The extraordinary brilliance of bees
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1570942,00.html
Bee Wilson's The Hive has Nicholas Lezard buzzing
Saturday September 17, 2005
The Guardian
The Hive by Bee Wilson John Murray, £7.99
Never particularly strong on biology, it was not until relatively late
in life - around the time this book came out in hardback, when I read
some of the reviews - that I discovered the precise mechanics of bee
reproduction. Somehow my biology teachers never got round to telling me
the final stages of the honeybee drones' lives. I vaguely knew that
they did nothing much all year round (the bees, that is, not my biology
teachers), knowledge kept on a life-support machine by my acquaintance
with PG Wodehouse's Drones club in Mayfair, playpen of the idle rich;
but I did not know that when those fortunate enough to mate with the
queen finally did so, their genitals were torn off and they died. It
is, one cannot help thinking, one hell of a way to go, and adds a
certain piquancy to Wodehouse's choice of name.
Bee Wilson
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