I hate bees

I hate bees.
Most people don't mind bees so much, unless they're allergic. They probably figure having delicious honey is worth the occasional sting to a bare foot. Not me though. I work as a beekeeper sometimes. I have a right to hate the little bastards.
You may have seen beekeepers doing their thing at some time, perhaps removing a swarm. The guys moving around slowly in their white suits with the hoods, bees flying about. Looks placid, doesn't it? Kinda fun? Nah. Beekeeping is about as much fun as a descent into the seventh circle of Hell. I'll explain.

I don't think many people realise exactly what it is beekeepers do. They vaguely imagine beehives going into a factory and honey appearing out the other end, magically, Willy-Wonka-style. Well, that's what I used to think. Of course, the reality is way different. Most people also think that the problem with beekeeping would be getting stung. Wrong, again. Getting stung is a minor problem compared to the main business, which is mostly lifting things. Heavy things. Beehives, namely.

Bees make honey. You knew that already. They make it in hives. You knew that too. What you might not know is that a beehive full of honey weighs about 60 kilogrammes. When taking honey off hives, beekeeping involves lugging lots of these heavy-ass things onto a truck. As honey is made in summer, this means this job usually takes place in sunlight and hot, hot temperatures. In any other job, this would be alright. You could take your shirt off. Of course, beekeepers wear a bee-suit, to prevent the angry insects whose food you are stealing from killing you with a thousand vicious stings. The bee-suit is made of heavy canvas, and there's as a pair of thick leather gauntlets that come up to your elbows. The hood (or veil) is thick mesh, which you can see out of but - somehow - contrives to keep fresh air out. The ensemble is complete with a set of heavy rubber gumboots. The result of wearing this get-up is that you get ridiculouly, stupidly hot, very, very fast. You sweat actual buckets. Sweat makes the suit even more impervious to air (and makes it easier for the bees to sting through, wich I'll get to shortly) and you soon feel like you're stewing in a hot, wet, canvas oven. The sweat gets in your hood-mesh and makes it hard to see. Your face itches. You scratch it, or wipe moisture away, and - surprise! - a bee stings you on the face. Now the urge to scratch is even worse.
It gets better. Bees, as you'd expect, fly all over the place, and land on your suit. Because bees can smell bee venom, and it pisses them off, and your suit is liberally coated in stings because bee-suits have been used by about ten other part-time beekeepers and has never ever been washed, the bees land all over you. Sometimes they just want a bracing drink of sweat. Mostly, they want to find a hole in the suit (and there are always holes) and sting you. Most of the holes are around the cuffs near the boots, where the elastic tends to go. This soon results in the indescribably hideous sensation of bees crawling up your legs, stinging as they go. This usually happens at a terrible time - mostly when you're carrying a fucking heavy hive full of honey - and you have to stumble to the truck, load the hive, and then go into a kind of leaping, desperate dance while you try to squash the bee in the folds of your pants, or failing that, forcing it to sting you before it heads too far north. The sacrifice is worth it, as I hear a sting to the genitals is amazingly painful. No jokes about swelling either, please. Ironically enough, if you're stung in the equipment, it won't work for the next week.
Bees get in everywhere, even where there aren't any holes. I don't know how. They make regular and unpleasant appearances inside your hood. This is horrible, because they're hard to kill without them stinging you somewhere very painful, like in your eyes. The best method, I find, is to bash them into your forehead. Seasoned beekeepers don't bother, as you're going to get stung anyway. A plus is that you get immune to the stings after a while (not that they get any less painful.) A drawback is that there's a fine line between "immune" and "suddenly really allergic for some reason." There are plenty of cases of blase beekeepers dropping dead of anaphalactic shock when they've been immune to stings for years.

This brings me to the guys I work for. They're insane. Not only do they wander around with no beesuits amongst swarms of angry bees, but they work the most ridiculous hours. The head guy, Peter, habitually works 18 hour days, sometimes turning in 90 hour weeks. No kidding. It's an interesting fact that Sir Edmund Hillary was a beekeeper before turning Everest-conquering mountaineer. It's not surprising. Our guys could saunter up Everest before lunch, and they'd poke around for a bit to see if they could put hives there too. That's another thing - our hives are in the most inaccessable locations. Many sites can only be reached by adventurous four-wheel-driving, which makes things interesting when you are coming back with two tonne of hives on the back of the truck. Working long hours has a certain effect on the bee-guys' social lives. Peter didn't know the Twin Towers had been toppled until three days after it happened, when he was asked his opinion on the matter. Their tastes in culture are strange. Most subscribe to Peter's theory that music calms the savage bees. They get their kids to make them mix CD's, (somehow they found the time to get married) which are often a bit strange. It's slightly surreal listening to "Ring of Fire," (very apt) followed by Celine Dion and a bit of Westlife, and then some Nirvana. I have a theory that the bees are angriest during Westlife, which is funny, because so am I.

So why do I do it? Well, the money's good. But only if by "good" you mean "11 bucks an hour." So maybe I do it for the nice sense of accomplishment you get from doing a job you reallly, really hate, and fact that once home, you will be free of bees for 12 whole hours.

Okay, this isn't exactly true either. You see, when you have been working with the horrible little bastard insects for fifteen hours straight, you find that when you shut your eyes you see bees everywhere. It's like being on a boat, getting off, and finding yourself still rocking back and forth on dry land, except in your eyes. If this wasn't unpleasant enough, when you sleep, you dream of bees.

Oh wait, there is a plus side. I get free honey. But when you've been cooped up with and covered in the stuff for days on end, are very familiar with the little stinging shits that make it, and have personally loaded tonnes and tonnes of the stuff, you really do get a bit sick of it.