♥~♥When bees go buzz-erk! ♥~♥
As British tourists are attacked by an angry swarm, what turns a humble honey bee into a killer?
We don't get attacked by animals much these days.
Plenty of people are scared of sharks, but the reality is that being eaten while taking a dip in some tropical lagoon is rather less likely than crashing in your taxi on the way to the airport.
There are plenty of creatures out there that can hurt or even kill you. But even in places such as Africa, deadly snakes and hungry lions tend to be far more under threat from humans than the other way round.
Badly bee-haved: Honey bees are usually mild-tempered but are enraged if their nests are disturbed or if the weather is too hot
So the news that dozens of people have been hurt - some badly enough to be hospitalized - by hundreds of angry bees in one of the sleepiest corners of France seems more like the plot of a bad Seventies horror film than real life.
On Sunday, a swarm of bees invaded an art gallery in an old pigeon loft in Moulidars, near the town of Cognac in the Charente region.
The gallery was full of tourists, who described scenes of sheer terror when the bees attacked.
One British woman was stung 500 times and had to be sedated as dozens of angry bees were plucked from her hair and clothing.
Other victims reported a mad dash for their cars, only to find that the stinging frenzy continued inside their vehicles as the insects flew in before there was time to close the doors.
People were running around screaming, their faces a mass of bees. Considering that severe allergies to bee venom are not unknown, it was fortunate no one died.
So what happened? How could something from a horror movie happen for real in a part of France not known for swarms of killer bees?
Bee expert Dr Nigel Raine, of London University, explains that attacks like this, involving the normally placid European honey bee, are very unusual.
'I've never heard of anything like this before,' he says. 'European honey bees are usually mild-tempered.'
Dr Raine suggests that the bees' hive had been disturbed, which can send the insects into a torrent of fury. Bees do not have ears, but they are extremely sensitive to vibration - it is possible that the tourists inadvertently disturbed a nest in the old building or, just possibly, a swarm of bees on the lookout for a new home flew in through an open window and became disoriented.
Mob mentality: Individual swarms have their own 'group personalities' with some being more aggressive than others
It is also possible that the bees were simply under the weather.
Beekeepers know that individual swarms not only have their own group ' personalities' - some are more aggressive than others, for example - but also that they can behave differently depending on the weather.
Hot and humid conditions often make bees bad tempered, while mild and sunny weather tends to encourage calm Behaviour.
Though European bees rarely attack people, the same is not true elsewhere. In the U.S., 'Africanised' honey bees, a hybrid strain known for its aggressiveness, have been spreading north from Mexico since the Seventies.
The Africanised bee was the result of experimental breeding carried out in Brazil in the Fifties.
It was designed to produce a strain that was better adapted to the Tropics than common European strains, such as the Italian honey bee, Apis mellifera ligustica.
Unfortunately, combining the genes of Tanzanian and European insects produced a bee that, while productive, could be extremely defensive and even aggressive.
Concerns about the killer bee were exploited by film-makers ever on the lookout for a new way to scare audiences.
If Steven Spielberg's Jaws made millions too afraid to go into the water, Seventies movies such as The Swarm and Terror Out Of The Sky made having a picnic seem equally scary.
Honey bees are considered to be potentially dangerous across much of the Tropics.
'I've worked in Mexico and if you hear a swarm there, you want to keep quiet and wait for it to go by,' says Dr Raine.
Even elephants have a wary respect for these tiny insects. In 2007, Oxford University scientists found that recordings of bees buzzing were enough to send the huge animals fleeing.
The main reason bee attacks can be so serious is the way the stings encourage further assaults. When a honey bee stings, it drenches the site with chemicals called pheromones, which send a message to the other bees, encouraging them to sting the same spot.
This can be an effective strategy when bees are faced by an animal such as a bear trying to tear apart their hive. The stings will be concentrated in sensitive areas such as the nose and eyes.
When a honey bee stings you, the barbed protuberance through which the poison is delivered rips away the last segment of the animal's abdomen. This means that the unfortunate bee dies of severe haemorrhaging within minutes.
Life source: If bees disappeared from the Earth, Man would die out as all our flowering plants are dependent on the pollinating insects
What an attack therefore represents is a concerted wave of suicides by a few hundred bees, who sacrifice their lives to protect a swarm of 60,000 individuals.
In March, a 53-year-old man working on a building site in Las Vegas, overturned a boulder and disturbed a hive of bees that quickly overwhelmed him.
Firemen had to blast the bees off him with high-pressure hoses because the insects had covered every square inch of his torso.
The victim survived, but ended up in intensive care having suffered more than 2,000 stings.
In 2000, a 77-year-old woman, also from Las Vegas, was stung more than 500 times and narrowly avoided death.
Bees swarm when on the lookout for a new site for their colony, using their good eyesight to fly in formation.
They can communicate using not only pheromones, but also the famous 'waggle dance', with 'scouts' wiggling their abdomens to indicate distance and direction for possible food sources or nesting sites.
So how do you avoid being attacked if you hear a swarm coming towards you?
Tips include wearing light clothing (bees seem to dislike dark colours so much that they attack them). They also hate floral or citrus perfumes, which they may find overwhelming or confusing.
Obviously, avoid disturbing them. Most attacks result from deliberate or accidental provocations, such as someone throwing a stone near a hive or banging into a tree with a lawn-mower.
If you come under attack from a swarm, the best - indeed, only - thing to do, say experts, is run.
Bees cannot fly at more than 10mph, which means you should be able to outpace them, at least for long enough to find shelter.
People who jump into a pond or stream and hide under water will find the bees waiting for them when they come up to breathe. And don't assume that because you have got away the bees will give up. It is important to get indoors as quickly as possible.
Few people - a handful every year worldwide - are killed by bees. This is in contrast to the billions who depend on the bee and other insects as a vital cog in the machinery of the world's web of life.
As Albert Einstein is reputed to have said: 'If the bee disappeared from the surface of the Earth, Man would have no more than four years to live.'
This isn't because we would run out of tasty honey, but because all the flowering plants would die, dependent as they are on pollinating insects to reproduce.
And with no flowering plants, the Earth's terrestrial ecosystem would collapse and life would come crumbling to a halt.
It is estimated that bees contribute about £850million a year to Britain's economy simply by pollinating commercial crops.
Of course, it isn't only bees that pollinate plants. Thousands of other insect species, as well as some birds and even bats, also do this vital job - but the bee has become a mascot, a totem representing the health of our planet.
Sadly, it seems that bees are in trouble. In the U.S., a mysterious phenomenon called colony collapse disorder (CCD) has led to the decimation of both wild and domesticated bees.
Since 2006, when CCD hit the headlines, bees have been disappearing in hives across Europe and Asia as well.
Man's relationship with bees is one of the oldest partnerships on the planet.
Throughout pre-history, wild honey was the only reliable source of sugar in the human diet, while bees have been domesticated for at least 4,500 years.
It is a partnership that, in general, has been hugely beneficial for both sides.
But, just occasionally, as the French attack shows, even the best partnerships can be marred by bad temper.
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