Week 16 Bonus Entry - Colouring Outside the Lines: Smurf Village!

[aggienaut]

   Beehives need to be painted. Usually we paint them white so they don't get too hot in the sun. When we got our first batch of beehives, we sent technician* Jeremy to the store to buy white paint.
   Since we didn't particularly care what shade of white it was, he bough a big bucket of paint from the "oops" pile at home depot at half off. Jeremy brought the paint back but then he had to go out on a job, so it came down to technician Bob and I to paint the hives (boss Dave was also not present). So we crack open the bucket, and "oh, its light blue? ... okay I guess the decision was made to go with light blue ::shrug::" so we paint all the boxes baby blue.
   Dave comes back "What the! Why are the hives BLUE?!"
   Jeremy comes back "What the?! I bought white paint!" We all look at the bucket. It does indeed say "white paint." Evidently it was in the 'oops' bin precisely because it was not white at all!

   Light blue is an entirely adequate colour for a beehive -- bees don't really care what colour their hive is-- so we put them out in the field.
   In the future, however, we painted all our equipment white.
   And eventually, it came to be that we had white boxes on top of blue boxes. I have named this corner of the bee yard smurf village

"Smurf Village!"

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note: this is not my official LJ Idol entry, just another bonus entry inspired by the topic.

* the technicians are from the bee control (ie abatement, ie, exterminating) side of the business. In case you're wondering who these technicians are and what they do.

Comments

[gratefuladdict.livejournal.com]

How do YOU know that the bees don't have a preference? Have you been tracking the rate of bee stings before and after the color swap, hmmmm?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha I should. "Hmmmm 5 stings in the face from these ones, 7 from these ones .... its still not a statistically significant sample though, time to dance around the hives some more..."

[gratefuladdict.livejournal.com]

I could suggest a few lab rats people...

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I could never be that cruel to a rat! ;D