Word: stingless
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...Tina could try some real bush tucker. Tiny black stingless bees, often called sweat bees, would lead her to the fix. "If you sit in the shade they'll land on you, and you just follow them home," Lilley says. "They'll usually be in a hollow tree, and what Aboriginal people did was cut or dip into the nest, using a cloth made from plant material, stick it in the honey to soak it up and then squeeze it into your mouth." Beats cow brains...
...hives, and, with a single-mindedness that is funny and impressive, go about the business of their miraculous, strange little universe. I watch them with almost parental affection--the buzzing, teeming clockwork, the workers cleaning cells, guarding the front door, foraging for nectar; the short, fat drones, fatherless and stingless and indolent, swaggering about, hoping to get lucky with a virgin queen...
Scientists, too, value amber. Trapped within the translucent, usually gold-colored substance are some of the most ancient examples of certain species known to science. The oldest ants, moths, stingless bees, caterpillars, termites, mushrooms and pollen grains, some of them dating back tens of millions of years, have been found in amber. And unlike ordinary fossils, which are relatively crude rock molds of prehistoric life forms, these specimens are often perfectly preserved, with the most delicate features intact...
Through a teardrop of ancient amber -- fossilized tree sap as hard as plastic and as translucent as glass -- the scientists beheld their quarry: a small stingless bee that shared the earth with giant mastodons. With sterile instruments and gloved hands, microbiologist Raul Cano and his student Monica Borucki proceeded with an improbable experiment. First they delicately extracted the bee's diminutive digestive tract. Then they placed the tissues in nutrient-rich broth. Within a week the mixture turned cloudy, a sign that bacterial spores, dormant inside the bee for 25 million to 40 million years, had suddenly, miraculously surged back...
...chapter describing extreme ectomorphy bears the title "Stingless Mosquitoes." Sheldon describes the lankiest men as "little male mosquitoes, frail waifs of the night...