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

[Joel S. Berson]

As far as I'm concerned, this is all an uninteresting wasp in a bee's nest.

Joel

At 2/16/2012 04:14 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>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
>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org