Name: Bees.
Age: Their earliest known ancestor was fossilised in the Cretaceous period.
Appearance: 20,000 different species exist, but they’ve generally all got the stripey, yellow’n’black bee-ish thing going on.
I know what this is about! Colony-collapse disorder! It is potentially the single greatest environmental catastrophe to befall us. The bees are dying! The number of native UK species has already halved. If the bees go, we all go. No more pollination means massive crop failure, mass starvation and death. SAVE THE BEES. No, they’re Gwyneth Paltrow’s new beauty aid.
What? They’re Gwyneth Paltrow’s new beauty aid.
I see. Yes.
Go on, then. Tell me what new way we have found to press the precious resources of our natural world into the service of celebrity. In brief: you let them sting you, and the venom ...
Yes? I dunno ... makes you healthy, keeps you looking young, reduces your cholesterol, pays off your mortgage, makes you see stars and unicorns? Something like that. It’s called apitherapy.
I have never met an apitherapist. I think they’re all in LA. They claim bee stings are good for relieving arthritis, treating multiple sclerosis and cervical cancer and as a natural alternative to antibiotics.
I ain’t letting nothing sting me on the cervix. I hear you.
Why would people believe such a thing? Beats me. Natural gullibility? Desperation? Stupidity? The death of God? Take your pick.
Don’t bees die when they’ve stung you? Some do – leaving the stinger behind also pulls out part of their guts, which does not make for a long or happy life thereafter. I’m going to assume apitherapists use ones for whom plumping a star’s epidermis does not require mortal wounding.
Gwyneth Paltrow moves in a world that advocates vaginal steaming. I would put nothing past her. I know. I know.
Shouldn’t we be outlawing all frivolous bee use until we have figured out this whole planet-threatening, mass-death thing? Like we had to melt down railings and ornaments in the war to make bombs and things. You would think so, wouldn’t you? But apparently we would rather look 25 and die than wrinkle and live.
Do say: “This bee totally ridiculous.”
Don’t say: “Oh, let her bee.”
