Large Scale Central

Bees!

General Discussion
#21

Steve Featherkile said:

I read somewhere that the critter that we commonly call a bee is not a bee at all, but is a cousin of the house fly. Who knew?

Probably what you heard about is something called a botfly. Some species of botfly look almost identical to a honeybee, at first glance anyway. I first heard of them when I was a kid. Once we knew how to tell them apart we would catch them and gently tie a thread around them. Then we’d freak out other kids by showing them our “bee on a leash”.

Real bees are closely related to wasps and ants, not houseflies.

#22

Don’t even mention bot flies. Some species of them are just nasty things and once you have seen what they do to the host in which they have chosen to embed their young into you will forever be creeped out. I hate the TV show monsters inside me. Ewww icky makes me feels very unmanly.

#23

Double post. Dumb phone or dumb operator

#24

Well, I can only report what I read, a few years ago.

  1. The honey bee was imported from Europe. Well documented. In colonial times, it was called by everyone, from Techumsa to Tho. Jefferson, “the white man’s fly.”

  2. The bee is related to the housefly. This I can’t document. At the time I read it, I just said, “Huh, that’s interesting,” and moved on. I don’t remember the author.

As a side note, at the time of the introduction of the honey bee, there were 12 species of pollinators in North America. Six remain, the other six falling primarily to pesticides. None of the twelve have the industrial capacity of the honey bee, though they can support a home garden.

#25

I do know that bumblee bees (don’t know if they are native or not) are decent pollinators as well.

#26

I think that there are several species of the bumble bee that are native to North and South America, but its many species have a nearly world wide distribution.

#27

Okay then…

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