The Bees Knees

I was riding out into the country to get some sweet corn, tomatoes (I should be eating home grown, Tomatosaurus Rex, tomatoes at this point, but thanks to the Great Tomatocide of 2011, we've only had one ripe fruit to date from the replanted batch), and I spotted hives.



Most folks would freak if they knew they were near the home of a few thousand bees. But the ladies only really get feisty if you stage a home invasion on them. I know because I used to do exactly that; it's what beekeeping is all about. It's hot, sweaty, back-breaking work and no matter how carefully you gear up and how much you smoke them, you're going to get stung.

The worst was when I was lifting a full super off and, while I was squatting, one of these six-legged bitches stung me on the knee through my jeans. I'm trying to slowly, carefully, lift about 60 pounds in 90º heat with too many clothes on. When you get stung, the bee releases a pheromone that alarms her roommates into defending the hive, and when that happens, you better believe they'll find the chinks in your armor.



I quit because I couldn't keep them at home (due to people not understanding how benign and beneficial bees are—no matter how hard it is to remember that when you've been stung while provoking them), and driving out to my friends' spread to tend them was a hassle. And tend them you must—you have to be half veterinarian to keep a hive alive for a year or two these days what with American foulbrood, European foulbrood, Varroa mites, tracheal mites, nosema and so on.



And I got out, sold my woodenware and so on before Colony Collapse Disorder.

Bees are exceptional bugs, pretty much everything they do and produce is beneficial to people, but keeping them is like having a 100,000 high maintenance girlfriends.