"lazarus cooke" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
oups.com...
I keep bees myself, Mike, as did my father and grandfather, and I try
to keep up with the research. There's amazingly little known about
exactly where bees mate - drones tend to hover in groups quite high up,
and they're not easy to research, especially when the Queen only mates
once. Bees are very unpredictable beasties.

I'd say there certainly isn't enough known to say that they 'never'
mate in a particular sort of place.

I don't see why it should only be drones that are taken. Workers only
have a life outside the hive of three or four weeks, and they generally
just collapse from exhaustion somewhere in the field. Bees need water
(it's important to give them a source,otherwise they may decide to use
your neighbours' children's paddling pool), and you have to provide
them with corks etc to float in the their water supply otherwise
they're liable to drown.

Having said that I generally keep my eyes open for honey bees wherever
I am, and don't remember seeing any on the water. They tend to prefer
stagnant -even quite revoltingly so - sources to clean ones, and I
don't think they'd like a nice clean trout stream.

Lazarus


Oh I would not presume to know much about it. I talked a lot with the old
Russian guy on occasion, mainly about his bees, but sometimes about other
things, he had gone through some terrible hardship, but as his German was
not exactly brilliant, and my Russian is basically non-existent, we did have
some communication problems.

One thing he told me stuck in my mind, and that was that bee stings make a
man extremely virile. He never wore any protection at all when working with
the bees, and was stung quite often. It did not seem to bother him at all.
Don´t know if the "virility" thing is true either, and I am unlikely to find
out, as quite a while ago, when I was stung a couple of times, I had an
"anaphylactic shock". Indeed, I have been since obliged to carry an
emergency injection kit.

My hypersensitivity seems to have "worn off" now at least, as the last
couple of times I was stung or bitten ( mainly F§$%&/ horse flies!) I did
not need the kit, and the resultant swelling etc was far less. I have also
had a couple of deer ticks in the meatime, and my reaction was far less
violent compared to the first few times. I still carry the kit though, as
the first two times nearly killed me.

TL
MC