Bee Attitudes

What is the surest way to know you’re not a bee? Try moving like one.

Families strolling past the Don Valley Brickworks were treated to an interesting sight one Sunday in late June. A cluster of earnest  bipeds  attempted the honeybee’s waggle dance, guided by theatre instructor Naomi Tessler.

We tried to grasp hive thinking through creative movement. I never felt more human in my life.

The workshop, nonetheless, showed just how far some folks will got to empathize with bees.

Toronto’s first-ever Pollinator Festival offered a number of less showy opportunities to know the intrepid little beasts that visit flowers.

Bee scientist Sheila Colla, for example, took festival-goers on a bumblebee walk.

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Photos by Stephen Humphrey

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Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge fan of Toronto ecology writer Adria Vasil and her column for NOW Magazine, Ecoholic.

But in the interest of calling a spade a spade, I felt I should add a few comments and corrections about her recent piece concerning bees. I sent it to NOW originally as a letter-to-the-editor. They printed another reply along the same lines as mine, but they don’t have infinite space for bee rants. I get that.

So I thought I would blog my letter. It raises a few stand-alone points.

And hopefully it drives people toward, not away from Adria Vasil’s excellent column – which, by the way, immediately owned up to the photo gaff.

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Not a bee: This handsome little character is a hoverfly, which mimics the appearance of bees to keep predators away. It’s all bling and no sting, however. Credit where credit is due, however. This frequent flower visitors is one of the most prolific non-bee pollinators.

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Paul Vautour, outgoing president of the New Brunswick Beekeepers Association, says he doesn’t like reading prepared statements, especially the one he’s about to read.

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Paul Vautour , NBBA
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Vautour pitches his pre-written oratory to blueberry growers and academics who study bees. Plenty of both listen in the Moncton, NB conference room at the Maritime Action Forum on Pollination Research.

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I was simple to spot as the tourist among seasoned beekeepers. I had the white bee suit, they were in shirtsleeves.

I looked like a B-movie spaceman among these unsuited apiarists. They calmly handled frames full of honey bees, chatting in various American twangs.

My suit came from a trade show table at the 2010 North American Beekeeping Conference in Orlando, Fla. I signed up for a field trip at the University of Florida’s Orange County annex, just out of town.

I struggled to peer through my camera sight, kept inches away by the veil. Later I tried to approach these bees without the suit, shadowing a few others who returned. I withdrew minutes later, unnerved by a threatening whine in my ear.

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