From ten meters away, the sound of a million honeybees is surprisingly soothing, like treetops whooshing in the breeze. At a daring six meters, the droning becomes ominous and insistent. At two meters away, the humming is so malevolent that the sky seems to darken. "Beautiful music, yes?" says Nikola Kezić, as if there is no doubt.
Arranging folding chairs on the lawn behind his ramshackle barn, the University of Zagreb biologist and beekeeper explains that he raises 25 colonies of up to 50,000 honeybees each. That's a million bees for his research, funded by Croatia's science ministry, in honeybee breeding and natural selection. Kezić leaves the barn doors open so the bees can come and go from the wooden boxes where they build their hives. The dusky swarm fills the doorway, nearly obscuring the hives. A rogue bee flickers insistently around Kezić's grey hair.
Following the Chernobyl nuclear power ...
