Readers of the Swarm Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sherlock Holmes

In Arthur Conan Doyle's "His Last Bow", Holmes shows Watson a book he refers to as "the magnum opus of my latter years." It bears the unwieldy title of "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen." Naturally his retirement was interrupted by a case.

(credit to Dagny1)

Answer: Hornets

Waldemar Bonsels authored a number of books, of which "Die Biene Maja" was the first. A hugely popular story, it spawned a 1924 and 2012 film as well as two different television series. The first was a Japanese anime created in 1975 and the second was a 3D CGI animation. Apart from all this, Maya was also the subject of a 1963 opera and 2016 musical.

In the story, hornets are presented negatively early on:

"Be polite and agreeable to every insect you
meet," she said in conclusion, "then you will
learn more from them than I have told you
to-day. But beware of the wasps and hornets.
The hornets are our most formidable enemy,
and the wickedest, and the wasps are a useless
tribe of thieves, without home or religion."

(credit to Kino76)

Answer: Aleksandr Pushkin

The full name of the original poem written by Pushkin in 1831 is, "The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of His Son the Renowned and Mighty Bogatyr Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the Beautiful Princess-Swan". It is a poem of jealousy, attempted murder and retribution.

The youngest of three sisters is chosen as a wife by Tsar Saltan. The remaining sisters are ordered to work as his cook and weaver respectively. Once the young bride gives birth, the sisters conspire to kill her, sealing her and the young prince in a barrel and casting them into the ocean. They are cast onto the shores of an island and in time the prince rescues an enchanted swan. The young prince is turned into a mosquito, fly and bumblebee by the swan and the prince stings his aunts and grandmother in the eye and nose in his various forms. The swan then reveals herself to be a princess and marries the prince.

(credit to Lavendria)

Answer: The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Of the four answers, only "The Lake of Innisfree" was written by Yeats. "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" was written by William Wordsworth, "To the River" by Edgar Allan Poe and "The Birks of Aberfeldy" by Robert Burns.

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" was written in 1883. The Isle of Innisfree is an actual island situated in Ireland that Yeats would visit as a child.

"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."

(credit to Sandpiper18)

Answer: Lily

This wonderful book won the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards and was a New York Times bestseller, too. "The Secret Life of Bees" was Kidd's fourth book, the previous three being spiritually themed.

In the book, Lily only has an unclear memory of how her mother died. She eventually finds out that, during a violent fight with her father T. Ray, her mother had a firearm which fell to the ground. On picking up the firearm, Lily accidentally shot her mother.

The book was adapted into a film in 2008, starring Dakota Fanning as the main character. The movie was produced by actor Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.

(credit to Lavendria)

Answer: Granny Weatherwax

Granny Weatherwax is the unofficial head of the witches on Discworld, specifically the area surrounding Lancre Kingdom. All four answers are witches, although Magrat Garlick later became queen of Lancre. Granny and her bees are mentioned in a number of books, but the bee happenings in "Lords and Ladies" was very special to Granny. She had the gift of borrowing, meaning that she is able to borrow the minds of animals and to see and experience the world through their eyes. She was able to borrow any mind, but had never done it with bees. Which she eventually managed:

"I done it with beezzz! No one can do it with beezzz, and I done it! You endzzz up with your mind all flying in different directionzzz! You got to be good to do it with beezzz!"

(credit to Kino76)

Answer: Mary Russell

Published in 1994, "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" is the first book in Laurie R. King's historical mystery series. Nominated for the Agatha Award for best novel, it relates the initial meeting in Sussex between Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. Its full title reads as "The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Or On the Segregation of the Queen" and in 2015 the series consisted of fourteen books.

(credit to Dagny1)

Answer: Shylock

All four the possible answers are Shakespearean characters, but only Shylock is from "Merchant of Venice". "Oberon" is from "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Tybalt from "Romeo and Juliet" and Prospero from "The Tempest".

The quote attributed to Shylock, comes from act 2, scene 5. Shylock speaks of Launcelot who is soon to be no longer in his employ and will soon be employed by Bassanio, Shylock's enemy. He believes that Launcelot's laziness and tendency to waste money will soon be at Bassanio's expense.

"The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder;
Snail slow in profit, and he sleeps by day
More than the wild-cat: drones hive not with me;
Therefore I part with him, and part with him
To one that would have him help to waste
His borrowed purse"

In classical literature, drones are synonymous with laziness. In the 1537 book, "The Book of Husbandry", it is said of drones "will eate the honny and gather nothynge".

(credit to Kino76)

Answer: Sold his father's bee-farm

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, known as Maxim Gorky, was a prolific Russian author who penned ninety short stories, thirteen novels and a number of plays and novellas in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

From "Three Men" by Maxim Gorky: "But somewhere in a distant village he found a pretty orphan-girl, and he sold a pair of horses and his father's bee-farm, to raise the money to celebrate his wedding." The horror! And now, no free honey for his future wife. He never forgot the bees either, as later he remarked, "I've always a head full of this sort of stuff, like a swarm of bees inside, humming."

(credit to Dagny1)

Answer: Dilating

Yes, 'dilating' is correct. It would not be a word I would associate with bees, but there it is. A synonym for 'dilating', is 'swelling' which in this context seems appropriate.

Robert Frost, an American poet, won four Pulitzer Prizes in his career, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 and was named as poet laureate of Vermont in 1961. He has the distinctive, or some would say dubious, honour of having been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature a total of thirty-one times, without ever receiving the award.

(credit to Lavendria)