post cute animals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOOnZ0ZNZs8

this video has died

farewell video

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Baby spiders balloonswarming in Hikurangi, New Zealand (more photos, more spiders in the link)

The threads of silk do not last very long and the spiders attached to them posed no threat, he said.

posed no threat, he said.

posed no threat

They're tiny little baby spiders! What the heck are they going to do? Blow into your eye and make it irritated and watery until you blink them away? Why does this even need to be said?

Tiny things can be venomous too.

Oh, sure. I have no doubt that they're venomous. My understanding is that nearly all spiders are venomous. So are honeybees and harvester ants.
The question is, how many spiders actually have venom that can cause any sort of significant injury to humans? I am told it is not exactly the majority. Spider venom is for hunting very small things, like insects, not great big things like humans.

Let's not forget that baby spiders are tiny because they're not full-grown, and therefore are presumably less venomous than the adults of their species. So whatever conceivable threat the adults might have posed, the babies will pose less of one.

I'm pretty sure the warning was there not because there's any real reason to expect baby spiders to present any kind of danger, but because people freak out about spiders and need to be reassured that they won't come and knife them in the back while they sleep. It is towards those people that my outrage is directed, not the guy who made the statement.

it might be more about the fear of waking up covered in baby spiders

or christmas crabs

basically swarms of things

Part 447 in nature's infinity-part series "Bees Are Weird":

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When it's hot, a lot of bees will hang around outside the hive; this is pretty reasonable behavior, since it frees up space inside for other bees to move the air around and keep the hive cool as well as removing warm biomass. Earlier this week when it threatened to hit a hundred, there were so many outside they covered the whole front of the hive and were bunched up at the joints and handles. What's weird is that I've found if I watch them, they're all oriented just about straight up and down; they'll move forward a couple steps, turning a little right or left, then move back like a tiny little vacuum. They do this at regular intervals and are fairly well synchronized, so the motion ripples upwards every couple of seconds if you let your eyes unfocus a little. Their mandibles are open most of the time, and they occasionally nibble at the paint or lick it; they don't appear to be noticeably cleaning anything, nor can I think why they'd waste energy cleaning the outside of the hive. I have no idea what they're doing, or why. Bees are weird.

Maybe they're bored. Synchronized bored.

How do you travel with your bees when you move out? You have moved out recently, right?

Also, share more bee facts pls.

The bees still live with my parents, since I have yet to find an apartment complex that's very enthusiastic about thousands of stinging insects moving in. They might take a vacation to the community garden this summer, but probably not; I don't want to stress the hive on a year that they swarmed. I go visit the hive every week or two (plus whenever I'm at the parents' place for other reasons). It doesn't require much maintenance; bees are pretty good at taking care of themselves.

Bees have an air-conditioning system based on fanning water with their wings to absorb heat by evaporation and then direct the hot air out of the hive.

When the hive is busy, bees go into a holding pattern to prevent pileups at the entrance; workers carrying nectar are given priority over those carrying water (bees need to drink since honey is very low-water), but when temperatures rise to dangerous levels water-carriers go first instead.

Bees have been demonstrated to have the capacity to perceive and respond to electrical fields like those created by living organisms. Some flowers advertise themselves with these fields.

Bees love alcohol and caffeine; some plants (especially citrus trees) caffeinate their nectar to entice the bees.

Some bees become alcoholics and are kicked out of the hive :<

Oh that last fact

The Alcoholic bee's Inebriated Hiveventure.

what do vagrant bees do anyway

Die, mostly. All they know how to do is work for the hive so they'll usually keep trying to get back in until the "bouncer" bees have to injure them to get the point across.

I took a video this time. The sound is a lot harsher than it is in person, which is strange; as a beekeeper, you learn to judge a hive's mood and health by sound, so it's disappointing I can't share that accurately.

Only some of the bees are hoovering now; I still don't know why. As you can see, even the ones still doing have gotten a lot less... organized about it, just sort of going wherever they feel like, whenever. The ones that aren't doing it are clumped up. Like, a lot. Interestingly, the group under the handle is actually hanging from the top of the handle: none of them are touching the wall of the hive except the three or four bees at the top, and there's no anchor at the bottom either. The pile at the hive's foot is three to four bees deep. I poked a stick in and they just moved enough to let it through and closed back over it, then did the same when I pulled it out. Bees are weird.

I have noticed a lot more propolis deposits on the front of the hive (that's those red-orange-brown splotches you can see here and there; it's a sealant and antifungal they make out of plant resins). That might be what they're doing with the hoovering; it's as good a guess as any. More interestingly, I would swear up and down that this afternoon I found a queen wandering around the piles of bees on the front of the hive, then going back inside. Then I found another one doing the same. I don't know if this is a new crop of queens, but that seems unlikely since the hive already swarmed once this year, but it's hard to mistake a drone for a queen and impossible to mistake a worker for one.

This colony is confusing and interesting. I'm going to see what they do tomorrow.

They are weird indeed.

Maybe you should give 'em some booze.