Mobs

           I’m sitting outside the bookstore at ASU, waiting for my son to finish his internship work for the afternoon. We share a car, and his schedule is tight: out of school at 1:15, work 1:35 to 2:35, soccer practice 3:00–5:00, so I’m chauffeuring for the next couple of months. There’s a nice patio here, with tables, a patterned brick walkway and almost-attractive bright yellow awnings.

          Yellow (gold) is right for Sun Devils, but the designer wasn’t thinking of the color’s natural advertisement for bees. That is bees: the insect that just killed a hiker last week in Camelback Mountain’s Echo Canyon, driving his friends into a cave to wait for rescue, each stung about 300 times. The ones buzzing around here seem more friendly; they so far only nibble at my book and move on. The girl sitting on this bench, however, was driven from the tables when two of the insects became intent upon her caramel Frappicino.

 This guy is next, sitting in her old spot with a delicious-looking watermelon FUZE. It looks like it may be diet, though, so the bees will probably make a swift direct course to the plate of pasta.

Lunches attract the grackles as well, but they are even more polite than the bees, in contradiction to their group behavior. They're boorish when it comes to other birds, at least when they have numbers on their side. 

          Bees swarm when forming a new colony like fish schooling, because a group is protective. When swarming, they're docile. But a colony of africanized bees – the ones that the hikers probably encountered – considers every disturbance the enemy. Bee keepers in South America have learned to work with the Apis mellifera scutellata. It's a heartier variety, though smaller than a European bee. The bees are great honey producers, and with extra smoke and protective gear, they're easily handled.
          Last month, In Myanmar, in only one example of human flash mob violence seen all over the world, peace-loving Rakhine Buddhists burned the houses of neighboring Rohingya Muslims pre-emptively, before the Roohingyas could burn theirs. And visa-versa, until eighty-nine people were killed, 136 injured, and 32,231 made homeless. 
          Why do the bees attack? Because they have learned and relearned, until it is a part of their genetic make up, that every stranger is an enemy. Because they are empowered by their large number. Because they feed on each other's energy until thought is reduced to momentum.