A young bear has been treated by vets after a “mad honey” trip in Turkey. The scandalous honey made from rhododendron nectar contains a neurotoxic substance called grayanotoxin that causes lightheadedness, sweating, numbness and pins-and-needles, unsteady gait and even hallucinations. Animals are more sensitive to grayanotoxin effects than humans and too much mad honey in some species can even cause death!
Poor little bear!
“Mad honey” is deliberately cultivated in Nepal and in regions surrounding the Turkish Black Sea. As little as one teaspoonful can get you off your head. The honey’s grayanotoxins take up to 3½ hours to take effect!
The Himalayan giant honeybees Apis laboriosa perform Mexican waves to boggle the compound eyes of incoming hornets.
The honey is most often collected by giant Himalayan honeybees Apis laboriosa which, along with bumblebees, are immune to rhododendron nectar’s intoxicating effects.
The neurotoxic honey has been known about since classical antiquity. Pliny the Elder is said to have gone on a mad honey trip in the AD 60s while King Mithridates the Great of Asia (today’s Turkey) is said to have hoodwinked an invading Roman army into getting high on the local rhododendron honey. The Romans started feeling sick and queasy, at which point Mithridates’ army attacked.
Asian honeybee Apis cerana foraging on rhododendron
By the 18th century, this mad rhododendron honey had spread to England where it was added to wine to make it more intoxicating.
“Mad honey” is illegal in several countries Australia, Canada, South Korea, India, Mexico and Brazil but (presumably) legal everywhere else. And yes, of course you can buy it online. But I wouldn’t recommend it!
Düzce’de bitkin halde bulunan yavru boz ayımızın sağlık durumu iyi, ekiplerimiz tedavisine devam ediyor. @milliparklar
Bumblebees are not solitary (unlike carpenter bees, which they can closely resemble) they actually live in fairly extensive colonies consisting of a queen and up to several hundred female worker bumblebees plus dozens of male drones whose only purpose is to breed with the females and keep new colonies going.
The bumblebees’ colony operates on an annual cycle with worker bees being bred throughout the spring and summer months when the colony needs them as nursemaids and foragers; as autumn closes in, more drones (male bees) are produced along with new queens. These queens disperse in late autumn and go out to find sites where they can hibernate alone and undisturbed throughout the long winter months.
Photo by Michael Hodgins on Pexels.com bees bumbling on a thistle
Bumblebees have a lower torpor-point than any other types of bee, being able to keep active at temperatures as low as 7°C (45°F). On chilly mornings when honeybees are reduced to a state of near-paralysis by the low temperatures, bumblebees are able to disengage their wings and buzz their flight muscles internally to heat themselves up to human body temperature. Just like honeybees, bumblebees must refuel several times a day on nectar from flowers or on honey from the wax honeypots in their nests.
The bumblebees’ year starts in late winter when the queens begin to thaw out of their months-long hibernation. They bumble out of their nests and buzz around on warm late-winter days looking for food. By early spring the queens will have left their hibernation sites and go out looking for a suitable place to found a new colony. Birdboxes, treeholes and underground mouseholes are all popular places. If the site is already occupied, the queen bee will buzz her wings, advancing threateningly until the mice, voles or little birds flee from their nest in terror. The shameless queens then bumble inside, cheerily setting up home in the vacated living space. This process is shown in the 44-minute National Geographic documentary below.
Unlike honeybees, worker bumblebees have a smooth stinger capable of stabbing any opponent multiple times. Despite this fact, most bumblebee species are docile and rarely if ever attack anyone.
Green bee-eater bashes a bee’s backside on a branch before gobbling it up whole
Bumblebees are sometimes preyed upon by bee-eater birds, which will catch the tubby bees in mid-flight, squeeze them and snap off their stings by bashing their backsides on gnarly twigs. The bees are then swallowed whole. Woodpeckers are known to sometimes break open entire colonies of bumblebees or even honeybees. These birds are easily capable of pecking open wooden birdboxes or beehives or any log or treetrunk where the bees have chosen to live. They pick cold mornings to do this, when the bees are less active and less capable of defending themselves. The woodpeckers then feast on the tender young bees and unhatched grubs.
Bee-eaters feeding on the wing
With the decline of the honeybee, bumblebees play an ever more important role as pollinators across the world. The buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris in particular is sold commercially to farmers as a pollinator. Active colonies can be purchased for around $100 US. They are sometimes sited inside giant greenhouses, glasshouses and polytunnels which are closed off from the outside world to prevent pests getting in. Sometimes, however, the tubby bees will bumble outside, and have been known to set up new colonies in parts of Asia, Africa and Australasia ― thousands of miles distant from their natural home ranges.
yeah you could get Unity Pro but you could also buy and eat an entire box of bees for the same price pic.twitter.com/Fj8ja7dIYK
丸花蜂¥12000! I've found a place where you can buy a boxful of buzzing bumblebees online! Imagine the tubby little bees bumbling about on their fairy wings, pollinating local orchards and keeping the environment in good order! A bargain at just £79.95!https://t.co/oVKfbbJWyvpic.twitter.com/4kg5AvQeVb
Home-made bumblebees documentary from UK; 9 minutes, not bad
Inside a bumblebees’ nest ― above. Note the poggly wax honeypots in which the bumbles keep their honey, in contrast to honeybees’ hexagonal wax cells.
DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME, FOLKS!
Hilarious 22-minute film from United States about a guy who tried to remove a bumblebee colony practically by hand in order to save them from getting sprayed. Not surprisingly, the bees attacked. He says he got stung about 40 times, enough to induce nausea and vomiting, which I’m sure can’t be a good thing. I couldn’t identify the exact species, but they seem a lot more “assertive” than British bees, that’s for sure.
British bilberry bumblebee (Bombus monticola) on stamp worth approx $1.60 USBombus polaris, Canadian arctic bumblebee on a stamp worth 4 US cents
🐝🐞 🐝 PLEASE REMEMBER TO LIKE 🐝🐞 🐝
🐝🐞 🐝 FOLLOW/SUBSCRIBE 🐝🐞 🐝
🐝🐞 🐝 AND LEAVE A JUICY GREAT COMMENT! 🐝🐞 🐝
YOU DON’T NEED TO SIGN INTO WORDPRESS TO COMMENT, YOU CAN GIVE A NAME AND EMAIL ONLY. IT’S NOT NECESSARY TO GIVE A WEBSITE, BUT IF YOU CAN GIVE A TWITTER OR SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILE ADDRESS, THAT’S GREAT.
Zaden Zane 