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I became a beekeeper last year, but not for the reasons you may think.
About two years ago, on vacation, my sister-in-law and I visited an apiary as a way to spend an hour together. The “experience” cost $25 and involved watching a beekeeper open a hive, point out the queen and offer us a chance to hold a hive frame (I said yes, Rebecca said no way). There might have been honey tasting involved. Of course, we posted pics of the farm, the hives, and us in our cute beekeeping hats.
That Christmas, fate came knocking when my husband and two daughters decided that hard-to-buy-for me would love an 8-frame, double decker, somewhat exotic Flow Hive, complete beekeeping outfit, hive tool, and smoker. Given the sizeable financial investment, and in an effort to be a gracious gift recipient, I signed up for Bee School at the Ag Station in New Haven that February.
In April, I picked up 2 “packages” of Saskatraz bees (a hybrid species from Saskatchewan and Northern California) and a second, more typical, Langstroth hive. A 3 lb. package is about 10,000 honeybees, a queen and some sugar water to keep them fed on their trip from California. With any luck, they’d each grow to a colony of 40,000 – 80,000 bees in a few months!
Note to those considering beekeeping: don’t decide to stop at Clinton Crossings on your way back from picking up your bees and leave them in the backseat. If so, you’ll learn that package bees take “relieving flights” …essentially bathroom breaks. After an hour, you’ll come back to pinpoints of mustardy yellow bee poop all over the interior. And lots of escapees buzzing around, inside the closed car, as you drive home.
The thing about keeping bees is that people make assumptions. Some think you’re a little nuts. Neighbors panic, assuming your home is in a constant swarm state. Friends with bee allergies take it personally.
Frequently, those on the left of the political spectrum thank me for beekeeping – for saving the bees. Or the flowers. Or the environment. Or stopping global warming. I really get a lot of credit! These thank yous tend to include a kind of fist-pump. As if I – along with the speaker – have both seen the light. Turns out, for some, my beekeeping is a brownie badge of liberal principles.
In contrast, those on the right sometimes grunt a slightly inaudible sound of appreciation for my local apiary. It’s usually a scruffy, older man; a farmer or a mr-fix-it type in a plaid, flannel shirt, who subtly signals that keeping bees is…well, ok. His tight-lipped thank you sounds something like: “Mm hmm.” (What I think this means is, “I respect your decision to live free or die, girls who raise bees are like Texans with guns, do what you want on your own property and everybody else be damned, and, oh yeah, oorah.”)
If only they all knew. I didn’t get into beekeeping to make a political statement.
It’s unclear whether the bee population is on the decline. No one has ever been able to take a census of wild bees. And I’m not exactly exercising my 2nd Amendment rights by caring for these stinging creatures. Keeping bees involves putting them in a wooden box, exposed to the elements and predators, doing cartwheels to keep them alive, and taking their honey. We feed them, provide pollen patties, treat them for varroa mites, kill invading ants, and try desperately not to kill the queen. My point is, keeping bees is unnatural. It’s somewhere between a science project and a very, very bad hobby.
But, I’ve been bitten (sorry) by the bee bug….
I love that there is so much to learn. I think it couldn’t hurt to have a hobby that gets me outdoors. And, mostly I’m anxious to be losing my youngest kid to college and worried I won’t have anyone to mother. Frankly, other people’s assumptions about my beekeeping are a little pesky and I wish they’d keep them to themselves.
Recently, though, a friend who was going to housesit asked about how he should manage the bees. I suggested he steer clear of the entrance and not block their flight path. If he wanted to get close, I told him to put on a veil, so his face was protected. He said the strangest thing:
I guess you don’t get stung because they know who you are. You know, you feed them and everything, so they probably recognize your scent, right?
It was the oddest assumption yet! But got me thinking. About bees and people, sure. But also about Democrats, Republicans and how to avoid getting stung. Bear with me.
First of all, bees CAN smell, and incredibly well. That’s one way they locate pollen. It’s also how they sense danger. But to suggest the 40,000 bees in each of two hives could smell me, were grateful for my work, and therefore wouldn’t sting me was a stretch.
It’s true humans need bees. They pollinate plants, which produce fruit, nuts and vegetables. These fruits, nuts and vegetables then spread more seeds and the cycle continues. Without bees, our food supply would shrink (but not be obliterated as bee-pocalypse supporters suggest, thanks to wind-pollenated plants like grains!). Plus, there’s honey…which tastes pretty good, and, if it’s local and raw, is said to help with allergies. Also, who doesn’t like a beeswax candle? And somewhere there are still hipsters trying to ignite a mead craze.
On the other hand, the jury is out on whether bees need humans. If they’re really in decline, maybe raising them in the backyard is helpful. But humans probably caused any decline in the first place through deforestation, land development, and pollution. And our “help” in rearing them is also leading to increased infection, human-dependent colonies, and (in some bee yards) harsh pesticides.
To understand our complicated relationship, it’s useful to know a little more about honeybees.
A bee colony is made up of a single, fertilized queen, a few hundred male drones (who are generally pretty useless except for fertilization) and 40,000+ female worker bees. The worker bees have differentiated functions that relate to keeping the hive humming – nurse bee, pollen collector, attendant, guard, etc. There are volumes written on the extraordinary ways that a beehive is a complete micro-ecosystem.
What I know is that, contrary to what my housesitting friend assumed, the bees in my backyard have NOT invited me to be part of their ecosystem.
In fact, each time I approach them, I undertake a set of rituals designed to make them calm and keep me safe. I use a smoker to fill the hive with cool billows of smoke, a natural sedative for the bees that dampens their sense of smell and masks pheromones emitted by the bees to signal danger. I also put on a bee suit and gloves. I tuck my jeans into my socks (not a good look!). The prep time before opening the hive is as long as the time spent inside checking on the queen, feeding, cleaning propolis, rearranging frames and checking for mites.
The thing is – I don’t want to hurt them. I’m there to feed and care for them (especially the queen!). Everything I do is designed to help them thrive. Similarly, honeybees really don’t want to hurt me. Stinging me results in the barbed stinger lodging in my skin, and the bee’s abdomen being ripped from its body, pulling apart its muscles, nerves and digestive tract in an immediate, explosive death.
In fact, one day after coming in from Flo and Girlie (the hives are named after my hardworking grandmothers who kept their own hives buzzing), I took off my bee suit, cleaned my tools and sat down in the kitchen to write one of my ongoing Facebook posts about the bee adventures. Because I’m old and a perfectionist, and emojis are really, really small on an iPhone, this particular post took about 45 minutes to get right.
I finally put my screen down, stood up, and brushed my hand casually down my t-shirt. And OUCH! All of a sudden I felt a tight, hot stab on my right hip. Out tumbled half of a little honeybee, onto the kitchen floor. That worker bee had been under my clothes, sitting on my skin for close to an hour without causing any harm. Happy as a clam (or busy as a bee?). She only stung me when I was thoughtless enough to unknowingly take a whack at her while she was resting.
So, if my bees and I like each other so much, why undertake this careful ritual of smoke and clothing and other preparation before we meet each Saturday morning?
Because we are different. And we need to respect our differences. The only way Flo and Girlie and I can exist together, in harmony, is if we’re each adequately prepared for our encounters. We have to stop our normal routines and get ready to enter a new place.
If the bees want food, water, tending, and care, they make room for my gigantic, clumsy hands and foreign tools. If I want to learn about bees, harvest honey and not get stung, I respect their ways and protect my vulnerable skin. This is how different species encounter each other when trying to co-exist. With caution, care, and extraordinary preparation.
The bees do not “know who I am.” And I try to account for that before entering their home.
As a Republican in Connecticut, I’m accustomed to entering political conversations, like the beehive, carefully. I try to listen, calm myself, use a little smoke (compliments, euphemisms, indirect language) and put on my protective gear before engaging. There’s little to be gained from barging into conversation.
If this analogy between politics and bees seems like too big a stretch, consider this: Political systems, like beekeeping, are “unnatural.” We’ve set up artificial ways to control and reign in our most basic human instinct of self-interest. We forced different kinds of people to work under a single umbrella (or party tent) for survival. We have complex rules and regulations (like registration and contribution limits) to support them. And we have hierarchies that reinforce roles. In America, we call this unnatural ecosystem the two-party system.
The parties do not “know” each other. Democrats and Republicans separately cluster to protect their colonies. Each member has a role to play. There are queen bees (politicians), drones (profiteers, the media), and worker bees (canvassers, poll counters, Congressional staff). And as the ideological extremes drift further apart, we are, increasingly, like different species trying (or not trying) to co-exist.
It seems to me our differences of opinion are becoming all-defining differences. Like bees, it’s my sense that Republicans are creating exo-skeletons – an external bone structure – that acts as a thick, rigid barrier, repelling new ideas. I see Democrats hardening their human endoskeletons – internal bone structures – and letting their skin become ever more sensitive.
And most importantly, unlike beekeepers, we’re all forgetting to pause before we engage with the other side. We’re forgetting to prepare ourselves. To calm down and put on our own protective gear. To speak each other’s language. To respect each other’s practices, to take care, act cautiously, deliberately, gingerly. We’re forgetting to start with a smoker, before striking at the other colony’s frame filled with hard-won honey.
And over and over again, we sting each other. Disoriented and afraid, we plunge the barbed stinger into the perceived attacker. And, it’s we who die a little. Something life-defining ruptures.
One of the great joys of beekeeping is being able to share honey with friends. This miraculous, golden liquid elicits literal squeals of joy.
So often, people say, “I love your honey.”
When they say this, I want to make one small correction: It’s the bees’ honey.
But keeping them alive and pest-free, harvesting the honey and filling jars, making sure there is food so they can overwinter – that’s all a joint venture. And it only happens when the beekeeper and the bees are able to keep their cool and work together.
Jennifer Aniskovich, JD, is a nonprofit advisor, beginning beekeeper and mom. She holds a B.A.in English from the University of Virginia, a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law (final year, Yale Law), and lives in Branford with her husband Bill. Her 27 and 17-year-old daughters have left (or are in the process of leaving) the nest. Jen’s all out of last year’s honey, but check back this summer if you’d like a jar from 2020. Learn more about Jen at her Nonprofit Advising website.
To reach Jen directly: jsa@aniskovich.com or 203-215-6000