Austinized honey bees

The Monday morning preschoolers were sharing their personal anecdotes about insects, arachnids, and superheroes. It was just a normal discussion while we all yawned and tried to get our week into gear. Believe me, preschoolers ALL seem to know someone who has eaten a bug. This doesn't impress me any more. I was impressed when a young girl informed us that she had a beevhive at her house with lots of honey.

No, that is not a typo! We are talking about a real beevhive! I don't know how entomologists have missed the resemblance for so long. One look through the microscope, and the relationship is slap-my-forehead obvious. Tiny flying longhorns!

Observe Exhibit A, the honey bee, then Exhibit B, the Bevo:



If you need to know if your bee colony contains Austinized members, you can follow these instructions for submitting bee samples for identification. It's true that the Texas A&M Department of Entomology and the Texas Cooperative Extension may be unwilling to admit the amazing strength and numbers of Austinized beev colonies due to traditional Texas bee rivalries.

For information about the unrelated Africanized honey bee, and bee smarts in general, TAMU is still the place to go.

And if you would like to learn about the world's largest scarab beetle, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty magazine, The Scarlet, August 25, 2005 issue is pretty amazing.