There are bananas, and then there are banana-flavored things. Laffy Taffy is my personal favorite, but Runts, Hi-Chews, and jelly beans also capture perhaps not this fruit’s essence but an idea of it.

Swiss entomologist François Huber was blind but that did not prevent him from studying honey bees and publishing his pioneering findings in 1792. He did need some help of course, and that came from ...