I’m sitting here revising coughprocrastinatingcough in one of the computer rooms in the university, when looking around I saw a flippin’ huge bee. Giant. I’m pretty sure it’s not a wasp or a hornet (they look more streamlined, this thing just looks…well, fuzzy and round) and it doesn’t look like a queen or anything. It’s just a huge bee. I don’t think it can get airborne - it has wings, but it was crawling along the shelf along the wall next to me. Now it’s just sitting looking at one of the computers up ahead.
I don’t like bugs anyway, but crap, this thing is huge. shivers
Probably just a variety of your friendly bumble bee. Queens can get downright huge, once saw some the size of golf balls flying with great effort around my yard growing up. Bumble bees always seemed more docile than honeybees, and their hairy bodies made them look fat and jolly.
If it has a lot of gold on it, it is a bumblebee. If it is pretty much all dark, it is a carpenter bee. Neither is very aggressive unless you attack them.
(Of course, if your university has an entomology department, perhaps you are looking at an escaped Megachile pluto.)
One time, I was in the backyard weedwacking because the grass had been neglected to be mowed for a while and having two four-legged fertilizer makers back there can get the grass growing in a hurry. I was back there weedwhacking away happily until this giant specimen of a bee harpoons my calf. Now I’m completely startled and I’m not one for being lanced by a bug. So, without thinking, I start smashing at it, seeing as how it’s still firmly imbedded in my calf, with the only thing I had: the weedwhacker.
Except it was still on.
Oh, I liquified the bee. I also mangled my calf and had all sorts of whip marks across it. So I stumble back into the house and the female birth-giver sees me and asks what happened in that maternal ,what’s-wrong tone that conveys the seeming end of the world for her one-and-only son. I replied that a giant bee stung me. This is where I had finally realized I used the still-turned-on weedwhacker to hit it, also mangling myself.
We have a bunch of these buggers flying around campus at the school I attend, and lemme tell you, they may not sting, but they are scary. Suckers are bigger than my thumb, and for awhile there they were everywhere.
Thanks, as I was just wondering about this last night. My daughter needed an insect for Show n’ Tell and I caught what I at first thought was a BumbleBee but then noticed the lack of gold. It did, however, have a strange yellowwhite spot on it’s nose. Caught him in a clear tennis ball container and boy was he pissed. His wooden bench nestmates though let me alone.
Some honeybees have had a nest in the eaves of my building for the last few years, close to my patio. Sometimes when I’m sitting out there one or two will zip down and hover in front of me, looking back and forth and up and down, then zip back to the nest. They’re pretty cool and seem to understand that they share the space with me. I’ve never felt threatened by them.
They might not be agressive, but when you start cutting down something that they’re living in, they can sure sound angry! Last year, I took out a decrepit trellis over my patio - much of it came down just by whacking with a big hammer. <whack> bzzz
<whack> BZzzzzZ
The next hammer blow landed on and shattered a section that had been thoroughly burrowed and tunneled.
<whack> BZZZZZZZZZZZ!
(me) Aaaaahhhh! Bees!
I was suddenly swarmed by about fifty big black furry bees. BIG BLACK FURRY BEES that seemed unhappy that their home was now wide-open and in pieces on the ground. Did I mention they were big? And black? And sounded really angry?
Happily, they didn’t bite or sting me as they took off for a neighbor’s trellis.
