http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS74k9p2_GQ
Two weeks ago, I posted a bit about the new game Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. I was not planning on mentioning anything else about this game here, especially since I don’t have it.
Then I learned that in this game you can shoot bees. This can be seen at 3:34 in the attached video. Bees are a weapon in this game.
So Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is somehow part of our continuing coverage of bees.
Bees Plan Routes to Minimize Travel Distance
As part of our continuing coverage of bees, I’d like to bring to your attention some research by folks at Queen Mary, University of London, as summarized by Virginia Morell for ScienceNOW:
Bumblebees foraging in flowers for nectar are like salesmen traveling between towns: Both seek the optimal route to minimize their travel costs. Mathematicians call this the “traveling salesman problem,” in which scientists try to calculate the shortest possible route given a theoretical arrangement of cities. Bumblebees, however, take the brute-force approach: For them, it’s simply a matter of experience, plus trial and error, scientists report in the current issue of PLoS Biology. The study, the first to track the movements of bumblebees in the field, also suggests that bumblebees aren’t using cognitive maps—mental recreations of their environments—as some scientists have suggested, but rather are learning and remembering the distances and directions that need to be flown to find their way from nest to field to home again.
So this isn’t some major natural algorithmic discovery or, as Wired put it, “BEES SOLVE TRAVELING SALESMAN PROBLEM” (fuck Wired), but it’s a pretty cool find that bees will in some way remember distances and plan routes to minimize travel.
Swarm of Bees Delays Giants-Diamondbacks Game
As part of our continuing coverage of bees, here’s a report from the Associated Press:
The Diamondbacks’ grounds crew used a combination of cotton candy and lemonade to help disperse a swarm of bees that delayed the San Francisco Giants split squad’s 11-1 win over Arizona for 41 minutes in the second inning Sunday.
With runners on second and third and one out in the second inning, a dark cloud appeared in right field, sending Diamondbacks center fielder Chris Young sprinting toward left.
“I didn’t see them at first I just heard them,” Young said. “I am not afraid of one or two of them. I wouldn’t flinch at that. When you start talking about 500, 600 of them yea, I am afraid of that. …”
INTERRUPTING OUR NATIONAL PASTIME
WE MUST PUT AN END TO THIS MENACE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54exo8JTUs
As part of our continuing coverage of bees, 30 HORNETS TAKE OUT 30,000 HONEY BEES.
Can you use a shop vac to vacuum the bees and not kill them?
I have a colony in between floor joists and am considering using that to get the bees and then get the comb.
BEES
The shop vac will kill them, the hose has ridges and the vacuum is too strong, they’ll be mush by the time they get into the canister.
BEES
A shop vac will kill them. You have to have a middle container and a way to control vac pressure.
Here is an example.
Wait hold on what is this —
I made a bee vac sort of like iddee’s in the previous link. I have used it to vacuum bees out of a floor joist situation and had very few dead bees.
Just do a search and make one. A bee vac just allows the bees to come to a gentle stop in a screened box, and allows you to control the air flow velocity so that the bee roll gently down the pipe.
BEE VAC
