So does Eric Cartman.
Posted on 05/04/2012 6:38:22 PM PDT by nickcarraway
What’s tastier than meat and cheese? Sweat and tears, for bees anyway.
Though they’re not as popular as their honeybee cousins, sweat sucking and tear drinking bees are making a buzz in cities across the country.
“They use humans as a salt lick,” John Ascher, who oversees the a database of 700,000 species of bee at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, told the Wall Street Journal.
Ascher discovered Lasioglossum gotham, New York City’s very own sweat bee, while walking through Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
The tiny insects rarely sting and might even go unnoticed on a sweaty arm or leg. But researchers in Thailand went one step further, allowing bees to sip from their eyes. “On landing, automatic blinking with the eye often prevented the bee from getting a firm hold, causing it to fall off the eyelashes,” the researchers wrote in a study titled, “Bees That Drink Human Tears.” “If so, the bee persistently tried again and again until it was successful, or finally gave up and flew off.” When the odd bee did latch on, the researcher was often unaware. But when several bees set up shop, it was a different story.
“The experience was rather unpleasant, causing strong tear flow,” the authors wrote in the 2009 study published in the Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society. “Once a bee had settled and more were approaching, these tended to settle near each other in a row. Closing the eye did not necessarily dislodge bees but some continued to suck at the slit. They were even able to find and settle at closed eyes.”
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Just reading this made my eyes water!
So does Eric Cartman.
Stupid city slickers.
Everyone already knows about sweat bees.
Cats do too, but all they make of it is cat ****
I guess that splains why the bees wont leave me alone when I’m floating in the pool.
In Wisconsin ee have a wasp which is ground wasp. Nests in a hole in the ground which we call “sweat bees” and they have one hell of a sting. Also a very tiny wasp which hovers and exhibits the same behavior related in that article (never got stung by one) but I believe this is aLSO A WASP. I DON’T KNOW BECAUSE i’M NOT AN EMTPEMOLOGOSIT (NUT SURE IF I CORRECTLY SPELLED THAT RIGHT AND i’M HAVING PROBLEMS BECAUSE OF NY CATRACTS but either the reporters don’t know the fifference between bees which nest in a hive all make honey and a wasp.
If there is a FR with an entomologist background reading this I ask. Are these bees ? Or are they wasps ?
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