Learning To Deal With Stings (129)

Episode 129 – Learning To Deal With Stings

[music]

Jim Tew: Listeners, I'm here today with Jeff Ott from Beekeeping Today Podcast. I'm going to ask Jeff an off-the-cuff question. Jeff, when you work your bees, do you wear gloves?

Jeff Ott: Why'd you have to put me on the spot like that, Jim? [laughs] It really depends on my mood for the day and what I'm doing with the bees.

Jim: That makes sense. I'm curious because Kim and I talked in May about memorable stings in our lifetime - stings that really stand out, but in general, if we're just going through the day-to-day routine actions of working bees, that's more useful equipment than the “stand-out” stings. Have you got a while to talk about stinging, how to deal with it, how to learn to live with it, if you can, and other ways to suppress it, can you talk for a while about that?

Jeff: Sure. I'm happy to embarrass myself, Jim.

Jim: Well, I'll be embarrassing myself too. Misery loves company, as you know. I'm Jim Tew.

Jeff: I'm Jeff Ott from Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Jim: We're coming to you on Honey Bee Obscura. Where today, we want to talk about the real-world situations of stinging honeybees and what to do about them, if anything.

Introduction: You are listening to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the folks behind Beekeeping Today podcast. Each week on Honey Bee Obscura, host Kim Flottum and Jim Tew explore the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees in today's world. Get ready for an engaging discussion to delight and inform all beekeepers. If you're a long-time or just starting out, sit back and enjoy the next several minutes as Kim and Jim explore all things honeybees.

Jim: I remember Jeff as a kid, stings from wasp and yellowjackets and whatever, even as a child, it was a big day, big event. My grandmother would mix up some poultice with vinegar or something. As I look back on it, all she was doing was just helping me get through the psychological shock of the fact that I had just been attacked by some other animal.

Jeff: A Calamine lotion, Bactine, comes to mind. [chuckles]

Jim: Yes. Would you think that people who don't keep bees don't keep bees because they sting? What would be the limiting factor? How restrictive is stinging to the growth of beekeeping as a universal endeavor?

Jeff: I would have to believe that primarily if someone was not averse to working with insects because some people have the “ick” factor of working with insects. Once you get past that, I think stings would be the predominant issue.

Jim: Well, that's a good point. That's a good point. I've done this too long. I didn't think about the icky factor. I thought it'd be straight, that if bees didn't sting, everybody would love beekeeping, and everybody would be one. Then all of us who think we're special would not be special at all.

When I've asked audiences if I could, if I'd developed a bee strain that did not sting, would you want it? Would you like it? Would you use that queen stock? You know the answer because you know beekeepers as well as I do. No. They thought stinging was the right thing for bees to do. That stingy thing was the spice of beekeeping.

Jeff: I know a bunch of bears that would love to have stingless bees and some possums, some skunks. [laughs].

Jim: That's an excellent point. I guess, in general, stinging is here to stay. What do you say to someone who's just starting out? How do you deal with someone that asks you a question at the grocery store or while you're sitting beside someone in the doctor's waiting office, "Don't you ever get stung?" How do you answer that question without looking like you like pain?

Jeff: You say, "Yes. I like going to the dentist too." No offense to all my dentist friends. Boy. Yes, you say, yes, you get stung. Then I usually follow it up with, and I don't like it. I do everything I can not to get stung and still work the bees responsibly.

Jim: When I've had those conversations with people, I've evolved through the years. At first, I tried to explain it, well, you've got protective gear. Well, you learn bee biology, and you keep stinging to a minimum. It doesn't happen that often. Yes, it always hurts, but no, the pain is not inconsolable.  Even that didn't make complete sense. If there's even a chance of pain, why I do it? That there's things that people take all the time that has an element of potential pain to it, but that doesn't mean that you don't do it.

By now, the person's been called to go back to the dentist or the flight's taking off or whatever, and the conversation usually dies down there. I guess I wanted to spend a little bit of time about these conversations that you try to explain to people that yes, I get stung occasionally, and yes, it hurts, and no, I don't like it, but I'm going to always keep bees. I try to make that make sense in a way to someone who sees it as completely nonsensical.

Jeff: Along those lines. This conversation often comes up in a one-to-one basis with beekeepers, especially the first-year beekeepers or maybe the second-year beekeepers when they ask, "How do you get used to getting stung? How can I get used to working with bees and not be so fearful of being stung than I'm clumsier?"

Jim: May I use the word tolerate? I don't know that I ever really get used to stinging. I know it, I know what it feels like. I know that some stings will take you to your knees while other stings are inconsequential. Probably it’s the affect the amount of bee venom that the bee administered when she was able to sting you. I know all that, but that doesn't mean that it really hurts. There is a second, Jeff when right after a good sting on some tender spot is just really hurting.

Just for a second, you think, just give 20 seconds here, give me a half a minute and I'll be okay. Right now, this really is hurting for just a bit and then it quickly passes then you go about your business. How does someone learn that? Wouldn't you think, here we are, Jeff, me anyway, I can't speak for you, totally out of any area of expertise that I have? Wouldn't you think that a person's ability to experience and tolerate pain and adapt to it is an individual thing? Some people just pick it up like a piece of candy, others may never get used to it.

Jeff: Yes. I think so. I think in part it is a person who's decided to keep bees already has crossed the first threshold. They know they're going to get stung at some point. They've crossed that first threshold. The second threshold is how many can I take before I can no longer take it?

Jim: That's right.

Jeff: Whether that be in a day or in a season or during the experience of the hobby. Can I get through the first season and manage the stings and still like the hobby that I could think I would like?

Jim: Good point. Good point. What you're saying is that it's the number of stings per unit of time.

Jeff: [laughs] Yes.

Jim: How many stings per unit of time should I grow to tolerate and where, right? Stings around my eyes are not funny. Stings on the back of my arm are annoying and will cause me to jump around for a bit and deal with that, but they're not the same. Let's take a short break and hear from our sponsor at this point and gather our thoughts together.

Betterbee: It's summertime, and the varroa population in your hives is booming. Target varroa now with ApiLife Var to protect your hives from mite-born diseases down the road. With over 30 years of international use, ApiLife Var is a natural thymol-based treatment with an effectiveness that exceeds 94%. Learn more and get yours from Better Bee today by visiting betterbee.com/alv.

Jim: I always recommend, I always suggest, I always encourage anyone who goes into a bee yard to have on some eye protection. If a visitor goes with me to a bee yard and they're confident they're not beekeepers, but they're not panicky, I still would like for them to have eye protection on. I don't know anyone who's ever been stung in the eye. Personally, I had a student, an international student, who went back to his home country and was stung in his eye.

Jeff: In the actual eyeball.

Jim: Yes, and he had residual problems from it.

[crosstalk]

Jim: Recovered, but it was not a happy situation. From personal experience, Jeff, I want those glasses to fit close to your head, to hold your head. I don't want it just to be a typical pair of glasses, even though I like those better than having nothing on. Because on one occasion I had a bee hit me just above my eyebrow and then drop down behind my glasses. Then she was between my glasses and my eye - trapped there. The way I'll end that story is it took me about an hour to find those glasses because they went flying. I took those things off my face right now.

This is not a lecture, this is not an educational format, this is a conversational format. I really would encourage people to have on some eyeglass protection.

This is a common scenario. I'm just going to take a quick peek. I don't want to light a smoker, I don't want to get out of veil, but I do wonder if those bees are in that top super. I'm just going to have a quick look. You think that you can just crack that top open, have a quick look, sate your curiosity. At that moment bees come out, one of them comes right for you and pops you in a tender eyelid spot or whatever. Those are the moments you must fight. Those are the moments that you must be aware that I'm taking a risk now of agitating, upsetting, invading these bees without any protective gear myself.

Jeff: A lot of that really depends on reading the colony and the day. You don't want to do that on a cloudy, stormy, cold day with nothing in bloom. I know I don't. If you're going to take that risk, if it's a nice blue sky, 70 degrees, all sorts of flowers in bloom, and half the bees are out of the colony foraging, then that's a different proposition. The ones that are left inside are busy. They're not going to really notice you. If it's August and you crack that hive and you're just checking it out, chances are you're going to get some visitors.

Jim: Isn't that a good point? Just a beautiful point. A hive in May and June, during a good flow, will have a completely different personality than on a hot August day in a bit of a dearth. The same colony that you could sit beside and watch pollen collectors come in, watch house cleaning going on. You take that same chair in August and you're going to be running around your bee yard - in most cases because the colony is in a completely different mindset, in a completely different defensive mode.

Jeff: That's absolutely true. That's one of the things that drove me crazy or even still today somewhat is-- Nothing against YouTube beekeepers because there's many great ones out there that I enjoy watching. Early on you used to see the videos without explanation of someone opening a hive in their shorts and barefoot or their-- just opening a hive and working bees with no protective clothing. Then the first-year beekeeper or someone considering the hobby says, "Look, they've become so gentle now that I can even go out there in shorts and work the bees just like this person was doing on the video," when the reality is the person who did the video knew exactly the temperament of the bees at the time that they produced that video.

You go back any other day; they won’t be doing that. If you went back to that hive in August, they would not be out there in shorts and no veil. That always drives me crazy because that instills in a young or a new beekeeper the concern that if they go to their hive wearing their veil and/or gloves, they're going to be perceived as being a lesser beekeeper because they prefer to be protected. You get this conflict with beekeepers that, "To be a beekeeper, I need to be fearless and I need to be able to work the bees without gloves."

Jim: To be a cool beekeeper. To be an in-crowd beekeeper.

Jeff: To be a master beekeeper, I have to work my bees without gloves. There are instances where you have to-- you will want to have the dexterity of not wearing gloves or big leather gloves and gauntlets to work your bees, but it's not necessary to enjoy the hobby.

Jim: I was wanting to keep up. You made four or-

Jeff: Sorry.

Jim: -five good points right in order there. I was trying to memorize them and now I can't recall a single one of them, but they were all good points, boom, boom, boom.

In reality, you're better off to go into the bee yard overdressed than you are to go into the bee yard underdressed and then scurry back to your truck in a cloud of bees and try to get your veil on then. You look so much cooler, so much neater, so much in control of your destiny, strolling up to a bee colony with a veil loosely over your head and shorts and a short sleeve shirt on, only to find out that it's not a good day. By the time you find that out, you've been stung a few times. You've impressed all the friends and neighbors standing around.

I do not practice what I preach. When I finish this conversation with you, I'll probably walk back to my bees. I'm not going to put on a bee veil. I'm not going to do anything with them, but it's a good time to be stung. If you go back there and stand around and you're looking at the bees, watching them fly, it's really a good time to get a bee crashing into your ear, dropping down behind your glasses. “Yes, Jim, you should do it too.” You should put on equipment when you go back there, but I probably won't, but you're better off, especially for beekeepers in public, beekeepers in a crowd, beekeepers at a meeting, at an open hive demonstration.

Jeff: Definitely.

Jim: Put on too much. Then as the event progresses, if it looks like it's okay, then do a slow strip. Take off the gloves if you don't need them.

Jeff: I'm looking at the clock. I know we need to wrap up. You asked me originally a question about what protective clothing I wear. This is how I do it, Jim. I like to wear a smock because I like to keep my clothes relatively clean. I don't want to go in the house in track honey propolis and smoke smell around the house. I don't want to be changing clothes all the time. It's a lot easier for me to throw on a coat with a veil and go out in the bee yard because then everything's self-contained in that coat.

I always wear a veil. I don't like to be stung in the face. The question I always have is making sure it's secure. Sometimes there have been a time or two where I've been working the bees and I forgot that I hadn't zipped it up. This is what I've done for gloves. I'm one of those weird people. I wear gloves when I wash dishes. I just like to have my hands clean. I don't know, maybe that's come from playing guitar or maybe that's just weirdness.

I like to have my hands clean. Typically, if I'm doing a lot of moving and of supers and pulling off of supers and moving high bodies, I'll wear gloves just to keep the stickiness down.

If I'm going inside, if I'm looking for eggs, if I'm looking for the queen, if I'm doing delicate procedures, then I will go without gloves. If that's a day that I'm not feeling particularly confident and I'm thinking, "I really don't want to get stung between the fingers today or under the fingernail," I'll put on the blue exam gloves, because that gives me the dexterity of feeling as I used to as a paramedic, be able to start IVs and everything. That gives me all the tactical feeling I need to perform anything in beekeeping and still have a little bit of protection should I irritate a bee or accidentally grab one when I'm lifting a frame. That's what I can offer, you ease into it.

Jim: That's nicely said. I really can't argue. I always have gloves somewhere nearby. I may or may not have them on. Regardless of what I've said earlier, I don't put them on first and then take them off. I usually think, "Oh wow, I've had some number of stings here." It usually doesn't take a lot, five or six or 10 stings and I'm thinking enough of this, I'm going to put gloves on. Maybe I'll change my mind. It's like a sliding scale for me, what do you need? What's the event? What's the workload? I do readily support what you said, but most of the time I'm wearing gloves as a work glove, not as a bee glove. Sticky honey and heavy supers and a little nail head sticking out of a box somewhere.

Jeff: [laughs] Yes, straight.

Jim: I think we're in agreement. We understand that if we keep bees, we're going to be stung.

Jeff: Right.

Jim: The question is, how many stings can each individual take on a particular day, in a particular episode before they've had enough? We didn't mention the commercial world. We don't have time for it. I probably don't have the qualifications for it, but all my commercial experience has been, you put gloves on. You're getting paid to do the job. We’ve got to work all these bees. We got to be back home. We've got these obligations made. We don't have time to run back and forth to the truck to put gloves on or take gloves off, so you go suited up, ready to go. End of Statement.

Jeff: When I worked construction, I was helping build frame houses in Colorado, and the foreman, he would say, "You take those splinters on your time. Don't take them out on my time." [laughter] He was serious.

Jim: That's interesting.

Jeff: He's holding a hammer. [laughter] He was serious.

Jim: If you're new to beekeeping, it'll come. It is not an easy thing. It doesn't come quickly. Just be patient with it. Do whatever it takes to evolve and grow. If it's important to you that you not wear gloves, then work toward that goal. If it's not important to you that you're gloveless, then keep them on. Don't worry about what other beekeepers think about you. Be the best beekeeper you can based on your standards. That would be my thought.

[music]

Jeff: Here, here!

Jim: Thank you for letting me dwell on this again. Kim and I talked about standout stings. We didn't talk about just day-to-day, dealing with it, growing with it, the things you and I chatted with here. I always enjoy talking to you, friend.

Jeff: Enjoyed being here. Thank you, Jim.

Jim: All right. Bye-bye.

[music]

[00:22:11] [END OF AUDIO]