The Archive

To bee or not to bee

I’ve discovered something that I think is really interesting but I’m not sure how to make it funny or blogworthy.

Nevertheless, here goes.

It turns out that scientists at the University of Montana have been training bees to sniff out the location of buried landmines. And with some success too.

Minesniffing Bees

Now I’m all in favour of drafting the animal kingdom into human conflict, after all, they live off our land, they should fight for it too, but this notion does raise a couple of frightening scenarios.

Firstly, can you imagine the arguments in the forces over these little fellas?

Air Commodore: I’m sorry, they’re obviously part of the RAF. They fly, for goodness’ sakes. And look, I’m sure that one’s got a tiny handlebar moustache.

General: Nonsense. They find mines. That’s the job of the Royal Corps of Engineers. And they work incredibly hard. They must be Army insects.

Admiral: I’m sorry chaps, you’re both wrong. They buzz around making a fucking nuisance of themselves when you’re trying to have a beer in the summer. Obviously they’re sailors.

Secondly, given that escalation is an inevitable consequence of the development of arms, what happens next?

Presumably, the enemy will begin countermeasures, perhaps in the form of training their own creature to eat the bees. A quick google suggests rather obvious candidate: the bee eater bird.

Obviously then we’ll have to give our bees the means to defend themselves. So suddenly there’s a whole new breed of bee with tiny, shoulder mounted missiles or little machine guns clenched between its front four legs.

And if low budget television has taught us anything, it’s that Frankenstein always runs out of control. So soon, instead of being able to ignore the bug buzzing around your head as you ramble the Kent countryside, you’ll find yourself diving for cover and wondering “Did that bee fire six shots already, or was it just five? Do I feel lucky? Do I?”

What’s more, the New Bee spells the end for those crazy old men who do the beard of bees trick. True, the high explosive version would certainly be spectacular, but you’d only really get one chance at it.

Finally, once you’ve got bees in the army, how do you promote one of them if it does a great job? I mean, it’s already got stripes.

PS Nice to see my blog is influencing the national media. I opened my copy of the Metro today (London free paper that commuters read, for my enormous international audience), and who should I spy a picture of on the television pages? Only the Jeanette the lovely taxidermist (aka the fox-stuffing fox).

Watch out for a bee feature in the paper next week I guess.

posted by Peter The Great @ 3:33 PM