Saturday, May 07, 2011

On the death of bees in Germany

Yesterday I felt a bit strange. I was constipated for most of the day. Things were not helped by the fact that the University seems to want to close many of the toilets close to my office.

Although I guess that any readers are not particularly interested, or perhaps even slightly revolted by my struggles in the restroom, I should say that it is traditional for an Englishman to answer "as regular as clockwork -- there are no problems with my bowl movement", when he is asked by a doctor how well he is.

So I was feeling blocked, as I walked into the forest that I must walk through to get home. I suddenly saw a lot of dead flies on the ground. There were a huge number of bees and flies flying around 10cm from the ground. I thought that perhaps some beehive had been destroyed and the bees were just confused. I was slightly nervous that a bee might sting me, but I usually just press a cold can of beer on the stung area, and the pain is usually minor anyway.

I tried to remember what I knew about bees. There was a Dr Who series that had as a subplot, the death of lots of bees, which some implication for the end of the Universe. I had read that bees were dying out in reality for some unknown reason. So essentially I had no useful information, so I carefully walked through the forest of dead insects, went home, and closed my door. As Voltaire tells us "we must cultivate our garden", even though this may be hard with no insects.