Chapter Eleven: Hymenoptera Apidae

"Look man," Tedford mumbled under his breath, looking around anxiously, "I got out of that stuff a long time ago. Why can't you guys just leave me alone?!"

"I'm just here to collect what is rightfully ours," said the stranger.

"What's rightfully yours, huh?" pondered T-Bone outloud, "Okay, you win, just leave me alone." Tedford reached slowly into his pants pocket delicately with his bad hand - slowly partially because he was in pain, and partially to show the stranger that he meant no threat by his movement, but then suddenly hurled the gallon of milk at him with his other arm, milk exploding from the man's chest, as T-Bone pulled out a syringe full of faintly yellow substance and jabbed it hard into the stranger's arm as he rushed past him out onto the street. The stranger went down instantly.

The paramedics, always busy this time of year, arrived about 30 minutes later and transported him to the hospital. Since the man was unconsious but stable, tests were run, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for a large amount of an unidentified toxin that the doctors hadn't seen before. One of them vaguely seemed to recall reading something once about how one particular sub-species of bee in The Congo produced a venom that would produce a near-catatonic state in whatever animal (or human) it stung. Usually one or two stings wouldn't affect a full-grown human being, but enough stings could do the trick.

As the man lay in intensive care, connected to a bazillion monitors and machines, the curious doctor accessed an Internet access computer in the hospital's library, and spent a few minutes trying to find what he was looking for. He found a suitable website that let him search the Linnaean Taxonomy Database by order, family, genus, etc. He started browsing the various type of insects, the navigation bar on the left-hand side of the screen keeping track of his progress as he narrowed down his search:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera

The thumbnails on the right-hand side of the screen started popping up with images of wasps, hornets, yellowjackets, bumblebees, honey bees, carpenter bees, digger bees... not specific enough. "Hmmm," he thought, "would it be Vespidae or Apidae?"

Superfamily: Apoidea
Family: Apidae

He was pleased with himself as little images of bumblebees and honey bees appeared solely on the screen. He kept drilling down...

Subfamily: Apinae
Tribe: Apini
Genus: Apis

African bees. He was getting close now, he could feel it.

Species: mellifera
Subspecies: scutellata

Africanized honey bees. "Killer" bees. He recalled the silly killer bee movies of the 80's; swarms attacking Volkswagon bugs; the King Dome; Brazilian hybrid; the rapid advance from South America up to the U.S. No, no, no, this wasn't right. Killer bees are non-venomous. He went back up a level, then saw what he had missed.

Subspecies: adansonii

"Jackpot." He printed the screen, then dashed out of the room, looking frantically around for a telephone.