As a child I always wondered why adults were content with the boring dishware that seemed to fill each and every one of their kitchen cabinets. Slurping soup I’d imagine the poorly painted pilgrims dotting the rim of my mother’s dish set engaged in bloody battle with savage natives.

Soup time was always a little weird with my family.

Thankfully, artist Laura Zindel has everything you’ll need to inject a little oddity into your own murder-fantasy/dinnertime. A wide array of bug, bird, and beast adorned crockery is available on her site, which while not featuring any Octopi that I could spy, do have a healthy selection of bee-based works to appease our wrathful Octobee.

Zindel Ceramics [Laura Zindel : cribcandy]

Rugged. Self-assured. Adult. These are the words that describe the man who wears a moustache. Yeees, it says to the world, “I’m a man of action!” Ah, but action tempered with maturity, like a fireman or somebody’s dad.

I realize that Brownlee had posted the excellent musical number from this episode of the sorely missed The Tick previously, however, the entire episode deserves to be viewed in all its glory. So sit back and enjoy a tale of facial hair, love and obsession. A cautionary tale of what happens when science loses its way, abandons morality and, in doing do, wreaks untold havoc. Also, bees!

That Mustache Feeling [YouTube] : Thanks, Professor Robot!

The dwindling bee population is an issue that concerns us greatly. Not only do we enjoy the sweet fruits of bee labor, but the glorious gardens through which we wheel Ross on his day trips from “the home” would cease to exist were it not for the hard work of our striped mascot’s forebears.

Adam Makarenko is a photographer that grieves the tragic loss of the bee with us, producing stunning photographs of the world of Langstroth Range, a bee paradise in which they drift lazily among fields populated with only the most rare, delectable plants and take on a monstrous size more in keeping with the pants-shitting terror they inspire in the uninformed.

There remains no explanation for the mysterious disappearance of the bees, but if there is indeed a just and loving Creator in this universe it has transported them to this wonderland free from cell phone death rays and douchebag frat boys with a freezer and some string. Now if only I could find a saddle and a way in.

Adam Makarenko [Cool Hunting : Artist’s Site]

The Asian giant hornet is the worlds largest hornet, reaching lengths of up to 2.2 inches. Their venom is acidic, and contains mandaratoxin which, in sufficient doses, can cause death in humans, even those without allergies. Asian giant hornets are responsible for about seventy deaths a year. The venom also contains a pheromone that attracts other hornets, allowing them to predate in groups.

It is this which helps them to overcome European honey bee hives. Thirty hornets can massacre thirty-thousand European honey bees, which they behead or bisect with their powerful jaws, and whose stingers cannot penetrate the hornet’s thick exoskeleton. They then consume the bees’s honey and take the bees’s larvae back with them, to feed their young.

The native Japanese honey bee, however, has figured out a way to fight back. When the initial hornet scout approaches the hive they lure it inside. Once inside, they swarm the hornet en masse, covering it entirely and keeping it from moving. They then begin to vibrate their flight muscles. This has the effect of raising the temperature of the honey bee mass to 47 °C (117 °F). The honey bees can just tolerate this temperature, but the hornets cannot survive more than 45 °C (113 °F), and are effectively roasted alive.

National Geographic: Japanese Hornets / Bees [YouTube]

A younger Rowan Atkinson and John Cleese expound on the magical world of beekeeping. It’s strange to see humorists the likes of Atkinson and Cleese in their younger years, used as I am to now seeing them as aged men replete with salt and peppered hair. Watching old clips such as this takes me back to a simpler time, a time when the antics of British comedians were fresh and new, and John Cleese was still pretending he had a full head of hair.

John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson - Beekeeping [Cynical-C]