Hi there!
A few unlucky ones among you have been subjected to this
torture before. This is especially true if you had been (un)fortunate enough to
gain entry in B Tech course in IIT Bombay in 1971. Periodically when the batch reunions have
been announced, a certain “LazyBee” seems to wake up and starts buzzing around.
Being lazy, this particular specimen hardly ever stings but just about manages
to tickle and that too sometimes.
There is a very interesting anecdote which is a part of the
bee-lore which has been passed down from hive to hive. One of the ancestors of
this so called LazyBee had once bitten Rip Van Winkle when he was having his
20-year nap in a cave in New England and that has somehow introduced this “lazy
gene” in the bee-line, which induces
long naps in a few of its descendants. Those afflicted with this gene seem to
wake up randomly, buzz around for a while and then go into hibernation again.
Thank God that this gene is a recessive one and not many of the bees you find
around you are lazy. In fact in some of the bees, this gene seems to have been
inverted and these bees are over-active all the time. You must have heard about
an uncle of current LazyBee named BusyBee, who had somehow managed to escape
the effects of this “lazy gene” (may his soul rest in eternal peace in
Garden-Of-Honey) and gave us lots of reasons to smile.
Now with some global climate changes and increase in
pollution etc many things seem to be changing. LazyBee seems to spend more time
awake than in the past. So maybe, just maybe, you may hear the buzz a little
more frequently (you never know with these LazyBees).
Shirish Potnis
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