Free Republic

Aggravated bees attack unfortunate honey seekers from all directions. The mad birds in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" mastered the tactic, attacking en masse residents of a small Northern California town in coordinated swarms. Ticked off bees are a fact, malign Hitchcockian birds a fiction, but both demonstrate aerial swarm attacks can be ferocious and effective. Which is why at least two dozen defense ministries on Earth are spending billions on defending against enemy swarm attacks and on conducting their own swarm offensive strikes. Several years ago, the Pentagon ordered its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to analyze and develop...

The disturbing series of events during the summer of 2019 resulted in an investigation that made its way to the highest echelons of the Navy. In July of 2019, a truly bizarre series of events unfolded around California’s Channel Islands. Over a number of days, groups of unidentified aircraft, which the U.S. Navy simply refers to as ‘drones’ or 'UAVs,' pursued that service's vessels, prompting a high-level investigation.

Jon Bates owns Addicted to Fitness, a gym in Naples, Florida. As a personal trainer, he ends his nights by running 3.5 to 4 miles for both mental therapy and as a way to get his workout in. Bates said his friends give him a hard time about being outside in the humidity and heat when he has access to an air-conditioned gym, but he enjoys his outdoor runs, and the chance to sweat in the fresh air. So last Monday, he set out for his usual run, but on a slightly different route. He told Runner’s World he kept...

Bee removal is a common practice for many bee owners. Well, it’s about to become illegal in Texas if an Irving lawmaker has her way. When a local bee keeper gets a call concerning a swarm or hive in a nearby residence or tree, they load up and ride to the rescue. They arrive and set up their equipment and carefully bring the bees home to a new location where they can grow and thrive. However, new legislation being filed in Texas would prevent most bee keepers from performing this valuable service unless they first jump through a bunch of...

Anticipated but never before seen, the existence of tens of thousands of these dark objects at the galactic center could have far-reaching implications for astrophysics An artist's rendering of the Milky Way's core, with a supermassive black hole at its center. Scientists have discovered what appear to be twelve smaller black holes orbiting our galaxy's central giant. Each is thought to actually be a binary system composed of a black hole and a low-mass star. Gas siphoned from the star glows in x-rays as it falls into the black holes, allowing them to be seen. Credit: Columbia University For the...

The DC Media has spent the last two weeks attempting to destroy Donald Trump with lies. Outright lies, and they are doing so in order to protect a 14 year-old cover up. Not only have eyewitnesses and contemporaneous reports proven Donald Trump 100% correct about Muslims celebrating 9/11, a just-uncovered local CBS News (WCBS-TV in New York) report completely vindicates Trump’s claim of “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center.

Can analogies be drawn between insect swarms and human political activity? Stink bugs have been swarming in Washington, D.C. where, unlike CongressCritters, “They really cause no harm … just a nuisance.” Fortunately, the Congress has adjourned. The swarming addressed here can be more than just a nuisance. Sometimes the results can be seen as good or bad depending on what one wants. Swarming (as distinguished from smarming, a human social and political tactic) is a natural phenomenon permitting essentially brainless creatures — ants, bees, other insects and some fish — to thrive through apparently instinctive collective reactions to external stimuli....

CASTLE Market was closed yesterday afternoon when an estimated 30,000 swarming bees descended on Sheffield city centre. Two clouds of honey bees appeared at Waingate just after midday, swarming onto the roof of Shoe Zone and around a hanging basket on the corner with Castle Street. Shoe Zone worker Susan Crossland said: "A big cloud of bees suddenly appeared outside the shop. There were thousands and thousands of them. They just suddenly arrived." Her colleague Stacey Bingham called Sheffield Council's environmental health officers, who contacted bee keepers Jez Daughtry and George Windsor. Police officers cordoned off Waingate and closed the...

Beware of that beehive tucked in the eaves. Africanized bees—the strain commonly referred to as “killer bees”—have finally infiltrated SLO County, and their behavior is indeed potentially dangerous. The aggressive strain has relentlessly spread north since 1956, when it was first noticed in Brazil, arriving in Texas during the ‘90s, then Arizona, and now in California. Santa Barbara is battling them, but moving at about 30 miles a year, they have not yet been reported in Paso Robles. Scott Jeffreys, a lecturer in the Horticulture and Crop Sciences Department at Cal Poly who teaches bee keeping, emphasized, “They arrive and...

The recent uptick of the Islamic “tolerance” of Christianity continues and this time the hate has arisen in Indonesia. Isn’t Indonesia supposed to be one of those so called “moderate” Islamic countries? 01/23/2010 INDONESIA North Sumatra, two Protestant churches burnt: “too many faithful and too many prayers” by Mathias Hariyadi At least 1,000 people set fire to the Pentecostal community places of worship.

"Snakes on a Plane" may be the hot horror movie of the summer, but bees on planes are creating the most buzz in some aviation circles. Africanized honey bees -- the infamous "killer bees" -- are increasingly making unscheduled layovers at airports across the Southwest. The aggressive bees, which entered the U.S. from Mexico in the early 1990s, like to travel across open spaces and stop to rest whenever the queen gets tired. Airports have few trees or other natural rest stops. That makes planes, jetways, baggage-loading equipment, terminals and parking garages popular for stopovers. Consequently, pilots and mechanics sometimes...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Microminiaturization has made possible swarms of autonomous robots using nothing more than off-the-shelf parts. But concentrating their wireless chatter and getting them to cooperate to solve problems may be five years away, the National Science Foundation cautions. It's putting $2.6 million into a five-year effort to turn multiple wireless robots into an emergency search-and-rescue team. "We want to help emergency response personnel by sending cooperative robots into an unknown site," said California Institute of Technology researcher Joel Burdick. "My team will be developing software that enables each of them to perform slightly different tasks that together accomplish...