All characters are fictional and should not be confused with real scientists. I especially ask that no bee researcher take offense. We science writers would shrivel up and die if you stopped talking to us.
I sat alone again in the cafeteria again today. Ordered the schnitzel. No one wanted to sit next to me. Of course. No one ever wants to sit next to me. They all want to sit with the bee scientists.
Stupid bee scientists, like they are all that great. All clustered together at the other table like insipid little drones, buzzing about who’s cool and who’s not. All the pretty evolutionary psychologists and ethologists at their table. Talking about complex social dynamics, solar navigation, and collective intelligence. Chicks love that stuff.
Then they just get up in their stupid little hive and all leave together. When they walk past my table one of them is like, “hey, how are the yellow jackets?” Which totally a dumb thing to say, since vespula isn’t even that big a part of vespoidea. But then someone else snickers and says, in a really low voice but not that low, “ants with wings.”
What a prick.
People don’t understand that wasps are so much cooler than lousy bees. Wasps are shiny and clean. Like a sports car. Or a really expensive espresso machine that’s never even been used. Wasps have jaws. Which is cool. Bees are furry and disgusting. Like a monkey, except without the tool use. They’re fat and can barely fly and have gross, alien mouths. Little assholes – they’re not even native.
Even their name shows how people are totally biased pro-bee. Apis mellifera. Talk about undeserved. It sounds almost elvish. Or maybe like a fancy Italian word for sex. But, like, really clean pretty sex, like movie stars in the 50s would have had. Not dirty, like monkey sex or dog sex.
Ants with wings. They’re ants with wings.
Meanwhile, wasps get screwed – as usual. Vespula vulgaris. Like they’re rude or something. But you know what’s rude? What’s rude is landing on some random flower, throwing pollen all over the place, drinking all the nectar, and then leaving. That’s rude. That’s vulgar. Wasps aren’t vulgar. Wasps are solitary and cool.
People just like honeybees because they make honey. And they are organized and smart. And their venom is used in drugs. And because they pollinate some of our crops. Most of our crops.
But that’s so stupid, because a lot of animals are important for agriculture but you don’t see people making books and movies about them. Like pigs. Pigs are super smart and super important for food but no one tries to make them into little media icons.
Except maybe Babe. And Charlotte’s Web, but I would argue that was more about the spider, which is why she was in the title.
Ants with wings. As if.
And the media makes it worse. Every couple months, some dumb reporter comes to the department and walks up to my desk. “Hey, are you one of the bee scientists?” he says with his dumb mouth, looking at me with his dumb eyes. “No, I study mud dauber wasps. Sceliphron formosum.” I say, letting the gravity of this statement sink in. “Oh. Well, do you know where I can find a bee scientist?” he says, waggling his dumb head back and forth. “Over there,” I say in such a way so that communicates what a colossal mistake he is making. But he just wanders over to the bee scientists to ask them for the latest reason why we should all be panicking over disappearing bees. Like anyone cares. He never asks about disappearing wasps. Wasps are disappearing too, you know. Or at least some of them are. Others are doing fine, I suppose.
And bees sting. A lot. And it hurts. A lot. Mud daubers almost never sting. Yet on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, wasps always get rated as more painful than bees. Because Schmidt is a jerk and a wasp hater.
Honeybees get all the cool phrases, too. Land of milk and honey. Beeline. And “birds and the bees” means “sex.” What do we get? Rich protestant white people. In other words, boring people. But the mud dauber doesn’t need honey or clever idioms or anything. The mud dauber kills black widow spiders. Yeah. Awesome, right? Does stupid Apis kill black widows? No, because stupid Apis is too stupid.
If a honeybee saw a black widow it would probably crap all over its useless barbed stinger and hide. Where’s your honey now, pollen boy?? Are you scared because the big black spider is going to eat you? You want help? Well maybe you shouldn’t have made fun of the mud dauber. Then maybe he’d have helped you!
Yeah. That’s what I should have said. Ants with wings … psah.
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Vespula vulgaris — Tim Evison; Vespula vulgaris — Soebe; both via Wikimedia Commons; mud daubers, Sceliphron formosum [Ed. note: you know, they do kind of look like ants with wings] –– ron_n_beths pics via Flickr
Dear wasp scientist,
Our colony read your blog post. You said “wasps are solitary and cool.” We just want you to know that wasps are cool, but not all wasps are solitary, and social wasps are *much* cooler than European honey bees with their domestic little lives, all drones and cheerleaders. We social wasps have skillful political maneuvers and vicious back-and-front biting. We might bully a sister into working for us, or let them starve or work themselves to death, but we can also work together to make big communities much greater than ourselves. Sometimes, if someone’s going to make a bid to move up from worker to queen, one or two of us grow a pair. Of—to be absolutely clear—ovaries. (Male wasps and bees just screw around for most of their lives, if they’re lucky.)
And honey bees may be able to dance, but we can drum. Together.
Sincerely,
Parachartergus colobopterus
Hi P. colobopterus! You, um, can read? Well, that’s a little unnerving.
Listen, on the off chance that you are planning some massive takeover of the planet, I want you to know that I have always been totally pro-wasp. And I am very willing to accept my new wasp overlords in exchange for a plush position in your new order.