"Bees' nest"?!!! WTF!!!

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 7:21 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 9:07 PM, Ronald Butters <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:
>> There are over 3,500,000 Google hits for "hornet's nest."
>
> Well, clearly, that licenses the use of "bees' nest" in place of the
> obsolescent "beehive." I regret the error. But why would Colbert state
> that a bees' nest harbors *yellowjackets*? In the Carolinas, is the
> yellowjacket a variety of bee? In East Texas, the yellowjacket is a
> very common kind of *wasp* that lives in what is termed, locally, a
> "wasp('s) nest," whereas bees are said to live in structures still
> archaically referred to, locally, as "beehives."

I'll bee. I thought the yellow jacket to bee a be (and I'm pretty sure I've been stung by them at least once). And now I find out not only that it's a wasp, but that it doesn't have a space.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org