Vandals are damaging a historic site in Wales, and its operators have come up with an ingenious solution: protect the place with bees. This should work, for as noted bee expert Homer Simpson once observed, bees will bite your bottom, and then your bottom's big.
The operators of Greenfield Valley Heritage Park near Holywell, Wales are looking to protect the site's historic mills, which are under threat from unauthorized visitors to the fragile buildings. According to park manager Chris Wright, there's no real way to stop vandals who are determined to get inside the mills, so the solution is to have something there to welcome them. As such, makes the proposal of stationing a bunch of pissed off bees as mill security guards, according to Wright, "seem sensible." Never has the word "seem" been asked to do so much heavy lifting in a sentence.
As an added bonus, Wright says the bees could be used to pollinate wildflower meadows that don't exist yet, but could be created in the area. Plus, as the caption to the BBC News article puts it, "the idea is to use the bees as a security deterrent and sell honey in the park's new cafe," which actually reads as though the bees would be running the cafe themselves. If we really are headed towards an entire bee-run historical site, then I might actually be in favor of this. Shockingly, however, bee experts are not super thrilled about this idea:
They could be a deterrent," said Barbara Chick, publicity officer for the Welsh Beekeepers' Association. "I haven't heard of them being used as security bees."
However, she pointed out there may be health and safety issues if someone was stung and said she would not agree to their use as a security measure.
For more on this inspiring story of job creation for bees, check out BBC News.
Top image from The Simpsons, of course.