Greetings from the sunny, WARM southwest! No complaints about the weather from me today because it is almost perfect where we are in Arizona. My family and I are enjoying our annual trip to this region of the country.

Good news? Need some? Here you go!

A high school math teacher has won first place in a pumpkin-growing contest with her 1,725-pound pumpkin that might be the largest pumpkin ever grown.

Christy Harp of Jackson Township, Ohio, won $2,500 in the contest.

Contest organizers say her pumpkin beat the Guinness-record 1,689-pound pumpkin grown in 2007 by Joe Jutras of Rhode Island.

Simon Hughes helped nab an aligator on an East Texas hunt. The 5-year-old boy from Goodrich, Texas, was part of a hunting crew that recently killed an 800-pound, 12-foot-6-inch alligator.

Simon learned to shoot firearms when he was 4, so he was ready to go on an alligator hunt this past weekend with his father, Scott Hughes, and hunting guide Chuck Cotton. Simon had a new junior-sized .410-gauge shotgun.

Scott had obtained a state permit to kill two of the 40 alligators populating his 5,000-acre spread near Lake Livingston. State law requires alligators be caught on a baited hook or shot with a bow and arrow. They baited a hook on Saturday with some “smelly armadillo roadkill.” When they returned, the line was taut. Something had been caught and was waiting beneath the water.

They discovered it was an alligator so they attached it to an all-terrain vehicle with a strong line. The aligator was so strong it almost dragged their vehicle into the water, however.

Finally, the aligator surfaced a second time, and Simon, waiting 5 feet away, fired the first and fatal shot. Cotton fired one more shot at the giant animal to make sure it was dead.

Simon, has shown pictures of the gator to his classmates. But that won’t be nearly as impressive as when he can bring the mounted head to display its ferocious bite.

Killer Bees May Increase Food Supplies for Native Bees

Aggressive African bees were accidentally released in Brazil in 1957. As these “killer bees” spread northward, David Roubik, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, began a study that revealed that killer bees caused less damage to native bees than changes in the weather and may have actually increased the availability of their food plants.

Scientists feared that dangerous swarms of killer bees would compete with native bees. Roubik sorted out the role of invading pollinators in tropical forests.

Over the next 17 years, a severe drought and three hurricanes almost wiped out native bees. Their populations rebounded each time. Killer bees took over pollination of two plant families that had been important food sources for native bees: the cashew family and the spurge family. At the same time, however, Pouteria, one of the plants native bees prefer, became more common.

Roubik states that native populations in less diverse areas might be less resilient to invasions. “Basically we’re seeing ‘scramble competition’ as bees replace a lost source of pollen with pollen from a related plant species that has a similar flowering peak—in less-biodiverse, unprotected areas, bees would not have the same range of options to turn to.”