Bee Stings

Posted on July 20, 2020

Let’s ignore the fact that I haven’t updated my blog in 4 years – haha, yes, I still have a blog section on the Lava Bees website – and I’ll write while I’m inspired. Sure, I could fill you in on what the past four years has entailed – lava flows, moving hives, losing hives, having babies, yada, yada, yada, but what brought me here today, what sat me down to post on my hardly ever utilized bee blog, was to respond to a question most beekeepers get asked all the time, and what keeps a lot of people scared of bees. Do you ever get stung?

The simple answer to that question is YES. I get stung. I’ve probably been stung over 150 times in my life. And it still hurts every dang time. But I would say 100 of those stings were my own fault! There was a time period when I was trying to be the -didn’t care if I got stung – cool as a cucumber, t-shirt wearing, no gloves beekeeper. I am in awe of those beekeepers. I want to say we just have different pheromones, and the bees react to mine more – but that’s just wishful thinking! Haha, I think really – most of those stings were a result of ignorance and clumsiness. The first time I caught a swarm and tried to dump it into an empty hive (wearing shorts and nearing nightfall), I got probably 25 of those stings! Or clumsily, a bee would be crawling on my arm and I would bend my arm and smash it on accident. It’s so hot in those bee suits and gloves can make for floppy, hard-to-control fingers, so the benefits of not suiting up are incredibly tempting as a beekeeper.

In the end though, 8 years into beekeeping and I still prefer to suit up when I get into the hives. For me, it’s admittedly a mental hurdle I can’t seem to get past and I’m totally okay with that. I just tend to be way too focused on where bees are crawling on me that it takes 5 times as long to do my bee inspections. Even accepting that my body doesn’t react too badly to bee stings, I just focus too much on the little tickles you feel on the back of your arm that I miss out on the best part of beekeeping. The best part about beekeeping for me is that it quickly shifts you into the present moment and you can just let your mind go. I can be cradled in the sound of their buzz and beauty and nature and often forget all about the other things going on in life. But I just wasn’t getting there while being so physically exposed.  I’ve seen my beekeeper friend Jen, one of the most bad*ss women I know, get stung in the eyelid and neck, and just pull out the stingers like no big deal. I’m sure I’ll never be that cool. Seriously, the beekeepers who bare it all have my highest respects, they are true sages, and I hope they still consider me a “real” beekeeper while I continue to put on my layers. Even suited, some still make their way in, most likely by accident, and I still get stung from time to time through my gloves. Been face to face with a couple of bees that snuck inside my veil recently, and the sweet girls still didn’t sting me!

The bees that live on our property only feet away from where we play every day in the yard, hardly ever bother us. Of course, every once in a while there is a curious/seemingly mad bee.. probably trying to send me a message – which I always imagine to be like “HEY! We are getting too full in our hive over here!” Or “The sister hive next to ours isn’t sharing their nectar source location!” But most days, they just do their own thing. Their little house pad is the airport. They start buzzing with the sunrise and begin their busy day of being bees. And even the curious/seemingly mad bees have not yet decided to sting us just for hanging out in our yard.

Stings can hurt, but most of the time, I’m convinced they really aren’t trying to sting us. They die if they do, because their stinger gets stuck in our skin and rips the bottom part of their body off (they can sting other things without this happening). One thing I will say about my ultra breeze bee suit that is nice is that bees can try to sting me, but their stingers don’t seem to get stuck in the suit so I’d like to think I actually harm less bees by suiting up 😉

The real reason I was inspired to write this post though is to beam with pride that my 3.5 year old daughter got her first bee sting last week. And guess where she got stung? Not at our house! Not in the yard that she plays in every day just feet away from thousands of bees! She got stung at the beach! And it wasn’t even a live, angry bee that purposefully tried to sting her. It was a dead bee that she stepped on. She hopped around and did the “ouch, ouch, ouch” dance for a minute while I pulled the stinger out. Then the pain subsided and she was just excited to tell the tale of her first bee sting!

I kept a close eye on her to make sure she didn’t have any unusual reactions, and she didn’t. She amazingly didn’t really have any reaction at all. No swelling, no itching, no redness even. Which is more than I can usually say for myself. The first time I get stung in a certain area, it will swell up, get red, itch like crazy, and feel like a bruise for a few days. However, once I have been stung somewhere, I don’t tend to react as harshly the next time I get stung in that spot. It still stings when it happens, but within minutes of being stung I will forget which finger it was on and life goes on. I’ll spare you all the details of the time a bee managed to crawl all the way up my pant leg before it stung my girlie parts. What a humorous situation that was!

All this to say, I continually learn lessons and gain a deep appreciation for these sweet beeings. Yes, I get stung. No, not by angry, vengeful bees, but mostly by accident or my own clumsiness. You can probably apply those lessons to a lot of situations in life, at least I can, but I’ll leave that to the reader’s own interpretation.

Until next time – hopefully sooner than 4 years from now..