Little Tortoise and the Bees

While working with the bees I found these Leopard Tortoises living under the hives, where I guess they are eating the bees...

Jonkershoek National Park

A mountain area park with excellent waterfalls and plenty of herpetofauna (lizards you dumbass...)

The moutain stream

A frog in the stream

A little Gecko sort of thing

While photographing the previous lizard this guy ran down and started a threat display in front of me which involved running a short distance and then bobbibg his head up and down for a while, running some more and then bobbing...

After a bit of the threat dance he ran up an overhanging tree, looked down, and just kept bobbing

Jordan's Wines

The species I'm working on is called Apis mellifera, I'm doing the research in Stellenbosch, and my surname is Jordan. Coincidence? Or something more... sinister?

Hermanus and the Whales

Went to a place called Hermanus to see whales the other day. Saw them not 100 m off shore, frolicking around and spurting water. Good job all round really, except for the distant photographs.

Also saw little creatures called Dassies, which are the closest extant relative of the Elephant believe it or not. They live on the edges of sea rocks and eat grasses that grow there. Apparently they have hoofed feet like horses, cows etc, but I didn't ask them.


And on the way home some more Baboons.



This guy below was also in Hermanus, and is truly the scariest man I've ever met. He moved around much like a puppet, as though he weighed nothing despite his massive headdress. He also sang through his teeth in a high pitched hum and suddenly burst into fits of staccato, monotone laughter. If anyone gave him money he danced around in circles crying "Thank-lyou, Thank-lyou". The nightmares continue.

Hightailing it back home with a Bakkie full of Bees...

First light brought no good news today. At some point in the late night trip back to the guesthouse we had lost the lids of one of the killer bee hives, and in the quiet of dawn the bees were becoming restless. Getting in to the car involved a few more stings to the face and neck, though by now the swelling was as bad as was it was going to get and the pain was dulled by the lack of sleep. An old-wives' tale ran that sprinkling the hives with water would calm the bees, so Chris set out doing so while I quietly doubted the sanity of the exercise in general.

Once on the road things went as smoothly as could be expected, with stings coming regularly now as the morning sun woke the bees trapped in the cabin. Our first roadside stop though revealed a somewhat larger problem. Two more hives had lost their lids on the dirt roads, and although the bees stayed inside when the car was moving, the moment we stopped they started pouring out in their millions. We frantically tried to throw towels and jackets over the top and strap them down, but the onslaught of killer bees was too much for a decent job and we had to retreat to the car. It looked like we had done enough though: there were thousands rather than millions of little stinging bitches now, and we set out again.

The sinking petrol guage gave us our next cause to stop. I craned my neck out the window and saw some slight gaps in the coverings, but from where I was it looked good enough. We pulled up at the service station and were greeted as always in South African petrol stations by four or five attendants. Quickly they set about washing the windscreen, opening the petrol cap, checking the tyres. And quickly the Killer Bees set about f**king up all and sundry in the area. Pouring out into the petrol station the tiny weapons of death started stinging the attendants and then set out to find anything else that was moving...with dismay I watched a family pull up in 4WD and all hop out into the path of the bees.

Out of the car now and desperately pulling out bee veils on we shouted at them to run, but it had precious little effect. While I must admit the sight of everyone in the entire petrol station swatting at neck and face stings was mildly entertaining, I couldn't help but feel a little responsible. I turned at the sound of our bakkie puling away and saw that Chris had, in his desperation, ripped the petrol pump out and driven away with the fuel door swinging. It seems though, that just before fleeing for dear life, the attendant had set the pump to 'fill', and now, without a tank in which to pour its precious load, the pump was expelling its contents all over the ground. So there I stood, petrol welling around my feet, killer bees buzzing around my head, the entire petrol station deserted, and my co-pilot having disappeared in a puff of smoke. It was 8am and the day hadn't begun well.

Chris had parked the bakkie down the road, as far from people as he could manage, and came back to pay for the fuel. It had stopped free flowing now, and because we couldn't risk opening the door to go inside the shop, we left the money on the bowser and didn't look back. The bee hives were looking worse and worse, now not only were the lids missing, but they had shifted off their bases. We were beyond help now. There was hopefully enough fuel to make it home, and provided we didn't have to stop again we would be alright (or perhaps more importantly, the African public would be alright). Chris had now lost the plot entirely, one moment driving along calmly, the next bursting out with

"FUCK, THESE BEES FUCKED US MAN!"

"THIS IS KAK! THESE FUCKING BEES ARE KAK MAN!"

My reaction to these outbursts was uncontrolled laughter, like when you're in the principal's office and are trying to keep a straight face.

"THIS ISN'T FUCKING FUNNY MAN, PEOPLE ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE!"

More laughter from my side of the car.

So, all we had to do was not stop, and then no people would fucking die.

No such luck. A man in a council vest waving a red flag could never have known that stopping us for roadwork would bring such a load of kak onto his head. I waved and motioned like an idiot, trying to get him away from the car, and he smiled back. Soon the pain came, and away he ran. Away all the workmen ran. And there we sat, unable to move, hemmed in by cars around us with windows tightly rolled up looking at the cloud of bees now circling our bakkie. More outbursts from Chris. Finally we started moving again.

A few more stops for roadwork, a few more angry workers, a troupe of baboons that sat in the middle of the road until the bees had their way, and we were almost home. We couldn't stop at the toll gates of the expressway because "PEOPLE WILL FUCKING BE KILLED MAN!! THIS IS KAK!!", so we had to risk going the long way around.

About to pass through town, with its traffic lights and crossings, traffic jams and roundabouts, we decided we had to do something about these damn killer bees. It turned out the only way we could tie them down was for me to pull on a rope, jump in the car and slam the door on it, then Chris would tie it back on itself and we would be off. Rope in hand, I was ready to jump inside when I noticed the seat, the windscreen, the windows, and every other surface was covered in bees. Getting in would mean sitting on hundreds of bees that would sting through shirt and pants without trouble. A quick albeit temporary penis enlargement perhaps, but not something that appealed at the time. After a few harsh words between Chris and I, I found myself sitting on a cushion of stingers, trapped inside with thousands of killers, desperately trying to swat them away from sensitive areas. Seconds passed as the stings sunk into my flesh, minutes now, hours? Finally Chris finished and the windows could be opened, the bees were shooed out, my bits were intact and we made it home alive.

Just in case you think my little webpage is a load of old bollocks I've included this link to someone else's for comparison. It makes for interesting reading if you like to read other people answers to survey questions: http://bigmouthindeedstrikesagain.blogspot.com/

A trip to find the Killer Bee...

The trip started out much as you would expect any other African Adventure to, setting out before dawn, hurtling down rough dirt roads for ten hours in a beaten up old bakkie, narrowly avoiding oncoming traffic and wildlife, and having teeth peridoically shaken out of your head. This was not however, the kind of civilised African Safari that one might see in a 1940's movie. Here there were no khaki covered gentlemen smoking pipes with elephant rifles slung over their shoulders, gazing respectfully over the plains at a pride of lions.

Oh no, on this expedition there were no gentlemen, only one young university student, ill-advised in the ways of the African plains, and one weathered old man of the bush (above), ill-tempered as his partner was ill-advised, unhappy at the prospect of a ten hour journey, less happy still at what lay at it's end.

For this was not a trip to see the grand game of Africa, the cheetahs streaking across the Serengeti or the ponderous Giraffes leaning down for a closer look, but rather to find and bring home the one deadly African animal that no-one is interested in photographing, or even observing from the safety of a Land Rover. We were looking for the Killer Bee.

What seemed like a mildly entertaining concept in the planning stages became harsh reality ten hours down the road. With the local beekeepers (above) halfway between laughing and issuing serious warnings about death at the hands of these bees, the gravity of the situation quickly became apparent. I obediently suited up in my beesuit as instructed, and quietly thought I'd be safe enough if I just followed their lead...
I have many failings in life, and one of them is overconfidence at inappropriate times. This was one of those times. Dancing around like the Queen of the god-damned Faeries, I laughed in the face of the these so-called "Killer" Bees. Ha! Killers! You can't even get through my suit! Squashing them at will, I cried "Who is the killer now little bees?". With their tiny carcasses falling like the patter of rain at my feet, the joy of battle flowed through me. I was invincible, the pinnacle of evolution! With my superior technology I claimed dominion over all living things. I was a god to these soulless invertebrates...
At some point in my megalomanic ravings some bees found their way into my suit. The three centimetre buffer zone between veil and flesh is not the best place for killer bees to be really. The sweeping pain of multiple stings quickly made me realise that the tables of dominion had suddenly turned, and the gods had deserted me in my time of greatest need. Reaching my hands to the heavens I bellowed "What on Earth have I done to deserve this?". As my hands moved skywards the last few crushed bee corpses fell to the ground and I realised that perhaps this wasn't such a violation of Karma after all and I shut my mouth. The problem I had though, was that there is literally no escape from a situation like this. The killer bee has earnt its name because it does not content itself in simply shooing a honey thief away. The killer bee will chase down its target and sting it until it drops in a twitching mass, and even then will sting a few more times just to make sure.
So when one has bees in one's bonnet so to speak, it is not simply a matter of retreating to an area away from the bees and letting them out, because in so doing one would be letting eight million others in.
So, all that can be done is to let the bees sting and hope no more get in. And that is more or less what I did, though I may have wimpered a little at times. Letting that happen can give you a face like this though...and that is more or less what happened.