Mashing Up Memories...

[highlyeccentric]

At Phrasemuffin's request, here is a post about bees, honeycomb and the codification of memories.
According to Wikipedia:

Honey is laid down by bees as a food source. In cold weather or when food sources are scarce, bees use their stored honey as their source of energy[11]. By contriving for the bee swarm to make its home in a hive, people have been able to semi-domesticate the insects. In the hive there are three types of bee: the single queen bee, a seasonally variable number of drone bees to fertilize new queens, and some 20,000 to 40,000 worker bees[12]. The worker bees raise larvae and collect the nectar that will become honey in the hive. They go out, collect the sugar-rich flower nectar and return to the hive. As they leave the flower, bees release Nasonov pheromones. These enable other bees to find their way to the site by smell[13]. Honeybees also release Nasonov pheromones at the entrance to the hive, which enables returning bees to return to the proper hive[13]. In the hive the bees use their "honey stomachs" to ingest and regurgitate the nectar a number of times until it is partially digested[14]. It is then stored in the honeycomb.

According to goblinpaladin, the pattern of honeycomb also encodes bee's memories. What things bees remember is anyone's guess. Wikipedia has nothing whatsoever to say about this aspect of honeycomb.

Whilst I was doing the Dreaded Essay on Anglo-Saxon Charms, and ferreting around for information on bee-charms, I discovered somewhere (possibly via a blog- if it was yours, i apologise for the lack of citation) that premodern beekeeping was a dicey business; you want to KEEP your swarm, obviously, or no honey next year. However, if you want to GET the honey, you have to wait until the bees have swarmed and gone away, because unlike some (most?) modern beekeeper's hives, premodern beekeepers had no way of extracting the honeycomb, and honey, sneakily without disturbing the bees.

Pictures of an amatuer honey-making experience, sans fancy modern equipment, can be found on Neil Gaiman's blog. He also describes losing a swarm- the hive which flourished most split off, and the larger part of the colony buggered off into the bush. The queen that was left had too few bees in her hive to keep them all warm over winter.

Clearly, this is where Neil ought to have enacted some bee-keeping magic, to keep the larger part of the swarm on his own property.

Comments

[ahsavka.livejournal.com]

I love honey, and lacking the typical bee-wussery native to the human spirit, I'd always kind of wanted to be a bee keeper.

I'm allergic, though, so that's probably a bad idea. Sigh.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

sigh indeed. fortune is against you.

bees are cool. that is all i have to say on the matter.

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

What do bees remember? They're Hex's memory, of course!

*flees*

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

*GLEEEEEES*

also, have you noticed that our Bursar here is a bit... well, Bursar? I swear, every time I speak to him he has no idea which way is up.

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

I think my first post got eaten, but anyway...

I have this feeling that dried frog pills aren't available on Roundworld, and making them would be illegal.

Maybe we could just type "lots of dried frog pills" into his computer and see what happens.

[phrasemuffin.livejournal.com]

I was hoping for more on the memory encoding... *nudges B*... but I now feel I know all there is to know about honey and bees!!!

Also, I would love to learn Bee Charms :D

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

I don't remember where I learned that! I'll do my best to find out from you at some point.