Australian writer and humourist Clive James dined out for years on his hilarious description of a sublimely dreadful disaster movie called The Swarm, but fact catches up with fiction, and now communities across the United States are shivering in their shingles over the threat posed by swarms of Killer Bees, accidentally released in Brazil a few years back after a misbegotten attempt to crossbreed docile American bees with the fierce African variety; the insects, buzzing in unhoneyed tones are flying remorselessly up from the South and threaten the beekeeping industry from coast to coast – but wait, help is at hand: Martin Marietta Energy Systems folk working at the Oakbridge National Laboratory have come up with one of those multidecker chips so small it can be attached to the thorax of members of the swarm (first catch your bee) and will enable scientists to track the movements of the swarms precisely, so that antibeecraft guns firing insecticide can be directed precisely at the bees in areas where it will do least harm to other life – and for francophones who know that outre Manche they call chips puces, it all seems most apt – set a flea to catch a bee.
