I mean why not a worm and the ground? Or a plethora of of other anologies?
My interpretation has always been the association to spring, easter, and mating rituals. The “birds and bees” come out and everything wants to make babies.
Well, let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees,
and the flowers, and the trees,
and the moon up above.
And a thing called luh-uh-ooove. 🎶
It’s probably not the origin of the phrase, but I remember seeing some sitcom where a father sat his daughter’s boyfriend down to give him the “the birds and the bees” talk
The boyfriend said something like “no thanks, I already heard it from my parents”
And the father replied along the lines of “not my version you haven’t, you see, when the bee stings the bird, the bee dies”
Not-so-subtly threatening the boyfriend.
In my head it’s Red Foreman giving that talk, but I’m not 100% on that.
It’s not the origin of the phrase, since it dates back to at least 100 years before television
yes but tv shows predate televisions
They used to have specially trained children give the show in little boxes in people’s homes. It was either that or the mines, so it was a very sought after occupation.
On the way across the great plains, families traveling the Oregon trail would sit around the campfire imagining what Leave It To Beaver would be like one day
landed families in the 1500s would invite company over to watch the servants act out the episode where the earl of leicester accidentally makes dates with two women he is courting at the same time and has to be in both places at once
Ahhhh, so that’s where canned laughter came from, I guess they probably had to use salted laughter before cans were invented
I am not trying to be rude, but did you read the literal first thing they typed? I’m fairly certain they are aware that a sitcom from the early aughts, focusing on an era from 20+years earlier, on popular television, was addressing something that was relatable to people from way before the show was even about?
I’m genuinely sorry, cause it does sound rude.
Yes, that’s what I replied to. It sounded like they were genuinely not sure (but thought it wasn’t), not making a tongue-in-cheek comment. Guess I was being dumb.
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True, but fathers have been threatening their daughters’ suitors since time immemorial.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that it’s been used in a similar way for nearly as long as we’ve been using “the birds and the bees” as a euphemism.
True
AFAIK there’s not a story to it. It’s just using pollination as a metaphor; and now that I think about it, the flower isn’t even mentioned. Typical.
It’s funny that pollination is a better analogy for human reproduction than what goes on with bees.
Now Susan, one of you will be chosen to make ALL the babies, while the rest of you will be sterile workers that serve the queen, building structures and gathering and storing food for her offspring.
You won’t have much interaction with boys, but a lucky few of them will have their turn with Queen and die immediately after (because their penis gets ripped off in the process). You will have to drive any remaining males out of the hive before it gets cold, they aren’t worth keeping alive over the winter. New ones will be made in spring.
Bees are actually a democracy, the workers don’t serve the queen. Think about when a family is driving home from school and the kids start chanting “I want McDonald’s!” Now imagine the kids are the ones driving the car. That’s bees. They’re getting that McDonald’s. The queen doesn’t get any say.
I’m sure I’m sounding argumentative. You are right and wrong. The colony will refuse to serve the Queen based on her egg production, which can never last forever, supersedure is genetically good for the colony but can result in a short time of stagnation. They can store sperm for a few years, but shit gets stale eventually. Queens are actually born fairly regularly, but are killed in short order. After a few years the one birthing all the eggs experiences senescence.
This is actually a good evolutionary strategy, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened.
(There is no disrespect here, but we need to separate human terms from natural ones. And saying bees are democratic, when they are completely controlled by pheromones is a bastardization of that word)
Take a decision like moving house. When bees want to move their hive, they swarm. When other bees notice a swarm starting, they have to make a decision to swarm or not to swarm too. If enough bees to set up a new colony swarm, they’ll pack up and move and set up a new hive. But if they don’t reach critical mass (or if humans intervene and keep the queen at home) they won’t be able to make a new hive, so they stop swarming. In this way, the biggest decision a beehive typically faces looks an awful lot like a political rally in a democracy.
The flower shouldn’t be allowed a voice or a vote anyway. The flower should just stay at home and receive the bee’s attention. /s
Everybody fucks.
Non-stop disco, betcha didn’t know, betcha didn’t know, betcha didn’t know
Edit: missed the word “stop”
There’s actually a Wikipedia page dedicated to the phrase!
Relevant section:
While the earliest documented use of the expression remains somewhat nebulous, it is generally regarded as having been coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Published in 1825, Coleridge’s first verse in the poem “Work Without Hope” refers to both bees and birds in reference to the coming fecundity of spring:
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair— The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing— And Winter, slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!One scholar notes an earlier reference to “birds and bees” on columns in St. Peter’s Basilica from a 1644 entry in the diary of English writer John Evelyn. By the late 19th century, the phrase was common enough to appear in such works as essays by John Burroughs and publications explaining reproduction to children.
The sources for the entry go into further detail: https://web.archive.org/web/20210510050626/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-sep-04-cl-15141-story.html and https://www.livescience.com/39316-birds-and-the-bees.html
Before the 1960’s pretty much any honest discussion of reproduction was considered ‘pornography.’
The term “porn” has always been a snarl word
This is nowhere near the first incidence of the phrase. This movie’s title was most like a reference to the Cole Porter song “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” which was written in 1928, and even that is not the origin of the phrase.
I love the Noel Coward version. https://youtu.be/fOVF3Pixf_o
I love the Tank Girl version
Indeed. I could hear the song and I couldn’t place the date.
I remember I felt I missed something because my mom explained the specifics of menstruation to me and school went into more detail about sex and reproduction. Despite what sitcoms were telling me, no one ever sat me down and said anything about birds or bees. I guess I hoped there was a weird pre-written speech parents awkwardly tried to recall when their kids got to a certain age.
That was my dad’s experience. He was born in 1952 in Ireland, and one day my grandad sat down with him for a very vague and confusing talk which involved both birds and bees, but Dad couldn’t really remember what Grandad actually said.
Society had gotten more liberal by the time or was Dad’s turn to have the talk with me (1996 or so), so Dad was pretty forthright and straightforward about everything, though in retrospect it was probably still awkward for him. Still, I think that even in the late 90s my parents were unusually open; we were a bit unusual for only going to Mass occasionally rather than every Sunday. I remember the other kids at school constantly asking me how babies were made, but I’m pretty sure they just thought it was outrageous that I said “penis” and “vagina” instead of “willy” and “fanny”.
It must have sucked for your dad but part of me is happy that those sitcoms didn’t entirely lie to me.
well birds and bees are actually part of the plants reproductinve cycle so has a bit more to do with sex. The bird/bee visits a flower and gets pollen on it which it then bring to the next flower allowing the possibility of sexual reproduction instead of self fertilization.
This is why it’s so dangerous to let bees near your genitals.
This pollen keeps giving me bee stings on my area that God hates
