I look at all the websites that link to the Bee blog, and today I came across a pretty interesting one. It seems that one of our own has an alter-ego named Uncle Fishy. Here's an excerpt from his interview about bees on the Science Blogs site:
Uncle Fishy: my beekeeping club is really interesting too
Uncle Fishy: http://beehuman.blogspot.com/
Uncle Fishy: it's sort of organic bee raising
Uncle Fishy: no foundations on frames mean bees make smaller comb
Uncle Fishy: which leads to smaller bees that seem to last better against varoa mites and the like
Dr. Free-Ride: Is that better for the bees?
Uncle Fishy: yeah
Uncle Fishy: no chemicals
Dr. Free-Ride: Interesting
Uncle Fishy: they hatch younger so the mites seem to bother them less
Dr. Free-Ride: probably somewhat lower honey yields?
Uncle Fishy: well, I suppose a larger comb would maximize volume
Uncle Fishy: but I haven't done a max min problem not involving a sphere in years
Dr. Free-Ride: I'm guessing that optimizing bees as honey factories might weaken them with respect to surviving their environments (and mites and stuff)
Dr. Free-Ride: Dude, the White House garden has two bee hives?!
Uncle Fishy: yeah
Dr. Free-Ride: That's pretty cool
Uncle Fishy: once again, I'm ahead of the curve....
Dr. Free-Ride: Now I can couch my quest for bees as an act of patriotism
The whole exchange is hilarious and entertaining.
Now, I'm not going to out Uncle Fishy here, but it isn't rocket science to figure it out if you go read the whole piece.
