Busy Bee-keeper

According to some trivia source, honey is the only animal product whose manufacturing does not harm or disrupt the animals. That might be true, but what about the bee-keepers? This weekend I got to walk a mile in their high rubber boots. I joined one of the directors in my lab, who is a Saturday apiarist, and his team in their twice annual honey harvest!

We hit the farm about an hour outside of Paris. (It becomes rural very quickly!) There, a few steps had to be fulfilled before heading out to the hives. (1) Getting the hand-held smoker started. Used as the first line of defense, the smoke released around the hives prior to their opening sends the bees into a protective mode. Such loyal servants, their response is to swarm inside around their queen mother. Not to mention their motherload of honey. (2) Gearing ourselves up in the hooded suit. The second and real line of defense. I learned the hard way. I first thought the beekeeping team was joking when they instructed me to put on a pair of rubber gloves. (Suit and gloves, I said, this is too much like spending a Saturday in lab!) (3) Checking your suit and others for holes. (4) Repeat step 3. (5) Repeat steps 3 and 4….


We eased into the day’s work by first tending to the “sick” hive. Due to some contamination, possibly fungus, this honey shack had to be sealed, trapping the dirty inhabitants inside to die of starvation. Poor little guys! Then we soaked the tools in chlorine to avoid passing on the contamination (just like in lab), and moved on. Just as I was tending to the smoker, before I could even notice what buzzed under my suit, I got stung on the arm. Painful, but quick and decisive. Nearly at the same time, another woman got it good on the face. I could almost hear the victory cry buzzed out that enemy lines had been compromised. The two of us victims had to retreat back to the fields where it was safe to take off our armor and pop anti-histamines.

I still underestimated those buggers enough to go back. If early/pre man has been apiculturing since 13,000 years before Christ (Wikipedia), it cannot be that bad. Or, I was thinking at least that, as long as my skin was covered, I was fine. When I felt 2 or 3 hovering directly over each arm, I realized that the seal between my gloves and the suit should have been airtight! And then my retreat to the fields was less calm. Trapped in my suit, the invaders had to die and, most hopefully, before they stung me. Feeling their wings flutter on me was a quick but excruciating hell. The chief bee-keeper was even alarmed at this point, and started slapping squeezing and folding the suit above my arms. Unbelievably his technique worked to kill the invaders. The only sting I got was the first one.

Back at the homefront, we compared battle scars. I was by far the most untouched. The chief beekeeper had a rear-end sting that may now be preventing him from sitting down. And the labmate who I went with, well, see for yourself below. He got one under the eye. Apparently it was a bad day for bee-keepers. One explanation was the bad weather. Just like the Parisians during the May and June grayness, the bees were not out and about and doing their bzzz-ness. Instead they were all home lounging and ready to attack/defend.


Collecting the wood frames of honey from the hives was only the first step in a long process. But, thankfully, the least painful one. Before the frames could be further processed, they were stored in the cold room at the farm for an hour or so while we ate lunch. This served an important function to anesthetize the stubborn bastards who had clung on to their frames. Work then begun to extract the honey from the frames, by scraping off the hard outer wax, and then centrifuging the honey off the frame (again, am I at a bee farm or the BL3 in lab?). Work went fast, in part to avoid allowing the cryopreserved insects to thaw and attack. I was there with my wax scraper to bludgeon any resuscitated bees. (Kind of like killing a fly with a machete, this behavior felt good. But also unfortunately fulfilled the farmers’ stereotype of a violent American.)

The centrifuge to spin-force the honey from the enframed combs.


And here are the unfiltered fruits of our labor, complete with dead bees, pollen and wax. The finished stuff like we buy in jars in the grocery store won’t be ready until after weeks of sedimentation. I could not wait and tapped into this raw stuff, eating it by the finger-full. It felt kind of savage. But then again, so does any type of hunting and food gathering activity these days where man actually puts himself in danger.