Comments on: A taste of honey

By: Turlough

Turlough — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:26:19 +0000

Martin Wisse The bee colony as a totalitarian state ruled by a Queen? Not quite. The hive is perhaps the ultimate in a worker state—a female worker state at that. Many of the colony decisions are responses to the Queen’s pheromones, but the workers control her pheromones by what and how much they feed her. The Queen doesn’t lead, she follows. And all those hard-working worker bees? No, they lounge around quite a lot of the time. And they have a rich working life, changing jobs every few days until they eventually become foragers and get to go out in the big wide world for a bit of sight-seeing and fieldwork. The life of the men (drones) is a doddle—sex machines not required to do any work. Just one snag: come the autumn they cease to be fed by the female workers and are chucked out of the hive to die. Oh yes, if they do successfully mate, they explode and die. Way to go! But in the words of one politician: I warn you, do not become sick or grow old. The sick and disabled are shown the door and there ain’t no retirement plan in the hive.

By: Turlough

Turlough — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:16:25 +0000

Martin Wisse The bee colony as a totalitarian state ruled by a Queen? No, the hive is perhaps the ultimate in a worker state—a female worker state at that. The main colony decisions are largely controlled by the Queen’s pheromones, but the workers control her pheromones by what and how much they feed her. The Queen doesn’t lead, she follows. And all those hard working worker bees? No, they lounge around quite a lot of the time. And they have a rich working life, changing jobs every few days until they eventually become foragers and get to go out in the big wide world for a bit of sight-seeing and fieldwork. The life of the men (drones) is a doddle—sex machines not required to do any work. Just one snag: come the autumn they cease to be fed by the female workers and are chucked out of the hive to die. Oh yes, if they do successfully mate, they explode and die. Way to go! But in the words of one politician: I warn you, do not become sick or grow old. The sick and disabled are shown the door and there ain’t no retirement plan.

By: Dave F

Dave F — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 19:17:27 +0000

Eventually the movie was greenlighted when the hero became an ant, not a bee, thus dispelling studio unease about the communistic nature of the hive. I assume there was extensive rewriting of Maeterlinck’s original screenplay.

By: jet

jet — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 01:24:43 +0000

Sorry Jason, I’d plead hungover, but that isn’t really an excuse. How about I plead bad sense of humor, or perhaps, inability to properly contain my inner asshole? Or closer to the truth, how about I plead hyper-sensitivity to attacks on the US?

By: Simon

Simon — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 00:24:34 +0000

Try Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power.

By: James Hamilton

James Hamilton — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 22:56:54 +0000

So you lost the argument for calling the blog “Grumbling Hive”: there are those of us who were quite happy with “Junius”, but never mind. Rumour has it that Norm Geras came up with “Crooked Timber” for you all. I have occasionally wondered if he was teasing, and y’all taking yourselves too seriously to notice.

By: George

George — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 22:07:59 +0000

There’s a book out there these days called The Secret Life of Bees, any connection?

By: Jackmormon

Jackmormon — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 19:46:54 +0000

One of the earliest moral consumer boycotts was against sugar from the West Indies. In the later eighteenth-century, Puritanical types were encouraged to eat only honey or maple syrup to protest slavery in the cane fields. Didn’t really work, of course, but the effort did raise consciousness of slavery among the middle classes. I’ve also read that the famous stereotype of English people’s having bad teeth dates from the 18th c., when the middle classes of England could afford what was then considered massive amounts of sugar. (The sugar may even have been a more decisive factor than the tea…)

By: arthur

arthur — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:44:56 +0000

There were news reports a while back about al qaeda infiltrating the international honey trade for the purpose of smuggling across arabic wrold national boundaries. Honey is very popular there, and a substnatial import/export. Honey imports are a great way to smuggle bombs and stuff, because just try to inspect the inside of an oil-drum size honey jar.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:15:07 +0000

Corn syrup is linked to agricultural subsidies and protectionism. Sugar production is also linked to rum (specifically Screech), to codfish, and to Canada’s most despised minority group.

By: Dubious

Dubious — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:11:06 +0000

What about Saccharine, Nutrasweet, Splenda and other synthetic cousins? Are these the people who will eventually become genetically engineered superhumans?

By: Marc Mulholland

Marc Mulholland — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:04:17 +0000

JJR does say in the Constitutional Project For Corsica (1765) the following: “The island of Corsica, says Diodorus, is mountainous, well wooded, and watered by large rivers. Its inhabitants live on meat, milk, and honey, with which their country supplies them in abundance; in their relations with one another they observe the rules of justice and humanity with greater strictness than do other barbarians; the first to find honey in the mountains and in the hollow trunks of trees is assured that no one will challenge his possession. They are always sure of recovering their sheep, each of which is marked by the owner, and then allowed to graze unguarded over the countryside. This same spirit of equity seems to guide them in all the circumstances of life. . . ”

By: Marc Mulholland

Marc Mulholland — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:02:19 +0000

By: Marc Mulholland

Marc Mulholland — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:00:58 +0000

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 15:49:37 +0000

I thought your comment was very interesting Jason. Jet – you are getting to be a nuisance. Please behave.