【英语语言学习】愤怒的蜜蜂

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Every year, millions of commercial honey bees hit the road headed to farms around the country to pollinate crops. Occasionally, there are mishaps¹ like the one that took place this past week in Delaware when a tractor-trailer carrying hundreds of beehives tipped over on the highway.

We wondered - how do you go about wrangling² almost 20 million angry bees? Deborah Delaney is an entomologist at the University of Delaware, and she was on the scene of that accident. She joins us to explain what she saw. Deborah, thanks so much for being with us.

DEBORAH DELANEY: Oh, thank you so much for having me.

MARTIN: So you're a bee specialist, and when something like this happens - which apparently³ it does from time to time - your phone ends up ringing. You traveled to the scene, as we mentioned. What was the situation when you got there? Paint us a picture.

DELANEY: Well, when we arrived, it was probably around 9 o'clock. And I believe the accident occurred quite a bit earlier, at least three hours earlier. So it was dark. There were about four other beekeepers there with smoke and clouds and clouds of angry bees, completely disoriented bees clinging onto every possible surface and just a heap of colonies overturned.

MARTIN: So how do you even begin to get the bees back into the hives and back onto a truck? Can you walk me through it?

DELANEY: It's tricky⁴. I wish I had a pipe so I could, you know, whistle a beautiful melody to get them all to go back in, but it's not that easy.

MARTIN: (Laughter) It doesn't work that way.

DELANEY: When they're that disturbed and agitated⁵, if you come near them, they're going to sting you. And they're trying to get into your suit and your veil. So we're just using smoke. Any big pallet that we could find in the wreck⁶, we would pull down and lay on the ground. And then any in-tact, deep boxes - which are the main brood chamber⁷ where the queen should be, and also her young and eggs - we would try to recover that and put that on the pallet. They could then load that onto another truck with a forklift, and take it back to a holding yard to assess the damage for later.

MARTIN: What about the finances of this, Deborah? For a beekeeper to lose that many beans, how much money does that mean?

DELANEY: I would be crying, I think. What I've heard is that it was valued at about a quarter of a million dollars. It was about $250,000, and that was including the money that he would have gotten from the pollination⁸ contract.

MARTIN: This isn't the first time an accident like this has happened. Is this just part of the deal of transporting bees? You have to factor in a level of risk or are there certain safety precautions that can and should be taken, do you think, to prevent this?

DELANEY: I know that they're getting more efficient with how to load them securely, making sure that the load is balanced and equalized on the truck. And I know that certain people, some migratory⁹ beekeepers are even looking into plans of building and making trucks where the bees are actually kept inside of a more climatized container unit. We're going to definitely see advances in this area.

MARTIN: Deborah Delaney is assistant professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, talking to us about catching¹⁰ bees. Thanks so much, Deborah.

DELANEY: Oh, thank you.

1 mishaps   

n.轻微的事故，小的意外( mishap的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a series of mishaps 一连串的倒霉事
• In spite of one or two minor mishaps everything was going swimmingly. 尽管遇到了一两件小小的不幸，一切都进行得很顺利。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

2 wrangling   

v.争吵，争论，口角( wrangle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The two sides have spent most of their time wrangling over procedural problems. 双方大部分时间都在围绕程序问题争论不休。 来自辞典例句
• The children were wrangling (with each other) over the new toy. 孩子为新玩具（互相）争吵。 来自辞典例句

3 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

4 tricky   

adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的

参考例句：

• I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手，你能帮我吗？
• He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题，只做了个笼统的表述。

5 agitated   

adj.被鼓动的，不安的

参考例句：

• His answers were all mixed up,so agitated was he.他是那样心神不定，回答全乱了。
• She was agitated because her train was an hour late.她乘坐的火车晚点一个小时，她十分焦虑。

6 wreck   

n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难

参考例句：

• Weather may have been a factor in the wreck.天气可能是造成这次失事的原因之一。
• No one can wreck the friendship between us.没有人能够破坏我们之间的友谊。

7 chamber   

n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所

参考例句：

• For many,the dentist's surgery remains a torture chamber.对许多人来说，牙医的治疗室一直是间受刑室。
• The chamber was ablaze with light.会议厅里灯火辉煌。

8 pollination   

n.授粉

参考例句：

• The flowers get pollination by insects.这些花通过昆虫授粉。
• Without sufficient pollination,the growth of the corn is stunted.没有得到充足的授粉，谷物的长势就会受阻。

9 migratory   

n.候鸟，迁移

参考例句：

• Many migratory birds visit this lake annually.许多候鸟每年到这个湖上作短期逗留。
• This does not negate the idea of migratory aptitude.这并没有否定迁移能力这一概念。

10 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。