The services of bees have been valued for millennia. In the early Middle Ages, they provided honey for sweetening, mead and beer, wax for candles, sealants, and much more. The only benefits never mentioned then are pollination services, the prime reason we celebrate them today. So critical to the local economy, laws were enacted to protect bees in medieval Ireland. The Bechbretha set out rights for ownership and compensation. This fragment of an English illuminated manuscript dates to about 1200 AD. It depicts bees as moral examples. They are hardworking and live peaceably with neighbors in a hierarchical society. Sermons were preached, praising their virtues in churches, though riddled with myths. The Big Bee was a king without a sting (more noble!) and his subjects were born in the carcasses of rotting oxen!
The top boxes in my hives felt heavy during an inspection, so it was time to harvest honey on Saturday. I only have two hives, more as a hobby than for honey that’s mostly used as gifts. Imported honey brings down the price in stores, one of the most adulterated products on the market because it is hard to detect dilution with sugar water. Trust local honey. After extraction, I return the wet frames for bees to clean in the hive. I don’t take the comb because they invest more energy in making wax than honey (7:1). Honey was the only sweetener available in medieval Europe, but beeswax was more valuable for making candles in churches and monasteries, and so much brighter and cleaner than tallow candles. Before harvesting a frame of honey, it should have every cell in the comb capped with white wax. Frames are left in the hive if they have any brown caps that mean larvae inside. After perforating caps with a prickly roller, the frames spin for each side using a motorized honey extractor (centrifuge) or, if you have few frames and like the exercise, a hand crank. Honey oozes out of a port in the cylinder’s base through a fine mesh to filter scraps of wax before decanting into jars. If honey is too runny in a humid spring, it may develop mold. No problem this year in a drought. Our product came out deep golden and viscous, not needing to be dried to concentrate it. Bees hate to see (or smell) a beekeeper coming to rob their store, although I only take a fraction. My PEP protected me while a cloud of insects buzzed around. I didn’t get stung. But two days later, in another part of the garden, they found me out of my beesuit and got their revenge!
We know it’s April in Virginia when our car changes color under a coating of yellow pine pollen. The finger-writing on the car’s hood on the second day of pollen fall soon disappears under new layers, like the first footprints in snow vanish under fresh falls. This event coincides with our peak allergy season, but don’t blame pines just because they produce the most abundant pollen. Their grains have a couple of bladders for buoyancy needed for wind pollination. But large size prevents them from descending deeply when we breathe, and, equally important, their smooth surface isn’t sticky. Easily blown off the hood. Pine is an exception among wind-pollinated trees (and grasses) that are responsible for most seasonal allergies. Trees like birch and alder, and species of oak. Their grains are smaller, so they descend deeper down our windpipe, and sculpted or wrinkled surfaces stick to mucous membranes. Birch seems an exception to the rule until you notice the smooth triangular grains have points that make them prime allergy triggers too. We are hardly affected by pollen transmitted by insects, birds, and bats. Maple, cherry, hornbeam, dogwood, tulip poplar etc. Each pollen grain looks like a work of art under the scanning electron microscope. Their forms are unique to the species, which makes fossilized grains valuable in ecoarcheology. That raises the question why? Like so much in biology, the answer is natural selection. Wind-pollinated grains are produced abundantly to ensure some land on female targets that match their contours, and small enough to drift far. On the other hand, animal-pollinated grains are adapted by co-evolution between the plant and animal vector for sticking to particular wings or feathers, etc. Admire the beauty of the pollen story when you stop sneezing!
Why do we age—and why has rejuvenation always proved so elusive?
This book expresses a clear-eyed, deeply informed exploration of the biology of aging and reproduction. Drawing on evolutionary biology, endocrinology, reproductive science, and medicine, it examines humanity’s perennial attempts to outwit time—and why biology so often resists our ambitions.
From Victorian gland grafting and early hormone experiments to contemporary treatment of infertility, menopause, and senescence, I trace how scientific insight has advanced and myths have perished.
I aim to explain with clarity and wit why fertility declines, why men and women age differently, and why extending the lifespan is far more challenging than a simple remedy. This is not a self-help guide and doesn’t offer recommendations for longevity. Instead, Cheating Time is an accessible and thought-provoking account of what science can—and cannot—do about aging, written for curious readers with an interest in medicine, biology, and the future of human reproduction.
This is the first digital edition. It is a reissue of the original print edition published in the USA and UK, revised with updated information.
This digital edition is available at Amazon for $3.99 (or equivalent currency) or free with Kindle Unlimited.
Last month I posted about migrating flocks of grackles and blackbirds. Hundreds of them landed, turning the lawn from green to black as they hungrily searched for seeds between grass blades.
When they flew away, a solitary blackbird still lay on the grass. An hour later it was still there, so I checked it was still alive. Unable to find an injury, I supposed it was stunned by some impact – likely dropped by an attacking hawk since it wasn’t under a window.
It was too weak to fly. I took it indoors to recover in a box with mealworms and water and Lucinda warmed it in a towel against her breast. We earnestly hoped it would recover, and worried through the night.
Why should we care about one in thousands? Among so many, there must be several that never live to see another day. It set me pondering all day.
I thought it was our parenting instinct. We cared for the individual like a vulnerable baby. Or was it more than that?
Was it what psychologists call “the identifiable victim effect?” We respond emotionally to a single known individual, yet care little for the multitude. The one is a unique being that has its own story whereas a thousand birds are abstract, so we perceive them statistically. I felt responsible for it because if I didn’t help, who would? The bird crossed a boundary from its remote life in nature to enter our circle. The flock was not my responsibility.
It is in our nature to love individuals, not populations. Empathy is a moral reflex. We respond more to the image of a hungry Sudanese child on a poster than the thousands of other children that newscasters tell us are suffering at the same time.
There are countless stories and parables that illustrate how our hearts go out to the individual. The Good Samaritan who feels a responsibility to help a stranger. The shephered who leaves his 99 sheep to search for the lost one. Blake and Thoreau wrote about moving encounters with singletons in nature, and so did Emily Dickinson in the Bird Came Down the Walk:
… Like one in danger; Cautious, I offered him a Crumb …
Roger musing about Peace with Nature 