Be like the Bees

Smoker

My wife, Tiffany, and I were standing side by side stuffing cut burlap into metal cylinders with attached bellows and a hinged lid in what looks like a tea kettle from the world of Mad Max. With a lighter we lit the burlap pieces and shoved them to the bottom and began pumping the attached bellows. As the fire grew we each smothered the fire with even more burlap and then quickly closed the nozzle lid and began pumping the bellows until a cool white smoke emitted from the funnel top.   Keith, our instructor, came by and graded our effort. Tiff passed right away, my smoke wasn’t cool enough so I stuffed more burlap in and pumped the bellows until the smoke was white and cool. This was the first part of our assessment to become certified beekeepers.

Next it was time to suit up!

Once again it took me a little longer to make sure I had done the zippers in the right order: zip up, zip left then right, making it impossible for a stinging insect to get into my suit. Approaching the hive from the back I smoked the stacked boxes that make up the hive. Tiffany used her hive tool and removed the migratory cover revealing thousands of bees on top and between ten vertical frames. With quick staccato squeezes of the bellows I smoked the bees. The smoke blocks the alarm pheromone to keep the bees calm. Then working from the outside we removed frames and inspected the cells for eggs, brood, pollen, nectar and honey. We both marveled, what was academic knowledge became tactile. We had read the eggs were like a grain of rice, in actuality they were way tinier than a grain of rice. Tiff used the tools and techniques better than I did, but I didn’t roll (kill) any bees as I worked the hive so I consider it a success.

“Be like the Bees.”

We started this journey over 7 weeks ago and I never knew how much I needed the bees. Holding a frame of bees you can only think about the task at hand, a gift in a world full of distractions. Bees work together to become more than any one of them. In a bee’s busy lifetime a single bee will only produce 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.  To make one pound of honey bees have to visit 2 million flowers! Yet together the hive can make pounds and pounds of honey. It’s all about community with bees. Our instructor Keith has a bluntness and humour as a teacher. But he also has a deep love and admiration for the bees which is infectious. “ Be like the bees.” he simply said with moisture in his eyes. “live for others not for yourself. We are meant to be a community, we are not meant to be divided.”