The Sting

    Day two of our queen search-and-destroy mission begins ominously with looming dark clouds. David reasons, “The weather channel says it will rain every day this week. But they are usually wrong, and we have to go out sometime, so let’s go out today anyway.” Among the first days of bee lessons from David I learned that bees will find a lot of reasons to be disagreeable, highest among them weather and season. Working with bees during rain in late summer, for example, is sure to be awfully uncomfortable.

smoker- calms bees

    We set out in just these conditions nonetheless, generally assuming the rain will pass quickly even if it comes. Confident in yesterday’s successes, I enthusiastically pry open the first hive. Two exhaustive sweeps later, I declare the queen in hiding. It begins to rain in bigger drops. David, embroiled in his own hive, waves me down the line to the next hive with an upturned brick. Remembering he had deemed this colony aggressive, I gingerly remove the lid, feeder, and seal. I snub the smoker, trusting more in my bee suit to prevent attacks than my skill finding a queen hiding from the smoke.

    As I peel back the plastic sheet directly over the frames, I immediately rethink that decision- 6 bees zoom toward my hands, aiming at the seam between glove and suit, seeking any breaks in continuity. Rattled, I walk away a little, trying to compromise something like a gentle swat to remove them. I can smell that they mean to attack (bees give off a scent when angry), and warily watch the hive from a ways off. When I go back with the frame-grabber in hand, it’s with the reassurance that I still haven’t been stung, and I can trust my suit. On one hand, I had been joking for days that I can never be a real beekeeper until I’m stung, on the other hand, it’s obviously quite painful and I didn’t mind continuing to put it off.

line of hives

    I unstick the first frame, trying to reimagine the buzzing as friendlier. Suddenly, the buzzing is a lot closer. I look up, feel the bee buzz against my ear inside my hood, and begin to panic. I grab my hood and make motions toward isolating the bee away from my head, I suppose, while shouting something surely incomprehensible to David. He comes right over, but I’m already stung on the head, just back from my left temple. Still panicking (I can hear the bee continue to buzz around in my hair and above my head), I retreat further into the suit and make wilder thrashing motions.  “What do I do! What do I do!” Reassuringly he grabs me and directs me down the road away from the hives (I can’t see- my head is in the body part of my suit). We need to get away from the bees so that I can take my hood off and get the bee out. My thrashing subsides as the buzz of the dying bee lessens (bees die without their stinger). David chortles a bit at what must feel like my drunken stumbling, and I embarrassedly calm down, wincing at the sting and noticing how disheveled my tshirt has become in my bee suit. David stops me, brushes off the last few stragglers, and opens my hood. When I emerge, bleary, he has the culprit between his thumb and finger, thoroughly squished (I’m sure he takes boyish pleasure in bug guts, still). I find the site of the sting with my fingers and clear the hair away so he can check for the stinger. Finding none, David congenially suggests we take a break now, and we head back to the car for sandwiches and coffee. Out from under the trees he must have steered us toward, I notice how heavily it has started raining. In the truck I recover and David laughs that I have at last received my wish! I laugh too and we turn back to plans for the bees. The rain is clearing up, but David declares the situation probably hopeless, so we close up the hives and then head back to the shop to resume more mundane activities for the afternoon.