Bee

Back in the earlier days of time in graduate school, I spent about 1.5 years working with honeybees.  At the time, I was especially interested in animal behavior, and initially thought I wanted behavior to be my primary research focus.  While bees are utterly fascinating, I also began to be more cognizant of the relatively few number of faculty positions for "pure" animal behaviorists at universities.  My worry/concern about wanting to be able to obtain a tenure track faculty position nudged me to imagine ways I could be more "marketable".  By happenstance, I ended up taking a course in development because it sounded quite interesting.  Development is a course that highlights embryology through the lens of physiology... and it revealed to me (in a way I was not previously cognizant of) the idea of physiology of the development of behavior.  That course shaped me into what I became, a developmental endocrinologist (a sub-speciality of physiology) where a sizable portion of my work also involves the examination of behavior.  Study of physiology became just as much a passion as the study of behavior, and this was a great thing, because not only was it exciting for me, and I found an area where I felt I could contribute.... and physiologists were also more sought after as a specialization in biology departments at most universities.  And, it apparently worked well for me.  I only applied for one academic position in my life, and had only ONE academic job interview... and was hired after that one interview.  In academia, that is not particularly common.  Many folks end up applying and interviewing for several dozen (or more) positions before being hired. 

I was thinking about bees because during the two Summers where I worked with the bees, besides immersing myself in the study of their language, and how it is used to communicate navigation signals to other worker bees in a hive..... I also grew a tremendous fondness for honey.  Part of working with bees experimentally involves having to set up a variety of experimental hives in various configurations.  I would regularly tear apart existing beehives (my mentor in this work kept a few dozen "farming" style beehives just for this purpose).  So, quickly I learned how to go about tearing apart and reconstructing hives to collect and shape the environment for the thousands of bees in a hive for the variety of experiments I ran.  We used to have frequent honey and beeswax collecting runs as well, and so..... even though before graduate school I rarely had honey as neither of my parents were particularly fond of it (it was not present much growing up)..... as a result of those two Summers working with bees, I have been a devotee of honey ever since.  

I even have had (several) varieties of honey tinctured pipe tobaccos over the years.  If you are not familiar with the care and handling of bees, you may not realize that to manipulate bees you need to use a smoker (shown below), which will quiet bees and keep them from being as aggressive and utterly frantic if you disturb their hive.  

Also, most everyone who works on hives wears a head to toe full body suit designed to minimize bees ability to sting you.  I do say MINIMIZE, for across the two Summers, even consistently wearing a full body suit, gloves, boots, and mask, I would estimate I received ~250 stings overall.  A riled up next of 40,000 bees is a damn ugly thing to see, and even with the smoker and full body suits, if you had to manipulate the hive enough, they would swarm you, and even with the full body suit, a few bees would be successful in getting their stingers through the cloth, especially in tighter areas, like the bend of the knee or elbow.  So, I would average 5-10 stings a week.... but that was considered pretty damn good, when I would would typically encounter 50,000-100,000 bees a week through manipulating just two or three hives. 

But, back to the bee smoker.  It was common practice, back in the day, for pipe smoking workers with bees, to smoke and clench their pipe inside their headgear.  The full face of most suits looked like a window screen (see below):

By keeping your pipe clenched while wearing your suit, it offered another layer of protection from the bees, because you could blow pipe smoke at them to quiet them and keep them from aggregating around your face as well. I did this often while working with the bees.

I still eat a lot of honey these days.  I love the subtle flavors.  And, I have even tried a few "speciality" honeys where the predominate foraging flowers for nectar are derived from the same species.  You really CAN taste a subtle difference in these honeys made from unicultural flower species.  It is interesting and entertaining.  

And, I have enjoyed a variety of honey tinctured pipe tobaccos as well.  Twenty five or so years ago, I had a brief period of time where I had a temporary interest in trying to "blend" my own pipe tobaccos.  Basically, what I was doing was taking a very simple, plain burley leaf and adding "toppings" of flavors to the leaf.  I made small batches (a few ounces) of several flavors, including French Vanilla, Chocolate, Raspberry.... and Honey.  While I ended up enjoying all of them, the process of fussing with making them did not really appeal to me, so I let that sort of experimentation fall to the wayside after that.  It was not "my cup of tea" I guess.  It was simply more fun to just buy and smoke various pipe tobaccos.  

+ + +
 

• Ran 10 miles this morning (~16 km).
• Went to a Department Meeting
• Graded two sets of exams for A&P.
  
• Taught and guided a set of students in a lab about tissue and organ regeneration.
  
• Gave a lecture about neurogenesis (the process of how in early development, neurons develop their appendages and have biochemical means to find each other or find their target organs).
• Drove a pair of visiting scholars to the airport so they could start their journey home.
  

PipeTobacco