beekeeping.

Yup.

Today Barry, Krystallin, Rouslan, Pastor Peter and I went out to a village to Pastor Peter’s bee farm. We donned our netted hats and long sleeved shirts and learned the technique of, as Krystallin would say, “bee hunting.” Yeah, that’s not what we did. Okay maybe that’s what I did, just once though!

getting the smoke ready. nothing like a little poop to get those bees away.

barry took this one.

pastor peter's sister was there - she scraped off all the wax before we put it into the giant spinner thing.

after he takes out the slats with the honeycombs on them, we put them into this big spinner thing and cranked the handle and the honey flew out of the combs and drained down to the bottom.

So at one point, Pastor Peter walks up to Krystallin and I with a HANDFUL OF BEES and tries to hand them to us. I instantly am in tizzy mode and start backing up and pushing Krystallin in front of me. She’s actually allergic to bees though, so she wasn’t too into it either. Pastor Peter then tells us that these are boy bees and they don’t sting, so it’s fine. Nope. I couldn’t do it. Krystallin held a few in her hand at once. I was very proud of her.

And then Barry did it.

And then they wanted me to do it.

You don’t understand, I can’t do that. I don’t care what kind of bug it is, if it’s crawling and buzzing on me and I can’t get it off, I turn into uber-girl. It’s not okay.

Pastor Peter picked up a bee out of the bucket of water (hint: half dead) and handed it to me and I was like, “okay, its fine, its almost dead, I can do this.” And as he dropped it into my cupped hands, I pulled away and said, “nope.” It fell to the ground and died. That was my “bee hunting.”

So then Barry convinces Pastor Peter that I really want to hold A HANDFUL OF BEES (hint: I don’t). So he walks over and grabs some, unknowingly grabbing 5 or 6 girl bees too, which sting him five times on the palm of his hand. Sorry, Pastor Peter. He then hands me 1 bee, and I hold it on my hand for about 20 seconds before I start frantically and progressively louder saying, “okay get it off me, get it off, get it off.” So I shook it off and ran away. Really though, I almost cried.

There was another point in time that I screamed and ran away from a bee that I thought was trapped in my hat when I took it off. I thought it was on my face and I’m pretty sure I slapped my face and flailed my arms in the process. Yeah. Picture that. I’m 20 years old.

So we harvested honey (not sure if that’s what its called, but I like it), and a lot of it. So kewl.

We then had a delicious lunch and visited a church/graveyard where Pastor Peter’s family was buried. He prayed for us and it was weirdly cool.

So yes. To sum it all up: I don’t think I’m made for “bee hunting” although I’d totally be down with sportin the hats around school sometime. Yeah?