Lady Gaga eat your heart out. The meat suit is so last season. This season, at least in China, the latest look is live bees.
The 17th of July saw two Chinese bee keepers battle to see which of them could carry the largest weight of live bees on their person. The competition consisted of the two men, Lu Kongjiang (20) and Wang Dalin (42), spending an hour trying to attract the most bees to their persons. It is unclear as to whether the men smothered themselves in honey or whether it was their natural musk which attracted the bees.
The competition is vaguely reminiscent of the Finnish Sauna competition, in which two men would sit in boiling water until one surrendered. Following the death of a contestant in August last year that competition has been terminated.
Fortunately for the bee keepers there was no such tragic end to this event. Wang was the winner managing to carry a whopping 26kg of bees in an hour. If you think that is a lot of bees, the world record stands at 39.5kg and is held by Mark Biancaniello, an American (of course).
There does not seem to be a prize for the competition, but presumably no-one would mess with you once you’ve been covered with bees. We’ve seen Candyman.
We asked biologist and bee expert Dr. Ellen Lamborn BSc, PHD what she thought of the competition. After studying the images from the contest she offered us this by way of a comment:
“Ooo, bee bikini! I want one.”
It’s this sort of expert opinion that sets Newsnibbles apart from standard news websites.
You can read the full story here: http://inventorspot.com/articles/honey_im_home_beekeeper_battle_calm_swarm
You can read about the Sauna contest here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10904691
You can read Dr Lamborn’s more in depth thoughts on bees here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2745.2009.01590.x/full
And here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/h6326077370u4ng2/
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