'After studying the dance that bees perform when they return from finding a food source, what is called their 'waggle dance,' I decided to see if the bees could give flight instructions for the colony to navigate to a fight as well as a find. Could this honey-dance serve as a bee warning system, a kind of communal radar?'
They nodded and she continued.
'Actually, I must give credit for the idea to what happened in Poland, immediately following Chernobyl. Beekeepers there began to notice that foraging bees were being stung to death by their own colonies, immediately after they returned home. The other bees could somehow sense they'd been irradiated, you see, and were a danger to the colony. Well, if looked at politically, it seemed a lesson in the creation of enemies to benefit the community. The radioactive bees became a threat that the colony organized to fight, in order to survive. So I decided to re-create those conditions. But without the radiation, of course.'
As she spoke she set a container on the counter that contained a single live bee. She took a pair of forceps from the counter and, lifting the lid of the container slightly, inserted the forceps and very gently grabbed the bee with them and took it out of the container.
'Now, my methods may seem rather gruesome, but I assure you, bees have absolutely no equivalent to our sensation of pain.'
She paused, the bee struggling in the grip of the forceps. Then she took a pair of tweezers and, one at a time, neatly plucked the wings from the bee. She stepped over to the shield and placed her hand on the handle of a small trapdoor set into the shield. She opened the trapdoor about an inch, put the forceps and bee into the chamber, dropped the bee so that it landed squarely in the middle of one of the honeycombs, then snapped the trapdoor closed.
'You see the poor fellow moving across the backs of its fellows?' They could see the wounded bee crawling across others in the hive, in great agitation. 'This is much as any worker does when returning with the report of a find. And, just as in that dance of honey, this dance of, well, dismemberment includes pauses where, normally, the bee would stop and hum.' Here, she emitted a quite cheery little hum. 'You see?
'But of course this bee has nothing to hum with, which makes its dance quite exceptional… see there, now?' She pointed again into the chamber. She noticed their reluctance. 'Come closer, gentlemen. I assure you there's no danger.'
They moved closer to the shield and leaned in. The bee she'd placed in the hive was scrambling around now in awkward figure eights, and the other bees seemed to be taking notice of it. They formed an uneven circle around the wounded bee, a small space cleared of contact.
'Now, there certainly is no denying the vigor of the wounded bee's dance. I was looking for some indication of how the communal sense of bees would respond to a purely individual situation: a single, wounded bee, speaking energetically, if somewhat ungrammatically, of its own dire predicament.'
She turned to face them, held up a finger in emphasis.
' But what I had failed to take into account was Mr. Mandeville's book and his idea that there is no individual among bees. A thing exists to them as something that either benefits the entire swarm or threatens it. There is no in between.'
By now the circle around the wounded bee was growing smaller, tightening around the space in which it frantically gyrated.
'You see, gentlemen, how they first move away, then close in? Well, at first I was so taken by this response of the swarm, I forgot about my wounded bee. And when I remembered him again, he wasn't there. He had simply disappeared.'
As she said this, the two men looked into the chamber-and indeed, the wingless bee was nowhere to be seen among the swarm.
She leaned toward them.
'Here,' she said. 'Have a look.' She handed Wolfe a large magnifying glass. He placed it against the shield, put his eye close.
'I don't-,' he said.
'Look carefully,' she said.
Wolfe paused, then. 'Is that-?'
'Yes, indeed,' said Edith. 'Mr. Wainwright, would you care to see?'
Wolfe backed away, handed Benjamin the magnifying lens. Benjamin placed it against the shield, as he'd seen Wolfe do.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the magnified bees, their compound eyes enormous, the thousands of hairs along their bodies and legs. Then he noticed something alien in the mandibles of one bee. He looked to Edith.
'What I saw then is what you see now,' she said, looking into his eyes. 'Bits and pieces of my wingless sacrifice in the mandibles of other bees: here a leg, there a section of stripped fuzz…'
Benjamin handed the glass back, not wishing to look again.
'You see, gentlemen? They've quite literally torn him limb from limb.'
She crossed her hands against her white lab smock, waiting for their response.
They were both silent for a moment. Then Wolfe asked, 'And you gave this same… demonstration to Dr. Fletcher?'
'Oh yes. He was intensely interested. Which is why later, when I thought of the Mandeville book, I decided to trot it over to him. And that's when I discovered the corpus delicti. '
'Well,' began Wolfe. And then he seemed to have nothing to say, still shaken by the demonstration. 'Well, Edith, thank you for this… enlightening session.' They started to leave, then Wolfe stopped and turned to her.
'One other question.' He flashed that charming smile. 'What kinds of bees are you working with?'
'Why, Apis mellifera scutellata, of course. They're such an… energetic species. One tends to get results faster.'
'Apis…?' said Wolfe vaguely.
' Mellifera scutellata, ' completed Edith. 'For Africanized bee. Of course they're popularly known as killer bees, but that name, as regards their dealings with human beings, is quite ridiculous. Of course, in this instance,' and she motioned toward the chamber where they'd just witnessed the almost ritualistic cannibalization of the de- winged bee, 'it seems appropriate, doesn't it?' She smiled.
'Doesn't that…,' Benjamin began. 'Well, aren't you a little… frightened to be working with them?'
'I've been working with these little fellows for quite some time, young man. And just in case-' She pointed to a large red button set into the wall next to the lab door.
'An alarm?' asked Wolfe.
'That button activates an alarm, yes, but it also causes a gas to be sprayed into the laboratory. From those.' She pointed to the ceiling, to what looked like fire sprinklers.
'But wouldn't the gas-,' began Wolfe.
'It's instantly fatal to the bees, but merely irritating to humans. A bit like tear gas, I understand.' She saw the looks of doubt on their faces. 'Don't worry about me, gentlemen. I respect my bees, but I don't fool myself that they respect me.'
'Yes,' said Wolfe. 'Well, thank you, Edith. Thank you for your time.'
'Not at all,' she said, already turning back to her work.
Nodding good-bye, Benjamin followed Wolfe out the swinging doors of the laboratory.
CHAPTER 9
A few moments after speaking with Edith, Wolfe and Benjamin were outside in the quad, sitting on a bench beneath a tremendous sycamore tree.
Benjamin looked farther out to the west, to the low, rolling hills, covered with similar trees in their fall splendor. The trimmed hedges, bright flowers, warm-colored leaves all seemed a world away from the metal and plastic and methodical cruelty they'd just left.
'Well, that was…,' Benjamin began.
