Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Bee Quiet

A friend of mine, Buzz, is an apiculturist, and not only is he an apiculturist, but he is also a conservative. Is this unusual? Is this combination common or a rarity? Of course, in order to answer this question, one must first know what an apiculturist is . . . and even then, since there are relatively few apiculturists, it would be difficult to know statistically if this association is common or uncommon.

Anyway, the other day Buzz told me about a dream that he had had the night before. He related how refreshed and alive he was when he awoke the following morning. “It was the opposite of a nightmare, and when I woke up, I wished that I could have that same dream every night!”
He continued that the background to this dream was based on a study that was done during the solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017. (I had no idea what study he was talking about, as I hardly remembered the eclipse.) Apparently this study looked at audio recordings of bumblebees, honeybees, and other types of bees as they visited flowers along the path of total eclipse. The researchers found that while the insects were happily buzzing throughout the day and during the partial phases of the eclipse, the bees went quiet the instance that the total eclipse occurred in their area. The bee’s buzz is the result of the insect flapping its wing muscles, and so when the bees are flying, they are buzzing. No one is sure exactly why the bees stopped buzzing, but some think that it may be related to how the bees interpreted the drop in light.
At this point my friend, the apiculturist, then relayed the actual content of his dream, in which it was possible to simulate an eclipse indoors. However, as if this wasn’t far enough out there on the sci-fi spectrum, the more amazing part was that the Democrats in the U.S Senate behaved like the bees did during the 2017 eclipse.
In other words the Senate Democrats became quiet in response to this faux eclipse . . . quiet almost on demand!
He finished his story by saying, “Can you imagine what a wonderful world it
would be, if with the flick of a switch, simulating an eclipse, you could get Senator Schumer, Senator Warren, Senator Booker, Senator Kamala Harris, etc. to stop flapping their mouths. How much more efficiently would the Senate then run?”
He and I both realized that the likelihood of this happening in the near future was zero, but wondered if perhaps a grant could be given to The National Society of Apiculturists so that they could work on a project like this.
“Imagine,” said Buzz, “What a wonderful world . . . this could bee.”
BTW: An apiculturist is a bee-keeper.

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