We have bees under the slab of our front porch. A few days ago, I sprayed some foam into the hole where they were congregating. That stuff expands and fills with a vengeance–there are now no bees living under my front porch, since their entry hole and the crevice behind it is now a solid block of foam.
Still, even though this was a few days ago, a few dozen drones keep buzzing around that foam. They land, walk around, and fly away, then come back a few moments later. Depending on my frame of mind, I find it depressing, comical or tedious. There’s simply nothing there for them, but they repeat their ritualized, instinctual behavior until they expire.
Since these drones have only a few neurons in their tiny bee brains, I understand why they keep beating their little bee heads against a solid wall. What I don’t understand is why liberals continue to pay good American money for the New York Times, expecting that the political coverage that paper produces will somehow get better. It simply won’t.
For at least the past two decades, the Times’ political coverage has been a poorly written mish-mash of beltway-driven analysis that is all too ready to sacrifice facts in service of a narrative. Browse the “DC Press Corpse” category on this blog — the Times is featured there prominently and frequently. That coverage also has an institutional hard-on for the Clintons that is completely out of proportion to the supposed bad deeds perpetrated by Bill or Hillary.
Do I even need to mention the real damage done to this country by the Times, including but not limited to Judith Miller, post-9/11?
As I’m constantly hearing as we discuss the Times, a number of good people work for the paper. I’m sure they are kind to children, dote on their pets, and tithe regularly at some house of worship or other. But they are also part of an institution that is failing, badly, at a point in our history where we can’t afford our “newspaper of record” to fall down while covering politics.
Even if Trump loses in November–and due in part to the Times, don’t be so sure he will–Trump has opened the the door for “Trump Lite” in 2020. “Trump Lite” is simply a white nationalist who isn’t as lazy, sloppy and narcissistic as Trump. Trump Lite reads his briefing books, uses a dog whistle rather than a ref’s whistle, and has only one wife. Trump Lite will execute a pivot the day after the convention, and the New York Times will eat it up and ask for seconds.
I’m a Guardian subscriber and a TPM Prime member, but there’s no way in hell that I’ll pay money for the New York Fucking Times. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that canceling your subscription is a civic duty.
Afflicting the Comfortable on Behalf of the New York Blood Center’s Abandoned Chimps
JPL
I just can’t quit them. I called on Tuesday to go digital only and the person convinced to keep my Sunday subscription. I was tied in knots this morning after reading the article, about the forum. I was so proud of the one last night.
In other news for those who haven’t seen the mattress ad from this San Antonio company, it’s a much see. They are having a really bad day, just sayin. link
I originally saw the article at Josh’s place.
dedc79
There’s that quote “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
Well, the NY Times is the worst newspaper, except for all the other american newspapers.
They are one of the only newspapers left that does any investigative journalism at all, that continues to maintain correspondents in hot spots across the globe and covers conflicts/issues that most other american papers ignore. TPM is good for what it is, but it is not a replacement for the Times. Hell, a lot of what TPM does is built around stories initially reported by the Times.
ETA: You write that “they are also part of an institution that is failing, badly, at a point in our history where we can’t afford our “newspaper of record” to fall down while covering politics.” How on earth does cancelling your subscription help?
Quinerly
Did anyone just see/hear Mary Matalin? She thinks Trump has 100% chance of winning (she’s now a Libertarian and supporting Johnson even though she doesn’t think Johnson is a Libertarian). She’s always had “lazy lips” when she speaks but did anyone think she sounded drunk/heavily medicated? Her mannerisms and posture (not to mention that dress)were bizarre. She slurred her way through her answer on what Trump should do for debate prep…
I think she said “listen to Ailes.”
debbie
Reporting on Gary Johnson’s brilliant display of condescending ignorance, the NYT made two booboos of its own. Not even bothering to fact check anymore?
Kifaru1
Killing bees is against the law in most states now….even the pest control companies won’t do it. You have to call someone to come get them, alive. If they were yellow jackets, go for it…I hate them. :)
schrodinger's cat
Guardian was pretty much in the tank for Bernie in the primaries. They are not infallible and can be leftier-than-thou.
Oatler.
I’ve been fuming at the NYT since I was old enought to fume ( and wishing I’d had a subscription all the while…) but I’ll back them as long as Texans hate it.
debbie
@Quinerly:
Not a fan of hers, but Carville would drive anyone to drink.
elm
For anyone who missed the details, here is a complete history of the NY Times stories on the forum last night.
There most egregious editing hack-job is this one in which they pushed Putin, rape, and theft of Iraqi oil down the memory hole. They replaced a competently-written piece from Alexander Burns with a hack job by Patrick Healy and published it under the same URL and headline. There is no trace left of the Burns article. If you look at Alexander Burns’s author page on the NYTimes site you’ll see nothing for 7 September 2016.
Later still, they did restore those elements of the story, but I can only assume they did so in response to public pressure noting their changes — not through any virtue of their own. Had they merely read the version they replaced, they would have noted its many omissions, yet somehow they failed to/decided not to do that.
Felonius Monk
Isn’t it about time for a boycott of the NYTimes?
gogol's wife
@dedc79:
Yeah. I’m keeping my subscription. Crossword puzzles, arts coverage, Paul Krugman, a few great investigative reporters.
But I have to admit, even the Arts section has deteriorated greatly in the last couple of months. They have more and more fluffy interviews with like Rihanna’s choreographer or whatever. But I’m addicted to the crosswords. They’re not as good as they used to be, but still better than anyone else’s.
PhoenixRising
Funny, this is almost exactly what I wrote on the prepaid subscription card I returned to them last week.
“Stop letting drunken weasels control your editorial slant, and I’ll be delighted to subscribe. Otherwise, you are contributing to a disaster called ‘normalizing Trump’ that will be dissected by historians in the future assuming there is a future. PS the one thing cranky old Bernie Sanders was both right and well spoken about was that we are all sick and tired of her goddam emails. Go investigate the 40 year racist fraudster.”
Quinerly
@debbie:
Loathe her. Just hadn’t seen her in awhile. Very bizarre look and sound tonight. A mess, in my opinion.
redshirt
Don’t kill bees! We need bees!
debbie
@gogol’s wife:
I’ve noticed this. The Books section has become similarly fluffy. I now just scan the headlines in the sections I used to love in the Sunday edition. It takes maybe one minute, where I used to spend hours reading them.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Quinerly:
Could it be a botox overdose?
Hillary Rettig
@debbie: yeah, that was rich
Brachiator
The Times isn’t “our” newspaper of record, even if they try to float that lie. It is a creature of the family that owns it, and of its editors. And “we” have no control over it, and so what we can or cannot afford is really irrelevant.
I’m not even sure that the Times is all that important (except in the minds of its editors and some of its readers). The biggest paper in Texas, the Dallas Morning News, has endorsed Clinton, and this probably carries more weight than most of the mush that is ladled out daily in the Times (which, by the way, endorsed Clinton for the Democratic nomination and will probably endorse her to be elected president).
And yeah, a lot of good people work for the Times. I know some of them. But the paper itself, like most other newspapers, is likely doomed to be rendered obsolete by new media (which also is having a hard time surviving). And I really don’t know who is responsible for the crappy Clinton coverage. Too bad old media is dying and there are too few good investigative journalists who could get into the Times and name names.
People should leave reading the tea leaves and prognostication to the professional charlatans, astrologers and political pundits.
I’m not worried about a potential Trump Lite years from now. I just wanna see the dismal original soundly thrashed and tossed upon the ash heap of history.
But I will bet even money that the NY Times will not exist in 2020.
ETA: I like the Guardian, also, but they are also dying on the vine, cutting back staff and coverage. And at their worst they are lefties without a real cause, and do little more than pout and finger point.
gogol's wife
@debbie:
Yeah, same here. I also used to read every word of the political coverage. Now I flip right through it. “Patrick Healy? Nah.”
mistermix
Hey, everyone, I’m not sure if they were bees or wasps. Yellow, buzzy and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now dead.
gogol's wife
@mistermix:
Probably not bees. Sounds like yellowjackets.
Corner Stone
To carry over the professional exterminator thing from Cole’s thread, call one to come remove the bees. If they won’t do it for free there is almost always someone listed nearby who will come and get them, gratis.
Don’t kill the damn bees, please.
Omnes Omnibus
@mistermix: if they were bees, they would have attracted honey seeking bears to your front porch. You don’t want that.
mistermix
@schrodinger’s cat: The Guardian’s coverage is uneven, I grant you. Part of that is because, in the US, they hire young journalists who may or may not mature. Jim Newell, who is excellent, and Harry Enten, who now writes at 538, both spent a fair amount of time there before moving on to better gigs.
And I did vote for Bernie, so perhaps I missed a Bernie slant.
Quinerly
@jake the antisoshul soshulist:
You are on to something.?
Poopyman
@mistermix: Yellowjackets. Much better dead.
And the only reason I’d subscribe to the NYT is the comics section. That’s what kept me with the WaPo until ’05, but by then even Mark Trail couldn’t keep me coming back.
(Yeah,even though I never subscribed to the NYT I know about their comics section.)
ET
I don’t subscribe to the NYT but I do subscribe to the other big bastion of failed journalism the Washington Post and I have been seriously contemplating not renewing but haven’t pulled the trigger. This election season may be the impetus I need.
Villago Delenda Est
@Quinerly: What? The Bellatrix Lestrange of the GOP yet lives? I thought Molly Weasley did her in?
Poopyman
@Omnes Omnibus: Well that’s just great. Bears. You hear that Mistermix? Now you’re putting the whole blog in jeopardy.
Mike J
@debbie:
I have had a drink with him when he had a restaurant in DC. I had to drive myself there.
We had Maker’s.
And since people are discussing Johnson and bees, I’ll repost music. the Soft Boys performing Leppo and the Jooves from the album, “Can of Bees.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Poopyman: BoBo, The Moustache of Understanding, and Douchehat?
Peale
@schrodinger’s cat: loll. They are a mere shadow of the leftier than thou they once were.
BGinCHI
Also a subscriber to the Guardian and TPM Prime. I’m not sure why anyone would give money to the WaPo, NYT, or, in the local case, the fucking shite rag Chi Trib.
The papers can go ahead and die like Michelob and hopefully, soon, Budweiser.
Shitty behemoths that are ripe for being supplanted by smarter, tastier alternatives.
redshirt
@Poopyman: I get that reference!
The Sheriff's Mourning Jim
The GOP offered up fifty-seven varieties of ‘Trump Lite’ this election. Scott Walker was exactly Trump Lite personified. None of them could beat the real deal.
That’s the bigger problem going into 2020. Not that we’ll get Trump Lite. But we’ll get David Duke, Ted Nugent, or some other fringe nutty wackadoodle winning the GOP nomination with a helpful assist from the useful idiots at CNN and the New York Times.
The problem isn’t Trump Lite. The problem is normalizing Trump and reactionary politics.
piratedan
I guess the problem is, you get to keep on sliding on reputation until you reach a breaking point. Perhaps in the aughts, we could forgive their Clinton mania (while it was shelved during the Bush years… mostly) but I think many people have touched on a good number of the possible motivations…
1) The WP envy thingy… yeah.. the WP helped take down a President! Power of the Press baby! The fact that Nixon (and his dedicated crew) broke laws, ratfucked opponents, had folks in his administration who were as crooked as he was (Hello Spiro!) and had an obsession of staying in control to achieve his foreign policy aims made him susceptible to being outed by the FBI #2 who felt done wrong by being passed over for the top spot.
The converse, the NYT seems to be in little brother mode here.. oh yeah, well.. we’ll take down a Democratic President and show you!!!!!!!!!!! and essentially picked on a guy whose biggest failing was being an unfaithful horndog (maybe that’s a Democratic tradition, who knows?) and they spent YEARS trying to find something, anything that he did wrong and all they could find was a blowjob from a willing participant but no impeachment, no laws broken and a rather dubious perjury charge that quite a few folks could understand (perhaps not condone, but understand) as the GOP made it their business to get in his bedroom (as if they didn’t live in a few glass mansions of their own). Then, she had the temerity to forgive the bastard… aarrrgghhh!!!!!
2) The hillbilly hassle – The Clintons don’t come from “Money”, they were smart, dedicated, and idealistic. Everything a jaded old institution like the NYT loathes. They obviously didn’t know their place and didn’t defer to their betters. Arkansas… really, Arkansas. Probably headaches ensured due to the dramatic eye rolling. Although futures in fainting couches, like the economy, were up.
3) The sexism angle – Most First ladies prior to Hillary had their pet charities and causes that had a certain amount of quaintness to them. She actually felt that she had something to offer to the discussion. we didn’t elect HER, who the hell does she think she is… yeah yeah, so she had a degree, how in any way does that qualify her to have an opinion much less have her husband support her. The sheer effrontery of it has stuck in many a craw ever since
4) She wouldn’t simply just go away – Nooooo, she had to keep trying, running for office, and WINNING!, then losing… hehehheheh and then being appointed to the Cabinet? Cripes, can’t she understand that she’s been rejected, by the people? Just go away, we’ve never liked you and here you still are… making money, as if you still need to…
There may be yet other flavors in play, but when you weave those four themes, its as if the NYT is being run by The Mean Girls in junior high… and they simply can’t get over themselves.
debbie
@Mike J:
I’d expect nothing less!
debbie
@piratedan:
Oh, I don’t know. I’d still put any NYT article by Dexter Filkins up against Woodward and Bernstein — or any other WaPo writer — any day.
Mike E
NCBoE fully restores Wake Co’s early voting schedule, adding 9 sites (R’s proposed just one). We are the most populous county in NC, and now I can get a lot more people out for GOTV…prolly my last at the phone bank, Ima make it count, m-f’ers!
Cat48
I cant quit the Nyt either. Their TV critic in TV section ripped matt lauer on his performance last nite. That was enjoyable.
Skerry
Not DC Press, but check out Facebook Humans of NY page today featuring Hillary Clinton.
Here’s one of them that really speaks to me:
debbie
@Skerry:
I read them. Avoid the comments.
Mike in NC
Went for a haircut today and the only thing to read while waiting my turn was an old (January) copy of Time magazine. In hindsight, the fawning coverage of the Republican clown car was nauseating, as was the column attacking Obama written by Joe Klein (AKA Joke Line).
MomSense
12 year old came into the room, listened to Giuliani for a bit, and told me something is wrong with that guy.
Yup.
geg6
My local city paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is still pretty good. I won’t read the editor’s column because he’s the epitome of No Labels, both sides do it CW. But the news reporters, living and entertainment and sports are first rate. And they still do investigative stuff that’s always worthwhile. But then, we also have the Scaife rag, the News-Tribune. I won’t support that piece of crap. As for national papers, I quit the NYT a few years ago. I still have an online WaPo subscription because I think they’ve improved under Bezos’ ownership and the Spotlight editor’s leadership. They aren’t great but they are doing vastly better coverage of the candidates and election than any of the others.
Turgidson
@Mike in NC:
Ah yes, the “deep bench” of qualified, smart current and former GOP senators and governors. The ones who couldn’t beat a demented loudmouth moron with a bleached ferret for hair. The “brightest” of which was a wind-up doll of a human who spat out whatever catchphrases the last consultant or donor he spoke with told him to use, sometimes repeatedly when the situation did not call for it.
Yeah, they turned out to be a real murderers row, didn’t they.
Aleta
@Cat48: That was great, wasn’t it.
For those who don’t quit, I suggest commenting a lot on the NYT article threads. I think complaints from subscribers are also an effective message. Especially since they are publicly visible and will join others already there, critical mass.
The sub I pay for is a Weekly Reader-type large print mag, collection of a few articles and the crossword, that’s mailed to a 96 yr old relative who loves it so much I’ve kept it going despite increasing price.
Yellowdog
@gogol’s wife: I think you can subscribe to just the crosswords.
Jim Bales
I canceled my subscription to the NYT in 2004, when I realized that bloggers gave me a far more fair, accurate, and balanced description of both the Bush administration and the Presidential campaign then anything I was reading in the Times.
I would say that I miss the crosswords, except my wife and I buy books of their crosswords to solve at our leisure :-)
Best
Jim Bales
Iowa Old Lady
@JPL: The first Sunday after we moved to Iowa, I bought the NYT at a gas station. The guy working there sneered at it and me and said, “The Courier not good enough for you?”
Later, I tried to subscribe to the Times’ weekender package, which gives you Fri-Sun, because they had a terrific cheap deal. I signed up four different times and never got a paper.
So I don’t have anything to unsubscribe from, which I guess is a good thing,.
joel hanes
@dedc79:
Well, the NY Times is the worst newspaper, except for all the other american newspapers.
The Chrisitian Science Monitor is still pretty good (although not trying to be “the newspaper of record”)
High Country News (which is about the nexus of mountain-state politics and environment, and totally not what you were thinking) is IMHO superb. Somehow they manage to report the statements of “both sides”, while still understanding that facts exist and can be discerned and reported without having to lead some “source” to say so.
proper link
Until Murdoch bought it, the news side of the WSJ was consistently superb (the Opinion Journal has been a snakepit for decades). I haven’t read it since the change of ownership; people tell me it’s still pretty good.
gogol's wife
@Yellowdog:
Not if you want to do them in ink on newsprint.
RoonieRoo
Why yellow jackets are good and should not be indiscriminately killed (Yes, their nests should be removed if they are near/in your house as they are aggressive fuckers)
I depend on yellow-jackets in my garden because all you yahoos are killing the bees. They are my primary pollinator. They also keep my beans very healthy as they kill/eat the pests that go after my beans. I grow a lot of black-eyed peas and black-eyed peas will emit a hormone to attract a very specific type of wasp (including yellow-jackets) to come and eat the specific pests attacking them.
I harvest in the garden all through the year surrounded by yellow-jackets. I reach my hand into the plants where the yellow-jackets are busy working eating aphids and all types of pests. In 10 years, I have been stung ONE time and that was by a sick one that had walked up my leg.
They are just as much a beneficial that we need more and more every single year as the idiots kill off our bees.
/rant
Bex
@Quinerly: I was going to say the same. Matalin wasn’t making sense and was very slow to respond.
Omnes Omnibus
@RoonieRoo: I am still concerned about the bears.
frosty
@geg6:
You’re lucky. Mine, the Baltimore Sun, got bought by the Tribune Co. and cut staff and stories so badly I was reading articles written in LA and Chicago. That, plus the change in editorial slant was enough to make me drop the subscription I’d had for decades. And do you know how hard it was for me to find the Sun in the DC suburbs???
RoonieRoo
@Omnes Omnibus: Then you should like yellow jackets since they don’t make honey and they just might win a fight with a bear.
Omnes Omnibus
@RoonieRoo: Something to ponder.
NotoriousJRT
@debbie:
They both could drive a sane person to drink, and I am guessing Matalin would get me there first. And I don’t drink.
Barry
I’ve unsubscribed – I had to threaten to post the chat transcript on Facebook to get them to do it, but they finally (said that they) did.
SG
Late to the party, but I must add that it’s a terrible idea to kill honey bees and not just because they are essential pollinators. If you sealed up a honey bee hive, you’ve left behind thousands of bee corpses and, even worse, pounds of honey comb. Without the living bees to repel marauders, you have within your walls a veritable buffet to attract ants, mice, and vermin of all sorts.
Shortly after moving into our house, we discovered a bee hive in the bathroom wall. They were getting in through a gap in the fascia board. We hired a macho beekeeper to remove the hive — a three-foot length of honeycomb that was lodged between the studs and 20,000+ bees. And that was a young hive.
jharp
“A few days ago, I sprayed some foam into the hole where they were congregating. That stuff expands and fills with a vengeance–”
Be goddamned careful with that stuff. It can have unexpected results.
Trust me.
Aardvark Cheeselog
Alas, the choice is not between the failing Grey Lady and some better Newspaper of Record. It is between the Times and something worse. Sucks to be us.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mike J:
Maybe you should’ve asked for Little Maker’s; the spice agony might have been, er, interesting…
burnspbesq
Kindly shove it up your ass. You don’t get to make that call for anyone but yourself. In the unlikely event that I’m interested in your recommendation, I’ll ask for it.
Brachiator
@Aardvark Cheeselog:
I would say that the odds of something better coming along are very poor, but you can never say for sure. Here in Southern California I am watching the LA Times die, slowly and horribly. Some cannot imagine it; they assumed the paper would always be here. But I still like to think that all of the pent up journalism talent will find some new venue.
Uncle Cosmo
@frosty: The Sun? What Laura Lippmann in her Tess Monaghan series has regularly lampooned as the Beacon-Light, known to its inmates as the Blight??
I recently signed up to extend my subscription–Wednesdays & the weekend for ~$0.20 a week. Which is barely what it’s worth. For the coupons & the Sunday comics. The content is such utter dreck that fish wrapped in it will spend their last energies to wriggle free, & caged birds will die of constipation rather than shit on it. One of these days I’m gonna pitch a bag into the local recycling bin & have the bin throw it back at me in disgust.
evap
Here in Atlanta the AJC is actually a pretty good newspaper. They still seem to employ actual journalists who have covered some local stories in depth such as the Atlanta public schools testing scandal a few years back. I subscribe to the print edition 7 days a week, mostly because I want to support print journalism. That, and the daily Sudoko.
I have subscribed to the NYT at times over the years, but they will not get another cent out of me as long as they allow David Brooks to write editorials.
BruceFromOhio
Haisus aitch fucking kristmess, this is the third? fourth? screed I’ve read on this fucking blog about “wah wah, the NYT killed my unicorns.”
Any rag that treated judith miller that way deserved to be run out of town over a decade ago, much less run out of business.
And you are all just figuring this out now?
shomi
Run for your lives, “Sarah Palin is for sure running for Prez” MarkyMux is predicting the future again.
Please continue.
Tim in SF
Were they bees or something else?
If they were wasps, good work: you don’t want them anywhere near your house.
If they were yellow jackets, no fate is too cruel. Kill them where ever you find them.
Barry
I canceled my subscription last night. I had to threaten to post the chat transcript on Facebook to get her to do it.
Barry
(Grumble, grumble, frikkin’ iPad posting and saying that it did not)
artem1s
Ted Cruz is surely going to run the GOP table in 2020 with ‘you don’t hate me so much now, do ya?’ I predict he will do his best to morph into you Trumplite. Everyone knows he’s odious beyond measure and willing to knock down bodies with it. Ryan will get crushed trying to come in on the compassionate conservative side. Rand Paul might have a shot at re-positioning himself and capturing some of the more bitter Berners. But he’s just doesn’t want it enough to sacrifice his Senate seat. Cruz is my pick for most likely to be named the new white nationalist poster boy in 2020.
philadelphialawyer
@piratedan: I get that Bill Clinton could seem, to the Times anyway, like some sort of hillbilly. But Hillary? She is not from Arkansas. She does not have a Southern accent. She is from Illinois, and has a middle class background. She went to Wellesley and Yale Law School. There is nothing hillbilly about her.
And if Bill, with his Elvis and his appetites, is too declasse for the Times, what the hell is Trump then? The man screams out vulgarity, wealth without taste, discrimination, style or class. The trophy wives. The gold plated everything. The bigger is better mentality. The TV reality game show hosting. The houses of gaming (moderation avoidance euphemism). The plastering his name on everything. The inability to dress or groom himself properly. The stupid “trucker” hats. The shouting and boasting.
And yet somehow, Hillary, with her perfect manners, her professional background and accomplishments, her proper English, and her age appropriate wardrobe and hairstyles, is too hillbilly?
philadelphialawyer
I get that Bill Clinton could seem, to the Times anyway, like some sort of hillbilly. But Hillary? She is not from Arkansas. She does not have a Southern accent. She is from Illinois, and has a middle class background. She went to Wellesley and Yale Law School. There is nothing hillbilly about her.
And if Bill, with his Elvis and his appetites, is too declasse for the Times, what the hell is Trump then? The man screams out vulgarity, wealth without taste, discrimination, style or class. The trophy wives. The gold plated everything. The bigger is better mentality. The TV reality game show hosting. The houses of gaming (moderation avoidance euphemism). The plastering his name on everything. The inability to dress or groom himself properly. The stupid “trucker” hats. The shouting and boasting.
And yet somehow, Hillary, with her perfect manners, her professional background and accomplishments, her proper English, and her age appropriate wardrobe and hairstyles, is too hillbilly?
pacem appellant
I can’t believe no one has corrected your horrendous misinformation about bees! First off, are you sure it was bees, and not wasps? I have seen more wasp nests under porches than bee nests. In either case, those aren’t drones that are returning, they’re workers. Honey bees (and many wasp species) have three distinct castes: Queen, Worker, and Drone. Drones are the males, and they do no work (and are incapable of even feeding themselves). Workers are the vast majority of the the hive. They are sterile females. They do all the work, including feeding the drones. Each hive has one Queen. She’s the only fertile female in the colony. She does all the egg laying, and it’s a non-stop job.
Lastly, don’t kill bees! (Wasps, sure, nuke ’em to kingdom come) If I had honey bees move into my porch (would that I had a porch), it would be a day of celebration. Love your bees. They are the most important animal in the U.S. Without them, we would all starve to death.