STARS 1 LIVRO

SHADOWING 2
H o w T o R e s c u e 2 0 M i l l i o n A n g r y B e e s
http://esl-bits.net/listening/Media/2014-06-20/Angry.Bees/default.html
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Every year, millions of commercial honey
bees hit the road headed to farms around
the country to pollinate crops. Occasionally,
there are mishaps like the one that took
place this past week in Delaware when a
tractor-trailer carrying hundreds of
beehives tipped over on the highway.
We wondered - how do you go about
wrangling almost 20 million angry bees?
Deborah Delaney is an entomologist at the
University of Delaware, and she was on the
scene of that accident. She joins us to
explain what she saw. Deborah, thanks so
much for being with us.
DEBORAH DELANEY: Oh, thank you so
much for having me.
MARTIN: So you're a bee specialist, and
when something like this happens - which
apparently it does from time to time - your
phone ends up ringing. You traveled to the
scene, as we mentioned. What was the
situation when you got there? Paint us a
picture.
DELANEY: Well, when we arrived, it was
probably around 9 o'clock. And I believe the
accident occurred quite a bit earlier, at least
three hours earlier. So it was dark. There
were about four other beekeepers there
with smoke and clouds and clouds of angry
bees, completely disoriented bees clinging
onto every possible surface and just a heap
of colonies overturned.
MARTIN: So how do you even begin to get
the bees back into the hives and back onto a
truck? Can you walk me through it?
DELANEY: It's tricky. I wish I had a pipe so I
could, you know, whistle a beautiful melody
to get them all to go back in, but it's not that
easy.
MARTIN: (Laughter) It doesn't work that
way.
DELANEY: When they're that disturbed and
agitated, if you come near them, they're going to
sting you. And they're trying to get into your suit
and your veil. So we're just using smoke. Any big
pallet that we could find in the wreck, we would
pull down and lay on the ground. And then any intact,
deep boxes - which are the main brood
chamber where the queen should be, and also
her young and eggs - we would try to recover that
and put that on the pallet. They could then load
that onto another truck with a forklift, and take it
back to a holding yard to assess the damage for
later.
MARTIN: What about the finances of this,
Deborah? For a beekeeper to lose that many
beans, how much money does that mean?
DELANEY: I would be crying, I think. What I've
heard is that it was valued at about a quarter of a
million dollars. It was about $250,000, and that
was including the money that he would have
gotten from the pollination contract.
MARTIN: This isn't the first time an accident like
this has happened. Is this just part of the deal of
transporting bees? You have to factor in a level of
risk or are there certain safety precautions that
can and should be taken, do you think, to prevent
this?
DELANEY: I know that they're getting more
efficient with how to load them securely, making
sure that the load is balanced and equalized on
the truck. And I know that certain people, some
migratory beekeepers are even looking into plans
of building and making trucks where the bees are
actually kept inside of a more climatized
container unit. We're going to definitely see
advances in this area.
MARTIN: Deborah Delaney is assistant professor
of entomology at the University of Delaware,
talking to us about catching bees. Thanks so
much, Deborah.
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