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Bees Ground Stealth Fighter

posted by martyb on Tuesday August 16 2016, @09:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the buzzy-bunch-needs-new-home dept.

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

El Reg reports

20,000 [...] bees were found in the exhaust nozzle of an F-22 Raptor engine following flight operations at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, on June 11, 2016.

Rather than kill the bees--America is badly affected by hive collapse, the base decided to call on a beekeeper to take them away.

Andy Westrich, US Navy retiree, was the apiarist known to the on-base entomologist (the Air Force keeps insect experts on its bases, apparently). Westrich used vacuum hoses to trap the bees, and he calculated the swarm size from the weight of the captured bees--eight pounds, or in modern numbers, 3.6 kilos.

From the USAF release: "Westrich suspected that the swarm of bees were on their way to a new location to build a hive for their queen. [...] Westrich believes she landed on the F-22 to rest. Honey bees do not leave the queen, so they swarmed around the F-22 and eventually landed there."

wordlessTech has a good photo.

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  • (Score: 2) by CoolHand on Tuesday August 16 2016, @12:36PM

    by CoolHand (438) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @12:36PM (#388654) Journal
    I'm glad the USAF actually cared enough to take the time to help the bees out, instead of indiscriminately killing them, as the military normally does things. That's a bit TIC, but I actually am quite serious that I think it's great they did that, when they could very easily have just killed them all.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @12:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @12:40PM (#388656)

    Quite, I thought the same thing. They took the time to call a bee-keeper and get him to collect the bees. I think that's great!
    The article also nicely tied in with (although did not explain) the dieing off of bees which is going to present us in a couple of years with a larger problem than just grounding planes, which, let's face it, are just expensive toys for folks with too much money on their hands.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday August 16 2016, @05:21PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @05:21PM (#388742)

    Bees' lives matter!

    By the way, redoing the stealth coat on the F22, after the bees left, probably cost six figures. So did the Approved Bee Vacuum System.