Bees are terrifying

Among all the books about beekeeping you can find out there, I feel one point isn't stressed enough: bees are fucking terrifying. It's a difficult point to get your head around, but an important one: would you invite bees to a dinner party? No, because they're fucking terrifying. Would you let them do babysitting for you? Again, no. Terrifying. But here I am in my suburban house with a suburban backyard with a box full of terrifying insects of murderous death a mere five metres or so from here. It's insane. I'm insane. How did things get to this point?

I really feel there could be room in the marketplace for a practical beekeeping book based on this theme, motivating and inspiring new beekeepers in their hobby. This prospective book could cover the practicalities and the history of beekeeping, covering the terrifyingness of bees in comprehensive detail.

Considering the science of the matter, for instance, I find that bees are insects, that glamorous movie star of the animal kingdom. Let's review a few of the films that insects have appeared in: The Fly, in which a man turns into a disgusting and horrifying gigantic beast. The Swarm, in which killer bees go about being bees that kill. On the other hand, who trusts Hollywood? Let's consider literature instead: there's Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which a man turns into a cockroach, to his own terror and disgust.

Literature gives us the example of many famous beekeepers whom we can emulate. One such was Sylvia Plath, who wrote an excited poem about first receiving bees, containing such resonant lines as

I would say it was the coffin of a midget

Or

I lay my ear to furious Latin. 
I am not a Caesar. 
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs. 
They can be sent back. 
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner. 

I wonder how hungry they are. 
I wonder if they would forget me 
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree. 
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades, 
And the petticoats of the cherry.

Sylvia Plath was also insane and killed herself shortly thereafter.

And we haven't even considered the basics of bee sex (violent, and explosive, resulting in the deaths of several drones and one lifelong egg laying slave), the stinging mechanism (kamikaze warfare by bloodthirsty warriors who would be quite satisfied by your death), and so much more.

In conclusion, Bees Are Fucking Terrifying Creatures of Slaughter And Death or maybe it's just that me and the Baron recently did a honey harvest and are still traumatised by it. Who knows.

Fig 1: Cthulhu in insect form 

Citizen Train

The Baron being in Sydney, and the cats being otherwise engaged, I hied me off this afternoon to see a film. There's nothing like a film to be alone in company, as the old saying goes*, though on the other hand, there's nothing like a film for being alone in aloneness either. Which is to say, when I got there, there was absolutely no-one in my theatre at all.

I was so surprised that I had to go back and ask the staff to check if I'd got the theatre right after all. (I had). Not that I was ungratified: to see a film, alone, in an empty auditorium, has long been a life goal of mine. I almost managed it, too, about ten years ago in a cinema in the middle of Melbourne, though another bunch of people showed up halfway through the previews, which I was rather miffed by. (That cinema later closed, which just goes to show, you should never let people into a theatre that has only got Tim in it.) I had better luck this time, as I sat through the previews completely on my own, but of course it did make me rather anxious. What if I didn't want to see a film on my own after all? It felt a little over-grandiose, sitting there in that huge auditorium, having the film screening in front of me.

And then there was the matter of chairs: ludicrously, the cinema staff had made me select my seating - in what I soon had come to discover was a completely empty theatre. I felt no such compunction for sitting in my selected seating: but then, what if someone did waltz in in the middle of the film and demand me to move out of their seat? Worse still - what if, when I left, I found I had been sitting in my selected seat after all?

It was all very awkward, perhaps made more awkward by the fact that, on reflection, it wasn't particularly awkward at all. I just sat in whatever damned chair I was sitting in and enjoyed the spectacle. I wish I could say I did something more interesting, like stripped back to my undies and did a little dance in the empty auditorium, but nope. I just sat there.

This is not a film review. This is not even really a blog post. This is just an idle passing note to note the idle passing afternoon when I sat in a cinema watching a film all on my own. The film was good. I totally recommend it. You should totally go and see this film.


*I don't know if anyone actually said this about films, but it seems like something someone might have said about films, so in it goes.