SCOTT SIMON, host:
A legal showdown was set this week, when the Hillsborough County School Board in Florida voted to seek legal action against an apiary. Now don't run off to look that up. That's a place where they keep bees, which brothers Steve and Mike Grande(ph) have done since the 1970s.
But their apiary is not far from the Limona Elementary School in Brandon, and the staffs there say that students have been stung and bees have left corrosive droppings on teachers' cars. The same thing is that they had cattle roaming around, school board member Jennifer Faliero told the St. Petersburg Times.
But Steve Grande points out that unlike cattle, bees can't be fenced, or make a beeline, if you please, to feast on flowers. They have defenders in the neighborhood who say that the apiary was there before the school and besides, the bees pollinate flowers and orange trees. The Grandes say we have gentle bees. And it is just not in the nature of bees to sting when they are far from their nest. They believe that wasps that built nests in the east of the school are responsible for any stinging that's going on.
But bees always blame the wasps, don't they?