"Why to be unsatisfied with your peter size?"

[randy_byers]

A question my spam asks me, in one form or another, almost every day. The answer is always that there is no good reason, especially at this late date, so why not talk about bees instead? After all, bees never worry about their peter size.

So there's a shrub growing against the back of our house that flowers this time of year. I don't know the name of the plant. Denys planted it many years ago, and I keep forgetting to ask him if he remembers the name. (Hey, Denys, do you remember the name of that plant?) Anyway, I hadn't previously noticed that bees like those flowers, but they do. I've checked out the bees on that plant several times this year, and every time there have been at least a half dozen honeybees. It's the only place I've seen honeybees in my yard this year, and I've only seen two other honeybees in the yard in the past I don't know how many years. Five? What's particularly strange to me is that I'm seeing them on this plant but haven't see any in the raspberries. They used to be all over the raspberries before the big Colony Collapse Disorder honeybee die-off in recent years. Or maybe they were in the raspberries too and I just didn't notice them, since they're still so few.

Whatever the case, possible signs of recovery in the honeybee population. Or it could be just a random fluctuation, I suppose. My boss says he's just discovered a hive of them in an old birdhouse on his property near Briar. Hm, the birds and the bees? That brings us back to peter size ...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

According to Cliff Mass's beekeeping friend, it's been a bad year for bees, irrespective of CCD, in the Northwest, because it's been too cold for them to fly so much of the spring that they have been dying of starvation.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Ooops. This is me. Forgot I wasn't logged in.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that post by Cliff Mass. It's possible that there have been fewer bees in general in my yard, but it's really hard to tell. As I recall Mass' friend was talking about honeybees rather than bumblebees.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

There seem to be fewer bees in our yard lately, but as usual the place was buzzing when the cottoneaster was in bloom. Cottoneaster. It still gives you bees.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Thanks once again for the word "cottoneaster," which is a plant name I can't seem to retain. I was looking at one in the neighborhood recently, trying to remember what it was called, and all I could come up with was, "Ulrika knows the damn name!" (See Denys' comment about memory below.)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, in that case I guess I should at least once spell it right for you. It's actually "cotoneaster", but my fingers habitually supply the extra T because the way I remember the word is by recollecting that it looks a lot like 'cotton' + 'Easter'.

[(Anonymous)]

If you mean the large shrub right outside the pantry, my memory says it's an Echinacea. But you know my memory -- the poor thing tries, it really does, but sometimes the damned synapses just refuse to fire...

-- Denys

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I hear you on the memory front. I've just googled echinacea, and that ain't it. (Although echinacea looks like a good candidate for the bee garden.)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Among other things, echinacea is not a shrub.

[wrdnrd]

I was just reading the other day (i *think* in the PCC monthly newsletter?) that bees have been overall rebounding from colony collapse in recent years. I'll look when i'm home at lunch to see if i can find the article again.

Tho', yeah, what Ulrika said about it being a bad year for bees in the Northwest.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

You'd think that bumblebees would be made of sterner stuff, weatherwise, what with all that fur.

[the-maenad.livejournal.com]

How do you know bees don't worry about the proportionality of their anatomy? Can't you imagine bee viagra spam?

"HEY YOU DRONE! ARE YOU WORRID YOU R LESS THAN A BEE SHOULD BEE? WITH OUR SECRET STING ENHANCEING FORMULA THEY WILL THINK U R A WASP!!"

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Now that you mention it, one of the pages about echinacea that I looked at mentioned that it attracted long-tongued bees. Why to be unsatisfied with your tongue size?