Robbing the Bees by Holley Bishop

Author:Holley Bishop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2005-03-18T05:00:00+00:00

We parked about a half-kilometer from his beeyard, put on two layers of clothes under our bulky beesuit coveralls, and carefully secured our veils and gloves to leave the bees no room to enter. Then we lit the largest smokers I had ever seen, bellows-like instruments that burn burlap, old sheets, cardboard, dried cow patties, or whatever is available to generate smoke to pacify the bees. Only then did we approach his colonies, and I should have been warned by these elaborate precautions.

Merely walking toward the colonies elicited a massive response on the part of the bees, so that the situation was out of control before we smoked and opened our first colony. Bees were everywhere, banging into our veils and helmets with such ferocity that we could barely hear each other and stinging through our layered clothing. It was a hot, humid day and the combination of sweat, noise, and stings forced us to retreat after examining only a few colonies. The bees followed us all the way back to the car, and we had to keep our equipment on until we were far out of their stinging range. As we drove off, we could see the farmers swatting at bees and two of their cows were being stung; we had to stop and move the animals farther away to safety.

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