I'm allergic to wasps. Which is odd because I don't have the same reaction to bees. Though I guess someone could tell me the difference. I will admit I kill wasps, and scorpions. Bees, they are just happy little dudes who are actually surprisingly easy to catch and release.
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I'm allergic to wasps. Which is odd because I don't have the same reaction to bees. Though I guess someone could tell me the difference. I will admit I kill wasps, and scorpions. Bees, they are just happy little dudes who are actually surprisingly easy to catch and release.
Well wasps don't die when they sting you as they don't have barbed stingers like bees. Wasps eat insects and also love picnic food
. Bees are vegan (nectar) and also aren't actually dudes they are all non-fertile females, not sure about wasps.And ... Slugs... I suspect they're probably about the only evidence of some sort of creator as they feel like some sort of drunken experiment in biological workshop. Just about everything else you can sort of see a purpose for - slugs seem utterly, utterly pointless - they just trash everything your garden like teenage vandals that are never going to grow up and leave their slimy 'tags' everywhere they go. Nothing much seems to like eating them apart from the odd desperate starving toad... and unlike snails and other molluscs, even the French haven't figured out how to serve them up...
This recent flurry of posts reminded me of something I’d hoped to forget.
One morning, I made a latte, using a Starbucks machine of some sort I had at the time.
As I recall, it was delicious, except that it must have had a bit of ground coffee that had found its way into the cup.
Having been a long-time consumer of camp coffee (aka cowboy coffee) where the grounds are literally dumped into a coffee pot and boiled, I had come to appreciate chewing my coffee.
So I did what I would normally do. I chewed, in absentminded fashion; then stopped, with the dawning realization that what I was chewing was no ordinary coffee ground.
I examined the ground, and it turned out to be an earwig.
To my dismay, it was only half of an earwig.
The creature had apparently clung to the underside where the coffee comes out, just above the cup, and then let go.
From that point forward I checked the machine quite carefully every time I used it.
I am not fond of earwigs.
One morning, I made a latte, using a Starbucks machine of some sort I had at the time.
As I recall, it was delicious, except that it must have had a bit of ground coffee that had found its way into the cup.
Having been a long-time consumer of camp coffee (aka cowboy coffee) where the grounds are literally dumped into a coffee pot and boiled, I had come to appreciate chewing my coffee.
So I did what I would normally do. I chewed, in absentminded fashion; then stopped, with the dawning realization that what I was chewing was no ordinary coffee ground.
I examined the ground, and it turned out to be an earwig.
To my dismay, it was only half of an earwig.
The creature had apparently clung to the underside where the coffee comes out, just above the cup, and then let go.
From that point forward I checked the machine quite carefully every time I used it.
I am not fond of earwigs.
If it was this stuff (My Gran used to drink and serve)
Then the earwig would have improved it...
Reminds me when Mrs AFB and I stayed in a holiday cottage. She made me a cup of tea. As I got near the bottom of the cup I saw something dark brown in there. Assuming it was a bit of stray tea leaf I carried on drinking it.
It was actually a huge black spider. It was disgusting. I can’t remember how many times we washed out the kettle before we used it again but it was more than a few!
Okay, cockroaches merit suspension of the Fifth Commandment; horrible things.
Actually, I knew people in the former eastern Europe who were convinced (or had convinced themselves) that the "Russians had brought the cockroaches with them, along with bad language and bad government."
Actually, I knew people in the former eastern Europe who were convinced (or had convinced themselves) that the "Russians had brought the cockroaches with them, along with bad language and bad government."
...... are you saying one or both of your parents is a cockroach? I'm confused.
Well wasps don't die when they sting you as they don't have barbed stingers like bees. Wasps eat insects and also love picnic food
There are male bees, too, known as drones, ("idle drones" in my mother's sardonic words, adding that she didn't want her sons to grow up to be "idle drones" as had been the case with her brothers) and are first to be expelled from the hive in the event of a food shortage) but the pollen gatherers (the "worker bees") are female, as is the queen.
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In the case of cockroaches, I'd recommend suspending the Fifth, not the Fourth.......Commandment.
My dad keeps bees. He has honey on everything instead of sugar. Cooks with it as well.
Hopefully that will keep him healthy. I do find myself worrying about him a lot at the moment.
Hopefully that will keep him healthy. I do find myself worrying about him a lot at the moment.
You probably need to clarify that, with which set of commandments you mean then.
I am in no way religious, and thus just right clicked the "Fifth Commandment" text and did a "Search with DDG".
Upon your further insistence of the same thing, I did more research and I'm still only guessing you meant the one about murder, because it's not like everyone agrees on the same version. It's worse than trying to track Star Trek story lines across all the reboots and time travel.
Ah, yes, fascinating.
I had never known that some number the commandments differently and in different sequences.
Anyway, in the version I learned at school, the Fourth enjoined you to honour your parents, while the Fifth bluntly instructed you not to kill.
If the little creepy crawly is eating stuff in your house that you consider yours (and thus stealing) the Torah has you covered:
Yuck... yeah.. sometimes they gather in my mailbox in a rainy time. Finding one of them in there is startling enough, but opening the box and having it teem with them is like accidentally clicking on the teaser clip for a B horror flick. I end up taking the mail to the back yard and spreading it out on an old sheet as if to dry some cleaning rags. God forbid I should bring one of them into the house. So I was dumping my mail onto such a sheet one day when the then five year old from up the way wandered into my company and inquired what I was doing. I told him and pointed out one of the creatures departing the leaves of the newspaper. He was delighted. He wanted to know if when it grew up it would be a dragon. I had a nightmare in the wee hours of the next day, featuring giant earwigs hauling my Volkswagen beetle over the stone wall and into the back meadow.
Relaxing on day 2 of a long weekend. Our CEO gave everyone the day off yesterday to thank us for all the 12 hour days we've been doing during all this.
Naturally the back end processing systems knew this and did their damnedest to use yesterday to create a perfect storm of overloaded servers, long database activity (3rd party app that I want to take a chainsaw to) and page locking up the freaking wazoo (again, chainsaw). Really put a damper on the day off for a while, but I digress.
On the plus side, I still have a job and part of the issue was caused by increased sales that caught us unawares.
Naturally the back end processing systems knew this and did their damnedest to use yesterday to create a perfect storm of overloaded servers, long database activity (3rd party app that I want to take a chainsaw to) and page locking up the freaking wazoo (again, chainsaw). Really put a damper on the day off for a while, but I digress.
On the plus side, I still have a job and part of the issue was caused by increased sales that caught us unawares.
Yes still having a job is a good thing these days. Many are not so lucky.
Ahh yes indeed, I ddin't mention the males as they play almost no part in the life of the hive until a queen dies and the workers have to raise a new one, actually several, in a fascinating process. They feed several larvae royal jelly until they hatch, after which the young queens fight to the death until one is left (their stingers are smooth like those of wasps) After which winner flies off with drones in pursuit for mating (I think the lucky suitor dies after impregnating the queen however they umm do it) after which she returns with a lifetime supply of sperm to fertilize eggs. This is also why drones have bigger yes than the others to spot the queen in flight.
As you can see I was fascinated by bees as a youngster, espcially the dance they made to indicate direction and distance of flowers to the hive.
Terrific post. And I share your fascination with bees. Wonderful insects.
I vividly recall my mother - brandishing a dishcloth (which was handed to my brother) - we were quite small at the time - and describing, in considerable detail, what happened to drones, as a sort of cautionary morality tale that she might give some thought to, with a view to implementing it in an alternative existence, should the admirable habits of worker bees not be emulated by her two sons.
That they chased and courted the queen was omitted from my mother's recital, but their end was graphically described.
Years later, in France, I was allowed to don the beekeeper's costume, and every step of the process of harvesting the honey was explained to me (and I was encouraged to participate and learn about it all) by the lovely father of the French family with whom I stayed when learning French, who kept beehives in the grounds of his country house.
I'm not a fan of cockroaches. When those flying variety come at me, I'm not ashamed to say I scream like a little girl. I grew up in extreme poverty and these things give me the willies.
I cannot forget how it feels to have one crawl on you. It may have attributed to my extreme insomnia starting from a young age.
I sure don't like those big things (waterbugs? i don't know what they are) that are like huge cockroaches. I mean almost the size of a small mouse. Used to see them once in awhile down in the laundry facility in my apartment building. And yeah, they can fly. Horrifying.
Yeah, I forgot wasps, they usually get dispatched before leaving the house.
I was watching a show on Disney Plus called Wings of Life, a show about how bugs and birds pollenate plants and it really made me sad looking at some of the lovely places in the world and knowing that mankind, can't help himself from trashing these places if a $ can be made. In Houston, thousands upon thousands of acres are bulldozed for development, and that's already having 6 million people living in the Houston metropolitan area. We just can't help it. I know this is a discussion for PRSI, so no comment about this specific point is requested.
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Wait ... what's that on your shoulder?
We have the fence completed, well, call it structurally finished, as the only thing left to be done is the 16" or so lattice on the upper part of the rear (doing it in framed box sections, to make it look very finished). Rear, sides, and al lthe gates are completed - we have a wide-ish gate on the east side, and on the west, a small gate that opens from stairs (TBC), and a larger set of double gates so we can still access the backyard with a vehicle (which will be handy for the shed construction and landscaping).
Love the east side being fenced to the front corner, it was only fenced to the rear corner, so now it's a little more private, secure, and gives a rather dull side of the house a little more interest. Also been opening up the plants/trees/etc., on that side, to be more landscaped.