Nothing Compared to the Twig of '93!

“You see. Nature has a certain order. The ants pick the food, the ants eat the food, and the grasshoppers LEAVE." ✧ • AU Hank Pym / Ant-Man • Semi-Selective • The Mundanes Are Both 21+ •

[goodluckgotham]

MOVING DAY

Hey guys! This blog is moving…again…

Yeah, I'm sorry for all the running around with my blogs, but I FINALLY set up a multimuse, multiverse blog with some friends. We're writing for a lot of new characters and doing more experimental stuff that should be very fun, and I encourage y'all to join us!

This all said, I'm gonna hunt down every thread I can, and I will NOT be dropping any! I will make fifty trips from here to the new blog, and back to make sure that doesn't happen!

If y'all wanna check out the new blog and some of what we're doing there, you can find me right here.

[so1987-deactivated20230102]

"greta thunberg emotes wrong/is a bad actor/speaks rehearsedly/speaks too maturely for her age” yeah that’s the autism. it does that.

[dontcallmewheels]

jadedantenthusiast‌:

Crawly Bugs

Hank paused for a moment and looked down at the table. Sure enough, the ants were busying themselves with stealing sugar cubes from out of Charles’s bowl. He had been so preoccupied with pulling out his notes that he hardly noticed.

“Guys,” He began with a stern voice. “You know better than to crawl around on food outside the lab.”

“Get back into the ant farm right now, and think about what you’ve done.”

One by one, the ants dropped what they were doing and retreated to their farm as instructed, their tiny heads hung low with shame.

“Sorry about that. They’re usually much better behaved.”

“It’s alright, I have students that behave that way when unsupervised. It’s hard to have your eyes on things all the time,” he was having a hard time hiding a chuckle. 

“My students have been known to throw wild parties when I’m not looking. We mustn’t blame ourselves.”

[jadedantenthusiast]

“That’s true. Especially when you have well over 4,000 little ones to keep track of.”

Things were going good so far, so Hank continued on with the joke, hoping to coax a laugh out of the other man. He spoke a bit dryly, but he managed the faintest of smiles as he set the rest of his notebooks down.

“Raising kids is never easy, but it’s all worth it at the end of the day, isn’t it?”

[jadedantenthusiast]

Crawly Bugs

Hank paused for a moment and looked down at the table. Sure enough, the ants were busying themselves with stealing sugar cubes from out of Charles’s bowl. He had been so preoccupied with pulling out his notes that he hardly noticed.

“Guys,” He began with a stern voice. “You know better than to crawl around on food outside the lab.”

“Get back into the ant farm right now, and think about what you’ve done.”

One by one, the ants dropped what they were doing and retreated to their farm as instructed, their tiny heads hung low with shame.

“Sorry about that. They’re usually much better behaved.”

[jadedantenthusiast]

Venting

@prplhawk

“Hey Clint...”

“Do you ever get mad? Like, really, really disproportionately mad over something that you know sounds stupid?”

“And no matter how hard you try, you can’t find the right words to convey all of the emotional shit that’s gotten backed up in you to get you to that point?”

“I’m being chatty now, but I’ve been feeling that a lot lately.”

[parismemes]

send 🛏️ for a starter in which our muses’ hotel room only has one bed so they’re forced to share.

[linguistanora]

“I can’t fucking do this” - I mutter for the twentieth time as I continue to fucking do it

[jadedantenthusiast]

Cats

@alittledangerintheeyes

“As long as you’re nicer than my cat, I think we’ll be fine.”

“Crackers is garbage. Garbage that I love. But still garbage.”

[jadedantenthusiast]

Bats Eat Bugs

@richbastardbat

“Excuse me, Batman. If you're looking for lunch, I'm going to ask you to please step away from my ant farms.”

“Or are you a bat of the fruit-eating variety?”

.........

“Horrible joke, I know, but I've never met you before. And this is what happens when the other Avengers encourage me to make new friends.”

[jadedantenthusiast]

Crawly Bugs

@dontcallmewheels

“Yes, they are creepy and they are crawly. That is how bugs do.”

“I don’t tell you how to live your life, Dr. Xavier. Please, do not tell my ants how to live theirs.”

[xoaspiewriterxo]

Just Autistic stuff

- stimming to your favourite song

- wearing the same bathrobe, sweater, tops for several days

- using the cold weather as an excuse to stay in

- collecting things

- obsessively arranging things until you’re satisfied

- watching asmr videos

- zoning out randomly during conversations

- always early to avoid panicking about being late

- your mind going to fast or slow

- playing with your fidget toys just out of boredom

[jadedantenthusiast]

Fair Warning

@secondbestdetective

“Just so you know, I am incredibly uncomfortable and subsequently ‘crabby’ when meeting new people.”

“Nothing against you. I just don’t want you to think that I hate you toward the end of the day.”

[jadedantenthusiast]

Nothing has been written here yet and I’m baking cookies.

*cracks knuckles*

Let’s get to work, lads!

[fat-gold-fish]

how do u actually save bees?

[viva-la-bees]

Plant bee-friendly flowers

Support your local beekeepers

Set up bee hotels for solitary bees

If you see a lethargic bee feed it sugar water

Spread awareness of the importance off bees

[l0veyu]

+Don’t eat honey✌🏻

[ogaycanyousee]

NO.

That will not help save the bees at all. They need the excess honey removed from their hives. That’s the beekeepers entire livelihood.

[libertarirynn-deactivated202006]

Seriously refusing to eat honey is one of those well-meaning but ultimately terrible ideas. The bees make way too much honey and need it out in order to thrive (not being funny but that was literally a side effect in Bee Movie). Plus that’s the only way for the beekeepers to make the money they need to keep the bees healthy. Do not stop eating honey because somebody on Tumblr told you too.

[jumpingjacktrash]

excess honey, if not removed, can ferment and poison the bees. even if it doesn’t, it attracts animals and other insects which can hurt the bees or even damage the hive. why vegans think letting bees stew in their own drippings is ‘cruelty-free’ is beyond me. >:[

the fact that we find honey yummy and nutritious is part of why we keep bees, true, but the truth is we mostly keep them to pollinate our crops. the vegetable crops you seem to imagine would still magically sustain us if we stopped cultivating bees.

and when you get right down to it… domestic bees aren’t confined in any way. if they wanted to fly away, they could, and would. they come back to the wood frame hives humans build because those are nice places to nest.

so pretending domestic bees have it worse than wild bees is just the most childish kind of anthropomorphizing.

[foxthebeekeeper]

If anything, man-made hives are MORE suitable for bees to live in because we have mathematically determined their optimal living space and conditions, and can control them better in our hives. We also can treat them for diseases and pests much easier than we could if they were living in, say, a tree.

Tl;dr for all of this: eating honey saves the bees from themselves, and keeping them in man-made hives is good for them.

[thebeeblogger]

✌️✌️✌️

[kaldurcalm-deactivated20240513]

Plus, buying honey supports bee owners, which helps them maintain the hives, and if they get more money they can buy more hives, which means more bees!

[alwayshere195]

I tell people this. About the honey and what to do to save bees. I also have two large bottles of honey in my cabinet currently. Trying to get some flowers for them to thrive on. Support your bees guys

[nanonaturalist]

… uh guys… the whole “Save the Bees!” thing is not about honeybees. It’s about the decline of native bees almost to the point of extinction. Native bees do not make honey. Honeybees are domesticated. Taking measures to protect honeybees is as irrelevant to helping the environment as protecting Farmer John’s chickens.

To help save native bees, yes, plant NATIVE flowers (what naturally grows where you live? That’s what your bees eat!), set up “bee hotels,” which can be something as simple as a partially buried jar or flower pot for carpenter bees, and don’t use pesticides. Having a source of water (like a bird bath or “puddles” you frequently refresh) is also good for a variety of wildlife.

[nanonaturalist]

Want to know more about bees that are not honeybees?

Dark Bee Tumblr is here to help [link to post chain about forbidden bees]

[nanonaturalist]

ALSO also also

Every place has different types of bees. Every place has different types of plants/flowers. Those hyped-up “save the bees” seed packets that are distributed across North America are garbage because none of those flowers are native in every habitat. Don’t look up “how to make a bee hotel” and make something that only bees from the great plains areas would use if you live on the west coast.

Look up what bees you have in your home! Here’s a great (excellent) resource: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/630955-Anthophila

This is every bee that has been observed and uploaded to the citizen science network of iNaturalist. You can filter by location (anywhere in the world! This is not restricted to the US!), and you can view photos of every species people have added. Here’s the page for all bees, sorted by taxonomy, not filtered to any specific location [link]. Have you seen a bee and want to know more about it, but you don’t know what kind of bee it is? Take a picture, upload it to iNat, and people like me will help you identify it–and it will also become part of the database other people will use to learn about nature!

Some native Texan bees I’ve met!

A sweat bee! [link to iNat]. These flowers are tiny, no larger than a dime.

A ligated furrow bee! [link to iNat] They burrow and nest underground.

A longhorn bee! [link to iNat] I don’t know where they nest, but I often find them sleeping on the tips of flowers at night (so cute!)

Meet your local bees! Befriend them! Feed them! Make them homes! Love them!

[thegreatpigeonking]

This is one of the native bees I met in Arizona! This handsome man is a male Melissodes sp., AKA a type of long-horned bee. I saved him when he was drowning in a puddle.

[nanonaturalist]

I love him

[terrible-tentacle-theatre]

This is a great post all in all but I’d just like to note that colony collapse syndrome is definitely a thing, so domestic honeybees are absolutely in danger as well

[trantares]

Europen Honey Bees are an invasive species in the US and compete with native bees.

[arborescesarchive]

Native bee populations are specifically evolved to pollinate certain native plants. Most are unlikely to have a significant effect on the pollination of the non-native crops that people need to grow to survive. It’s true that honeybees will compete with native bees as well, and can be classified as an invasive species, but so long as native bees are supported and native flora is maintained, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be able to coexist. And while there’s a whole different argument to be had about the negative effects of growing nonnative crops at all, if they fail, as they likely would without the honeybees that a large percentage of farmers keep to pollinate their and other local crops, the effects on humanity will be catastrophic 

[nanonaturalist]

Lest people think I am anti-honeybee (no? I love honeybees?? They are precious??), the above is correct. Like it or not, the way we grow our food (much of which is not native to where it’s farmed) absolutely requires pollinators like honeybees. We would have a hugely massive food crisis on our hands without honeybees.

But, because so much $$$ is tied into the continued production of food, governments and food production companies will do whatever they can to mitigate the effects of colony collapse and other honeybee health issues. What can you do to help honeybees? Buy and eat food. Easy, right?

What is being done to protect native bees? Well,

1) Scientists and researchers are feverishly trying to get them listed as protected species and absolutely failing (see @thelepidopteragirl’s post about colleagues of hers: [link]).

2) Scientists and researchers are trying to get pesticides known to have devastating effects on bees and other pollinators banned and absolutely failing ([link]).

3) Scientists and science communicators (like me now, apparently) are trying to spread this information about native bees and their importance so more people can do little things like plant native flowers (lookup North American species for your zip code here: [link]), change how often they mow their lawns ([link]), and vote out the assholes who are profiting by destroying our environment ([link]). Success on this one: TBD, and by people like us.

As a gift to the honeybee lovers out there, please accept this photo of one making out with a stinkhorn mushroom:

[the-awkward-turt]

^An excellent post on the complexities of the “Save the Bees” movement

[systlin]

To add, honeybees are also having problems in, you know, Europe and Asia, where they are native!

I feel like that gets forgotten by many, as Tumblr is very USA centered. 

[acecroft]

Ewan McGregor in Angels & Demons (2009)

[hilarioushumorfromouterspace]

[jadedantenthusiast-a]

You can say Ant-Man

[weavemama]

BY A WHAT

[artistil]

THATS ALL THE BIG SCARIES IN ONE BUG TFFF JU

[1petulantpanda]

Give it a dime, apparently.

[1petulantpanda]

Had to go research this thing, and the answer to what to do if it stings you is scream.

from Wikipedia-

“One researcher described the pain as “…immediate, excruciating, unrelenting pain that simply shuts down one’s ability to do anything, except scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations. In terms of scale, the wasp’s sting is rated near the top of the Schmidt sting pain index, second only to that of the bullet ant, and is described by Schmidt as “blinding, fierce [and] shockingly electric”.“

[momma-crow]

Soooooo…dissociate to escape or?

[theyoungestwhateleydaughter-dea]

It’s laying eggs in you.

[prokopetz]

Let’s back up a second and fully appreciate that description.

The Schmidt sting pain index, a widely used classification system for the bites and stings of ants, bees and wasps, is literally the personal ranking system of a guy named Justin Schmidt, who goes around letting bugs sting him for science. Like, that’s this Thing as a scientist.

In one entry, he describes the sting of the common bee as “almost pleasant, [like] a lover just bit your earlobe a little too hard.”

In another, the sting of the yellowjacket is described as “hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.“

So when the Schmidt sting pain index characterises the sting of the tarantula hawk as “blinding, fierce [and] shockingly electric”, well, now you know what your standard for comparison is!

[moonsofavalon]

this is fascinating but when do we kinkshame Justin Schmidt