The Bees

"Getting the bugs out" is standard procedure whenever anything as complex as a new airplane is delivered. The trouble with Central African Airways' brand-new Vickers Viscount propjet was that the bugs would not go. They were not, in fact, airplane-type bugs at all, but a swarm of 75,000 bees which came hiving out of nowhere soon after the plane landed in Salisbury, to take up happy residence in one of its wings. Central's mechanics scattered, and to replace them, the airline called in a local beekeeper, Jack Garrett. Blow smoke or gas into the wing, he advised. No, said the airline engineers: formic acid from the dead bees might hurt the metal or the rubber on the gas tanks.

A man from Durban thought that garlic might help. A Londoner suggested tying a horse under the wing. "Bees," he wrote, "don't like the smell of horses, but wrap him carefully so he won't get stung." A local housewife urged the airline to give the bees a good whiff of bruised lemontree leaves. C.A.A.'s chief pilot decided on more drastic action. Taking his place at the controls, he flew skyward to 17,000 ft., bumped, banked and looped--but when he got down again, the busy bees were still happily humming in the wing.

At week's end airline officials decided that there was nothing to do but wheel their brand-new plane into a hangar and take it apart.

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