dat bzz
bees bzz, ok. they bzz when they are busy, they bzz when they find pretty flowers. but when you annoy them, they have an unmistakable bzz that even a silly human can tell means ‘go away, or my sisters and i are going to fuck you up srs.’ its usually accompanied by divebombing close to the face, flying orbits around the head, that kind of thing. i suspect this behavior is encouraged by scent: if ive been stung already, perhaps without noticing, then ive got ‘kamakaze bee hormone’ wafting from somewhere on my clothes. this makes area bees mad. she can keep it up for quite a while (minutes) without stinging if you act suitably cowed, but one wrong move and youll find out that pistol is loaded. i usually get it on the ear at this point, or by accident when they get confused by my hair or beard.
bee bump
this is not a threatening behavior, but it *is* territorial. if you are standing around a hive, enjoying the calming noise of bees at work, one of the girls mite bump into you. im pretty sure its deliberate. shes telling you, ‘there are bees here; do you have other business in the area? because if youre here to hassle us, you dont even have the element of surprise, mister.’ its fairly friendly tho. one reason she does it is to revel in her power to make big mammals try to assume the fetal position while running– at which point they will start dat bzz to keep the game going. but if you arent afraid, and you dont mess with their brood, they can bump you all day and never step it up.
vibrating alert
if you pinch or trap a bee, but not hard enuf to hurt her, instead of stinging she will give you a little jolt. i dont know if they do it with the wing muscles or what, but it feels like a mild electric shock or a mobile phone. i swear ive felt it thru a metal truck bed when i set a box on top of a bee cleaning up some wax there. the purpose is pretty simple: ‘hey, im workin here!’ bees arent shy; you wudnt be shy either if you had 10000 friends.
