Bee
From X-Files Wiki
A bee is a type of insect that can fly and often makes a buzzing noise. (TXF: "Herrenvolk", et al.) Bees are social insects and live in colonies. (TXF: "War of the Coprophages", "Zero Sum") They are known to create honeycomb in enclosed environments. (TXF: "Herrenvolk", "Zero Sum") Honey bees secrete royal jelly, a highly nutritious secretion, from their pharyngeal gland. (TXF: "Zero Sum") Many bees live in an apiary, where they swarm. (TXF: "Herrenvolk")
Bees also have venom sacs and stingers that the insects use to sting their victims with venom but these components can be made to carry a disease, delivered when the bee stings. (TXF: "Zero Sum") Bees can also be made to carry a virus in their sting. (The X-Files Movie, TXF: "The Beginning") Any kind of bee can be lethal to a human, provided the person is stung by enough of them. Even Africanized honey bees, the so-called "killer bees", basically have the same venom as the European honey bee - it's just that they tend to attack in swarms. (TXF: "Zero Sum") Aliens are immune to bee stings, although the stings are not only painful to humans but also to alien bounty hunters. A means of protecting a human from bees involves dousing the person in oil. (TXF: "Herrenvolk")
As part of the joint Syndicate/alien colonization plans, a series of events leading up to colonization would be initiated when bees delivered an alien virus, causing a massive outbreak of the virus and a state of emergency to be declared. (TXF: "One Son") The Syndicate initially conducted a trial run of bees that carried smallpox but the group also kept bees carrying the alien virus. (TXF: "Zero Sum", The X-Files Movie) Presumably, the Syndicate's plans for the bees were destroyed with the group's destruction, in 1999. (TXF: "One Son")
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[edit] History
[edit] Klemper's Greenhouse & Possibilities in Miller's Grove
In 1995, a bee could briefly be seen on a flower in Victor Klemper's greenhouse, shortly after his death. (TXF: "Paper Clip")
In Miller's Grove, Massachusetts, in late 1995, Sheriff Frass suggested that killer bees had been a genetic experiment gone awry, let loose on an unsuspecting populace, and, when Doctor Bambi Berenbaum first met Dr. Ivanov, she wondered if he had ever considered programming robots he created to mimic the behavior of social insects like ants or bees, to which Ivanov admitted that he had. (TXF: "War of the Coprophages")
[edit] Canadian Presence
In Canada in 1996, a bee from a nearby agricultural project stung a repairman on his neck, while he was working near the top of a telephone pole, despite the worker attempting to swat the insect away. The man almost immediately swatted at his neck, causing the bee to fall to the ground, where it landed on its back but continued to buzz and struggle. The man later died, as the bee was a carrier of smallpox, and his corpse was found by FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder and the alien Jeremiah Smith, as they passed the scene of the incident together.
Jeremiah Smith then took Mulder to the Canadian farmland where the bee had come from. More bees were in the vicinity of flowering ginseng shrubs that were tended to by members of an agrarian workforce that included blond boy clones, who had witnessed the repairman contract smallpox, as well as clones of Samantha Mulder.
A nearby apiary contained many more thousands of bees, giant pillars of honeycomb and a narrow skylight that provided ingress/egress for the insects. Mulder, Jeremiah and a Samantha clone hid here, with Mulder having doused himself as a means of protection from the bees, after an alien bounty hunter rushed onto the farm in pursuit of Jeremiah. The bees started to attack the invading alien when the threesome pushed a honeycomb wall down on him. The bounty hunter was left with physical symptoms of smallpox, but he survived his encounter with the insects.
After a month spent unsuccessfully inquiring about the Canadian farmland with each of the Special Representatives of the United Nations, Mulder met Marita Covarrubias, who told him when they first met that the farm had been abandoned, with the ginseng crops having been left to die, and that no evidence of bees or bee husbandry had been found. (TXF: "Herrenvolk") No evidence of beehives had been discovered, either. (TXF: "Zero Sum") Before their first meeting was concluded, Covarrubias handed Mulder a UN folder that included a photograph of Samantha clones working in the ginseng field and, by about six months later, also included a photograph of a bee atop one of the flowering shrubs. (TXF: "Herrenvolk", "Zero Sum") Around the same time, Mulder called forensic entomologist Doctor Valedespino to ask the expert all about killer bees and a fatality caused by bees. (TXF: "Zero Sum")
[edit] American Outbreak
By about six months later, seven packages that contained the bees were sent from Canada to a P.O. Box in Payson, South Carolina. One of these packages was damaged during transportation, however, and was consequently taken to a storage room in the Transcontinental Express Routing Center in Desmond, Virginia, where postal worker Jane Brody was killed by swarming bees in a restroom of the building. Her body, which showed signs of smallpox, was found by her friend and coworker, Misty Nagatta, by which time the bees were all gone. Misty was later visited by men who did not identify themselves but wanted the damaged package from the storage room and, before leaving, told Misty that, if she spoke to anyone, she would lose her job.
Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who was reluctantly working under orders from the Cigarette Smoking Man, initially attempted to cover up evidence of Jane Brody's death shortly after it happened but Skinner later found honeycomb inside the walls of the restroom where Brody had died and took this evidence to Dr. Valedespino. Even though the scientist was unable to identify the kind of bee that had killed Brody from the honeycomb alone, he extracted a bee larva from the comb and alerted Skinner that, about six months earlier, Mulder had visited him with questions regarding killer bees. Realizing that the two cases involving bees were directly related, Skinner called Marita Covarrubias with news that he might, very soon, have access to the same bees that had been part of the Canadian agricultural project. That night, Dr. Valedespino found that the bee larva was no longer contained and he was killed in his home/laboratory by more swarming bees.
In a building on New York City's 46th Street (where the Syndicate would often meet), the CSM presented a specimen of the virulent bees to the group, referring to it as the last remaining specimen. He reported that the bees from Dr. Valedespino's house had been contained and destroyed and that the scientist's body, which exhibited signs of smallpox, had also been sanitized. The other Syndicate members were unaware of how the latest death had happened and, although the CSM refused to divulge any details to the group, he assured the other members that the matter had been taken care of and that any other breaches had also been handled. Before he left the Syndicate meeting, the CSM pocketed the bee specimen and revealed that the planned trial run of the bees had already begun.
Shortly thereafter, a swarm of bees stung many children in the playground outside the J.F.K. Elementary School in Payson, South Carolina, and were responsible for the agonizing death of the childrens' teacher, Ms. Kemper. Children from the school were taken to Payson Community Hospital, where their treatment was overseen by a Dr. Linzer. A few hours after the children were stung, Skinner arrived and notified Dr. Linzer that they needed to be treated for smallpox, having learned from Mulder that the bees carried the disease, but his medical advice was disputed by the doctor, at least initially. Marita Covarrubias arrived soon after Skinner, with questions for him regarding the bees. (TXF: "Zero Sum")
[edit] Inside a White Dome Tent & Stinging Scully
After following an alien virus being transported through Texas in 1998, Mulder and his FBI partner, Special Agent Dana Scully, came to two white domed tents that were surrounded by a field of corn, whose pollen had been genetically engineered to include the virus. Unaware that at least one of the tents housed many thousands of the bees that were carriers of the alien virus, the agents entered the tent. The insects were stored behind louver vents in the floor and created a low humming that Scully incorrectly suspected was the sound of high voltage electricity. When additional louver vents at the top of the dome opened, Mulder realized that he and his partner were in danger, and told Scully to run.
Almost immediately after Mulder's warning, the vents in the floor opened, releasing the bees. Thick streams of bees clouded the atmosphere of the domed space, flying for the open louvers at the top of the dome, as Mulder and Scully, pulling their jackets over their heads, ran for the only way out of the tent. The swarm of bees was so thick that Scully struggled to see the exit, a set of double doors, but Mulder took her hand and led her to the doorway, where overhead fans blew down on them as they quickly stamped their feet to remove the insects from their clothing. Once the agents had rushed outside, Mulder asked Scully whether she had been stung in the domed tent; she replied negatively but uncertainly. Mulder later recounted having seen the bees and corn crops when he covertly met with Alvin Kurtzweil, a former member of the Syndicate acting as an informer to Mulder.
Meanwhile, Scully had a hearing with the FBI's Office of Professional Review during which, as she spoke, a bee crawled out from under the collar of her jacket and slowly wandered toward the back of her neck. This bee later stung her while she was visiting Mulder in his apartment. She picked the squirming bee out of her clothing and held it in her fingers as Mulder, who assumed that the insect had gotten in Scully's shirt, checked the back of her neck. Even though Scully had no preexisting allergy to bee stings, she was affected by the alien virus and Mulder called an ambulance for her but was unaware at the time that the paramedics were working for the Syndicate and the driver of their ambulance shot him, moments before the real ambulance arrived.
Before Mulder regained consciousness in a hospital where he was taken, the Lone Gunmen found the bee in his hall and identified it as an Africanized honeybee. After Mulder rescued Scully and cured her with a vaccine, she presented a vial containing this same bee to OPR as evidence of her recent experiences, but admitted that she did not believe the FBI currently had an investigative unit qualified to pursue her evidence. (The X-Files Movie) Mulder later recounted, at another OPR hearing, that Scully had been stung by one of the bees carrying the alien virus and that she had been exposed to the virus. (TXF: "The Beginning")
- Although the conclusion to The X-Files Movie does establish the existence of another cornfield surrounding two more white dome tents in Foum Tataouine, Tunisia and implies that the virus from the cornfield in Texas is transported there, following the destruction of the Texan cornfield, it is not entirely clear what happened to the bees stored in the two tents in Texas, whether the similar tents in Tunisia also contain bees and, if so, whether those bees have been transported from the tents in Texas or are entirely different.
[edit] Larvae
This article is lacking necessary information, and needs attention. Information regarding expansion may be found on the talk page. Feel free to edit this to assist with expansion.
[edit] Symptoms
[edit] Smallpox
- Main article: smallpox
[edit] Alien "Black Oil" Virus
- Main article: Purity
[edit] Background Information
The script of "Herrenvolk" describes the bees near the flowering ginseng as "honeybees" and the condition that inflicts both the repairman and the bounty hunter as "a kind of extreme smallpox viral infection". Even though neither of these concepts are in the episode itself, the later "Zero Sum" further explores the idea of bees carrying smallpox.
[edit] Appearances
- TXF:
[edit] Additional References
- TXF:
- "War of the Coprophages" (Season 3)
- "Small Potatoes" (Season 4)
- "The Beginning" (Season 6)
- "Dreamland"
- "One Son"
- "The Unnatural"
- "Hollywood A.D."
