In the Fannie Flagg book “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe,” Ruth pleads to Idgie, “Go on you ol’ Bee Charmer, tell me a good tall tale.”

That is exactly what I have asked of one of our faculty members this month—to tell me his tale, but of how he is charmed by bees.

Chris Otto has always had a fascination with insects and it was this interest that led him to a career in biology. Initially, he was introduced to all things Apoidea from a friend who studied beekeeping in Wooster, Ohio, near Chris’ hometown of Cleveland.

Bees, specifically, swarmed into his life with his participation in the Peace Corps. While on a mission in Honduras, Chris learned to assist and teach farmers with bee cultivation, specifically Africanized honeybees. This strain had been introduced in Brazil only to invade all of South America, Central America, and as far north as California in North America. The hyper-defensive behavior of these bees has had a negative impact on apiculture in many places, including villages in Honduras.

“I tried to convince the farmers to move the bees away from people,” said Otto. “They are very defensive and will attack if they feel threatened.”

After his Peace Corps tenure was completed in 1990, Chris went back to his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, to work as a researcher sequencing the genome of the bacterium E. coli.

While intending to become a research scientist, Otto’s work teaching the farmers in Honduras convinced him he would find teaching more rewarding.

“As a teacher, I find if students talk to each other about the subject, I’m on top of my game,” he said. “That’s what steered me toward teaching rather than becoming a research scientist.”

Otto said that during his work at the University of Wisconsin, he often perused “The Chronicle of Higher Education” want ads. He saw an advertisement for Athens State in 1992 and decided the small campus was the place for him.

“I attended Indiana State University for my undergrad and the University of Wisconsin for my graduate studies,” he said. “We would have 250 students in a class. I just didn’t want to teach in that environment.”

At Athens, Otto met an adjunct professor of art, Gayle Bergeron, who was dividing her time between the Athens State and Martin Methodist, where she had been a full-time instructor for 11 years. The couple married in 1995.

“I got grabbed up pretty quickly,” he jokes.

“Well, you were just standing there,” answers Gayle.

They live at the Elk River, which Otto says is the only place he’s ever wanted to call his permanent home.

“When I was still in Wisconsin, I looked at the map of Limestone County and saw the Elk River,” he said. “Four days after I came here I was living in a doublewide on the Elk and I’ve been living there in one form or another ever since.”

Otto can’t say enough about the value of preserving the water and wildlife resources of the Elk and worked with a group of Elk River residents who opposed TVA selling a portion of public lands to a developer to build a marina.

“There are already marinas at Lucy’s Branch and Second Creek and both are underutilized,” he said. “The Elk flows for 140 miles and there are not that many rivers that flow freely that far. Twenty-five years from now that will matter—not urban sprawl.”

Gayle has been involved in Art on the Square for the past two years and said she is heartened by both the recent growth of Athens and the increasing interest in the arts. She said she encourages students to walk around the downtown square and draw or paint the street scenes.

Gayle, a New Orleans native who earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin, said she takes encouragement from both the Art on the Square event and the recent Storytelling Festival as signs that the community is expanding its cultural scope.

Occasionally, Otto’s bee expertise gives him the opportunity to visit hives in the area. He is most often asked to relocate swarms, or transient groups of up to 20,000 bees searching for a home, to safe and productive surroundings. This activity is not without hazards.

“If you get stung a few times, they say you get ‘popped,’ but if you’re stung a bunch of times, you’re ‘pummeled,’” he said.



Guy McClure works in University Relations at Athens State University. News Courier reporter Karen Middleton contributed to this story.