My Cousin and Honey Bees

About a year and a half ago, my favorite cousin in the world took an internship studying honey bees. Her name is Ashley and she attended Ohio State University and majored in Forestry and Wildlife. She loves animals more than anyone I know, and she is also the bravest person I know to have wanted to work with bees. But she loved it.

She often sent me pictures and taught me odd-ball little facts about honey bees and their honey. Apparently you can freeze honey bees, and when they thaw, they're A-okay.

One day, Ashley sent me this photo to the right. It's a queen bee that she was studying and those white bags are the queen's ovaries. Yeah. As gross as I find it, Ashley was enthusiastic to talk about it and I always participate because she's my best friend and it really is interesting.


She also grew her own tube bee-babies! Below, you can see the little larva-like crescents, curled up in their tubes. Using her science-y abilities to take genetics and make things out of them, Ashley created a whole army of test tube babies. Creepy, yeah.

Ashley is far more knowledgeable about bees than I am! But the website in this link here is very helpful to teach you all you want to know about bee studies.

The last thing I want to talk about is an extension to Ashley's bee studies. She taught me about a specific fly that actually hunts bees and other large insects. It's rather terrifying and called an "assassin" or "robber" fly. They kill and eat insects like honey bees, and I think that's metal as heck. So, for those of you interested in the most terrifying fly in existence, here is a photo (Right) and a video (Below).

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