Pandora's Blog

Originally published in Reflection's Edge, September 2009

November 25

I got a bio internship at Portland State University starting next quarter, working for Professor H. He has a USDA grant for "Colony Collapse Disorder of the Western Honeybee",exploring methods to reverse it. That’s better than my alternative, which was to work on a Pfizer-sponsored drug trial for erectile dysfunction in rats. (What would Aunt Beatrice say?)

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January 7

Matt’s the other grad student on the project. He was one of my lab partners in O-Chem, and was sweet to me then. But in our initial meeting with Professor H., he said, "We’ll need an acronym. How about Bee Extinction Reversal Project? We can get stickers printed for hives that say ‘BERP me’."

Men are drones.

January 8

Professor H. summarized common theories for Colony Collapse Disorder: climate change, disease, pesticides, air pollution, insect-resistant transgenic corn for ethanol, and cell phone radiation.

The rat ED grad students all got iPhones using their grant money. What do cell phones have to do with their research? I asked one of the Ratboyz, and he said they need to be on call 24/7.

Sigh. I’m trying to convince Professor H. to buy us a hive.

January 11

Queen’s rook pawn to eighth rank. Promote to queen. That’s what happens to Cape honeybees in South Africa: adult worker bees can be reborn as queens. Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve our problem. The hives already have queens, but they vanish with their colony, without a trace.

New rat cages were delivered for the ED project: not lab cages, but multi-level pet habitats. I expect to see rats wearing smoking jackets and sipping tiny martinis. The males are in the small mammal lab on the east side of the building, and Matt and I were assigned lab space at the end of it. I’m not sure where the female rats are.

January 13

Professor H. presented another theory. He compared the inbreeding of western honeybee queens to the rise of hemophilia in 19th century European royalty.

Matt says, "So the queen has to mate with a commoner. Where do we find a bee stud?"

You can’t get much more common than a drone. But it’s an interesting question. There are global seed vaults, like at Svalbard in the Arctic (click Doomsday Vault). But what about animals? Nobody cares about the bees.

January 14

One in 5,895,200: the odds of being killed by bees. What about by rats? I found the Bio department’s old cages, in the insect lab in the basement. That’s where the harems live, multiple rats to a cage. Trickle-down from Pfizer hasn’t reached the females. The males in their sunny penthouses seem pretty mellow, but the females show their teeth. If they break out of the dungeon, we’re rat chow.

Nothing’s happening on our project. Am I the only one with a sense of curiosity?

I’m going to have to take charge.

January 15

Curious about Matt’s bee stud idea, I did some research. We want a drone sufficiently isolated from the current population that it predates CCD. How far back can we go? There are bees in amber, like the insects in Jurassic Park. So I clicked on eBay. Sure enough, they have insects in amber for sale. But I have questions about their condition, era and species. Out of 20,000 species of bees, only seven are honeybees. That’s a longshot.

The Ratboyz are growing whiskers to embrace their rathood. You won’t see Matt and me painting stripes on our faces and wearing deely-bobbers.

January 16

I made a suggestion. There are stories of seeds taken from ancient Egyptian burial tombs that still germinate after thousands of years. And we know they domesticated honeybees. Did they store hives in the burial vaults?

Professor H. was skeptical, but Matt piped up, "I’ve played Tomb Raider I, II and III. Buy me a ticket to Cairo, and I’ll check it out."

We can’t afford anything. This is hopeless.

January 18

Sometimes the mountain comes to Muhammad. Next month, the Portland Art Museum will host a traveling exhibit, "Anubis and Osiris: Afterlife of the Pharaohs." It’s in L.A. now. Curious, I clicked on exhibit inventory. They’ve got a hive! At least I think it’s a hive. The Egyptians used cylinders of baked clay, which is what it looks like. One desiccated larva is all we need for DNA extraction.

The bad news: sealed glass cases, security guards, alarms, cameras, and who knows what else.

The good news: the museum needs volunteers to help with setup, and PSU grad students are welcome. We signed up.

Matt thinks this is cool. I’m scared to death about what we’re planning, but I didn’t let on. Somebody has to save the bees, but what would Aunt Beatrice say?

January 24

We had an orientation meeting at the Portland Art Museum (click PAM.) They showed us notebooks of exhibit instructions from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (clickESCA.) The instructions are in fractured English. Most museum volunteers were interested in the art treasures like the sarcophagi and vases with hieroglyphics. Matt and I had no competition signing up for the boring clay hive and some agricultural tools.

The hive openings are sealed with baked clay, which seems odd. You’d think the burial attendants would have used beeswax, right? It’s like they didn’t want these bees to escape, even in the afterlife. Weird.

The tricky part will be piercing a seal and extracting life that’s thousands of years old. Matt proposed borrowing a power chisel and laparoscopic surgery tools. We compromised on a small battery-powered drill and a little vacuum cleaner: the kind they use to vacuum dust out of keyboards. Matt says our most difficult task will come later: unwinding the long strips of linen from around the bee larva.

Professor H. is washing his hands of all this.

What would Beatrice say (WWBS)?

January 28

The Egyptian crates arrived at PAM, and our work began.

Matt says he and I are founding members of the Mummy Bee Liberation Front, MBLF. (Don’t click—it’s a joke.)

The packing materials were layered like a mummy. First we removed the outer casing. Inside that was injected plastic foam. Then long windings of bubble wrap. Then plastic film to protect from moisture. We were wearing latex gloves, and I tried to keep my hands from shaking.

While I kept watch to make sure no one was looking, Matt used the drill, which he muffled with bubble wrap. It took a long time—why did the ancients seal this so well? Finally he peeked in the hole, and I heard him whisper, "Osiris calling. Come to the light, little ones." Then he vacuumed. That was un-muffled, and a man glanced our way. I gave him my "helpful volunteer" smile, and he turned away.

We sealed the hole with chewing gum. From grade school experience, I know dried gum lasts for eternity.

It will be a week before my heart rate drops back to normal.

January 29

We transferred the vacuum cleaner contents to a test tube and gave it to Professor H., telling him not to ask where we got it. It’s mostly dust, but there are some recognizable insect parts. Professor H. made a show of pessimism, but I can tell it’s a façade. He’s a leading expert on insect DNA extraction and embryo microinjection.

We’re going to save the bees!

February 13

The good news: Professor H. was successful with the DNA extraction and has begun replicating the genetic material in the form of bee sperm.

The bad news: No luck finding an apiary to experiment on. The minute we say DNA, beekeepers freak out. We could buy our own colony and a hive, but this is an urban campus. Where would we set it up?

February 14

I walked though the sunny RatPalace this morning and spotted my name on a whiteboard. There was a crudely drawn rat with an erection next to my name, and a red heart drawn around both. Underneath, it said, "Will you Bee my honey?" It was unsigned.

Jerks.

February 16

The harem rats down in the RatCave are breeding like, well, rats. The little pink babies with their eyes shut are so cute!

The Ratboyz have even less to do than the male rats. I cannot believe they’re getting thesis credit for this.

February 24

We found hives! Not what we were originally looking for, but they’re perfect. We learned of a house on the outskirts of Portland that was foreclosed. The previous owner had a hobby farm in back, complete with beehives.

We drove out to look at it today. It has a "For Sale" sign in front, and the three-car garage is empty. Matt says those are signs of Human Colony Collapse.

We shooed away a neighbor’s annoying yappy little dog and found the sorry-looking apiary is in back. Only thirteen hives, and upon examination, only one has bees. The other twelve show classic signs of CCD: capped brood and honey in the hives, but no adult bees to care for them. And no dead bees nearby. Eerie. Where did they go?

But it’s just the opportunity we need. Can we revive the apiary with DNA from the mummy bees?

February 25

Did you know you can order virgins online? Queens, that is. They only mate once. We ordered ours here. When she arrives tomorrow (next day air), we’ll micro-impregnate her with mummy sperm, then substitute her for the hive’s legitimate ruler. Matt says we’re like gods (Aunt Beatrice would faint). He calls it the Madonna method, and has been humming "Like a Virgin."

I hope we don’t lose her tiny crown during the swap.

March 1

Today was B-Day.

We drove out at dusk and shooed away the neighbor’s yappy dog. The hobby barn still held beekeeper equipment, and we smoked the surviving hive to put the beauties to sleep.

Then we committed regicide. I feel guilty about that. She was probably a good queen, beloved by her subjects.

Long live the new queen!

Back in the lab, we unwrapped chocolate cigars.

March 5

We waited a few days before checking to make sure our ruse succeeded.

Her Majesty #2 is laying eggs in the comb. The female worker bees are constructing more cells in the hive. Nothing for the male drone princes of the previous queen to do but goof off, just like the Ratboyz.

Not that there’s much for us to do, either. By the time the gestation period is over, it will be spring break. I’ll be dying of curiosity by the time we return. Will we be able to tell the new bees apart?

March 10

As I was walking through the RatPalace this morning, sunlight streaming through the windows, three whisker-faced Ratboyz were loitering. One jostled me, groping me in the process. He claimed he was blinded by the sun.

I responded with language Aunt Beatrice would never use, and the headline that flashed through my head was "Three blind Ratboyz suffer tragic accident with carving knife."

Jerks.

March 15

Spring break starts this afternoon. Matt and I checked the hive one last time. I’m curious to extract one of the larvae that are about to emerge, but with our precious buns in the oven, we don’t want anything to go wrong.

The Ratboyz left yesterday. They hired a freshman, Jenny, who’s staying on campus during break, to feed the rats and clean the cages. She came to me this morning, frantic with questions: the Ratboyz neglected to tell her any details, like where the food pellets are stored.

March 24, AM

We’re back. Matt and I had agreed to return from spring break early to observe the hives before Professor H. puts us to work updating spreadsheets.

Something’s wrong. We drove out to the apiary Saturday morning before lunch. We found the neighbor’s yappy little dog dead in the back yard. Also several squirrels, birds and a raccoon. Did someone set out poison?

At least our hive still has bees buzzing around it. That’s a relief. The colony looks healthy, but the only way to know for sure is to take some bees back to the lab for study. A beenapping, Matt calls it.

March 24, PM

We returned at twilight, when the bees had settled into the hive for the night. We smoked the hive to put the bees to sleep, slid out a comb frame, shook bees from it into a collecting tray and put the lid back on. The hive looks healthier than ever: thousands and thousands of bees. We beenapped a few hundred—Her Majesty won’t even notice.

But back at the lab, we began to get worried. Most of the bees look weird. We killed one and examined it under a microscope. It’s almost entirely black, even the wings, and the mandibles, proboscis and tongue don’t look suitable for nectar collection. The stinger is barb-less, like a wasp’s. Whatever was in the mummy’s tomb, it wasn’t species apismellifera. The bees are sluggish, still half-asleep from the smoke.

I’m going to have nightmares tonight.

March 25, AM

Sunday morning, I’d had trouble sleeping, so I went in to the lab at dawn. Dead silence in the small mammal lab. No scratching, no squeaking. I turned on the lights.

The male rats are all dead.

I put on a facemask and latex gloves and gently lifted one of the rats from his penthouse cage. Rigor mortis had set in. His eyes were open, with a horrific stare of death. His body is emaciated. Rubbing his fur the wrong way, I saw dozens of bloody dots: puncture wounds. Something got in through the bars and sucked the lifeblood from him.

The bees! I ran to the end of the lab, where Matt and I had left the collecting tray. The perforated plastic top was a lot more perforated: In several places, bee-sized holes had been gnawed through it. I panicked, realizing they were loose in the building, and ran outside.

Hands shaking, I called Matt with my cell. His cell went to voicemail and I called again. On the fourth try, he finally answered, asking why I’d woken him. By that point, I was nearly hysterical.

When he arrived, he insisted on going inside. I argued against it, but he opened the door. I followed. We turned on all the lights. Do you know old fluorescent fixtures buzz just like bees? We were whispering. I was shaking. Where were they hiding?

Finally we went down to the insect lab, the dungeon.

Squeaks! Scratching! Life!

And the smell of blood.

Blood was spattered all around the cages, and we saw hundreds of dead bees.

We believe the males died one at a time, overwhelmed by the swarm. But in the crowded harems, the females fought together to protect their young. The mummy bees, already engorged with blood, were no match for their sharp teeth.

Now we know why the Egyptians went to so much trouble to seal that colony.

We have to destroy the hive.

March 25, PM

Taking no chances, we donned beekeeper gear from the barn. We smoked the hive, opened it, and doused it with enough insecticide to create an EPA Hazmat site. There were no survivors. We searched through the hive till we found Queen #2 and crushed her. If any mummy bees are out hunting and return, they’ll die as soon as they enter the hive. I’ve never been so happy to see a colony collapse.

School starts tomorrow. Our thesis project is ruined. Matt and I are going to McMenamin’s to drown our sorrows.

March 26, AM

I woke up on the couch in Matt’s apartment.

God, my head hurts. And somehow, my bra teleported itself onto Matt’s kitchen counter. What was I thinking? What was I drinking?

I dragged myself to the small mammal lab. Thank God we cleaned everything up on Sunday.

Jenny was there, red-faced and crying, surrounded by angry Ratboyz. They accused her of letting the rats starve over spring break. I laid into them, saying what happened was obviously a side effect of the ED drug, since it only affected the males.

With doubt creeping into the Ratboyz, I grabbed Jenny’s hand and rescued her from the lab.

Matt and I had a mid-morning briefing with Professor H. We didn’t tell him everything, and it was clear he didn’t want to know more. He said something important, though:

"Did you check the other hives?"

March 26, PM

We returned to the apiary. A month ago, when we examined the 13 original colonies, 12 were dead of CCD.

Today, one colony is dead, laid waste by our assault yesterday. But the other 12 have risen from the dead. Only a few hundred bees each, which is why we hadn’t noticed before.

How could that be? There was only one queen!

We found the answer: mummies promoting themselves to queens, just like the Cape honeybees in South Africa.

Matt quoted a line from Aliens: "I say we nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure."

What we wouldn’t do for some WMDs.

March 27, AM

Walking through the RatPalace with its now empty cages, I saw one of the Ratboyz sitting at a lab bench, head in his hands, trembling. He’s the one who "accidentally" groped me a month ago. Today, I’ve got worse things to worry about, but I asked if he was okay.

It took him a while to answer, but he finally stammered, "Prolonged usage can lead to sudden blood loss and death."

He never cared about the rats before. Why now?

I said, "It’s a shame about the rats, but that’s what animal drug trials are for, right? You experiment on rats before you let humans try it, so people don’t get hurt."

That’s when he started crying.

I get it now. How could the Ratboyz be so stupid?

I met Matt in the PSU library. He’s been researching IEDs, and he says we need to act tonight, blitzkrieg-style. When he started babbling about stealing the Ratboyz’ iPhones to use as remote detonators, I got him out of there fast.

I never realized biology was such a dangerous field.

March 27, PM

A beautiful Oregon spring night: soft rain falling; the sounds of crickets and frogs; the scent of grass and spring flowers. And two PSU terrorists skulking through a backyard with IED-filled backpacks. Matt wanted to go alone, but I insisted we’re in this together. WWBS?

It’s late enough that all the mummies are in the hives. We suited up in full beekeeper gear and sealed the entrances to the hives with duct tape. That won’t hold them for long. We saw how they broke out in the lab. We’re using cheap alarm clocks for detonation timers. The neighbors are going to freak when the hives burst into flames, but they’re nowhere near the houses.

By the time the fire department gets here, we’ll be long gone and Osiris will be greeting his mummies in the afterlife.

March 28

Our fire made the news. (Video here.) That was great, because it meant we could survey the results without going near the crime scene. As the firefighters poked through the ashes looking for clues, we could see the destruction was complete. Hooray!

On the down side, our thesis project is a complete bust. Professor H. made us delete all our files, and we can’t publish anything.

Maybe I’ll become a hair stylist like Aunt Beatrice.

May 5

I got a bio internship! Working for Professor H. again. He received a grant from Brazil’s Ministry of Tourism (click BMT) to study the anaconda population decline. Nobody cares about the snakes.

But a gray bee buzzed through the lab today.

Where did that come from?