MythBusters

On this episode of Mythbusters...

It's revenge of the creepy crawlies

as the whole team bugs out in the Bug Special.

First, Adam and Jamie take on

the fight of the bumble bee

as they put this viral video to the test.

Can 1,000 bees really make a laptop lift off?

Come on, bees.

Go. Up.

Kari, Grant, and Tori take on the year's most requested myth.

Can bags of water repel flies

and finally, they get even more bang for their buck.

With the tale of a speeding motorcyclist fatally floored

by an inspect impact.

Oh, my God!

Who are the Mythbusters?

Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.

Between them more than 30 years

of special effects experience.

Joining them, Grant Imahara,

Kari Byron and Tori Belleci.

They don't just tell the myths,

they put them to the test.

Why are you smiling?

Because we are about to do a story I am pretty sure is going

to make you very uncomfortable.

What?

It involves bees and it comes from a viral video that shows

about 1,000 bees glued to the top of a lightweight laptop

and they fly away with it.

I hate bees.

I do know that clip and it's without a doubt something we should test.

This is the bee movie that has the Internet a buzz.

Supposedly glue, honey, and 1,000 bees lift this laptop off a log.

Can this really "bee" true or is it a flight of fancy?

How do you think we should tackle this one?

We should do what they did in the clip and see if it works?

With protective gear.

If you want.

I want.

They have all the protection Adam needs.

Let's do it.

Of course Adam's Nemesis, the bees.

I think we all know I don't like bees.

Remember the hypnotism episode?

I told you I would do it for science and not like it one bit.

I'm looking forward to this because it's gonna be fascinating

but I think if you check in with future me

when we're in the middle of the experiment,

he gonna think it's fascinating but he's not gonna like being there.

That's totally correct. This is fascinating,

but I don't like being here one bit.

See, it's like I foretold the future.

But while they make Adam nervous,

Jamie has nothing but respect for the humble honey bees.

These are just incredible creatures.

An average worker bee only lives six weeks

and for half that time she's out foraging for nectar

where she can make 10 trips per day up to four miles a day.

So over the course of her lifetime, she can travel over 1600 miles.

All that effort for not much.

Since it takes 12 bees to get one tea spoon of honey.

Amazing.

No doubt these bees can go the distance, but can they weight lift?

What got here is exactly what we have seen in the video.

The same glue and the same laptop and some honey.

With the laptop coated in a layer of short acting

bee-friendly glue, Adam adds a dash of honey.

Alright. Let's do it!

Then it's time for Jamie to bring on the bees.

Wow, look at all those.

Grab that end.

You ready, Adam?

Yeah, ready.

Hurry up.

The glue is drying.

All right.

Look at that.

I had some bad dreams like this.

But unlike the video, one frame

doesn't equal a bee-smothered laptop.

Go. Up. Lift!

In the video, they laid down the glue

and bring over the frame of bees, give it a shake

and the whole laptop was covered with bees.

In our experience, that's not exactly what happens.

I think this is at least going to take two frames of bees

to get full coverage if not more.

That's if the adhesive works.

For more coverage, Jamie brings in another swarm of bees.

Here's the next batch.

Okay.

Wow!

That made a noise.

That's a lot of bees.

The laptop is not going anywhere at all.

Does it seem like it's any lighter?

No, not so much.

Despite the same glue and twice the number of bees,

the guys aren't getting the coverage for this myth to take wing.

But rest assured the Mythbusters

have a plan b.

We are going to increase the chance for success in three ways.

First, we are going to mix the glue and the honey together to make a tasty adhesive.

And sweet gluey honey or honey gluey.

Second, we're gonna give them another reason to stick around.

Yeah. this queen right here. We're gonna put this in the middle

of the laptop because they are genetically programmed to stay around a queen.

Hopefully, that will keep them around long enough to get stuck.

Third, instead of one frame of bees like we saw in the video.

Nice!

Oh, dude!

We're gonna shake three full frames of bees on this sucker.

If that doesn't work..

So well done I was distracted by the fact that I hate being around bees.

That's coverage!

That's beautiful.

Up we go.

I think we need a couple more frames.

Come on.

That's a lot of bees.

Calm thoughts.

Not calm feelings.

Calm thoughts.

What's the matter?

The number of bees may be disturbing for Adam,

but this test is finally starting to look like the viral video.

The coverage is great.

There have to be thousands of bees.

That is a hum of activity.

Although it looks like the video, there is one key difference.

Is it getting lighter?

I think it's actually getting heavier.

Dude, I don't think it's happening.

We got the queen in the middle, the special adhesive

5 frames worth of bees,

and like several thousand of them and the laptop is honestly..

I think, heavier than when we started. I don't think it's going to fly.

If you excuse me now, I will go into a corner

and let go of my heebie jeebies at once.

You will have to agree we have done everything we can

and it's not just looking terrible for the myth.

It's looking awful.

It's nowhere close to happening.

I feel like I want to go to the shop

and tease apart the components of the story to find out why.

Okay, so first off, the myth that water repels flies.

Finally we're testing this one.

This one is going berserk on the fansite forever.

If you want to repel flies hang a bunch of clear bags of water.

Clear bags of water? No additives, nothing else?

Nope, just water.

That's insane.

Tell that to the flies.

According to the fans, this is a no fuss, no buzz solution.

Decking your house with bags of water will keep flies away.

Could H2O alone really create a no-fly zone?

This seems straight forward to test.

We get a room full of flies, we take two pieces of meat, put them on either sides of the room,

hang a bag of water over one piece of meat and see which one the flies go to.

I have two questions.

First, how many flies should we use?

We need a pretty big sample size.

Let's start with 5,000.

Here's a better question then: How are we going to count them?

Flies don't live that long.

We could just let them die naturally and then count them.

Perfect. Okay.

To answer the fan furor, Tori creates a home for the flies

while Kari explains just why this idea might work.

Flies have prismatic vision and since a bag of water

is going to reflect and refract light,

it will create a field of high optic flow that tells the fly that there is something

essentially creating a bug lighthouse, warning it away from the rocky shores.

Flies have compound eyes

consisting of thousands of lenses which means they see

a mosaic image of their surroundings.

So the theory is, the light refracted through the water

is amplified and this deters the flies.

This fly box is made up of 3 equal compartments.

Sectioned off by trapdoors.

The middle section that's where were gonna be holding our flies.

On the end sections, they are both going to have a piece of meat.

One of the section is going to have a bag of water.

We will open up the trap doors

and see which piece of meat the flies go to.

The one with bag or the one without.

Yep, it's a simple plan and with Tory's fly box complete,

all they need is...

to put this myth to the test we need flies and a lot of them.

Maggots.

That's crazy!

I've had nightmares like this.

The flies we have chosen are common house flies.

Why have we chosen them?

They are attracted to rotting things.

Particularly rotting meat.

Smell this.

Yeah, it's bad.

That's it. That's all the maggots. Let's close it up.