"We will always want what we don't possess."
-Q

While I was feeding my fish in the backyard pond today, a few wasps zoomed by me. I've always been curious but have never actually known exactly where bees go or what bees do during the winter. Surely they're not out and about, I've never seen even one bee during the cold season. So I hit the books. I learned that different species of bees will behave differently during winter, so I stuck with the classic honeybee.

When temperatures fall, honeybees stay in their hives. Some bees will hibernate, but the workers form a huge "bee ball" surrounding their queen. The bee ball is constantly moving, with each bee vibrating his wing muscles to raise temperature. Heat is also generated by the oxidation of the honey that was produced during the warm season. This heat is then disbursed amongst the hive by the wing-fanning of worker bees. These methods warm the hive enough to keep it from freezing. The workers feed on the stored honey and can consume up to 30 pounds of it throughout the winter. And you thought honeybees are working so hard to supply us with honey? Think again, they are working hard to survive!

"We all have problems, we will all face hardships. How we deal with them is what makes us who we are."
-Q

"There will be an answer. Let it be."
-The Beatles

"Time spent on hate is time gone to waste."
-Rise Against

"An eye for an eye only leaves us all blind."
-Sum 41

"Intelligence introduces desire."
-Q

"It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It’s always our decision who we are."
-Robert Solomon

The Earth can be thought of as one huge ecosystem. It is a physical environment with a community of living, interacting organisms. You have those that roam freely amongst the Earth and those that grow through and from it. There are natural processes that maintain and keep the planet operating. How, then, are our bodies so different from planet Earth? We, too, can be thought of as an ecosystem. We have navigating germs and cells that resemble the roaming animals, growing hair that represents the sprouting plants and vegetation, and bodily functions that represent natural planet maintenance. Inside each of us, we have a whole world of our own.

Planet Earth has opened my eyes! After watching the Jungles episode for close to the sixth time over, I got to thinking: We always think of our planet as having three main living environments: water, land, and sky. But we are missing one, one that isn't so obvious and almost always overlooked. The treetops. Sure, there are many animals that live in the treetops along with another environment, such as birds, but there are some animals that spend their entire lives in the branches of trees miles above the ground. And they never come down. Quite a lifestyle.