Sweetness And Light Part 6

When the bees fly again, they taste the spring. Plath wanted this to be the last poem in her new collection; this hopeful reference to the new year would have been its finis.h.i.+ng line.

In the end, the beekeeping poems were published posthumously, as Ariel as Ariel, and reordered, without this final note of optimism. One of the last letters she wrote refers to her plans to resume her beekeeping; it was delivered after her death.

CHAPTERTEN.

DISCOVERY.

The tradition of the beekeeping cleric continued, following such examples as Charles Butler, Lorenzo Langstroth, and William Cotton, but in England the monastic connection dwindled after the Reformation. Brother Adam, the most famous beekeeping monk of all, however, was based at Buckfast Abbey in Devon for most of the twentieth century; from this quiet base, he made globally important discoveries in his quest to find and breed the best bees in the world.

Brother Adam was born Carl Kehrle in 1898 in south Germany. At that time there was a connection between Germany and the Benedictine Order, who were trying to reestablish a community at Buckfast in south Devon, first founded in 1018. The monks offered the boys they recruited an education and the opportunity to join the community when they were sixteen. In return, they helped out at the monastery. The young Carl was asked by his mother if he wished to go to England "to build an abbey in praise of G.o.d." He began a journey, aged twelve, by train, steams.h.i.+p, and horse-drawn taxi to a new life on the edge of the heathy hulk of Dartmoor.

The monks harvested honey as a part of their self-sufficient life, and the frail German lad was thought of less as a builder and more as a suitable a.s.sistant to the main beekeeper, Brother Columban. He was soon absorbed in his task. Bees captivate people, Brother Adam later wrote; he was endlessly fascinated by their precision, order, and ability to adapt to their environment.

Brother Columban had moved with the times by s.h.i.+fting up from straw skeps to the modern frame hives. But there was trouble in the Buckfast apiary, as in the rest of the country. In 1904, reports began in the southeast corner of the Isle of Wight of a disease, probably caused by inbreeding. It blocked the insects' breathing tubes, causing havoc in the colony; it corrupted their wings so they could not fly. Today we know it was caused by the tracheal mite, but then people did not understand its origin: perhaps the new hives were to blame? The problem reached the mainland by 1908, then spread onward.

Many country dwellers a century ago kept bees as part of their cottage economy; the Isle of Wight disease, as it became known, was a rural catastrophe. In the terrible season of 1917, Devon villagers brought their dying colonies to the abbey for help, but to no avail. Of the forty-five Buckfast colonies, only sixteen survived, and these were the ones with Italian-crossed queens. Brother Adam's subsequent work sprang from the idea that breeding could be the key to beating disease.

The British native bee, known as the British Black, suffered most in the outbreak; some think its pure strain was destroyed. This subspecies, in any case, was far from flawless, with a tendency toward testiness and swarming. Brother Adam would spread his ca.s.sock around him when he knelt at their hives to stop the irascible creatures crawling up his legs and stinging him. He began to cross his remaining colonies with the imported queens of other breeds. As well as the Italian bees, other kinds were being used by breeders to improve their stock, such as the Carniolan bees, from the Austrian alps, which were famed for their gentleness. At Buckfast, it was the Italian and Carniolan bees that had mated with the native black bee, which fought off the disease. Brother Adam's idea was to build up strong colonies that could develop a natural resistance. His work enabled him to send healthy queens around the country; thanks to him, British beekeepers could restock and recover from this devastating disease, which had killed an estimated 90 percent of their colonies.

Brother Adam was influenced by the ideas of Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), the Austrian monk who discovered the laws of heredity. Mendel had tried to apply his theories to breeding insects, but he knew more about peas than he did about bees. His hives had been kept side-by-side in the old-fas.h.i.+oned bee sheds that are still in use in Germany today; Brother Adam, with his practical apiarian knowledge, knew that the breeds should have been kept separate in order to ensure pure strains. In 1925, he established the isolated Sherberton apiary in a sheltered valley tucked into the high ground of Dartmoor. This collection of hives on poles looked like a forest of postboxes among the granite boulders of the moor. The local beekeepers agreed to keep their hives at a distance when they brought them to the heather in summer.

Brother Adam was trying to combine all the best characteristics: docile bees that built up good colonies, produced plenty of honey, and resisted disease. Artificial insemination techniques would help his efforts. In The Monk, and the Honeybee The Monk, and the Honeybee, the BBC television program of 1988 that widely publicized Brother Adam and his work, Peter Donovan (his right-hand man for thirty years) picks up a drone and squeezes s.e.m.e.n from his abdomen. He draws the fluid up into a pipette. The queen is blown into a tube so her abdomen pokes out of the open end. Two tiny hooks pull open her egg-laying duct. In this unregal position, she receives the s.e.m.e.n. She returns to her hive, starts laying, and the controlled breeding program progresses. The queen is crucial to the nature of the colony; she pa.s.ses her genes onto her offspring and reinforces her dominance by pa.s.sing out chemical signals to the rest of the hive.

Brother Adam, the beekeeping monk whose extensive travels produced the Buckfast "superbee."

This is why she is the "queen bee." Brother Adam's ambition was to develop the queen of queens.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR was not a particularly easy time for a monastery with German connections; to the end of his life, Brother Adam spoke with a strong accent. The white hives on Dartmoor were shot at by patrols and wild rumors spread that they had been placed in a particular formation to guide the Luftwaffe to Plymouth. In one unfortunate encounter with the Dartmoor Home Guard, two of the monks forgot to bring their ident.i.ty cards to the isolation apiary and were temporarily imprisoned in a pub in nearby Postbridge. was not a particularly easy time for a monastery with German connections; to the end of his life, Brother Adam spoke with a strong accent. The white hives on Dartmoor were shot at by patrols and wild rumors spread that they had been placed in a particular formation to guide the Luftwaffe to Plymouth. In one unfortunate encounter with the Dartmoor Home Guard, two of the monks forgot to bring their ident.i.ty cards to the isolation apiary and were temporarily imprisoned in a pub in nearby Postbridge.

When Brother Adam was diagnosed with heart trouble, he was told he should never work again. But during his convalescence, he rejected all ideas of retirement and decided instead on a series of long and strenuous journeys. His mission was to continue his search for the best races of bees, and he would do so by traveling to collect them himself, be they on mountains or islands, in valleys or deserts. The plan was to incorporate these bees into the Buckfast breeding program. Time was of the essence; modern travel meant that the purity of honeybee strains would not last much longer. In order to get uncrossed stock, he would have to visit some of the most remote places in Europe and Africa.

In 1950, Brother Adam set off in his Austin car on travels that would, over the next twenty-six years, take him more than 120,000 miles. During his travels he went to Provence, following up his interest in the French queens he had already imported; to the Swiss Alps and Germany; to North Africa and the Middle East; to the Mediterranean and others parts of southern Europe, including Greece and the Iberian peninsula.

He made it to the mountainous native territory of the alpine Carniolan bee, at one point winding around no fewer than seventy-two hairpin bends to reach the bees' isolated fasthold. In North Africa, he was caught up in a sandstorm more vicious and disorientating than any attack by bees. He went to Cyprus, where a rule against importing bees had kept the native strain pure. He went to Crete, fabled in myth as the birthplace of bees; a bee he found here, which had a peppery temperament, was later named after him, Apis mellifera adami him, Apis mellifera adami. He survived a car crash in Turkey, and he went to Mount Athos, a part of Greece controlled by the Greek Orthodox Church, where there were twelve monasteries, scattered hermits, and no females-apart from the bees. On all these trips, queens were sent back to Buckfast to continue the breeding program.

Five varieties of honeybee, in particular, had characteristics he desired. One of the French bees was a good honey producer; a Greek one was good tempered; an Egyptian one, calm. The two best bees were a Saharan bee from Morocco, which proved to be prolific, and a Turkish bee, which was a good honey gatherer and consumed little in the winter, helping to conserve stocks and build up the colony.

From all these trips and all these varieties, the Buckfast honeybee emerged. It became a best-seller in Britain and beyond, especially after tests by the University of Minnesota in 1979 and 1980 proved its superiority to other commercially available queens.

If a bee could survive in damp Dartmoor, it could prosper anywhere. Those who liked the Buckfast breed said the bees were so calm that a colony could be stroked like a pet; those who didn't like the Buckfast said it must be genetically unstable because so many different bees had gone into its breeding. While it is true that the queens need to be produced by artificial insemination in order to keep the stock pure, the Buckfast proved popular with beekeepers all over the world (and continues to be so). The bees even attracted thieves; when some insects were rustled from the monastery in 1982, Brother Adam gave the following description to the police: the victims, he said, were "three-quarters of an inch in length, with dark brown and dark gray stripes."

IN 1987, BROTHER ADAM had one last major foreign expedition to undertake. Accompanied by German and British beekeepers, and with the film crew that produced had one last major foreign expedition to undertake. Accompanied by German and British beekeepers, and with the film crew that produced The Monk, and the Honeybee The Monk, and the Honeybee, he wanted to go up Mount Kilimanjaro in search of the elusive African black bee, Apis mellifera monticola Apis mellifera monticola.

Did this bee still exist in its pure strain? It had been recorded in the nineteenth century, when it was said to be docile-certainly more so than the fierce yellow African bee, Apis mellifera scutellata Apis mellifera scutellata. The Tanzanians at the bee research station at Arusha were skeptical about the genetic purity of any black bees left. The yellow bees were certainly present, and displaying their traits: when Brother Adam opened one hive, the colony sent out attack signals. Lesley Bill, a member of the expedition and Brother Adam's biographer, reported that the bees were still hovering ready to attack an hour and a half later outside the house where they went to shelter, a quarter of a mile from the hives. Brother Adam said they were the most aggressive bees he'd come across in all his travels.

If the black bee did exist, it would be at an alt.i.tude above 8,200 feet; the bees in this remote area were so isolated they would not have needed to develop defense mechanisms to deal with humans and other animal a.s.sailants. If they could survive at this height, chances were they could probably survive a northern winter.

The first mountain the group climbed was Mount Meru in Tanzania. Brother Adam, now aged eighty-nine, had been injured in a fall but, undeterred, was carried by two of the beekeepers on the expedition. The sight of the slight monk being borne up the mountain was one of the most memorable images of the film.

Above 8,200 feet, the team started to look in log hives that cooperating local beekeepers had hung from the trees to stop ant and other insect invasions. Unsure of whether the bees would be aggressive or not, they kitted up. Even Brother Adam, who eschewed a bee suit, wore a veil; but he refused gloves, as is often the way with experienced beekeepers, who like to have a more delicate touch on the hives. These bees turned out to be relatively good tempered-perhaps because they contained the prized black bee as well as the more aggressive yellow ones. The queen was captured and put in a balsa wood container, along with a retinue of workers.

The climax of the trip came on the ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain and a good hunting ground for a pure strain-if one existed-of the African black bee. Brother Adam did not continue all the way up with the rest of the expedition, but the others went on to find more log hives, which they smoked by setting light to a combination of dry gra.s.s and elephant dung. In one of the hives, there were numerous crawling black bees, their abdomens banded black on black. This was not, even so, a pure colony. But Brother Adam, when he saw what they had found, was pragmatic: let's put her in the breeding apiary and see what happens, he said. The television program ended with this tantalizing possibility. Sadly, the queens sent back to Buckfast Abbey all arrived dead.

Brother Adam's breeding program was suspended when the monastery decided that its efforts should concentrate on honey production; however, genetic work has resumed and continues today. The beekeeping monk died in 1996; at his funeral, a bell was tolled for each year of his life, and on the ninety-eighth stroke, the coffin was lowered into the ground. His memory is treasured by beekeepers for many reasons. There's the superb heather honey mead he would offer to guests for a midmorning drink, either at the abbey or from a bottle cooled in the stream at the breeding apiary; there are the stories of his sudden, old-age deafness-quite as selective as his breeding program-in the face of bothersome questions. Above all, Brother Adam is remembered for his pioneering inquiries into different bee races. It was ceaseless work; he toiled as hard as his insects. He popularized ideas about honeybee breeding among beekeepers and the public at large, through his books, talks, and broadcasting. "Everyone is familiar with the guiding principle of St Benedict-ora et labora [pray and work]," he wrote. "But those who know his writings better will soon see that a further obligation derives from this teaching, namely that of pa.s.sing on to others the experience gained in one's life and work." [pray and work]," he wrote. "But those who know his writings better will soon see that a further obligation derives from this teaching, namely that of pa.s.sing on to others the experience gained in one's life and work."

WHILE BROTHER ADAM was shuffling the honeybee's genes, a brilliant Austrian zoologist, Karl von Frisch (1886-1982), was starting to unravel the mystery of how they communicate. The idea that they can do this at all still has revolutionary implications: the fact that bees pa.s.s on information shows they have some form of intelligence. A bee may have a minuscule brain, but its behavior demonstrates significant cognitive ability; in short, it "thinks." Von Frisch's work was so outstanding, so groundbreaking, that it caused an enormous stir-many didn't believe that a "mere" insect could be intelligent. He had discovered that the honeybee's powers of learning and communication rival those of mammals. was shuffling the honeybee's genes, a brilliant Austrian zoologist, Karl von Frisch (1886-1982), was starting to unravel the mystery of how they communicate. The idea that they can do this at all still has revolutionary implications: the fact that bees pa.s.s on information shows they have some form of intelligence. A bee may have a minuscule brain, but its behavior demonstrates significant cognitive ability; in short, it "thinks." Von Frisch's work was so outstanding, so groundbreaking, that it caused an enormous stir-many didn't believe that a "mere" insect could be intelligent. He had discovered that the honeybee's powers of learning and communication rival those of mammals.

This scientist's elegant work is accessible to the layperson; his experiments can be understood by the general reader interested in understanding the observable world. Instead of the higher mysteries of the laboratory, these involved colored cards, boxes imbued with the scent of Italian oranges, and watching bees fly to flowers.

To begin with, von Frisch wanted to see whether a honeybee could distinguish between plants of different colors. At the time, many scientists did not believe invertebrates were capable of this feat. He believed otherwise. To prove this, von Frisch put a small gla.s.s dish of honey on a blue card to attract the bees. When he replaced the honeyed card with a blue, unsweetened one, the bees continued to visit: they seemed to be able to see the color and connect it with a reward. When he tried putting shades of gray alongside the blue, to find out if the bees saw tone rather than color, they continued to fly to the blue. The experiment was repeated successfully with different hues.

There was one notable exception. The insects seemed to be color-blind to red. This is interesting because native scarlet flowers are relatively rare in Europe; this is connected to the fact that many of the insects they coevolved with-with the exception of b.u.t.terflies-cannot distinguish red; some of our native red flowers actually contain a certain amount of purple, a color that can can be perceived by bees. In addition, other red flowers, such as poppies, reflect ultraviolet light which the bees can also see. The many scarlet flowers native to continents such as North America and Africa evolved to be pollinated by birds and beetles, not by bees. be perceived by bees. In addition, other red flowers, such as poppies, reflect ultraviolet light which the bees can also see. The many scarlet flowers native to continents such as North America and Africa evolved to be pollinated by birds and beetles, not by bees.

How keen was a honeybee's sense of color? Von Frisch then put squares of different colors all together and found the bees confused blue with violet and purple. The bees he trained to fly to yellow also went to orange and green. Their sense of color was clearly different from ours, based on a system of visual receptors most sensitive to ultraviolet, blue, and green.

Although color is a visual beckon to bees, this is not all they see; shape, too, turns out to be important. Von Frisch put sugar solution in a box and pasted a radiating pattern onto the front, training the bees to a.s.sociate the form with sweetness. He placed it among other patterned boxes and found they could distinguish the right one. He repeated the experiment with solid geometric shapes, but found they were better at recognizing broken patterns, such as those found in nature in the form of petals.

VON FRISCH THOUGHT there must be other ways in which bees could distinguish one plant from another, and decided to experiment on their sense of smell. When he first began his trials, it wasn't known whether bees could smell at all. But since flowers have different, specific scents that humans can pick up, it seemed likely that the bees could do so too. there must be other ways in which bees could distinguish one plant from another, and decided to experiment on their sense of smell. When he first began his trials, it wasn't known whether bees could smell at all. But since flowers have different, specific scents that humans can pick up, it seemed likely that the bees could do so too.

First, the scientist put out rows of cardboard boxes, each with a small hole in the front. One box had a dish of sugar water and, for each experiment, either a few drops of an essential oil or a fragrant flower. This was the "food box." Its position was changed frequently to ensure that the bees returned because of the scent and not because they remembered the location. The bees flew around the boxes, pausing at the holes; they entered only the box scented with the smell they thought meant food.

Next, von Frisch wanted to see if the bees could distinguish between different smells. He trained the bees to fly to a sugar solution scented with an essential oil made of the skins of Italian oranges. Then he put this scent among forty-six others. The greatest number of bees flew to the box containing the food scent; they were also attracted to two others-essences of cedrat and bergamot-which, like the original scent, both came from oranges.

By experimenting with different strengths of essential oils, von Frisch discovered the insect's alertness to different intensities of smell to be roughly the same as a human's; if you wander around a garden, following your nose, you are in some ways reacting more or less as a honeybee.

Bees can taste, too, and this sense has an element of calculation; they suck up only nectar of a sufficient sweetness to be worthwhile in terms of energy. Like that of humans, their sense of taste is less subtle and alert than their sense of smell. There is a good reason for this: scent can alert us to approaching enemies, whereas taste happens, for humans and bees, only when it is far too late to flee from danger.

VON FRISCH'S most famous discoveries relate to how the insect orientates and communicates; it was he who cracked the "language" of bees. His explorations on this subject started with a simple observation. When honey was smeared on a piece of paper, he noticed it might take hours or even days for a bee to find it; but once one came, as many as several hundred could arrive soon afterward. It seemed the scout bee had pa.s.sed on good news to the rest of the hive. most famous discoveries relate to how the insect orientates and communicates; it was he who cracked the "language" of bees. His explorations on this subject started with a simple observation. When honey was smeared on a piece of paper, he noticed it might take hours or even days for a bee to find it; but once one came, as many as several hundred could arrive soon afterward. It seemed the scout bee had pa.s.sed on good news to the rest of the hive.

To discover how this had happened, von Frisch carried out a series of revealing experiments. He set up a single-honeycomb observation hive and dabbed the bees with different colors in different parts of the thorax and abdomen in an improvised code so that he could distinguish up to six hundred individuals. When a particular bee came to a sugar dish, he could then follow her to the hive and observe what she did next.

Stationed in front of his hive, von Frisch saw the scout bee make a series of circular movements on the surface of the honeycomb; he called this the round dance. The movement could continue for thirty seconds or more in the same place. Meanwhile, the surrounding bees became excited, touching the dancer bee with their antennae and following her motions. The agitated insects then flew out of the hive; shortly afterward, they turned up at the sugar solution.

The insects also seemed to detect the smell of particular flowers on the dancing bee. In the botanical garden in Munich in mid-July, von Frisch counted seven hundred different kinds of flowers in bloom. In this heaven of nectar, he picked on one small plant with silver foliage, Helichrysum lanatum DC Helichrysum lanatum DC, which was present in just one bed. According to botanists, this flower was not normally visited by honeybees. But once the numbered bees had been fed sugar syrup in a dish surrounded by this flower, many came specifically to it. From the hundreds of blooms on offer, this was now the chosen one: a scented message had pa.s.sed through the hive.

Nectar is often located at the base of a flower; to gather it, the bee may have to crawl right in, and in the process becomes saturated with the plant's smell. When the bee has collected nectar from some way off, the flower's scent may have been lost from its body, but is still carried with the nectar in its honey sac; smell can be transported from some distance.

Von Frisch noticed more facets of the "language." The sweeter the nectar source, the more vigorous the dance; the bees were communicating the quality of the haul. He also discovered that there was not just one movement. Bees pa.s.sing on information about food from farther away from the hive performed a different one. In this second dance, the reporting bee ran a short distance in a straight line, wagging its abdomen vigorously. It did a semicircle in one direction, then the wagging motion, and then another semicircle in the other direction; when drawn, this looks like a fat figure eight with a "waggled" center. Von Frisch had noticed this distinctive dance before; many observers of bees have also commented on it. He now suspected the movement must be connected to information about food.

The existence and length of the waggle-line turned out to indicate the distance of the hive to the nectar. If a bee had to make a detour from their "beeline"-over a cliff or around a tree, say-it computed this into its dance. They could also take account of such factors as crosswinds. All this was important so that the bees could know how much honey to eat to sustain them to and from the forage patch.

The movement communicated yet more. The angle of the waggle-line on the face of the vertical comb told the bees in which direction to fly once they had left the hive; it corresponded to the angle they must fly between the hive and the sun. In fact he discovered the system operated even when the sky was overcast, since ultraviolet light can penetrate the clouds. The language of bees could indicate nectar source, direction, distance, quality, and quant.i.ty: not bad for "just" an insect.

"Bee beards" show how the colony works as a whole; here the insects cl.u.s.ter around a queen, usually kept in a cage in the person's mouth.

Von Frisch was so amazed by his results that at one point he wondered if his coded bees had developed some sort of scientific sense and were behaving not as nature intended, but as the scientist wanted. "The language of bees is truly perfect," he said, "and their method of indicating the direction of food sources is one of the most remarkable mysteries of their social organization."

The discovery that these tiny creatures could perform such complex mental feats was a complete surprise to many, and opened human eyes to the capabilities of the animal world. In 1973, Carl Jung said that he previously believed insects to have merely automatic reflexes, but that his views had been challenged by von Frisch's revelation that bees could tell each other where to find food. "This kind of message is no different in principle from information conveyed by a human being," said Jung.

In an introduction to a book of von Frisch's lectures, the distinguished American zoologist Donald Griffin pointed out that the Austrian scientist's work cleared away some of the "melodrama" attached to bees-the elaborated stories that had been so prevalent in their history: for him, the truth was stranger than fiction.

UP UNTIL THE mid-twentieth century, the honeybee was largely seen in the public imagination as a benevolent, if mysterious, part of nature; this was about to change with the dawn of the "killer bee." mid-twentieth century, the honeybee was largely seen in the public imagination as a benevolent, if mysterious, part of nature; this was about to change with the dawn of the "killer bee."

The origins of this frightening-sounding creature were innocuous enough. Just as in the seventeenth century, colonizers brought the northern European honeybee to North America; different races of Apis mellifera Apis mellifera now circled the globe, as beekeepers such as Brother Adam experimented with cross-breeding to create the best possible bee. now circled the globe, as beekeepers such as Brother Adam experimented with cross-breeding to create the best possible bee.

In the 1950s, Brazilian scientists, hearing reports of legendary honey crops from African bees-a bounty of 565 pounds was reported from one South African colony-decided to bring some over to see if they could improve domestic yields. A geneticist named Warwick Kerr made a trip to eastern and southern Africa, gathering bees, including the fearsome Apis mellifera scutellata Apis mellifera scutellata, the African yellow bee that later so bothered Brother Adam. Of the many African queens he sent back home, only one survived of the forty-one from East Africa, and fifty-four survived from the south. Nevertheless, these were enough to unleash a chain of dramatic events.

The queens were put into a breeding program and carefully kept in a eucalyptus wood in the state of So Paulo. Queen traps were put on the entrances to the hives to ensure they didn't escape into the wild. Unfortunately, a visiting beekeeper, intrigued by the new bees, came to have a look. He saw pollen was getting caught in the hive entrances and helpfully removed the traps: the "killer queens" were unleashed.

Humans can fiddle with nature, but then can't control it. Bees from twenty-six hives flew out into the wild, where they bred with European bees, and their progeny spread. The Africanized bees traveled 186 to 310 miles a year; by the 1990s there were an estimated trillion such bees in Latin America, with an average of fifteen colonies per square mile-though in some places scientists discovered more than a hundred in this area. Wherever they went, they displaced the more docile European bees. The invading insects spread on and on, and they were heading toward North America.

The Africanized bees moved so rapidly because of how they had evolved in their native territory. In temperate regions such as Europe, the honeybees need to rear large colonies that produce plenty of honey; in winter, they cl.u.s.ter together and survive on these stores. In tropical climates the bees evolved different solutions to different problems. Instead of the fluctuating temperatures of a European summer and winter, dry and wet seasons signal changes in nectar production. More of the bees' energy is spent on producing brood and frequent swarming, or absconding-leaving the nest site altogether-than in making and storing honey. When European bees swarm, they can fly only a certain distance before running out of fuel; Africanized bees can load up with double the amount of food and will fly up to 100 miles before they have to settle in a new nesting site.

The Africanized bees flew on, and as they did, their reputation grew. An early alarm bell rang in a low-key report in Bee World Bee World, the journal of Eva Crane's International Bee Research a.s.sociation. "The Spread of a Fierce African Bee in Brazil" ran the headline in 1964. The article told of incidents of stinging, swarming, and absconding, and recommended that no more be imported. But it was too late.

By now, people were frightened by one particular trait of these invading insects. African bees are relatively aggressive toward intruders due to the larger number of predators, such as ants and honey badgers, on their native continent. They are far more touchy than European bees; within seconds of an alarm, thousands can explode from a hive to beat off a potential danger. In one savage incident, a botany student from Miami University was trapped in a rock crevice after disturbing a nest. He was bombarded by bees. Rescuers were fought off by the insects. Eight thousand stings were later counted in the student's lifeless body, around seven per 0.16 square inch.

The story was a gift to the media. Despite the fact that killer-bee deaths were statistically comparable to fatal lightning strikes, the headlines screamed out the news. In 1978, a B-movie called The Swarm The Swarm was released, starring a vast colony attacking nothing less than the United States. One journalist came up with a commercial angle by marketing "killer bee honey," which sold for nearly $1 an ounce. The headlines crescendoed: these "mean" insects could unleash a "vicious frenzy" of stings. "And now, they are heading your way" boomed the was released, starring a vast colony attacking nothing less than the United States. One journalist came up with a commercial angle by marketing "killer bee honey," which sold for nearly $1 an ounce. The headlines crescendoed: these "mean" insects could unleash a "vicious frenzy" of stings. "And now, they are heading your way" boomed the Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia Inquirer in 1989. in 1989.

The killer bees, although dangerous enough on occasion, had nothing like the impact on the public that these headlines threatened. But they greatly affected beekeeping. Instead of increasing honey yields, as originally hoped, the new insects had a devastating effect; they were more interested in swarming and spreading than in building up honey stocks. It transformed day-to-day beekeeping. Bees now had to be kept away from livestock and humans, which was a blow to the traditional, amateur backyard beekeeper, and apiarists approaching such insects had to dress in thicker protective clothing and were advised to work in pairs.

In North America, colonies were taken around the country by migratory beekeepers, sometimes called the last real cowboys, who roved from state to state with their insect "herds." These wandering apiarists took the bees to the southern states for good winter foraging. But such movements meant more European-evolved bees would mate with the Africanized ones and perhaps aid the spread of the killer bees.

An eradication program was introduced in California, with Africanized swarms identified and destroyed. It was largely futile. Beekeepers knew the genie was out of the bottle; all they could do was learn how to live with these new residents. After all, people lived happily enough alongside the variety in Africa. In fact, perhaps beekeepers' greatest fear was how the public would react to the inevitable deadly, if occasional, incident.

When I recently asked some American apiarists about the current state of play, they said the bees had reached Texas but seemed to have stopped at Louisiana, perhaps due to the different environment. They spoke with a touch of trepidation; n.o.body wanted more lurid headlines. Many think there will be a northern boundary to the bees' spread, since they do not cl.u.s.ter and survive the cold as effectively as European bees. Whether this will prove the case is yet to be seen.

CHAPTERELEVEN.

REDISCOVERY.

The bee has been used in healing for at least four thousand years. The oldest reference to its medicinal use is from a Sumerian clay tablet of around 2000 bc, recommending river dust kneaded with water, honey, and oil, probably as a cure for a skin problem. Other apian materials, such as propolis, were also favored by ancient civilizations; the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Indians, and Arabs all believed in their powers. The Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460-377 bc), for example, thought honey cleaned, softened, and healed ulcers and sores. Such remedies continued as "folk" medicine even after the advent of the modern scientific age, but in a quieter way. Doctors insist on laboratory results, not just hearsay, and manufactured pills have largely taken over from such homespun natural remedies.

In the 1950s, the world price of honey dropped due to an over-supplied market, and beekeepers turned to other products to supplement their income. Pollen, propolis, royal jelly, and even bee venom began to be supplied to the growing alternative health market. There was a term for this trend: apitherapy apitherapy. The movement grew gradually and since the 1990s it has taken off as people have turned back to traditional medicines.

On my mantelpiece, I keep a little bottle of tincture made from propolis harvested from a beehive. This morning, because my throat had a creeping, scratchy tickle, I put six drops of the dark-brown liquid into a small gla.s.s of water, where it fizzed like a demon potion. The slightly almondy flavor is just strange enough to taste effective. I began to take it after hearing so many beekeepers praise its usefulness; they sc.r.a.pe a bit of propolis off a hive to chew whenever there are colds in the air. Propolis is a resin exuded by plants to fill in their own "wounds." It protects the bees' colony, too, seeming to combat disease. The insects gather it to plug gaps in the hive, smoothing the inside to stop insects such as wax moths laying their eggs.

Over the 1970s and 1980s, the Danish naturalist Dr. K. Lund Aagard investigated the benefits of propolis, having cured his infected throat by gargling it mixed with hot water; in France, another researcher, Dr. Remy Chauvin, concluded that it raised the body's resistance by stimulating the immune system. Dentists, in particular, have turned to propolis. For example, Dr. Philip Wander, a Manchester, England, pract.i.tioner, uses propolis on mouth ulcers and to clear infections, heal cuts, and stop pain.

NEXT TO MY BOTTLE of tincture is a pot of pollen. When I need to feel fortified, I sprinkle some on my porridge or whiz a spoonful in a blender with a banana, some yogurt, and honey for a smoothie. The small, natural pollen pellets have a slightly earthy taste. Their colors vary with the flowers from which they come; I like to look at them in the pot and imagine their origins. of tincture is a pot of pollen. When I need to feel fortified, I sprinkle some on my porridge or whiz a spoonful in a blender with a banana, some yogurt, and honey for a smoothie. The small, natural pollen pellets have a slightly earthy taste. Their colors vary with the flowers from which they come; I like to look at them in the pot and imagine their origins.

Bees gather pollen as plant dust and knead it into these little b.a.l.l.s, which they carry back to the hive on their hind legs and store in the comb. Sometimes known as bee-bread, this form of pollen is a highly nutritious substance, rich in protein, vitamins, and minerals. It is such a complete food that, in one experiment, carried out by Robert Delperee of the Royal Society of Naturalists of Belgium and France, rats fed on just bee-collected pollen and water remained healthy and fertile for several generations. Honeybees, after all, use it to feed their developing young, helping them to grow strong and healthy. Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion boxer, aimed to "sting like a bee"; he ate like one, too, boosting his diet with pollen. Abraham Lincoln liked the honey on his bread to be mixed with pollen. Nowadays, nutritionists claim it also helps both female and male fertility.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence for the effectiveness of pollen. One story, of an American army officer who escaped from a j.a.panese prison camp in China in the 1940s, recalls how the officer was found by the local people close to death in the jungle and was fed fruit mixed with the plant dust. The locals also dressed his wounded feet with honey and pollen. All this, he believes, saved his life.

THE TWO STRANGEST PRODUCTS of the beehive are venom and royal jelly. How on earth are these harvested? It is one thing hauling frames of comb out of a hive, quite another milking a bee of its poison, or extracting the tiny quant.i.ties of royal jelly found in the queen cells of the hive. of the beehive are venom and royal jelly. How on earth are these harvested? It is one thing hauling frames of comb out of a hive, quite another milking a bee of its poison, or extracting the tiny quant.i.ties of royal jelly found in the queen cells of the hive.

Royal jelly is the milky white gelatinous substance fed to both workers and queen bees as they develop; after three days, the worker's brood diet is changed to pollen and honey; the developing insect in the queen cell, however, continues to be fed entirely on the gel, and this enables her to grow to her magnificent size. The queen may live for several years, while in the summer rush a worker bee dies within a matter of weeks; for this reason, royal jelly is perceived as a longevity supplement, especially in China and j.a.pan. The royal jelly yield of a hive is a quarter ounce, and its collection is highly labor intensive, which is why it is so expensive. French beekeepers in the 1950s pioneered the commercial use of royal jelly by creating artificial queen cells and sucking out minute quant.i.ties of jelly using a pump.

Bee venom is used to treat arthritis and other inflammatory conditions such as multiple sclerosis, on the principle that it stimulates the release of the anti-inflammatory hormone cortisone. Tickner Edwards, a Suss.e.x beekeeper writing at the start of the twentieth century, described a "patient" arriving at the home of an old-fas.h.i.+oned apiarist for his regular stinging. The therapy is still in use today, with up to eighty bees used in a single session. The insect is held over the inflamed area with tweezers and gently squeezed until it stings.

Bee venom is also collected so it can be injected by needle rather than sting. The toxic fluid was probably first milked at the end of the nineteenth century by J. Langer at the University of Prague. He would squeeze each insect's abdomen and collect its drop of venom in a capillary tube. He had to use 25,000 bees to provide enough for just one microgram in its purified, crystalline form.

In the 1930s, a German firm called Mack started producing bee venom commercially. Originally, the long-suffering employees were made to wait in front of the hives, carefully picking up each bee as it came out of the entrance, and squeezing it so that it stung a piece of fabric that would absorb the liquid. Mack's inventors then worked out how the bees could be boxed and given a mild electric shock to make them sting a piece of paper in defense; a Czech company in the 1960s improved the system further by making the material so thin that the bees could withdraw their lancets and live to sting again. By such methods, bees could be made to inject the paper ten times in a quarter of an hour.

Those who believe in bee venom say it is a natural remedy that avoids the side effects of chemically produced drugs. The medical establishment is, by and large, more skeptical. Experts in rheumatism say there are other more effective, scientifically tested palliatives. However, the first clinical trial of the effect of bee venom on humans has recently been started at Georgetown University in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. The att.i.tudes of some medics toward apitherapy are starting to change, especially where honey is concerned. Much of the credit for this s.h.i.+ft is due to a scientist in New Zealand.

PARTS OF NEW ZEALAND are an agribusiness version of the biblical "land of milk and honey." The cows feed on clover; the clover is pollinated by bees; the farmers collect the milk and the apiarists the honey. New Zealand, while a place of great natural beauty, is not quite as untouched as its image suggests; whole areas have been manipulated by large-scale farming. Swathes of native bush were destroyed by the colonials who made great fortunes from sheep farming in the nineteenth century, and some of this land was later given over to commercial forestry. Driving through the North Island, I could see how the hillsides had been scarred and denuded, or swathed with profitable woodland. On the way to the world's largest mainland gannet colony in Hawke's Bay I saw acres of planted conifers on one side of the track; on the other were feathery bushes that produce white flowers. These turned out to be the native plant behind the current revival of honey as a health product: manuka. are an agribusiness version of the biblical "land of milk and honey." The cows feed on clover; the clover is pollinated by bees; the farmers collect the milk and the apiarists the honey. New Zealand, while a place of great natural beauty, is not quite as untouched as its image suggests; whole areas have been manipulated by large-scale farming. Swathes of native bush were destroyed by the colonials who made great fortunes from sheep farming in the nineteenth century, and some of this land was later given over to commercial forestry. Driving through the North Island, I could see how the hillsides had been scarred and denuded, or swathed with profitable woodland. On the way to the world's largest mainland gannet colony in Hawke's Bay I saw acres of planted conifers on one side of the track; on the other were feathery bushes that produce white flowers. These turned out to be the native plant behind the current revival of honey as a health product: manuka.

Farmers see manuka as a weed, and let it grow only on land too steep and poor to farm; environmentalists are more keen. It is part of the islands' original ecosystem and once mature, other indigenous trees tend to germinate in its shadow; an area of manuka signals a revival of native bush. Beekeepers used to dislike the plant; its nectar produces honey with such a strong flavor that some would bury their crop rather than attempt to sell it. All this has changed; a pot of manuka can fetch more than three times that of even the best monofloral and multifloral honeys.

Manuka is nowadays used for a number of ailments, from leg ulcers to stomach complaints. Its packaging suggests it is medicinal; so does its almost antiseptic taste-even if you like dark honeys; this is not the sort of pot that tempts you to stick in a spoon for a lick. Having watched the rapid rise in popularity of manuka in health food shops, I wanted to meet the man behind its success.

Dr. Peter Molan, a biochemist at the University of Waikato, has spent twenty years exploring the therapeutic uses of honey. His work has demonstrated and quantified its antibacterial properties. He still needs to pinpoint exactly why why it works so well, but says that he and his team are "getting close." His research has spearheaded its scientific revival; here, at last, was proof of honey's efficacy. it works so well, but says that he and his team are "getting close." His research has spearheaded its scientific revival; here, at last, was proof of honey's efficacy.