Travel hopefully in life.

I did another bee post! You can read it here.

Have a snippet to whet your appetite:

Other newly discovered species have been long extinct—take the Kem Kem Abelisaur, the fossilized bones of which were believed to be those of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex until earlier this year—or are teetering on the brink of extinction themselves, like the Brazilian Dinizia jueirana-facao tree, which can grow as tall as a 12-story building and weigh up to 62 tons. Despite its imposing size, this massive 2017 addition to the legume family escaped the notice of the scientific community for many years because there are only 25 of them left in existence.

The insect world in particular is considered to be fertile ground for new species to be identified. As is true in many instances, the smaller things are, the easier they are to overlook. And sometimes, even after those small things have initially been discovered, they get stuck in a drawer and forgotten for a few decades before someone with the time and inclination to properly classify them comes along.

Such it was with this week’s terrific tunneling species: the pueblo bee.

What a tremendous oversight on my part!

Anyway, I have a new post up on my Substack about bee stuff. It's the first in a series called "Tunnelers of Love," which will be exploring some of the coolest species of digger bees I can find.

Here's a little snippet for y'all, as a teaser:

Pallid bees emerge from hibernation in the spring, usually late April or May, and live for about a month on the surface, growing scarce and difficult to find come July. They’re a fairly common bee, considered Least Concern in terms of conservation, and tend to be more active at night when temperatures drop. Not at all surprising, considering that pallid bees live within a few degrees of death, boasting an average internal body temperature of 119 degrees Fahrenheit where 125 would prove fatal.

Newly hatched male pallid bees tunnel their way to the surface first, whereupon they begin searching the previous years’ nesting ground for mates. Partners are much prized in the pallid bee community. A female pallid bee will mate with only one partner before she’s finished for the season. As such, C. pallida’s mating dance is usually more of a fistfight, with male pallid bees scrapping viciously over potential mates and racing each other to every fresh prospect that appears.

You can read the whole thing here on Substack.

I very nearly forgot about this today, so forgive me if my post isn't as robust as a Fuck Yeah Friday! might usually be.

Anyway, today I want to talk about bees. Specifically, a few species in the genus Trigona, which is the largest genus of stingless bees. Of the eighty species that comprise Trigona, many of them consume meat in addition to flower nectar and pollen, but only four of them—Trigona crassipes, Trigona necrophaga, Trigona hypogea robustior, and Trigona hypogea hypogea, according to Wikipedia—are colloquially known as "vulture bees." Wikipedia being what it is, I would have to do considerably more research before I felt comfortable calling all of these species out as the vulture bee (or even as bonafide species at all) but I found a very cool paper on Trigona hypogea that confirms and details their feeding process and diet which largely consists of, you guessed it: dead animals!

That's right, y'all! These bees are mainly carnivorous. Not to be confused with wasps, who also eat meat but are, by and large, assholes—though I am reluctantly coming to regard them with a certain amount of grudging respect as I fall deeper into the bee-based entomology hole that is my life. It is the tragedy of my life that I don't have a close-up photograph of these metal bastards to share with you, but I'm going to tell you about their eating habits in explicit detail instead to make up for it.

Trigona hypogea process the flesh they consume in the same way that other Apidae process pollen, breaking it down with a mandibular/salivary secretion and storing it internally until they can get it back to the hive, regurgitate it, and stash it in capped cells for later use. While most species of bee possess a "pollen basket"—a flat patch surrounded by hairs which hold pollen granules in place—on their rear legs, Trigona hypogea instead have five sharp teeth on their mandibles that allow them to rend flesh. Yes, you read that right: these bees have teeth!

As in most social beehives made up of species other than honey bees, Trigona hypogea store just enough honey to ensure the survival of the hive, which means that, unfortunately, there will be no harvesting of meat honey. And yes, believe it or not, there's a chance that you would actually be able to consume meat honey if enough of it existed not to doom the hive to a premature and terrible death! When bees make honey, they combine dehydrated flower nectar with a cocktail of bee-specific enzymes that render it essentially immune to decay.

Raw honey lasts forever, and is antimicrobial enough to be used for wound care in a pinch. I'm not a doctor or any kind of medical professional, but there are plenty of papers out there on honey being used to treat MRSA and staph infections if you'd like to get into the nitty gritty o-chem details, and I have personally used it to treat minor cuts to great effect. (No scabbing or scarring! Very wild experience.) You should absolutely not replace modern antibacterial creams, gels, or other products recommended by trained healthcare professionals with honey, and under no circumstances should you use the honey you get in the bear-shaped bottle at the grocery store for anything other than sweetening your tea or tossing directly into the garbage because it's the worst.

All of which to say: the chances are that meat honey would be likewise safe from bacterial contamination and therefore edible, although I can't imagine that it would taste great. ....I still kind of want to try it, though.

Anyway, bees are incredible creatures and their evolutionary variation and biological diversity even within their taxonomic set of family traits is absolutely fascinating. You will likely see more bee profiles from me in the future, but for now take comfort in the knowledge that the vulture bee is out there at this very moment, scouring the tropics of the North American continent for its next ghastly meal.

For those of you who want to know more about bees, or at least to look at cool bee photos, I've also stumbled onto a couple of really excellent taxonomic collective websites this week that are worth perusing:

Anthophila - an online repository of bee diversity

and

York University's bee genera image bank

ETA: In my endeavors to dig up a series of entomologist-quality bee species identification cards for myself, I ran across a very excellent free PDF of general bee ID cards for anyone who's interested in being able to spot these beauties at a distance while out for casual walks and really freak your family out in the process. You can find the cards here!