The buzz about bees
Why do we fear what the environment needs?
Bees move quickly in and out of their large hive in Bellingham, Wash. on July 7, 2022. This is Les Scott’s oldest bee hive on his property // Photo by Sophia Heit
Written by Sophia Heit
Everything about that day was comforting. The warm air, the smell of barbecue lingering in the air, the sound of kids laughing as they jumped off the dock into the lake.
Then, my grandma opened the car trunk. Two yellowjackets flew out, coming straight for me. Tears streamed down my face.
I was stung twice.
I was four when I developed my fear of yellowjackets — a type of wasp. Following that experience, I also became afraid of their gentler relatives, the bees. Now, I am an adult about to graduate from college and I still carry this fear.
Tired of having anything holding me back, it seemed like the perfect time to head into a swarm of bees. I was lucky enough to stumble upon two friendly, local beekeepers who let me meet their honeybees.
Nai’a LeDain, a beekeeper and owner of Bud and Bloom Botanicals in Whatcom County, keeps her bees at Kragnes Family Farm at the foot of Mount Baker in Maple Falls, Washington. The bees live in a handful of hives in a wide open field with nothing around to disturb them and miles of nature to explore. Sometimes this means seeing critters like raccoons, skunks and mice, but ultimately it feels like a more intimate setting for beekeeping.
LeDain got into this activity when she met a woman who was selling beekeeping equipment. Feeling inspired, she decided to volunteer for her during a particularly stressful time in her life, and beekeeping became a form of meditation.
Her favorite part about beekeeping is the noise that a healthy hive makes, and out in Maple Falls, it’s impossible to get distracted from the buzz of the bees.
The noise I heard when LeDain opened each hive was something I was not sure I would get used to — it was so loud. It sounded like a humming engine hard at work. Normally, she explained, a healthy hive sounds quiet, but it grows very loud when opened.
“The bees make such a beautiful sound when they are healthy,” she said.
A quieter frame that has been opened may have lost its queen. LeDain said she knocks on her hives during the winter to hear if the bees are loud and healthy or quiet and possibly dying.
“Listening to them is such a huge part of figuring out whether a hive is healthy or not,” she said.
Being around the bees as they hummed and worked hard was an empowering experience. Some of them landed on my hands for a moment, but they were too invested in their work to visit for long.
LeDain said each hive probably houses 50,000 to 70,000 bees. All those bees were buzzing around me, and none of them were interested in hurting me. If the bees are aggressive, there is always a reason for it. She said it is usually because of a variety of reasons — they may have lost their queen, have extra moisture in their hive, or a wasp could be robbing them.
“They are really gentle creatures,” she said. “You can literally get in the middle of a beehive.”
Sometimes, she takes her friends out into the field to lay on the grass, letting the bees land on them and lick off their sweat.
“I try to encourage people to come out if they are feeling afraid because it helps to see how gentle they really are.”
LeDain said many people start beekeeping to get over their fear of bees.
“I think beekeeping is a really helpful tool to teach people that bugs aren’t that scary,” she said as the bees buzzed around her.
“The more you learn about anything, the less scary it becomes, and the more fascinating it is,” LeDain said.
Just a short drive from my apartment, I met another local beekeeper.
Les Scott lives in Bellingham and has been beekeeping for about four years. He operates Les’s Bees, a beekeeping supply store located out of his home that serves the entire Whatcom and Skagit County areas. Scott said his establishment is popular because it is the only in-person store nearby; many are forced to order their supplies online.
Les Scott checks on one of his bee hives in Bellingham, Wash. on July 7, 2022. He said that most beehives contain eight to 10 frames // Photo by Sophia Heit
His backyard is a little sanctuary near Lake Whatcom. Beautiful purple flowers bloom in the well-maintained grass, and busy bees fill the silence as they float in and out of their picturesque hives.
Scott is comfortable around his bees, often approaching them without a bee suit. I found his confidence contagious, and instead of the rapid heartbeat that usually accompanies me when I am around bees, I felt myself smiling.
His shop is filled with hive boxes, frames and bee suits with little yellow logos reading “Les’s Bees.” I was clueless about what it takes to be a beekeeper, but Scott was kind enough to explain it.
At Les’s Bees, boxes usually come in eight to 10 frames, and Scott sells five-frame starter kits with bees and a queen to new beekeepers.
The ideal conditions for bees to build their hives were discovered by Lorenzo Langstroth in 1851, according to Bee Health — a website sharing sustainable bee health practices.
Langstroth unveiled something called “bee space.” Bees build comb whenever there is more than three-eighths of an inch of extra space. If there is less than one-fourth of an inch of space, they fill it with propolis, a resin-like material bees produce to build hives. The Langstroth hive has spaces measuring five-sixteenths or three-eighths of an inch to separate the frames and allow the bees to crawl around.
Beekeepers can create more queen bees by “grafting.” To do this, Scott explained that beekeepers take a very young larva — less than 12 hours old — from the hive and place it in an artificial starter cell turned vertically. This causes the bees to “build” the larva into a queen. Normal bee cells are horizontal. Scott believes queens need vertical cells because there’s more room for them to grow.
Additionally, unlike other larvae, developing queens are fed royal jelly by nurse bees until the cell is capped. Scott said queens can live up to five years, but are normally replaced within two, while worker bees live approximately six weeks.
When starting a colony, beekeepers often feed the bees with sugar syrup to help them grow. Once they’re ready to collect nectar from plants and flowers, the bees begin producing honey by adding enzymes to the nectar and drying it.
However, Scott said, bees can’t eat sugar syrup if they are producing honey for retail.
Les Scott wears a hat that advertises his business in Bellingham, Wash. on July 7, 2022. Scott has been beekeeping for about four years now // Photo by Sophia Heit
“The rule is: if you start collecting honey, then you do not feed [them], because they will take sugar water and make honey out of it, and it will be fake honey,” Scott said.
Scott knows of some beekeepers who got 200 pounds of honey from their hives. “I have one out in the county that is probably going to make 140 pounds,” he said.
Scott handed me a jar of honey warmed to the hive’s temperature — about 95 degrees Fahrenheit. When I later went home, I spread it on a piece of toast. It was delicious.
If bees are so good for the environment and one hive can produce 200 pounds of honey, why are bees among the most common fears?
Scott said it is because most people think of the sting first.
“A sting is always a surprise, but it’s the thought that is attached with it that creates the problem and really freaks people out,” he said.
Some people are luckier than others regarding how their body reacts to getting stung by a bee. While some might have an anaphylactic reaction, others might only feel the initial sting. Scott only feels the initial surprise of the sting and tries to brush the bee off quickly to prevent it from fully sinking its stinger in and dying.
In fact, honeybees can only sting once. This is because their stingers are barbed and will rip out of their body, killing them soon after.
“They aren’t aggressive and sting only out of defense,” Scott said. “In the fall, when we are stealing honey, we probably deserve it then.”
Most bee stings happen when someone steps on a bee or gets too close to a hive — where older, crotchety bees spend more time than the less irritable young. Scott also recommended avoiding disturbing the bees at night or when it rains, because the whole colony is home instead of foraging and tends to be particularly defensive.
Furthermore, he said beekeepers don’t wear dark colors because evolutionarily, bees associate them to their biggest threat — bears.
Before resorting to force, bees try to warn people with a head butt so they can get out of the way, Scott said. They know stinging is their last defense.
“It means their life to them,” he said.
On the other hand, wasps are much more aggressive.
Although yellowjackets and other wasps do a little pollinating which does help the environment, they are mainly predators and spend much of their time looking for meat. Wasps, hornets and yellow jackets are all predators of honeybees, Scott said.
When it gets warmer, the wasp population increases, and honeybees have to protect the hive from them, or else they will take the nectar and larvae.
Shockingly enough, honeybees don’t shy away from theft, either. In fact, they can sense weak hives — which happens when the queen has been lost — and steal honey from their own kind.
More people are beginning to appreciate honeybees for their environmental support and the sweet honey they produce. Yet, many still fear these creatures, associating them to the pain of the sting. If more people could spend time around bees, they will become more comfortable and less afraid around these important pollinators.
“We are becoming more concerned with nature and the climate, and we think of them more as pollinators than dangerous critters,” Scott said.