Tall Bee Tales

One thing I have noticed since starting to raise honey bees is that people seem to love to talk about them. Nearly everyone I meet who finds out I have bee hives has some story about bees that they are just dying to tell me. Some are entertaining, some are fascinating, and some are complete nonsense. I am starting to understand what it is like to be a famous athlete, except for the fame part. And the money. And the talent. But you get the point. I am sure there is many a quarterback out there who would gladly give a year's salary and royalties minus agent fees to not hear one more story of some high school football game back in '78 where the fate of the free world was riding on the story teller not messing up this pass. There is something in people that, once they find out something unusual about a someone, they feel the irresistible urge to corner this poor stranger and tell them all about something.

I have noticed this phenomenon a lot with pet owners too. I know people love their pets, and I am glad because another way I use up my surplus time and money besides bee keeping is working with an animal rescue. I can't count how many times I have been manning an adoption booth completely surrounded by dogs and cats in cages and some woman comes up and insists on telling us about every pet she ever had. As far as I can tell, there is no point in this other than to help me dispose of my surplus time that I would otherwise have been talking to potential adopters or something silly like that. It is a lot like what new moms talk about, only they typically don't impose their bodily fluids  stories on non-new moms. There seems to be a code of honor amongst them that keeps the best stories within the group but passed from generation to generation to preserve the ability of the human race to properly burp a newly fed kid. Pet stories are not so well guarded.

And they don't just tell us about each animal, they tell us what they liked, what tricks they could do, what their personality was, and more often than you would imagine, what they vomited all over the couch last week. I have often wondered how long they would stand around listening to me if I started telling them about each of the over 600 animals we have had.

Killer Bees

I am not sure what the compulsion is that causes people to do this, but it seems to be rooted in a combination of the need to find acceptance from strangers through common interest and a complete lack of sense of what others care about listening to. The saving grace of Bee Stories is that people usually only have a catalog of two or three at the most, so there is less danger of getting sucked into an hour long ramble about their cute potty habits. The stories that are told though are done in a breathless, amazed tone that is normally reserved for natural disaster or spitting cobra stories, and they usually involve someone getting their just deserts for desert. Very often, they center around the fabled "Killer Bees" that seem to cluster around Hollywood.

I was at dinner the other day with some folks that we have known a long time but recently discovered I was a bee keeper. They could hardly wait their turn to tell me their favorite bee story. First up was a "bees in nature" story. An older lady told me about how she had bees for years, and really enjoyed them. They were a feral colony that had built hives in an old house on her property. She would check on them every year and they were always there, year after year. Then one year, they were just gone. Where do I imagine they went?

My guess is they died. They only live a couple of months anyway, except for the queen and a few workers who live through the winter. A farmer probably sprayed pesticide on his crops and the bees brought it back to the hive, poisoning the rest of them. Somehow my explanation didn't seem to bring her the joy of closure. Note to self. The next time someone asked what could have happened to the bees, tell them that they found a better place in a land flowing with milk and honey. Don't tell them that they were poisoned and they all died.

The next storyteller up relayed a story "I saw with my own eyes" which is a good indication that not only they didn't see it, but the fifteen people the story passed through before reaching him also didn't "see it with their own eyes". This was a "survival against all odds" story. He was working at a paper mill, and logs would come in with bee hives inside them. The bees would be swarming around the logs and follow them through the the log handling equipment...the chop saws, the debarker, the chipper, and somehow, through all of this, they would manage to dodge the blades and emerge from the other side, swarming around some sweet smelling paper on a shiny new roll. Wasn't that something?

It was something alright. Something that I didn't really believe, but I smiled and looked amazed with the same expression I would have when a woman told me about how her Chihuahua always knew the phone was about to ring and who was calling.

The next story up was my favorite kind of bee story, the "Just deserts" story. There was this guy that was always running his mouth. A real know it all. One day they found an old log that was full of honey comb. The know it all was telling them all about how good wild honey was and to demonstrate, he broke off a chunk of comb and started munching away on it. Naturally there was a bee in it and it stung the inside of his mouth. He had to be airlifted to the hospital and derned near died! Ain't that something?

It was something alright. Something that I really didn't believe. I kept the smile in place.

Close on the heels of this story was one of the most common, the Swarm Story. Apparently bee swarms are amazing sights to non-beekeepers and they take on all kinds of menacing qualities. They are always on the verge of attacking innocent children, dogs, and metropolitan areas until something happens just in time. Turns out that what always happens in these stories it the swarm leaves. This I can believe.

What I can't believe is a story that was told as fact where these guys were horsing around with a boat when they should have been working, running it up and down a river inlet to see how fast it would go. I like this story best because it combines all of the elements in a neat little package. Apparently, all of this racket of the boat running up and down the river stirred up a swarm of bees ("Bees in Nature"). Not appreciating being waken up from their afternoon nap, these bees got together and decided to do something about it and descended on the boat ("Swarm Story").

When the guy in the boat saw the swarm coming, he hit the throttle and ran as fast as he could from the bees, but the noise of the boat just irritated them more, so they gave chase ("Killer Bees"). He disappeared around the corner looking terrified. Five minutes later, he came tearing back around the corner, bees in hot pursuit and disappeared around the bend the other way. Five minutes later, here comes the boat, here come the bees. Bend. Boat. Bees. Bend. Boat. Bees. The story ends, of course, when he finally runs out of gas and the boat motor dies. He dives in the water to avoid the swarm, but with the noise gone, instead of attacking him, they fly away, leaving him in the middle of the river long after dark ("Just Deserts").

Now some of you reading this may consider me a hypocrite for making fun of people telling bee stories while I tell some pretty outlandish ones right here, but that is my prerogative. You see, in order to make fun of stories, you have to know why they should be made fun of. I happen to know key facts about bee behavior that uniquely qualify me to determine how legitimate a story is. For example, in the story about the boat, I happen to know that bees don't care about the noise of a motor, and were probably just attracted to his aftershave.

I am sure there are many other bee stories in store for me as I continue to become known as "that weird guy down the way that keeps bees." Never fear, I will always pass them along (although I may take credit for them myself it they are good enough).