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I have to hand it to the brain trust running our provincial Department of Tourism.

Just when it looked like another summer tourism season was tanking -- thanks in no small part to the cost of filling up our gas tanks -- they staged not one, but two Machiavellian schemes to entice tourists to stay just a little bit longer.

In case you have been away, asleep or are still slightly inebriated from Canada Day, a transport truck carrying 12 million honey bees flipped over on the Trans-Canada Highway near St. Leonard early this week. The highway was closed as clouds of agitated bees buzzed around looking for the culprit who upset their smooth ride back to Ontario.

For starters, am I the only person in this province who didn't know we import honey bees to pollinate crops? Talk about migrant workers! Do they collect EI after working all week in our blueberry fields?

Bees have an important job to do, but I still give all insects of the stinging variety a wide berth. When my lawnmower accidently pushes up against a bee or hornet's nest, it doesn't take me long to retreat to safety. I'm still traumatized from a childhood incident in my grandfather's backyard when chasing a wayward baseball, I stepped squarely on a huge hornet's nest.

This was in the era before YouTube (thank goodness) so there's no video of me running wildly across his backyard, arms flailing as several hornets dug into my exposed arms, legs and neck. My grandfather -- now long departed -- took a torch to the nest that night, God bless him.

While those bees had residents buzzing in the northwest, we were dealing with a whale of a problem down here in the southeast.

At this end of the province, a 50-tonne fin whale washed up dead on a beach near Rockport, south of Dorchester. As the summer sun hit the rotting carcass, the stench sent the curious away holding their noses in disbelief that any living or dead creature can smell that bad.

And that's where the pure brilliance of the tourism department comes into play. Who else could have engineered such a clever and diabolical scheme to trap tourists in New Brunswick? We've got 12 million angry bees guarding one entrance to the province and a stinky whale carcass protecting the other end.

Between the stingers and the stench, tourists are trapped.

There's no escape from our home and needy land.

Brilliant. Utterly brilliant.

We should hear of the benefits of this bee-and-whale project any day now. Month-long cottage rentals along the Northumberland Strait will climb, visits to Magnetic Hill, the Hopewell Rocks, Cape Enrage will skyrocket.

At the other end of the province, King's Landing will be overrun with bored tourists looking for something to do to fill their extra days in New Brunswick. The Grand Falls Gorge will be wall-to-wall adventure-seekers, the world's longest covered bridge in Hartland will be bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Thank goodness the Great Bee Spill didn't happen near the Nova Scotia border. We know how protective our cousins to the south are about their honey bees. There's no signage warning against bringing guns, toxic chemicals or illegal aliens across the border at Amherst, but don't you dare try to import honey bees.

Those Nova Scotia bees must have one strong union . . .

Anyway, sitting somewhere in the bowels of the Centennial Building in Fredericton is a smug provincial tourism bureaucrat who dreamed up the big bee-and-whale caper.

Give this man or woman a medal, give him a raise, give him an extra week off, give him passes to Magic Mountain. Brilliance like this deserves to be recognized.

I readily admit that for the past few years, my faith in our provincial tourism department has been fading.

They just seemed incapable of dreaming up any innovative schemes to encourage those well-moneyed denizens of Ontario, Quebec and New England to visit our fair shores.

But this year's caper absolves our tourism mandarins of any past sins. If visitor numbers are down at the end of this tourist season, blame it on high gas prices, parity of the Canadian and U.S. dollars or the threat of a possible recession. But don't blame it on the tourism department; it has redeemed itself.

Besides, I finally understand the province's new marketing slogan. It's stumped me for months but clarity arrived this week -- between the bees and the whale -- in a semi-religious parting of the clouds and lifting of the fog.

Bee . . . in this place.

Brilliant. Utterly brilliant.

n City Views appears daily, written by various members of our staff. John Wishart is assistant managing editor of the Times & Transcript. His column appears every Saturday.