Perverted Scientist Collects Honey Bee Semen In The Name Of "Research"
Smithsonian – The first question everyone wants to know is: how?“
I’m surprised it took you so long to ask,” Brandon Hopkins says with a laugh. The 35-year-old entomologist is preparing samples to be sent to the USDA Agricultural Research Service National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colorado, a facility dedicated to securing our food supply by collecting genetic material from agricultural species. “You pretty much just squeeze them, and the stuff pops out,” he says.
Hopkins is the apiary and lab manager of Washington State University’s Apiary Program, and the “stuff” he’s referring to is honey bee semen.
Yes, semen. Hopkins spends a lot of his time visiting beekeepers and collecting seminal fluid from drones, the male honey bees that exist primarily to impregnate queen bees. Or, as Hopkins puts it: “They’re flying genitalia. They don’t collect nectar; they don’t collect pollen. The only thing they do is mate.”
He prefers to capture drones during flight, when they are on their way back from their daily attempts to mate with a queen. Between 1 and 5 p.m.—their flight time—he sets mesh screens in front of the entrances to hives. Worker bees are small enough to get through the screens and back into their dwelling, but drones can’t. As they cling to the dividers, Hopkins springs into action, gathering the stinger-less bees in cages and placing them, one by one, under the microscope.
This actually doesn’t sound like that bad of a job. Basically this guy is just giving these “Drone” honey bees the happy ending they deserve. I can’t imagine a bee orgasm feels any different whether you’re finishing inside the undercarriage of your queen, or into the palm of 35-year-old Brandon Hopkins. As the kids say, no harm no foul. I bet he does a good job. I bet he’s gentle, and I bet he knows how to draw it out just long enough to leave these honey bees completely fulfilled.
The sad part about this is unfortunately, the bees die immediately after the act. Obviously that’s not ideal, but that has nothing to do with the soft, delicate fingers of Brandon Hopkins, and everything to do with evolution. These guys don’t serve any purpose other than to fuck. They fly around looking for a queen to impregnate and then just die. They don’t spread pollen or sting people. They’re pretty much just bee escorts, so YOU can decide exactly how much value you put on their life.
Hopkins claims he’s doing this “research” in order to prepare for a future catastrophe where the only way to save the honey bees of our planet is by digging into his cache of bee semen, but I think that’s probably a stretch. I think this dude just loves satisfying bees. He heads to the office early afternoon as the bees are filling up his net, pops open a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and turns on some Marvin Gaye to set the mood, and gets to fucking work.
This is purely speculation but it wouldn’t shock me if all this bee semen he’s collecting is actually part of some immortality/muscle building witch doctor concoction. I’m onto you Brandon Hopkins. Sleep with one eye open, you sick, sick fuck.