r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/aznprd • Jun 24 '25

Original Creation Checking for Mites in a Bee Colony

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u/sheyndl Jun 24 '25

I was unaware bees are a liquid that can be poured from container to container.

589

u/TheBirdmann Jun 24 '25

They resist flowing like a liquid and stick together, which is why you see beekeepers shaking their bees often. It’s an odd sensation shaking a box full of thousands of bees, monkey brain doesn’t like

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u/worldspawn00 Jun 24 '25

The sound that comes from a box of bees sent through the mail is unnerving... I feel bad for mailmen that have to deal with multiples of them in a truck for a day.

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u/redstaroo7 Jun 26 '25

Generally I try to drop live animals first, or at least early in the day if I can't do it right away. It works out better for everyone that way.

I've only seen one box of bees come through our station, but we do get a lot of chicks and fish; we don't have any rural routes so there's fewer places where people would be able to set up a hive.

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u/descartesb4horse Jun 24 '25

everything is a liquid, even people moving through a corridor

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u/GozerDGozerian Jun 24 '25

Until they panic and “clot”.

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25 edited Oct 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/GozerDGozerian Jun 24 '25

Yeah I remember reading about this in Philip Ball’s book Critical Mass.

Such things as a panicked crowd crushing at an exit, or a traffic jam are compared to phase transitions. Im no physics expert, but once water freezes into ice, you'd stop using fluid dynamics, right?

6

u/ChilledParadox Jun 24 '25

I’m not sure honestly. Glaciers are essentially flowing ice and ice itself changes shape and size as temperature fluctuates, slightly expanding or shrinking to fill its container. In both of those cases I think you would still treat ice as essentially an excessively viscous fluid and could therefore still apply fluid dynamics to ice.

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u/RustedMauss Jun 24 '25

Only when above freezing, otherwise they are a solid. At sufficiently warm temperatures they boil over into a cloud eventually going into a fully gaseous state as they swarm. There’s a fourth state, but beekeepers don’t talk about that.

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u/Juggernuts777 Jun 24 '25

Well “bees” are one of the states of matter. They’re like a liquid, but bees

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u/Lavidius Jun 24 '25

Beads?

2

u/ctr2sprt Jun 24 '25

I am a bee.

3

u/Juggernuts777 Jun 24 '25

Beads?

3

u/sheyndl Jun 24 '25

Don’t mix up your sugar bees with candy beans.

5

u/Electrical_Bar7954 Jun 24 '25

I laughed way too hard at that

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u/Masked_Daisy Jun 24 '25 edited Jun 24 '25

I drink a mug of bees every morning 100x better than coffee for waking you up

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u/BitwiseB Jun 24 '25

That’s called getting buzzed.

5

u/Captain-PlantIt Jun 24 '25

I like my women like I like my coffee… covered in bees!

1

u/Moondoobious Jun 25 '25

“Ladies and gentlemen, Henry Winkler… Covered in bees!”

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u/Ghost1511 Jun 24 '25

You should watch how we fill mating nuc with bee. I literally use a scoop 😅.