Sweat Bee Caught in Throat
Just a few days ago, on August 1, 2012, I was bicycling home as usual, cruising along and talking to myself[1], when suddenly, as I was inhaling, an insect got sucked into my mouth, smacked into the back of my throat, and stung me in my right tonsil[2]. Yow![3] So I jammed on the brakes[4] and juddered to a halt, coughing and hacking, until I finally horked up this sad, phlegm-coated insect. She looked dead. Obviously, the most critical thing I had to do at that point was make sure I could get her home for pictures[5]. So I popped her in one of the little insect bottles I almost always carry these days, took her home, and gave her a rinse with tap water before putting her on a piece of paper towel in a dish to dry out overnight. She still looked dead at that point. Rather shockingly, she turned out not to be dead; the next morning, she had woken up, cleaned herself off, and looked as fit as if she had never been violently jammed down my throat in the first place!
She was logy at first, but the camera flash made her perk up and start moving around.
Luckily, she didn’t fly, at least not right away. She has the straight antenna tips that I expect from a female bee.
She also has the long hairs on her hind legs that form a “pollen basket” that a female bee would use to carry pollen home to feed her young. This one obviously has no pollen on her legs at the moment, because it all got washed off either during the near-swallowing experience, or during the bath afterwards.
After the pictures, she flew up and I lost track of her for a bit, but eventually I spotted her on my arm. So I opened a window, flicked her outside, and let her fly off, apparently none the worse for her harrowing experience[6].
She is one of the “sweat bees” in the familyHalictidae, a large family of small ground-nesting bees that are either solitary or have very small group nests. I think she is probably one of the 10 or so species of the genus Halictus. These are called “sweat bees” because they are attracted to the salt[7] in people’s sweat. So if you are outdoors working and sweating on a hot day, they are likely to come by to lick you. This tickles, and so you’ll reflexively swat them, thinking they are a deer fly or some other biting insect. And they’ll sting you. It’s all a big misunderstanding; if you let them alone, they won’t sting. Luckily the sting doesn’t hurt much, but one does learn to stop and see what the insect tickling one’s arm actually is before swatting it.
—–
[1] And I suppose you never talk to yourself when you are alone? Besides, it isn’t always talking. Sometimes I sing. For sufficiently broad definitions of the term “singing”.
[2] “When she’s happy, how she smiles/You’ll see teeth for miles and miles/And Tonsils!/And Spareribs!/And things too fierce to mention!” I’m just glad the bee never got as far as my spareribs, or my things too fierce to mention.
[3] Luckily, this wasn’t one of the big bees or wasps that get rated in the high “2”s or “3”s on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Sweat bees like this are only rated around 1 (“Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.”). It probably rates a bit higher in the back of one’s throat, but overall it wasn’t particularly painful, just surprising. If it had been one of the big ones, I might conceivably have had to go to the hospital to keep my throat from swelling shut.
[4] One of the things I like about my recumbent bicycle (a BikeE) is that it lends itself to sudden panic stops. If I jam on both brakes and stomp my feet on the ground, I can go from cruising speed to dead stopped in something under a second, after traveling not much more than one bicycle length. If I tried that on a regular bike, I’d go right over the handlebars.
[5] Why yes, the first thing I think of after nearly swallowing a stinging insect is to save it for pictures. What, isn’t that the first thing everyone thinks of?
[6] So now, imagine the story from her perspective, maybe talking to one of her sisters on a flower while they both gather up pollen:
“So here I was, flying along minding my own business, when suddenly this MONSTER comes out of NOWHERE, and SUCKS ME UP! I run into this huge, wet fleshy thing, and I GRAB it, and hang on! I thought I was DONE for! But I had nothing to lose, so I STUNG it, and BIT it, and suddenly it sprayed buckets of MUCOUS on me, and then this HURRICANE WIND BLEW ME BACK OUT! And then the monster grabs me with this GIANT PAW, and stuffs me into a dark hole! Now I didn’t know WHAT was going on, but nothing more happened for a while, so I just lay there, covered in the MUCOUS and wondering WHAT was going to become of me! Then, all of a sudden, the top of the hole opens, and WATER POURS IN! I swirled around and around, thinking “OH NO, THIS IS IT!” But it wasn’t! I suddenly landed on this soft, absorbent surface, and I just lay there, pretending to be dead, and hoped that nothing would see me! But then, would you believe, NOTHING HAPPENED! I just lay there, until it got dark and I thought it would be safe to move, and all night I cleaned myself up and recovered. I thought that it was all done, but then, just before sunrise, there were these sudden BLINDING FLASHES OF LIGHT, BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN! AND THE MONSTER WAS BACK! Well, I panicked, and flew up, and actually landed on the monster, because there was nowhere else to go. And then you know what? The monster flicked me off in the air, and I was OK! Damnedest thing!”
Overall, I think her story is better than mine.
[7] When you are well away from the ocean or other salt sources, getting enough salt is a big deal. The problem is that animals need a certain amount of salt, but plants don’t (plants only require potassium, not sodium). So plant-eating animals need to get their sodium chloride from other sources than their food. Which means that they will lick salty dirt, filter salt out of puddles, or lick up the salty sweat of much larger, and sometimes dangerous, animals. Humans have the same problem as every other animal, which is why we can taste salt (and like the flavor). The only problem is that our ancestors pretty much had to eat every salty thing they could find in order to get enough salt, so they did not evolve much in the way of mechanisms for deciding to stop eating it when they had enough. And now that we have developed entire industries that can give each of us more salt than we can possibly ever need for just pennies per pound, we can easily eat way more salt than is good for us. So now, doctors practically encourage us to think of salt as poison to keep us from overdoing it, even though it really is an essential nutrient (but only in moderation)
Comments are closed.
Yow! is right. Try putting bicarbonate on that sting!
(5) This is why I love the internet. Well, yes, that is the first thing, of course. Choke, hack, hack, cough, now where’s the collection bottle, hack, hack…
Halictus in my mouth, Halictus! No, no, not Halitosis!
Frightening, funny and fascinating. Great post!
You are correct about your understanding that the story from the bee’s perspective is so much more interesting than the story from the human being’s perspective (even if you are an odd sort of human being which makes you fractionally more interesting than others who lack this oddness).
Why not start writing all your blog posts in this manner?
It would liberate all entomologists from their scarcity of descriptions. They would all adopt an Emily Dickinson poetic alibi.
Also it might widen the circumference of science. Think about the psychological studies you might initiate among entomologists. Why you could even start up a conference on insect consciousness and thinking processes. This advance in the area of entomology could possibly advance many other areas of science that are less robust in their ability to interest the general public such as what I am currently working on in biology 20 (however I think this is unlikely since most of science is geek infested and most geeks –like myself— are more interested in a decent meal, a normal child and a savings account with money in it than in advancing the circumference of any field of science).
While I do have praise for your blog post with reference to its decision to take the perspective of the bee there were some areas of difficulty that I thought I would point out to you. I know you don’t want me to point them out to you and merely praise your acumen in adopting another species’ consciousness to spread your propaganda about bees but I want to point out some areas of this section of your post where I felt the bee was being maligned.
So here is your description of the bee being attacked by your tonsils:
] So now, imagine the story from her perspective, maybe talking to one of her sisters on a flower while they both gather up pollen:
“So here I was, flying along minding my own business, when suddenly this MONSTER comes out of NOWHERE, and SUCKS ME UP! I run into this huge, wet fleshy thing, and I GRAB it, and hang on! I thought I was DONE for! But I had nothing to lose, so I STUNG it, and BIT it, and suddenly it sprayed buckets of MUCOUS on me, and then this HURRICANE WIND BLEW ME BACK OUT! And then the monster grabs me with this GIANT PAW, and stuffs me into a dark hole! Now I didn’t know WHAT was going on, but nothing more happened for a while, so I just lay there, covered in the MUCOUS and wondering WHAT was going to become of me! Then, all of a sudden, the top of the hole opens, and WATER POURS IN! I swirled around and around, thinking “OH NO, THIS IS IT!” But it wasn’t! I suddenly landed on this soft, absorbent surface, and I just lay there, pretending to be dead, and hoped that nothing would see me! But then, would you believe, NOTHING HAPPENED! I just lay there, until it got dark and I thought it would be safe to move, and all night I cleaned myself up and recovered. I thought that it was all done, but then, just before sunrise, there were these sudden BLINDING FLASHES OF LIGHT, BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN! AND THE MONSTER WAS BACK! Well, I panicked, and flew up, and actually landed on the monster, because there was nowhere else to go. And then you know what? The monster flicked me off in the air, and I was OK! Damnedest thing!”
Overall, I think her story is better than mine.
******************************************
Yes you are right. Overall it is a good dramatic story.
But here are my comments with reference to future posts made from an insect’s perspective. You do want to be sensitive don’t you?
1) Stop capitalizing unless you want to make your bifocal readers go blurry
The capitalization of words in the sentences is rather florid and if you plan to use an insect’s perspective to animate future posts I suggest you go easy on this literary technique.
I would simply use italics. I doubt this bee would have exaggerated her feelings in this way and would possibly have been more detached and clinical in her presentation of her case.
Also do you note how many times you have capitalized WHAT?
If you still want to continue to add lively interest to your school age fans in this manner go ahead. But for half blind folks like me it gets to be a roller-coaster ride of a read.
I know I am being picky—you can ignore this tip if you must. This is after all your blog so you may if you must continue blowing up sections of the sentences to the size of Ukrainian sausages and leaving other parts hotdog size, go ahead. I will just grit my teeth and bear it.
2) Why are you assuming the bee is stupid?
We don’t know what goes on in an insect’s head (Do we? If we do know—- then I’m sorry about making a fuss over the matter of specificity of terms used by the bee—to describe various anatomical details of your person.)
But the matter of specificity is important.
This could be a bright bee who recognizes hands, paws and branches. She could even be a poetical bee which would make her a fanatical distinguishing machine.
Also being a female bee gives her extra brains (females of every species are way smarter than males).
So if we don’t know if the bee is dumb why portray her this way? Why do you think the bee would consider your elegant manual appendage (your hand) to be a paw? For all we know that bee is exquisitely refined in her ability to see your hand as a hand and is able to distinguish a cat’s limb as a paw. I do not want to be difficult in reference to taking up the bee’s side against your side—as I know I am overextending my stay on your blog –as it is —with these deleterious mutations of comments in the futile attempt to avoid doing my older son’s biology 20 notes. (Why isn’t he doing them? Because he is being paid Alberta’s minimum wage of I think about ten bucks an hour to do proletariat type work that he loves to do because he loves money more than books.) So what was I talking about here?
Oh, yeah, the bee.
3) The bee would never make a Calvin and Hobbes story out of the encounter with your appendages. You have doen this but she would not do it.
I think she would have been very restrained.
Here is my take on the bee’s story:
So here I was, worked to death as usual by the demands of the hive’s endless multitudes of ungrateful children, searching for a bite to eat when along comes a strange man on a bicycle. I try to avoid the man but you know how clumsy the male of any species is and so he doesn’t remove himself from my vicinity and at the velocity I was travelling there was no way to avoid contact.
I ended up in the back of his throat in an undignified position but at least the screaming that the man had been doing prior to our contact ceased immediately. Because I was annoyed I stung him. There was nothing personal about this puncture wound administration but he carried on as if he was dying. It is my opinion –that a man should be taught his manners and this man obviously lacked any. How do I know? Any other species would have let me go after getting walloped by me but nope, this fellow picks me up and dumps me in a handy dandy specimen container where I faint elegantly and come to my senses to find myself being washed clean of all my earlier labor.
Not content with almost vacuuming me free of all my body parts, the man commences to take nude photographs of my body. Was he ashamed of his illicit activity (and against my will as well?) Nope.
So there you go. Men. The male of any species cannot be trusted.
After obtaining photographs of yours truly in many darling poses (all natural albeit rather shell shocked poses) the man lets me go. I find out later that I am now posted on the Internet as a notorious vile female bee caricature (undressed).
Despite all these strikes against him, I did not consider him a monster although this is how he describes my reaction to his mauling in his blog post.
The man has obviously rocks in his head but at least his tonsils made a soft landing. I only hope that in future—-he will not sing while moving at the velocity he was because it is hard for me to concentrate on two things simultaneously—the hideous howling and the moving trajectory of the bicycle.
******
Now you see the difference in journalistic quality AND SENSITIVITY between your account of the incident and the one I provide for comparison?
I better stop.
You may decide never to take the insect’s perspective again.
I doubt that you will stop howling as you bike (I mean singing).
I’d better go back to chapter 5 (The light-dependent reactions of photosynthesis).
My husband talks to himself. I was once driving behind him and noticed that he also gesticulates when talking to himself. Sometimes his lips move but no sound comes out.
Loved this post!
Thank you for thinking about posting your story, it was great.
Awesome post, Tim. I love it!
I’m impressed you had the presence of mind to not only stay composed enough to save the bee, but to actually want to save it. My exposure to this accident* would be to basically do the opposite of everything you did. I loved your post from the bee’s perspective.
Andy
* …unless… unless it WASN’T an accident! We should consider such things, because to not do so could lead to our eventual (and rather embarrassing) destruction.
Susannah: I suppose I could have gargled with baking soda solution. Although, I kind of suspect that a lot of bee-sting remedies are mainly just a way to distract a person until the pain of the sting fades on its own 🙂
Julie: OK, I’ll watch the ALL CAPS in future. As for the rest, I suppose one anthropomorphization of an insect is as good as another. Although, I personally wouldn’t be all that calm, collected, and dispassionate if some creature the size of the Empire State Building accidentally inhaled *me*. Well, like the man said: “You can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself”.
JennyW: I would gesticulate too, except I’d have to let go of the handlebars.
Andy: That would be quite something, if about ten thousand stinging insects suddenly flew down the throats of unsuspecting people in a major city.
I absolutely love this post…what a great story! And I certainly appreciate your priorities: “Obviously, the most critical thing I had to do at that point was make sure I could get her home for pictures”. I of course couldn’t agree more!
Great stuff!
EC
http://www.macrocritters.wordpress.com
Zig Ziglar has a great bit about talking to yourself. Talking to yourself is OK. Answering yourself is OK, too. However, if you ever talk to yourself and then reply with a, “Huh?!?“, you’ve got problems.