Nearing my father-in-law’s house, I was surrounded by a concrete jungle. Tax
services, restaurants and shopping centers were closing in on me. I then turned
the corner onto Cherry Street. This put me on a residential block. A man was
walking his dog and a family with young children was returning home from an
unknown adventure. Little did I know I was about to embark on a journey all my
own. Over twenty-years ago, my father-in-law, Lynn Cheatum, was helping a
neighbor cut down a dead tree. In this dead tree was a colony of bees and a lot
of honey. “ I was fascinated by it, “ Lynn said recalling the incident. He
then began telling me how his curiosity of bees had always been there but he had
never acted upon it. Lynn was still unable to act on this curiosity because one
of his neighbors was violently allergic to bees. This neighbor had to get a shot
once a month, just in case a bee stung him, so he wouldn’t die. A few years
later, in 1977, Lynn moved and was able to start his apiary, a place where you
keep bees and their hives. He mail ordered his bees from Sears and Roebuck. Lynn
remembers the bees came in a cage with a screen, similar to a window screen, on
one side. The bees also had a supply of sugar water to keep them fed. The queen
bee was separate from the other bees, the workers and the drones. The queen’s
cage is about half the size of a package of cigarettes. Worker bees are the
female bees in the hive that collect the pollen and do the work to keep up the
hive. The worker bees also protect the hive. After they sting an intruder, the
bee dies. Drones are the male bees that do nothing but eat the honey and fly
around trying to mate with the queen. Drones consist of about 1% of the bee
population. After the drones mate with the queen they die. The Queen bee’s one
job is to reproduce. When Lynn’s bees arrived, he had everything he needed to
begin the enjoyment of his apiary. When asked what the best part of beekeeping
was, he anxiously began to tell me that working with the bees was very exciting.
To my wonderment he compared his interaction with the bees to petting a dog.
This I was unable to understand. My experiences with bees were they were a
nuisance always interrupting a picnic or a get together on the porch. He also
commented that being able to sell and give away his honey to his friends and
family was also rewarding. Every Christmas my husband and I can count on having
a big jar of delicious honey for a present. I then inquired about the process of
jarring honey. To my amazement he used the same process used to donate plasma.
The honeycomb or blood is placed in a honey extractor or centrifuge. This
container spins around throwing the honey out of the honeycomb or the plasma out
of the blood. The honey then is placed in jars ready for eating and the plasma
in bags ready to save lives. Just then Lynn’s wife, Kris, entered the room. We
began discussing how she too was very interested in the apiary. Kris recalls
Lynn pausing while mowing the grass so he wouldn’t run over a bee. She thought
this was a very caring act. She informed me that Lynn had bought her a suit for
her birthday, the first year they were together. This allowed her to begin
helping Lynn with the bees. Kris jokingly says, “ I married the bees.” This
I could tell was a good thing. She concludes by telling me of her enjoyment
while watching the bees from the kitchen window. Curiously I asked about the
scariest moment, if any, in bee keeping. Together they told the story. In the
summer of 1997 Lynn and Kris were moving a beehive. They both had their vale, a
straw hat with netting around it, and gloves on. Kris also had her pant legs
fastened with a rubberband, so that the bees were unable to get to her legs;
Lynn did not take this precaution. The beehive was newly assembled and the bees
had not had time to use their propolis or bee glue to glue the two boxes
together. The boxes slid a little from side to side making the bees angry. “I
could tell there was going to be hell to pay,” Lynn said remembering how the
bees then began to sting him. He then remembers telling Kris they needed to get
in the house. He started pulling out the remaining stingers when he began to get
itchy all over, his hair, arms and legs. They later found this to be an
anaphylactic reaction. An anaphylactic reaction is a case of hypersensitivity to
the venom in an insect sting that produces sudden shock that can be fatal. Kris
looking very tenderly at her husband continues. She then told Lynn to go take a
bath as she went to get baking soda for him. When she returned she found Lynn
with his head down making a snorty sound, like he was having trouble breathing.
Kris looking very tenderly at her husband continues; she explains she was scared
to death and raced to dial 911. The fire-truck arrived first. Two burly firemen
took Lynn out of the bathtub and laid him on a sheet. Lynn began to wake up.
“Right away, I realized what the situation was, “ Lynn chimed in again. Lynn
had to stay overnight in the hospital because his blood pressure would not
stabilize. While waiting for the doctor to come in, Kris counted the number of
stings on his ankles, the final count was twenty-four. “That was pretty
exciting,” Kris concludes. Lynn then asked if I wanted to go and see the
apiary. This was very intriguing to me. Walking out the backdoor I noticed two
boxes to the left of a stack of firewood. On the ground, in front of these boxes
were a couple dozen dead bees. I inquired about this to find out that a worker
bee’s life span is about 3-4 weeks. I also found out that when a bee dies in
the hive, the worker bees drag them out. Lynn then proceeded to take the top of
one the boxes off. This I admit was a little bit scary; I was fearful we might
anger the bees and suffer the consequences of not being in the proper cloths.
After taking off the lid, I observed about five rows of honeycomb. I was allowed
to taste the honey right off the honeycomb; it had a much richer taste than
store bought honey. Bees continued to fly around us. One bee even landed on
Lynn’s head. He acted as if this was normal, and explained he didn’t think
it was going to sting him, it never did. I was thankful no bees landed on me. I
do believe bee keeping would take a bit of getting used to. After my observation
of the bees and my interview with Lynn, I realized the bees also fascinated me.
They are very interesting insects. I would definitely have to agree with Lynn
when he said, “Too many people when they think about bee-keeping think about
getting stung instead of how good honey tastes.”