, Man Allergic To Bees [more inside]
posted by lalochezia on Sep 11, 2023 - 2 comments

Here's a bee. It's a freebie, like this free thread. That is all. [more inside]
posted by Greg_Ace on Sep 11, 2023 - 98 comments

Michael Bush has a website about bees. Bush is an opinionated apiarist who espouses natural beekeeping, and has the kind of old school website you might expect.
posted by zamboni on Sep 11, 2023 - 7 comments

The Bees of Childeric I "The 27th May 1653 likely started as any other for mason Adrien Quinquin. A man working on a construction site in Tournai, modern-day Belgium, he was several feet under the ground swinging his pickaxe when he hit something unusual. A glint of gold shimmered up at him. After gathering the attention of nearby people, the rest of Quinquin’s hole was dug up. Inside was a real treasure trove: human bones, hundreds of silver coins, a highly decorated sword and scabbard, and many more gold items including buckles, rings and brooches. Key for us, there were also 300 little bees made from gold. " [via]
posted by dhruva on Sep 11, 2023 - 13 comments

As the U.S. crept toward an overreliance on mono-agriculture, it eroded native pollinator populations, forcing the country to rely more and more on a species (European honeybees) that is both invasive and increasingly unstable. We strip the land to make more of the same crops and in doing so refortify our economic tentpoles and hasten our agricultural demise. The more the system grows, the more it precipitates the upheaval of the very thing it is most reliant on. from America’s Bee Problem Is an Us Problem [The Ringer] [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Aug 24, 2023 - 28 comments