As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter........
On growing up we had a hive of honeybees which lived in the roof of our sharecropper house. I was always delighted with them and often studied them as bees are very pretty creatures, including all the types from bumble to mason to sweat.
It saddens me that most of the bees are now gone. I have not had those stingy sweat bees bother me forever and I rarely see the other types.
This though is not about the sadness, but about adventure as I came across a story on Asian bees which really intrigued me, as they were not like regular bees.
I will post the narration, but it is such a wonder that there are bees which are huge, and miniature, bees living on tree branches and bees living in tree hollows.
"The largest and most extensive honey-maker is the "bambera". This is nearly as large as a hornet, and it forms its nest upon the bough of a tree, from which it lines like a Cheshire cheese, being about the same thickness, but five or six inches greater in diameter.
The honey of this bee is not so much esteemed as that from the smaller varieties, as the flavor partakes too strongly of the particular flower which the bee has frequented; thus in different seasons the honey varies in flavor, and is sometimes so highly aperient that it must be used with much caution. This property is of course derived from the flower which the bee prefers at that particular season. The wax of the comb is the purest and whitest of any kind produced in Ceylon.
So partial are these bees to particular flowers that they migrate from place to place at different periods in quest of flowers which are then in bloom. This is a very wonderful and inexplicable arrangement of Nature, when it is considered that some flowers which particularly attract these migrations only blossom once in "seven years."
The next honey-maker is very similar in size and appearance to our common hive bee in England. This variety forms its nest in hollow trees and in holes in rocks.
Another bee, similar in appearance, but not more than half the size, suspends a most delicate comb to the twigs of a tree. This nest is no larger than an orange, but the honey of the two latter varieties is of the finest quality, and quite equal in flavor to the famed "miel vert" of the Isle de Burbon, although it has not the delicate green tint which is so much esteemed in the latter.
The last of the Ceylon bees is the most tiny, although an equally industrious workman. He is a little smaller than our common house-fly, and he builds his diminutive nest in the hollow of a tree, where the entrance to his mansion is a hole no larger than would be made by a lady's stiletto.
It would be a natural supposition that so delicate an insect would produce a honey of corresponding purity, but instead of the expected treasure we find a thick, black and rather pungent but highly aromatic molasses. The natives, having naturally coarse tastes and strong stomachs, admire this honey beyond any other."
I love honey bees, but I would really like some of these molasses bees, as not so much for this honey tar, but if they were wee little bees, I might be able to keep them in little boxes and bring them into some shelter to over winter them for their survival.
My main interest is in pollination. I have never been stung by a real bee or wasp, because I do not bother them. Sweat bees only bothered me as a child as I was too miserable in the fields to figure out not to be rubbing on the bees sucking sweat off of me.
This has brightened my day in knowing God made some most odd bees compared to what one normally thinks of as bees.
Honey tar bees, how wonderful can that be eh.
agtG
