Texan Develops Innovative Solution for Killer-Bee Attacks

By John Pint
 

The threat of Africanized Honey Bees (AHB) is well known in Mexico, where the bee population “went African” many years ago, and where hundreds of humans and animals have been killed by them, but only recently have people in the southern United States discovered the grim reality of an AHB attack.

Will Baird, a wildlife conservationist and inventor living in Houston, Texas was deeply affected a few years ago, by the tragic fate of a good friend. “He was my neighbor and was just about to be married,” says Baird. “He had a few bee hives on his property and overnight one of them was Africanized. The next day, my friend began mowing his grass. As he approached the hives, a cloud of bees poured out and attacked him. He jumped off the tractor and the mower cut off his legs. It was a horrible way to die.”

During the following months, Baird decided to seek a way for people to defend themselves against an attack by Africanized bees. Because the bees are particularly irritated by the roar and vibrations of motorized vehicles, Baird first worked on how to protect a tractor driver. Knowing that bees can’t stand smoke, he tried attaching smoke bombs to a tractor. This approach failed because the wind either blew the smoke in the wrong direction or obscured the vision of the driver.

Then Baird had an inspiration: what about water vapor instead of smoke? He soon found out that bees have a defensive mechanism to prevent their drowning in a spray of water. “Bees breathe through their thorax,” he explains, “and they have waxy hairs around the thorax which make the water bead up, so the flow of air is unimpeded.” Baird next searched for a formula that would allow water to bypass the waxy hairs. Once he found it, he says, he discovered that a spray of vapor would immediately kill the bees swarming over the body of a victim under attack and would then hold other bees at bay, allowing the victim to escape or be rescued.

“At first we thought we needed an awful lot of this liquid,” states Baird, “but we forgot about the bees’ ability to communicate among themselves. The relatively small number of dying bees immediately warn the living which will then hover above the spray but no longer try to penetrate it.”

Because the bees are forced to stand off, their victims are given the precious moments they need to move away from the “hot zone” around an AHB hive.

Baird put his formula into devices mounted on tractors, portable units for rescuers and 18-ounce spray cans. The formula was then tested extensively by Texas A&M University and the dramatic results can be seen in a video on www.beealert.com .

Emergency Medical Technicians use a portable BeeAlert sprayer during a test-rescue in east Texas, conducted by Texas A&M. Instead of receiving hundreds of stings, as in a normal attack, the victim was stung only twice and a rescuer once.   Photo courtesy of Will Baird.

“What’s unique about this liquid,” says Baird, “is that it is completely non-toxic both to people and to the environment. It simply interferes with the bees’ breathing.” He points out that it can be safely sprayed directly on the body and face of a person covered with bees, unlike an insecticide or firefighting foam, both of which are toxic.

Baird now heads a company called BeeAware, Inc. which operates out of Houston, Texas. Although the spray (called BeeAlert) is still not available from retailers in Mexico, it is expected to be for sale south of the border in 2010.

When asked whether he has received any feedback from his customers, Baird replied, “Just one week ago I got a phone call. ‘Is this Will Baird?’ asked the caller. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Well, I want to thank you,’ said the voice. ‘You saved my life.’ ”
Baird’s caller had been operating a bulldozer. When he began to move some boulders, killer bees swarmed out and began stinging him. He jumped off the bulldozer and ran towards a Jeep where a friend was waiting. The bees followed him and immediately attacked the friend and his dog, both of which were sitting in the unroofed vehicle. By chance, the friend had a can of BeeAlert in the car and sprayed it upward, in a circular motion. The bees then stopped their attack and after a few moments, the men and the dog left the scene, having received only a few stings.

“In short,” says Baird, “it works.”
 

 

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