Bee Calm

Reader Contribution by Kim Flottum
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You’ve heard it a hundred times…learn to work your bees without gloves. It’s so much easier because you have a better feel for where your fingers are and you crush and injure far, far fewer bees. You know it’s true, but maybe next time…

And then you watch the instructor or that experienced beekeeper work that colony without even a veil on…not even a veil! And they almost never have a sting to deal with, and when they do, they just whisk it away without missing a beat. How do they do that?

The truth of the matter is that when you are working your bees, the first thing is, you have to have confidence in yourself. That confidence comes, in part, from having reached a comfort level when you have a colony open because you kind of know what to expect, in part from knowing why you are in the colony in the first place. And, of course, in part from having done it enough that not only do you know what you are doing, but you know what you will do next.

Let’s first look at getting that confidence level up to where you want it.

For most folks it takes a bit of doing to get used to insects buzzing around your face and walking on your hands.  Most of us grew up shooing away buzzers – mosquitoes on the patio, horse and deer flies while on the beach, wasps and hornets at picnics. All of these can cause harm and we early on develop a survival response – we wave, slap, swat or spray.

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