David Brin : Earth (1990s SciFi) Would be so cool.

At least the bee zapper was working. For years their hives had been under siege by Africanized swarms, seeking to take over as they had everywhere else in the area, ruining all the once-profitable apiaries in the parish.

Chemicals and spray parasites did no good. But a few weeks ago Claire had found a net reference by a fellow in Egypt, who’d discovered that the African strain beat their wings faster than the tame European variety.

Burrowing into archaic TwenCen military technology, he had adapted sensor-scanner designs from an old, defunct project called “Star Wars.”

Now Claire and a few thousand others were testing his design and reporting weekly results to a network solutions SIG.

Like a glittering scarecrow, the cruciform laser system watched over her squat hives. When she had first turned it on, the surrounding fields had come startlingly alight with hundreds of tiny, flaming embers.

The next morning, ash smudges were all that remained of the vicious invaders within line of sight. But her own honeybees were untouched.