Inspired by this amusing post on Steven Schwartzman’s ‘Portraits of Wildflowers’ photography blog, I thought I’d take a look at some of the more unusual search terms people used to find my blog in 2012.
‘woodlice droppings’ – 16 times
Urgh. I have failed to find any photos of woodlice droppings on my blog to keep these people happy. My internet research suggests that woodlice droppings are about 1mm in width and look like black dust particles.
‘what do woodlice look like’ – 4 times
Really? This is a bee blog! Oh well, if you insist:
From www.uksafari.com.
do woodlice lay eggs – 1 time
Yes. A female woodlouse will keep fertlilised eggs on the underside of her body until they hatch into small, white offspring. That’s enough about woodlice now.
‘squashed bee’ – 12 times
Oh dear. I’m not very optimistic for this bee. Here’s one I’m afraid I accidentally squashed and is long since deceased.
ouch! that bee just stung me! – 2 times
Ouch indeed.
‘what do hives look like on adults’ – 6 times
Wrong type of hives.
‘what causes hives under the armpits’ – 2 times
Not bees.
‘hand feeding carrot’ – 3 times
Like this? Bulls love tasty crunchy carrots!
Like this?
‘hunny from bees’ – 3 times
Mmm my favourite hunny.
‘british beekeepers beware sign’ – 2 times
A sign to deter British beekeepers or a sign to warn others that British beekeepers may be present?
‘honey dripping on body’ – 2 times
Think they wanted a different kind of blog!
‘average monthly rainfall and temperature ealing’ – 2 times
In 2012, lots and flipping cold.
‘jon and sarah pie and mash wedding’ – 1 time
Huh?
‘bee pic taken by me 
‘ – 1 time
Try looking on your own computer? I did and here’s one I took earlier.
Honey bee on thistle
I never knew bees and woodlice have so much in common.
Me neither. Or that people were so interested in woodlice. Imagine how much traffic an actual woodlice blog gets from all these searches.
Brilliant! Something to make us think about, or not, perhaps.
Yes. It’s intriguing to see what’s on people’s minds.
You wouldn’t believe how many folks have stumbled upon my blog after searching for the term “bee porn.” : P
Oh yuck!
Ha! Bee Porn was actually one of the top search terms people used to find my blog as well.
I’m going to have to read your blogs, too!
What a fun post Emily. I’ve thought of doing something like this as well, the search terms are quite bizarre at times! Some of them make me wonder “What on earth led you to my blog??”
I hope 2013 is a more successful year for you on the honey-production side.
Thanks Anna. I hope a few of these visitors enjoy our blog posts, even if they weren’t what they were after! Hope 2013 is a sunny year for you and the bees.
I’m glad I inspired you to write about the search terms that led people to your blog; it seems we all get our share of strange hits. You’ll have to see what you can come up with in 2013 to accommodate the people who were looking for ‘‘jon and sarah pie and mash wedding’ and ‘honey dripping on body’.
Yes. I could probably get some shots of bees licking up honey drizzled on their bodies. As it happens I’m currently planning my own wedding, so perhaps I will look into this pie and mash idea of Jon and Sarah’s.
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I love this! I have been doing the same recently and found some unusual search terms for my blog including: ‘bee face’, ‘bees chasing someone into water’, ‘beekeepers babies’, ‘name five things the bees do’, ‘apis mellifera rheumatism [sic]‘ and ‘i had a dream a spider monkey climed on me’!
Very odd! Five things the bees do – let’s see – stick up their hive parts with propolis, make holes in their comb, munch away at fondant, find their way up Pat’s trousers and generally misbehave
I continue to get people finding me when looking for Fire Pits, now I do have a fire pit, and it’s a very nice one, but not the main content of my blog.
However, if you are looking for a good layer, covered in honey, chicks, cocks, deep bedding, queens and sexing tips, I could definitely help you… I’m talking chickens and bees of course!
A fire pit! Fabulous. Do you toast marshmallows on sticks over it?
That sort of talk will definitely keep the Ealing beginner beekeepers awake during your ‘First year of beekeeping’ advice!
Teehee, this is so much fun! I’ve gotten some weird ones as well.
Lots of weird thoughts out there
One of my favorite posts of all times!!
Deb
Thanks so much! I love your ‘Hedgehogs, Bats and Lightning Bugs’ post!
Hilarious. You wonder what people think when they link and see the blog they are connected to.
Must be a bit of a disappointment for all those woodlice researchers!
This post made me laugh — wood lice? pie and mash wedding? Wha?! And I love the list of five things that bees do.
The weirdest search term on my blog has been “orumcek” (a few diacritical markings missing there) which turns out to mean “spider” in Turkish. (I do have a bit of spider stuff on the blog, but the word really had me stumped for quite a while.)
Thanks! Have started following your blog
I’m honored and delighted! (I’d better write some more posts so you’ll have something to read.)
What a delightful idea for a post! We shall steal it.
Please do!
Enjoyed this, Emily. It prompted me to do a search of my own searches. Disappointingly mostly within the broad scope of the wildlife subject matter, nothing even slightly risqué… but, wait a minute, what’s this? Six (6) hits for “decomposing human bodies”! That’s way way off piste, and not in a nice way…
Hmm, very disturbing!
It seems you have us all examining our own search engine terms, some make sense, but many don’t: ‘Snow Cut Flounder’, ‘Shuffle Castle’, ‘Dalton Pacer Test Blue Ridge’?. Most people seem to arrive at my blog looking for photos of caterpillars or info about Andy Goldsworthy sculptures, so probably end up disappointed. In retrospect, including the word ‘beating’ in the title of the blog, and frequently referring to cute birds from a certain family means that my blog probably has more then its fair share of unsavory visitors……
‘Snow Cut Flounder’ and ‘Shuffle Castle’ sound like they could be types of dances. Perhaps the unsavoury visitors will get distracted and turn to a life of nature watching instead.
Ah… thanks for the smile on a bitterly cold Monday morning!
No probs!
I LOVE seeing what people have been searching to find my blog! It’s one of the things my husband and I laugh about at the end of the day. Your comentary is especially brilliant. You appear to get more random things than I do. At least when I get “two sheep walk into a bar” I can relate that to an actual post. Or as of late, I have some traffic from “what do Dutch Shepherd eat?” to which I would answer: an entire wheel of homemade cheese covered in cat litter.
Happy New Year. I look forward to your next blog.
Marsha
Mmm flavoursome cat litter! Happy New Year to you too x
Hilarious. I often am amazed when I spot strange search terms. Do you think that creators of search engines might just be messin’ with our minds?
Ha, yes. Bet those Google geeks have a contest going to come up with the weirdest search times possible to confuse us all.
I’ve done it, I’m a copy-catter-dirty-ratter. I made a similar post on my blog today http://laurarittenhouse.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/seek-and-ye-shall-find/. I did give you credit for inspiring me. I hope that takes the sting out of having your individuality trod upon
Hi Laura, I’m a dirty copy-cat too as I was inspired by Steven Schwartzman’s post! And Rusty at HoneyBeeSuite did a similar post recently too: http://www.honeybeesuite.com/shes-been-framed. So don’t worry, we’re all at it!
I saw you gave Mr. Schwartzman credit (and I followed the link to his funny post) so we aren’t totally evil as we lurk our way through cyberspece. Let’s call it a constructive sharing of ideas rather than copy catting, shall we?
Sounds good!
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