Let’s remember when bees “accidentally” disrupted a protest at UW, on this day in 1969 (April 24)
This story is pretty amazing. UW leaders, desperate to shut down a Vietnam protest, had a truck full of bees coincidentally show up on campus near the protest.
As the UW Daily recounts:
In 1969, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were leading the anti-Vietnam War protests around campus, particularly targeting recruiters. During one of these protests, as thousands of students approached Loew Hall to confront recruiters from the Navy, a pickup truck full of bee hives pulled up. Someone in a beekeeper suit began tipping the hives over, and the bees began swarming and stinging the packed crowd of protesters. Despite this, students successfully took over and held Loew Hall, preventing the recruiters from doing much business that day.
And HistoryLink has more:
On April 24, 1969, an attempt by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to shut down corporate recruiting at the University of Washington’s Loew Hall degenerates into farce when angry bees escape from hives being trucked across campus by two Eastern Washington farmers.
The farmers claimed this was an accident, but nobody believed them. Leftists, rightists, neutrals, and police were stung by the bees, which were both apian and apolitical.
Did the University Administration actually invite the bees to campus? The answer, as it turns out, is undoubtedly yes.
Read the rest here:
