[ExI] bees again

[Dave Krieger]

Spike -- Aren't the following more likely reasons for why people like
bees more than cockroaches?

1) Bees, one of the earliest species domesticated (not to be confused
with "tamed") by humans, make honey and beeswax, and are therefore
economically useful.  Cockroaches do not.  If bees, with their
swarming, stinging behavior, did not possess this usefulness, we
wouldn't give a shit for their impending extinction, beautiful or no.
(We've wiped out plenty of beautiful species without even noticing.)

2) Bees, because of their distinctive lifestyle, of necessity must
live outdoors, for the most part. Cockroaches invade our homes. Even
though bees earn their keep, so to speak, by producing economically...
if they tried to share our living space, do you think we'd tolerate
them? The thought of waking up with an insect walking on your face, or
seeing one walking around your stored food looking for
vulnerabilities, is no more pleasant when the insect is a bee than
when it is a cockroach...perhaps even less so since, as you point out,
cockroaches don't sting.

So my suggestions for reducing the human propensity to poison our own
living space in an effort not to share it with roaches are two:

1) Intensive research to discover some economically valuable
by-product of the cockroach... preferably one that is edible and
delicious.  I don't hold out much hope for this one ("Do earwigs make
chutney? Do spiders make gravy?"), so we move on to:

2) Intensive research to develop a means of keeping roaches out of the
home that is cheaper and more effective than insecticides...
preferably one that the roaches won't adapt to tolerate within a few
generations.