Bees swarm under bike seat: the thrilling conclusion

Yesterday, Mister Jalopy reported a swarm of bees under the seat of one of his bikes for sale at Coco's Variety in Los Angeles. Upon hearing the news, neighbor Amy Seidenwurm headed over to the store, donned her bee suit, and bravely herded the bees to a cardboard box, transferring them to "greener pastures where the flowers are dripping with nectar and hives are clean and commodious."

2 Wheels, 2000 Bees

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Maddy

What is up with the Bees? This is like a 70s movie. I had 8 dead bees inside my house yesterday.
jjasper

All hail Amy. A real Beemanitarian!
bat21

Obligatory Nicholas Cage clip
Sephie2

Amy Seidenwurm = I swarm U my Eden?
Anonymous

My vote was still for the shop vac. Would not have hurt the bees and would have allowed for release. Just use a clean, empty one and stick the business end on a long stick.
ndollak

C’mon! Let’s take it back to the hive! On the count of three, everyone start flying…
Anonymous

Gawd bless Mr. Jalopy, Amy Seidenwurm, the bees, bikes, Coco’s and Boing Boing.

And thanks for reminding me: I have to get over there for another box of Hamster’s Lunch!
Neuron

Sue Hubbell’s A Book of Bees is great.
Anonymous

How could they have POSSIBLY NEGLECTED TO TAKE A VIDEO OF THIS and post it to Youtube … that’s what the tubes are for!
Anonymous

Fixed-Gear Beecycle?
Anonymous

Yay!
jjjj

Amy was just in the LA Times Magazine this last weekend…

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2009/08/honey-menu-canele.html
thatbob

Capture and release?!? “Thrilling conclusion” my ass! I was gonna ride that sweet Bee Beard Bike around in my apiarist suit commanding my Bee Army to wreck havoc across LA! Or at least to score me some Hostess Twinkies, man!

And yes, I said “apiarist suit.” IMO a bee suit is the black and yellow striped ensemble plus deely boppers that you wear in Blind Melon videos, Super Mario Galaxy, Saturday Night Live, and the Simpsons. Think about it: bear suit; ape suit; tanuki suit; bee suit.

Okay, that, or else a suit that is literally made of bees. Which would also be pretty cool to wreck havoc in.

But for capture and release? Pfft.
nosehat

Okay, that, or else a suit that is literally made of bees. Which would also be pretty cool to wreck havoc in.

I like the way you think!
mdh

Brava!
Anonymous

I’m thinking there may be a market for this. Who would want to steal a bike that has bees on it.
Ugly Canuck

Bees and silkworms: out of millions of insect species, only these produce things directly useful to man. Strange.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Bees and silkworms: out of millions of insect species, only these produce things directly useful to man.
  
  Lac? Cochineal?
phreatic

Whatever insects they use to make some of those “natural flavourings” or “red number 40″? I’m not sure if I would argue that either of those things are all that directly useful to man though…
dorfus

Uh oh. 24-Hour Blog Cycle (no pun intended). This is the kind of thing you see under the “Breaking News” crawler on CNN. Bees on a bike. Was it really fascinating? Or was it just (bum bum buuummmm…) that the blog must be fed?
Ugly Canuck

Thanks, Antinous: now we have four “insect-derived goods”.
But, I suppose, only one, where humans need but to gather and enjoy: the honey of the bees. The others all need processing by human hands, even the silk.
On second thought, I guess the grubs, larvae and other “food insects” used around the world could count as “insect goods”. But not as “goods produced by insects”.
nosehat

Plenty of insects help fertilize plants, help aerate soil, help break down dead things, help kill garden pests.

Also, some can be eaten by humans.

That’s a pretty direct benefit.

However, “beneficial to man” is a curious yardstick to apply to plant and animal species, since it measures the amount of human ingenuity put into making a species useful to us rather than anything innate about the species.
Anonymous

@ #6 Are you referring to the fact that Seidenwurm means Silkworm in German? It’s all coming together!
Ugly Canuck

Oh, I do not use it as any kind of “yardstick”: I’m not about to judge the insects! Neither as a group, nor one against the other. Live and let live, says I.
It’s simply a curious fact IMO: items or things produced by insects (not the insects themselves) which are directly and simply useful to people are very very few in number.
I suppose the explanation is partly that there’s not so many insects, that actually produce anything, other than more insects. Which is something that they do very well indeed (in fact it seems their whole life), if the conditions are right.
TroofSeeker

Maybe they’ve nurtured our species, Mr. Canuck, because, to them at least, we’re so tasty!