Adapt to the surroundings
If you find something black on the hood of your car as you rush towards it, what will you think? A piece of wet cloth left behind by the cleaner, or a plastic bag blown there by the wind. Sorry, you got it all worng.
My mom, a zoologist, found an entire swarm of honey bees. It then struck her that the previous evening, she had heard a thud when driving past an avenue tree. A branch had fallen on the car. That probably was the connection.
The watchman was summoned and he suggested that fire was the only solution. Not happy with the option, my mom began her journey hoping that the speed would dislodge them or at least the trees in her college campus would lure them. However they stuck around the whole day, like a dog that has found its master, and seemed to have no plans of leaving anytime soon.
With no options left but to convert them into study material for batches of students, the lab assistant was employed to douse them with alcohol to capture them.
But, unlike human beings, I think the bees’ motto was ‘yield not to temptation’; for they took to their wings and disappeared in no time.
A rare encounter but it raises a valid question: When the branch fell off the car the previous evening, why didn’t the bees? Has urbanisation led to bees preferring cars?
Keywords: human interest
