Bee story belongs in a tabloid
Dear HCN,
I can’t let the
cover story “The BUZZ business” (HCN, 6/24/02) pass without
comment. While I wouldn’t dispute the fact that Africanized bees
can react to disturbances with ferocity, the author chooses to take
an unnecessarily hysterical approach to the subject. For example,
while it may be accurate that 1,000 people have been killed by
Africanized bees (good figures are difficult to come by and vary
widely), this is hardly as sensational an item if it is divided by
the 50 years these bees have been advancing through South, Central
and North America (roughly 20 per year).
The
author also makes some serious factual errors which suggest to me
that he is careless about separating fantasy from reality. To
wit:
He has the concept of how the bees cool the
hive correct, but he should have quit while he was ahead. He goes
on to say, “Squinting, concentrating on the tiny moving shapes, I
can make out water droplets on their legs.” I guess in 27 years of
beekeeping I’ve just missed this phenomenon. The fact is it happens
only in the author’s imagination; bees transport water as they do
nectar, drawn up through their hollow tongue and carried in the
honey stomach. You are no more likely to see what the author
describes than you are to see Holstein cows headed for the barn
with little pails of milk suspended from their
horns.
The bit about stinging is interesting,
too. “Instead of just landing and stinging, as a regular bee does,
a killer bee zooms at you full speed, with its stinger aimed
forward, and hits with a noticeable pop, driving the stinger deep.”
This may happen in roadrunner cartoons, but not in the real
world.
In and of themselves these points may be
of no great significance, but they call into question the quality
and validity of the article. The article would have been better
placed in a tabloid and falls far short of the standards I have
come to expect from HCN.
Tom Theobald Niwot, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Bee story belongs in a tabloid.
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