I’m using every ounce of fingertip energy to avoid bee-related puns in this post. Brownie-point me.

Photo courtesy autan via flickr

Conversations about bees have exploded on the web today. What’s up with the synchronicity?

This morning, my sister even randomly emailed me the beautiful trailer for Taggart Siegel’s 2010 documentary “Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?”

Discovery News reported today…

…findings from a study that showed bees to have personality akin to extreme-sports-minded humanoids. They take risks. They seek adventure. They dance, for crying out loud (although that does have a more practical function). Check out the article by Emily Sohn to learn more about the biological view of risk-taking behavior.

Oh! And if you think you’re some bee expert, take a gander at Discovery News’s interactive quiz about bees.

When I was 8-years-old, I opened up the tailgate door of my dad’s pickup truck to accomodate my sister’s birthday party tables and chairs. I was a helpful twerp. The truck bed was covered with one of those blue protective blankets. I lifted it to shake some dust off, and suddenly, my wrist was enveloped in molten, searing pain. I was convinced the tailgate door had clipped off my arteries and I was gonna bleed out any moment (perhaps I was a morbid twerp). Turns out, an angry bee had been stuck under the blanket for who-knows how long and came zooming out, straight toward at the tender flesh of my pre-pubescent wrist. When my dad came over to remove the now-dead bee from my swollen arm, I felt kind of bad for it. Now, almost two decades later, I feel slightly guilty for contributing in minutia to the decline in the global bee population.

What? The bees are disappearing? Yeah, you need to hear about this.

Gretchen LeBuhn, associate professor of biology at my alma mater, San Francisco State University, launched The Great Sunflower Project a few years back. It culls the help from ordinary people around the globe to help track bee populations. People can request seeds and plants to put in their yards. Then, they take 15 minutes out of their day to count the bees that visit and report back to the Backyard Bee Count. Collaboration makes the world go round. And so do bees, apparently.

Image courtesy YourGardenShow.com

Watch Grethcn LeBuhn’s eloquent explanation of on YouTube.
She makes me smile.

Another bee finding to hit the web today was Katherine Harmon‘s article about the concept that bees have as individualistic personality differences as our own. If you’re a cat owner, this non-human similarity may not strike you as particularly exceptional, but it’s good science, published today in Science.

For the final installation of today’s bee roundup (seriously, it’s so hard to avoid bee puns), USC Impact broadcasted a story about urban beekeeping, a segment of Episode 45 which won 1st place at the Emmys Foundation 2010 College Television Awards.

Check it out:

Oh! One more thing.

Did you know there’s a jammin’ Twitter account devoted soley to bees in art?

Guess what it’s called.

@BeesInArt

AND, they’ve curated a list of 192 Twitter uses who are super-interested in bees. @VanishingBees is another game-changer in the save-the-bees endeavor. Sweet.

Damn, I couldn’t make it through. Is it any excuse that I legitimately am craving honey?