[ExI] FW: bee free, honey! it's fake

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] FW: bee free, honey! it's fake

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/18/hives-honeybee-boom-tuscan-island-italy-aoe

Unrelated, the Asian murder hornets eat bees.  Over the past 15 or 20 years, they have killed most of the bees in France.  When they invade the US, no more honey or almonds.

Keith


Keith, your last sentence sounds far too defeatist and implausible, considering the value loss for not fighting back.

Bees are generally not tuned by evolution to protect individuals in their hive.  Recall that time Picard went inside the Borg and killed a... colonist(?)

Picard assumed he would need to shoot his way back out, but when "Security" arrive moments later, they paid no attention to him and didn't seem a bit concerned that an invader had just slain one of (part of?) their... themself (?) for they were not programmed to defend the individual when there is no individual, only the Borg.  They scooped up the corpse and carried it away, ignoring the captain.  They just didn't get it that some alien life form would have the balls to invade.  (Oh wait, that was Picard, not Kirk; perhaps I could rephrase that last comment.)

Murder hornets are big sons a bitches.  OK, not sons, they are bitches, but they are really big compared to bees.  They must land down there, usually at the bottom of the hive, then walk in, the same way the bees do.  So what if we had two conductors going across the entrance, spaced too far apart for the honeybees to complete the circuit, fired at about 5 Hz with any ordinary cheap 12 volt source, murder hornet sashays on in looking for lunch and a little buzz POW!  

The bees go about their business, haul the corpse of this unknown lifeform back out, toss it over the edge.

If a prole were to think about it, he might be able to find a configuration which wouldn't cost much to make, thin, single piece, no installation cost, just put in there and plug it in, done.

I am surprised the French are not at least trying to fight back.  Guess it isn't in their culture.  Or perhaps they are, this is the first I heard of that.  But this is America, and the notion of lethal self-defense is as deeply embedded in our culture as baseball and apple pie, even long after we evolved into football and twinkies as our national favorites.

But it is more than honey and almonds, it is most citrus, and other nut crops.

If one of you Exi chatters patents that murderer-zapper notion and makes a buttload off of it, resulting in saving perhaps a hundred billion dollars of agricultural products, good.  But sheesh at least invite me to dinner and offer to pay.  

I like sushi.

spike