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

[Jonathan Lighter]

My old pal from western Pennsylvania always calls bumblebees "yellowjackets."

They wear little yellow jackets, Check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee

BTW, Wiki advises that "bumble bee" is the correct spelling, not the
ignorant "bumblebee."

Because, you see, it's a kind of "bee." Just as a "bed bug" is a kind
of "bug." It isn't a "bedbug."

JL

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 4:14 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Bees' nest"?!!! WTF!!!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Wilson's second message is spot on. First, Colbert undoubtedly is
> mocking the whole nomenclature, making it up as he goes along. I've
> heard (and chastised) quite a number of people referring to a wasp as a
> "bee". To some (mostly Americans), any insect with yellow-and-black or
> yellow-and-red abdominal striping is a "bee". Furthermore,
> "yellowjacket" is not a species. In fact, it's not even a single genus.
> It incorporates several species that also qualify as "paper wasps" and a
> few more species of similarly-colored hornets. There are other species
> of wasps and hornets that exhibit different coloring, but I've never
> heard anyone referring to them as a "bee". Several of my friends have
> expressed puzzlement in the past when I pointed out that the insect they
> were chasing around the house (or car, or picnic table) were in fact
> wasps and not bees. One common response would be, "Aren't they all bees?"
>
> There are several points of distinction between honeybees and
> yellowjackets, including lack of body hair on the wasps, feeding habits
> (wasps are generally carnivorous or omnivorous), lack of pollen
> collection by wasps, the material used in construction of nests
> (cellulose and other natural fibers bound with excreted "cement" vs.
> wax), stinginess (females have stingers in both kinds of insects, but
> wasps can sting repeatedly, whereas bees generally sting only once),
> allergenic properties (bees are more likely to cause allergic reactions
> because of their plant interactions, while wasps generally only hurt
> because of the barbed stinger and an injection of formic acid).
>
> The bottom line is that yellowjackets are no more bees than they are
> ants, but folk taxonomy often classifies them as bees. (In fact, wasps
> are closer to ants than to bees.)
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 2/15/2012 10:21 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."
>>
>> But my point was merely that only some kind of pointy-headed
>> pseudo-intellectual would concern himself with trivialities like
>> lexicon, syntax, phonology, etc., particularly in the face of language
>> change, when all that truly matters is semantics. The point of
>> language is communication, after all. As long as that end is realized,
>> concern with anything other than that is of no more intrinsic interest
>> or value to mankind than the computation of the ultimate - if there is
>> one; as a Greek friend of mine likes to say, "It's mathematics to me"
>> - value of pi.
>>
>> --
>> -Wilson
>
>
>
> On 2/15/2012 10:39 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> "Yellowjackets, often called 'bees,' as they are similar in size and
>> appearance and both sting, are actually wasps."
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowjacket
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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