Honey Bees Eusociality

(TS) In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens does not have an empathetic relationship with her parents as a result of the loss of her mother and an abusive father; however, Lily gains a new family figure, August Boatwright, who shows her the true empathy that is present between a parent and their child. (PS) Lily Owens’s absence of a mother and a “real” father causes Lily not to have a relationship with her parents that is filled with affection for one another. (SS) When Lily lost her mother, Deborah Fontell, she was told that she had shot and killed Deborah. (SS) Lily would say, “I would meet her saying, ‘Mother forgive. Please forgive,’” and she would kiss my skin till I grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame”

In the time period of the late 1960s, which is the time period The Secret Life of Bees is set in, racism and segregation were both incredibly common in the United States. Along with the racism and segregation of the time period, other problems began evolving. For example, many people of colored skin were punished, whether it be verbally or physically when they did something simple, like drinking out of the wrong water fountain, sitting in a seat of a bus rather than offering it to a person who was not of colored skin, or talking back to the wrong person. In most cases, however, this punishment in turn only made them stronger and pushed them to continue fighting. This same situation applies to many people who are abused in some form during their lifetime. During this time period, however, colored people were not the

Conflict is a key aspect in all pieces of literature. Without it, works would be very boring, predictable and would not be able to draw the reader in. There is usually one main conflict the protagonist faces, whether it is against an evil villain or the evil inside their own self. In the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the courageous protagonist, Lily, struggles with an internal conflict with the guilt of possibly being the cause of her mother's death and the absence of knowledge about her mother. Following a clue left by her mother, Lily runs away from home and meets the "calendar sisters" in Tiburon, SC. There, she is finally able to discover who her mother actually was and learn the truth behind her mother's death: that Lily had accidentally shot her. Upon uncovering the whole truth, Lily is finally able to begin to forgive herself and shrug off the heavy guilt that had burdened her for years. Through Lily's struggle to figure out who her mother was and accept what happened to her, Sue Monk Kidd wishes to communicate that even if something

Concern in relation to global bee populations has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. The primary cause of this has been a large scale population decline of both wild and domestic varieties, this can be seen within the US (Fig.1) as honey bee population experienced a 59% reduction in colonies between 1945 and 2008 (van Englesdorp et al. 2008). These findings have been supported elsewhere with experts observing similar changes in the UK with 3 of 25 bumblebee species native to the UK having become extinct since 1950 (Goulson et al. 2008). The significance of these findings are great; partly due to the importance of bees in areas such as pollination and honey production, as well as other implications of the data such as ethical issues.

When I first read through Nathanael Johnson’s article discussing the fall of bee populations in relation to a catastrophic unearthly demise, I kept an open mind. With my personal opinion about the bee crisis stifled, I read on to see if Johnson could aptly convince me of his argument. Unsurprisingly, he failed.

Every species has their unique way to survive and interact with their environment. Some have extra appendages in order to better combat predators, or they have bodies that allow them to camouflage to their environment. Every species also has their way of reproducing and copulation, whether for necessity or for enjoyment. Two species with different mating habits are the Apis mellifera, better known as honey bees, and Pan paniscus, Bonobos apes. The former uses its reproduction methods for the survival of the entire colony of honey bees in exchange with the death of few and the former uses copulation in a social setting in order to keep the peace of the pack.

Both the poem and the article have a significant connection with “The Secret Life of Bees”. Both deal with racial segregation. In the novel, The Boatwright sisters were discriminated many a time because they were African-American. I know this, because when T. Ray comes to retrieve Lily, he says, “‘So you’ve been here the whole time, staying with coloured women. Jesus Christ’” (Kidd 291). This tells me that T. Ray has a deep resentment for people of colour. He believes that Lily shouldn’t be surrounded by people who are black; or even probably any race, for that matter. This profoundly relates to the article. In the reading, Moore Campbell portrays Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s tribulations on entering her first year in a predominantly white college

It is hard to imagine a person who feels as though nobody loves them. A person who has no support system and constantly feels out of place. Lily strives to be accepted by someone, she feels unworthy of kindness and affection and does not understand the reason for her poor treatment. Throughout The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily’s various relationships throughout the novel ultimately strengthen and shape Lily as a person, helping her to move forward from her past struggles.

Martin Luther King once said “segregation not only harms one physically, but injures one spiritually it scars the sole it is a system for whatever stares the segregated in the face saying you are less then you are not equal to.” Jim Crow was a law discriminating all, except the whites. Even a decade later the Jim Crow laws are still affected.

The essence of the relationship between a mother and child is a mutual ascendency in regards to identity. Children are subject to an instinctive longing for a mother. It is the mother’s influence that guides them in their process of discovering all the realities the world posses and in that processing discerning their identity. Conversely when a woman becomes a mother the presence of her child causes her to evaluate and develop her identity under the pretense of motherhood. Paula Nicolson touches on the value of both these scenarios in her article “Motherhood and Women’s Lives” where she expresses how the mother child relationship gives the pretense for both parties to find their authentic identities (Nicolson). Sue Monk Kidd evaluates the

In the novel, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd the characters go through the struggles of discrimination and racism. In the beginning, Rosaleen offends some of the biggest racists in town and they end up running away to the calendar sisters, that neither of them knew anything about. In the end the become close friends and even end up living with them. Rosaleen is a major character in this novel. She has been Lily’s (the main character) nanny for since Lily was born. Throughout the novel, it shows how much closer they become. At the start she was awful at comforting others but by the end she is able to understand emotion is very good for Lily and the other characters.

Queen Bees & Wannabes is an excellent self-help source for the parent, grandparent, teacher, therapist or anyone else having a part in helping to guide girls anywhere from preteen to early adulthood. Ms. Wiseman very accurately describes labels, roles, parenting types and conversations and shares this information in a sometimes comical, but to me, always interesting manner.

To date only two brain investment studies on solitary and facultatively social bees are reported. A study on solitary bees, Osmia lignaria found that adults emerge with neuronal development typical of experienced workers in advanced eusocial insect species, but also found that mushroom body neuropil volume further increased with foraging experience [Withers et al., 2007]. These results confirm that mushroom bodies are important for cognitive processes in solitary antecedents, but cannot inform us on the role of social experience on neuropil investment. Smith et al. [2010] examined brain size and development using the facultatively social bee Megalopta genalis, a species with both solitary and primitively social colonies in the same populations. Mushroom body size increased with foraging behavior in solitary individuals and workers compared to newly emerged M. genalis females, but even greater mushroom body development was found in queens. Smith et al. [2010] attributed enhanced growth of the mushroom body cortex to maintaining behavioral dominance. Much like obligately eusocial bees, however, Megalopta are bees with distinct reproductive (queens) and foraging (workers) roles and therefore the relative roles of foraging and social experience are not

The relationship between flowers and bees is that they both benefit each other. The benefit that the Bee has of the flower is the Bee pollinate it, which they don't do on purpose, but has they go from flower to flower pollen falls on the flower on their way back to the bees hive. The flower benefits the Bee because the flower produces pollen which the Bee uses as food.

Honeybees are broadly dispersed throughout the world, on every continent except Antarctica (Fuller, 2015). The species has so many subspecies, and many of which are allopatric populations spanning from Nigeria, Brazil, Kenya, and Italy just to name a few countries they are found (Arias, 1995). Kenya occupies the most genetic diversity within the species, having five distinct subspecies, which occupy different ecological niches (Fuller, 2015). Designating populations, as subspecies within any species usually are not definite distinctions. This holds true for the subspecies in Kenya, which may not be distinct populations due to the large amount of gene flow between populations (Fuller, 2015).