By: Stephen Bishop
Not that I’m jealous, but I don’t get all the hullabaloo over bees’ work ethic. Sure, a bee may transport pollen to and fro 50,000 times over its sixty-day lifespan, but by the time I retire, I may have pushed paper to and fro a gazillion times over my 30-year career—and yet you rarely hear us paper pushers lauded as hard-working, industrious creatures.
And I don’t get those beekeepers who say humbly, “Well, the bees did all the hard work.” I say humbly, hogwash. Bees don’t lug sixty-pound supers around on 95-degree days while baking in a bee jacket. Nor do they lug cases of honey to the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings to peddle honey to the masses. And, let’s be honest, some patrons of the farmers’ market just need to be told, “Buzz off!”
ME: [trying to remain polite] “Not worth 20 dollars? If you knew all the hard work that went into that quart of honey, you’d probably say it’s worth more.”
CUSTOMER: “Well, don’t the bees do most of the work?”
ME: “KA-BLOOM” [it’s hard to write phonetically the sound of a beekeeper’s morale imploding]
Best I can tell, my bees work four months out of the year—March, April, May and June—then they shut down shop and goof off in the dearth, then eat and mingle with each other all Winter. Meanwhile, a lot of us sideline beekeepers work full-time jobs all year long just to afford our beekeeping addiction, and yet the bees steal all the credit.
I hate to admit this, but lately I’ve been feeling a little resentful toward all the press that bees get about being endangered and on the verge of extinction. You know what’s on the verge of extinction after honey harvests? Beekeepers’ backs, and I can’t remember the last time I saw the press writing about the chronic back problems that beekeepers face. Heck, if they need a catchy scientific name to drive traffic to their articles, may I humbly suggest: “SCCD” Spinal Column Collapse Disorder. Basically, it’s when a beekeeper’s lower vertebrae abscond from normal alignment and leave behind only a few pinched nerves and a big chiropractor bill.
And let’s not forget the parental responsibilities that many beekeepers face that bees just don’t. Bees emerge from the womb of their hexagonal cells as fully capable members of society. There’s no tantrums of the terrible twos, no pre-teen drama, no teenage wasteland, no adult child living in the basement eating them out of house and home. Sure, I guess drones fit that latter category, but even then, the worker bees usually kick them out before they turn 35 years old.
For me, trying to balance sideline beekeeping with working a full-time job and corralling a toddler who has more energy reserves than a small solar system—well, all that, feels like hard work. Add to that the call from my neighbor about a cloud of bees plundering her trash can, and you’ve got a recipe for burnout. Yep, no one ever told me when I was a new and aspiring beekeeper that one day I would be dumpster diving through my neighbors’ trash to excavate Coke cans, but that’s how far I’ve fallen.
So, Public Service Announcement: beekeeping burnout is real. In fact, if you find yourself exhibiting any of the following symptoms, you may need to seek help:
1: You no longer peruse beekeeping catalogs, but immediately hand them off to your toddler to use as a coloring book.
2: You’re too tired to run away or mount any defensive flailing against bees chasing you, so you surrender yourself as a pin cushion.
3: You are experiencing critical memory lapses, beyond run-of-the-mill hive tool misplacement. For instance, you may have so many hives scattered throughout countryside farms, you are now misplacing hives.
4: You have withdrawn inwardly and no longer converse with your bees while working hives.
5. You experience resentment toward your coworkers and write humor articles about them, maligning their work ethic.
If you experience any of these behaviors, it’s best to find a relaxing activity to destress. If beekeeping was your relaxing activity, I suggest joining a sideline beekeeper support group.
