Govinda

The Master Race of New Zealand honey bees must be maintained! The exotic honey bees take our jobs, rape our women, and show no gratitude! They invent lies about an historic genocide that simply did not occur! They shall be wiped off the face of the planet!

Right, I'm going to actually explain why I dislike (non-native) bees. The Varroa mite. Heard of it? It's a mite that kills bees. Originating in Asia, it reached Europe, and it is from there that it came to New Zealand (probably via your precious bumblebees).

Have you tried Manuka Honey? It's a special type of honey developed by NZ-native bees from a particular NZ-native plant (the manuka tree). It's what Champagne is to France, but in honey form, and to New Zealand. If I'm not mistaken, it costs around +$40 a jar in the UK. One time, someone from the UK planted manuka trees over there to try and produce some honey. Too bad we had a big stink about how it was a treasure (a taonga) to the Maori, and stopped them in their tracks.

Anyway, the damage from Varroa is extensive. This is from Biosecurity New Zealand:

"The whole bee population is at risk from the mite. Numbers of mites in a colony typically build up over a year or so, until they are sufficient to kill the colony if it is not treated. The mite will wipe out most wild (or feral) bees, as they will not be treated by a beekeeper to control varroa levels. Only well-managed bee colonies will survive the arrival of varroa."

Note that many wild bees are the native ones that our native plants find the most useful and have developed symbiotic relationships with. Exotic bees can only go so far to replace these, though they are perfectly suitable for agricultural crops, as one would expect.

"It is unknown how the mite arrived in New Zealand. Varroa is usually spread by live bees, and there have been no live bee imports permitted into New Zealand for at least 40 years. Varroa probably arrived either with an illegal introduction of queen bees from a varroa-infested country, or in a bee colony or swarm that established on or in a shipping container and survived the journey to New Zealand without detection."

If Varroa continues to spread in New Zealand, our native bees (and thus trees) will suffer, and manuka honey will become more expensive - which is a shame, because it is the world's best honey (no shit, that stuff is great).

We certainly could do without exotic bees, thank you very much.

STAMP STAMP STAMP.

Sincerely,
Alpha

EDIT: Your little CAPS LOCK message now requires an amendment

"Probably the crack pipe."

Goddamn you, I just snorted and chuckled, which irritated the shit out of my already sore throat XD

"A Christmassey Ted"

And about beeing a proud bee-squasher,

Just saw the movie of 1984. I haven't finished the book yet though.

I'm kind of disapointed. I thought there would be more story to it. It's like it's only the first part of a trilogy.

It's probably because a lot of events from the book have been left out in the movie. Also, the sexual tension between Winston and Julia isn't built up or anticipated enough. All the different events follow too fast, in my opinion. It comes across a little less realistic. (Talking about the movie here.)

Have you seen the movie?

Oh, and I forgot to mention Father Ted as 'my kind of humour'.

btw, that dream I mentioned had nothing un-chatholic in it. In case you were wondering.

But they don't do anything here! We have native bees that are useful, but all bumblebees do is provide competition for useful ones. We're shipping you a whole bunch of spare ones because you guys couldn't get it right, but as for the surplus...

STAMPY STAMP STAMP.

I don't really squash them on purpose. I just don't care if I do, when I'm in New Zealand.

Edit: Oh, and JSTOR! I love JSTOR! Finest academic database, kicks the ass of ProQuest.

Ahh Blackadder is awesome too!

The bumblebees being reintroduced in the UK are from New Zealand. Some twat brought all these British things to the other side of the world over the last century-and-a-half (gorse, possums, dogs, cats, ferrets, stoats, and... bumblebees ), and now they want them back?

I hate bees. I squash them. Well, bumblebees, because they don't do any service. All our plants have evolved to be pollinated by birds. You can have your bees goddamnit.

Frankly I'd like to be the instructor who gets a paper with a nerdy gaming site as a reference. For that matter, If I ever taught wikipedia would be a no-no, just because I like pissing off people trying to research stuff.

haha thanks for the rep, well I'm trying in any case ^_^;

Monty Python, The Mighty Boosh. Anything super-absurd.

This. Can I join?

Bees scare the piss out of me, so I doubt that'll be much of a problem!

Badass Religion is badass, where do I apply? And how many waivers, introductory and hidden fees are you planning to spring on me?