An Apprentice Beekeeper's First Encounter

Four weeks ago, on the spur of the moment (thanks to Alfonsina, as always) I enrolled in an apprentice beekeeper class with Palomino (the leader) and Alfonsina (his sidekick). "All I want are my three chickens!" Alfonsina chided. "But since Palomino is going to get his beehives, I might as well know a thing or two about bees. And you, Netty, ought to tag along in case we leave you with beekeeping duties while we're on another tour of the some far off part of the world." 

Don't let the animated smiles and bright eyes fool you. There were times when one of us fell asleep in the middle of a lecture, particularly the one about the taxonomy of the Arthropoda hexapoda hymenoptera apidae apis mellifera ligustica. In English, that would be the Italian honey bee.

 

Italians are the bee of choice for a majority of beekeepers in the Pacific Northwest because they start producing earlier in the season than the other more productive and winter hardy species. With warmer temperatures that are as short lived as ours, we need bees that start early enough to give us a head start on collecting the honey before the colder temperatures return.

That said, I was on a ferry ride with Alfonsina and her rugby playing nephew when she received a call from a friend, announcing that her husband, a beekeeper of almost ten years, was going to open his beehives that afternoon. "We must join him, if only to observe and ask questions in preparation for our apprentice certification test tomorrow!" Alfonsina declared. The closest form of beekeeping equipment I have is a white hooded sweater that cousin Abmel gave me fifteen years ago, but as always on the spur of the moment, I ignored all common sense, and enthusiastically accompanied Alfonsina to our first direct encounter with sixty thousand A.m. ligustica bees. (The beekeeper has six thriving beehives, each colony made up of approximately ten thousand bees.)

First of all, perhaps the most important equipment anyone should have when directly approaching a beehive are:

1. A bee veil. To protect your face and neck,

    the most sensitive to bee stings; and white,

    which bees accept more readily than dark 

    colors. Bees hate black. Remember that. BEES 

    HATE BLACK! 

 2. Smoke. Smoke triggers the bees' emergency 

     response system, making them think that 

     they must quickly start storing up for im-

     pending doom. They scurry down to the 

     honey stores and start "packing up", which 

     keeps them distracted from the beekeeper's 

     prying hands. 

The first three hives they opened had the most docile bees. It was quite amazing! And I was amazed at myself for keeping my cool despite hundreds of bees flying around me, with no veil to protect my head of long black hair.

Remember, bees hate black.

This is an ideal oval formation of capped brood. Under those caps are baby bees, which means the queen bee is a rockstar, and her workers love her!

 

When we got to the fourth hive, it was obvious that this colony was rather ornery. Now, this could be the result of many things, two of which are:

A. This may be a naturally bred colony from a
     "new natural" queen. Most hobby beekeepers
     acquire their queens from a breeder. Breeding
     is very important because it ensures a good
     tempered queen who will produce gentle
     bees, making beekeeping a more pleasant
     experience. However, when the bred queen is
     not doing her job well, the workers
     instinctively start to raise another queen. In
     beekeepers' lingo, this is called "supercedure".
     The resulting queen is not guaranteed to be a
     gentle bee producer.

B. It was close to five o'clock, clouds had moved 

     in, lowering the temperature. The workers 

     were coming home from a hard day's work, 

     and all they want to do is to settle down for 

     the night.  How would you like it if someone 

     kept blowing smoke into your living room, 

     setting off the fire alarm while all you want to 

     do is to sit on your couch, put your feet up 

     and watch CSI and The Good Wife on TV? 

     Needless to say, you wouldn't, and neither 

     did this bee colony.

Alfonsina got stung first. Twice, on the inside of her thighs. Ouch! She high tailed it away from that hive flailing her gloved arms in the air to shoo away the trailing bees. 

Well, she ran to me! Next thing I know, I feel a bee get tangled up in my hair, right at my forehead. Ugh, that buzzzzzzzzzzzzing sound was the loudest thing I'd ever heard. See, I had never, ever, in all my thirty-nine years of consciousness been stung by anything Apis mellifera, Italian or otherwise. The beekeeper's wife came to my aid, but before she could get the bee out of my hair, BAM! I was stung. 

I stopped fidgeting for a moment, stood up straight, actually pleasantly bewildered. "That's it?!" I exclaimed. That meager prick of a sting is what makes grotesque moguls of a victim's face? It didn't even hurt! 

But here's the catch. A bee that just stung an assailant gives off a pheromone that signals the other bees Here is the enemy! Here is the hated BLACK colored enemy! So another one came at me! And another one! Even though the sting didn't hurt (it was more like a throbbing discomfort than pain) I did not want to be stung again. Although, I think the sound of the buzzzzzzzzzzzz was more scary than being stung. I ran to the car, and sealed myself in. But not before I was able to collect a handful of golden honeycomb, which I later made into lip balm, with an equal amount of coconut oil. 

Ciao bello! Baci di cocco, mwah!

[Goodbye beautiful! Coconut kisses.]