May 27, 2009

Bee Maggots

I never get to post on honey bees, save for the occasional giant Asian wasp post. Here's my chance.

Take a look inside those honeycomb brood chambers and see the little bee larvae. Little bee maggots. Technically, I can't call them maggots, since 'maggot' refers to fly larvae. But until I'm told the proper name for bee larvae (and there may not be one, though an agriculturalist might be able to set me straight), I'll stick with maggot.

But such is the strength of my sweet tooth that I will be having Honey Nut Cheerios, despite all the maggots. And no, this post was not brought to you by General Mills.

Photo source: Chrissie Jamieson

12 comments:

Sabina E. said...

that is pretty cool..

Anonymous said...

Cool is one word for it...
I prefer icky though :P

Smoothoperator said...

lol this is a halarious blog, i love it. At first I was like what the heck is up with all these ugly animals then I read the description and started laughing. Thanks for providing me with a laugh, i needed it.

Raging Wombat said...

You're quite welcome, Smoothoperator.

Unknown said...

Still, no one has the proper name for the larvae? I was hoping to stump my friends at the next luncheon!! Honey will still taste as sweet, but I will never look at it the same again.

Anonymous said...

Those are so cute!

...has someone been screwing with my DNS? I thought this was the ugly blog?

Soujin said...

I'm in the beekeeping club at school and when we were going through the hives this spring we found a lot of these guys--they are INCREDIBLY fragile. If you poke them they just melt. It's actually kind of crazy.

Tim Eisele said...

As for what they are called, as near as I can tell beekeepers mostly just call them "brood" or "larva", or sometimes "grubs". I know, you were all hoping for something more exotic, but that's life.

Unknown said...

Honey-making is like sausage-making in some respects - you really REALLY don't want to know the details.

Honey Beekeeping said...

Hey little baby bees aren't ugly, well not to me. Well that's probably because beekeeping is my business. That's how I found your blog searching google for honey bee comb pictures. Nice blog though anyway. :)

Valerie said...

Im glad I came across this blog! I actually just googled bee maps to try to figure out the name because I sprayed a hive that was too close to my kids swimming pool last night. This morning I had the pleasant surprise of finding wiggly bee maggots (still calling them that!) among the carnage...how errrrrr lovely???? Ew!

Rick S said...

They are "grubs" not maggots ...