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

[Ron butters]

Is this some kind of parable or allegory for various ADS-L members, past and present?

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 19, 2012, at 11:47 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 11:07 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> a bee will die after it stings you because its stinger will be given up for the pleasure of the act and it can't live without its stinger, while a yellowjacket or other wasp can keep stinging you as long its little heart desires.
>
> It's true, all right. A bee's stinger has barbs that keep it from
> being withdrawn. So, when the bee flies off after delivering the
> sting, the poor thing's guts are torn out and it dies of the injury.
> Hence, bees sting only when the situation is do - or die, anyway.
> Bee-venom "cures" merely kill a lot of bees for nothing. OTOH, wasps'
> and hornets' stingers are smooth. So, a wasp or a hornet can sting you
> until it's out of venom, merely because you're unknowingly standing in
> its flight path back to the wasphive or the hornethive, and suffer no
> ill effects. Unless you swat it, of course.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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