Queen Bee

The problem with "The Real Housewives of Atlanta's" breakout wife NeNe Leakes is that she wants it both ways. She wants the fame of Bravo's top reality show about the back-stabbing, high school-style shenanigans of five well-to-do Atlantans, but she doesn't want the baggage -- namely, that's she's the brash manipulator the show makes her out to be. Early on, the outspoken Leakes, who is featured prominently in tonight's second season finale,...

Kelli Giddish is downright confident the gal she calls "Queen Bee" — the flesh-and-blood U.S. marshal training her to trail fugitives for NBC's new Jerry Bruckheimer drama "Chase" — means business. "She weighs about a buck 15," the gravelly voiced, sunny-haired actress said of the petite Houstonian. "She's a blondie. She wears her mascara. And she can kick your.... " The Georgia-born Giddish, 30, is also describing her Texas-size TV alter ego, U.S. Marshal Annie Frost, one of the 2010-11 season's empowered, action-adventure tough chicks whose job is to take charge, take names and take down the bad guys.

The problem with "The Real Housewives of Atlanta's" breakout wife NeNe Leakes is that she wants it both ways. She wants the fame of Bravo's top reality show about the back-stabbing, high school-style shenanigans of five well-to-do Atlantans, but she doesn't want the baggage -- namely, that's she's the brash manipulator the show makes her out to be. Early on, the outspoken Leakes, who is featured prominently in tonight's second season finale,...

The problem with "The Real Housewives of Atlanta's" breakout wife NeNe Leakes is that she wants it both ways. She wants the fame of Bravo's top reality show about the back-stabbing, high school-style shenanigans of five well-to-do Atlantans, but she doesn't want the baggage -- namely, that's she's the brash manipulator the show makes her out to be. Early on, the outspoken Leakes, who is featured prominently in tonight's second season finale,...

MARY ELLEN MASON was a busy music video producer when she first started thinking about bees about 10 years ago. In her Los Feliz apartment, she read book after book about beekeeping. "They seemed like these perfect creatures," she says. "They produce a product you don't have to do anything to." When Mason decided to take a sabbatical from the music business, she took a part-time job as a baker to decide what her next step would be.

Canadian researchers have discovered that the key to a queen bee's allure is a five-chemical intoxicant that induces loyalty and increased production among her worker bees. The discovery has great practical implications for agriculture and insect control, said Keith Slessor, who has studied the queen bee mystery at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Because the queen bee's chemical attracter draws swarms of bees, he said, "you could use it to catch swarms for honey production. . . .

A queen bee needs to keep her subjects calm and quiet, and she does so by secreting a scent that prevents worker bees from learning, according to new research. The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that a component in the queen's pheromone inhibits the sterile worker bees' ability to learn from negative experiences. The active scent element is similar to the brain compound dopamine, which is involved in learning and memory in humans and insects.

When Bee Canterbury Lavery took over as the city's chief of protocol 17 years ago, Los Angeles was, diplomatically speaking, just coming out of the Dark Ages. It was still a rough-at-the-edges movie town, where "international relations" meant the torrid, ocean-hopping affairs that people like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton used to conduct. Nobody was paying much attention to the niceties of diplomacy, says Lavery, a gregarious woman with a taste for brightly colored blazers.

Thousands of bees swarmed over a busy San Francisco intersection and stopped service on a streetcar line for nearly two hours Friday until a beekeeper came to the rescue. A policeman said that when he arrived at the intersection the bees were "all over the place. There were thousands of them. They looked like an oil slick." The source of the swarm was unknown. Drivers abandoned their streetcars, traffic was routed around the intersection and pedestrians were kept from the area.

"The September Issue," opening in New York this weekend and in L.A. on Sept. 11, is director R.J. Cutler's documentary on Vogue and its queen bee, Anna Wintour. Before Cutler got swept into the whirlwind of premieres, the L.A.-based director had friends over for a dinner party at his new outdoor kitchen and alfresco dining room. The Times played the role of fly on the stucco wall, watching the evening unfold and getting a peek inside Cutler's remodeled indoor kitchen as well. Look for the story next week in Home.

The problem with "The Real Housewives of Atlanta's" breakout wife NeNe Leakes is that she wants it both ways. She wants the fame of Bravo's top reality show about the back-stabbing, high school-style shenanigans of five well-to-do Atlantans, but she doesn't want the baggage -- namely, that's she's the brash manipulator the show makes her out to be. Early on, the outspoken Leakes, who is featured prominently in tonight's second season finale,...

"The September Issue," opening in New York this weekend and in L.A. on Sept. 11, is director R.J. Cutler's documentary on Vogue and its queen bee, Anna Wintour. Before Cutler got swept into the whirlwind of premieres, the L.A.-based director had friends over for a dinner party at his new outdoor kitchen and alfresco dining room. The Times played the role of fly on the stucco wall, watching the evening unfold and getting a peek inside Cutler's remodeled indoor kitchen as well. Look for the story next week in Home.

Talk about adding a late-inning buzz to a ballgame. The Houston Astros -- who once had the "Killer Bs" -- beat the San Diego Padres, 7-2, on Thursday, but only after waiting out a 52-minute delay in the top of the ninth inning caused when a swarm of bees took over part of left field at Petco Park. Geoff Blum hit a three-run homer and finished with four runs batted in. The Astros won three of four against the Padres.

"I'm NOT the smartest person in the world," avers Michelle, 18, one of the participants in the N's new reality competition "Queen Bees" (8:30 p.m. Friday). "Not that I feel, like, my good looks are the only thing I have. I felt it was important to me because that was something I was good at. I don't do really well in school. You know, I couldn't throw a basketball if my life depended on it, I feel, like, you know, I was really good at doing my makeup, I was really good at making my hair nice."

A queen bee needs to keep her subjects calm and quiet, and she does so by secreting a scent that prevents worker bees from learning, according to new research. The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that a component in the queen's pheromone inhibits the sterile worker bees' ability to learn from negative experiences. The active scent element is similar to the brain compound dopamine, which is involved in learning and memory in humans and insects.

MARY ELLEN MASON was a busy music video producer when she first started thinking about bees about 10 years ago. In her Los Feliz apartment, she read book after book about beekeeping. "They seemed like these perfect creatures," she says. "They produce a product you don't have to do anything to." When Mason decided to take a sabbatical from the music business, she took a part-time job as a baker to decide what her next step would be.

Talk about adding a late-inning buzz to a ballgame. The Houston Astros -- who once had the "Killer Bs" -- beat the San Diego Padres, 7-2, on Thursday, but only after waiting out a 52-minute delay in the top of the ninth inning caused when a swarm of bees took over part of left field at Petco Park. Geoff Blum hit a three-run homer and finished with four runs batted in. The Astros won three of four against the Padres.

The Royal Family Bug Band is holding a "Princess Search," hoping to find just the right rockin' and boppin' girl bug to add harmony to the group. There's only one restriction: Queen Bee and King Mosquito say that creepy-crawlies without wings are too ugly to sing their tune. "Cinderella Caterpillar," a comic romp at the Gem Theatre in Garden Grove, is played for laughs, but it sends out a clear message about prejudice and differences. Lead singer Prince Grasshopper (R. J.

"Mean Girls" so totally {heart}s mean girls. Like many stories about flamboyant evil, this cheerfully frivolous teen comedy exults in the sight of mini-me Marthas flipping their perfect hair and licking their blood-flecked lips. What's not to like? Mean girls may eat you for lunch (they'll vomit you afterward to save the calories), but, unlike Hannibal Lecter, they look pretty in pink.

With the emergence in recent years of such sexually charged female rappers as Foxy Brown, Eve and Gangsta Boo, there has been growing impatience in hip-hop circles for the return of the smoothest-flowing, raunchiest and single most charismatic hard-core female rapper of the late 1990s, Lil' Kim. But the Brooklyn rapper's second album is a major letdown. Throughout the album (in stores Tuesday), the Notorious B.I.G.