- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Have you ever asked Siri "How cold is it?"
Siri, a computer program known as Apple's "intelligent personal assistant" or "knowledge navigator," is part of Apple's Inc.'s iOS operating system. Folks usually ask Siri for directions. We ask about the weather AND directions.
So on Wednesday noon, Jan. 25, from our Vacaville "weather station," we picked up the Iphone and asked Siri: "How cold is it?'
"It's 53 degrees and I don't find that particularly cold," she said, maybe a little too fiesty. Siri is probably headquartered in Fairbanks, Alaska, where shivering residents experience -70 degrees in January. Or maybe she's based in Grand Forks or Fargo, N.D., where -40 degrees is considered a heat wave.
It's so cold in some of the cities in Alaska, North Dakota and Minnesota--how cold?--so cold that you have to open the refrigerator to heat the house. And, sometimes it's so cold that:
- you step outside and your shadow freezes
- you hear the police telling a robber to "freeze" and he does
- you bake a cake and set it out on the windowsill to cool and seconds later, it's frosted
- you talk to friends and your words freeze, so you have to pick up the letters and thaw them before continuing
- bees are begging to be smoked
So we walked outside to check the newly flowering oxalis for the presence of honey bees. Fifty-three degrees. Scientists tell us that honey bees don't usually fly when it's below 55 degrees, but we've seen bees flying at 50 degrees. So, between 50 and 55, that's a given.
The yellow oxalis seemed to be waiting. Any bees? Yes, one bee. She probably emerged from her hive, shivered a bit, and said to her fellow worker bees: "Let's go, girls!"--or something like that.
So we asked Siri "Do you like bees?"
"This is about you, Kathy, not me," she said.
Still feisty.



- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
'Tis the season for brotherly love, but not in the bee hive.
As the honey-gathering season ends and the weather turns colder, the worker bees (infertile females) push their brothers--the drones--out of the hive. Drones are of no use to the colony in the winter. They're another mouth to feed. (The sole function of the drones are to mate with the queen.)
So how are the worker bees able to shove the much-larger drones from the hive?
"The sisters quit feeding their brothers so that they're lighter and easier to push," said UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen.
UC Davis bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey admits to having a soft spot for the drones. “They’re cold and hungry, sitting there on the doorstep and wanting to go back in. They’re attacked and they die. Well, it’s a matriarchal society.”
It is.
A matriarchal society in the season of brotherly love.
