PPE and Mum’s Endeavour

  BUZZIN WITH AIMZ  

Bay of Plenty beekeeper ‘Aimz’ continues her accounts of a fledgling career in the hives with analysis of protective equipment in use at her workplace, and a look back at life growing up with both mother and father toiling on the hive tool.

Beekeeping, like any other industry has its PPE requirements. Personal protective equipment.  Not highly regulated, as in the case of roading, engineering and forestry. For the most part beekeepers are free to implement the level of gear they see fit.

Choose from full suit, half suit, vented/non, veil only, gloves (leather, nitrile, etc.) footwear, (gum boot variety, sandshoe, steel capped), back brace, knee brace... you get the gist.

That’s Dad doing it his way … not recommended for all! Personal protective equipment is not highly regulated in beekeeping, and some choose to celebrate this.

You can choose any time of year to sport a full suit, or not even wear a veil. Gloves are optional, and long pants can be too – as in my mother’s case.

My Mum, Queen keeper, hard toiler, her dedication drove this business forward. Feed runs before school and late nights scraping propolis to pay the mortgage. Uncannily like a bee working, head down, bum up. She hand-chucked hives and she drove trucks.

She also used to do a large amount of her beekeeping in a smock and veil, paired with shorts and red band gumboots. There came a fateful day when that ‘one’ hive had it in for her. The attack came swift and fierce as she cracked into the box. That whole damn hive swarmed her with stings. Black bees, got her real good, hundreds all over her legs as she ran and hid down a drain until the onslaught subsided.

For the love of bees – overworked and underpaid, Mum became the backbone of the business and family in the early days.

She is tough, my mum. With so much adrenaline in her body she was bawling as she drove the station wagon home, got dressed up in her thickest woollen clothes with a proper bee suit over top, then straight back to the site where this savage hive stood, still open to the elements. In an act of revenge, I mean ... good management practice, mum went through those frames until she found that black ‘b’ and ended her reign once and for all.

Aggressiveness is a trait we try to minimize; I have written “a$#hole” across the lid of one hive where they were unusually feisty. Without bandying around anthropomorphic traits I do however wonder if maybe they were just having a bad day? Second round on that hive and I couldn’t really fault them…

If minimizing stings is your strategy, then gear will play a crucial part, unless…

…You have a brother like mine - someone that would set the brother-in-law up. Holey gloves and a holey suit on first time honey runs. Wonder why good staff are hard to retain?

But really, now, these bees are pretty good, mostly content, not a lot of robbing at this time. We have been swapping out all bases for dry, clean, sanitized boards. It feels like I’m doing a good deed, some of these bases are completely damp through and I can’t help but think it must be like putting on a dry pair of gumboots! It is also a proactive measure we are taking to minimize any chalkbrood spores on the base, and the quick lift gives us an indication of the hive weight as we progress through.

   Well at least one of them is wearing work boots…

Hence the back-brace. We are fortunate to have a ‘human crane’ on our team, young and fit, as big as the rest of us combined. An asset to be sure, but we are all aware of ‘back health’ and encourage cycling through roles as necessary.

And the knee brace… Dad has just had his knee replaced with something stronger than bone, and as I write this, he is already back doing it and keeping the labour force on their toes.

I don’t know if PPE is something my dad bee-lieves in. His practical beekeeping gear most of the time extends to an open neck shirt, jandals, and a straw hat. When he turns up on a site in summer everybody else feels rudely overdressed.

But regardless, I want to learn as much as I can, and with the bee guru back in action I can only hope to question everything more.  (“Why was that hive light and starving that you came across? Did it have a hole in the feeder?”)

Overall, I am feeling more like a beekeeper. Every day I sit in that truck, not quite white overalls pocked with propolis, I look down at my knees and I see the embodiment of my mother, countless hours spent at her side, or on her lap, my entire childhood wrapped up in that suit.

Growing up, almost every day was 'take the kids to work day’… Our whole family lived and breathed beekeeping.

Beekeeping is hard on the body. She would lay on her back on the wooden floors at night to take the strain, and some evenings would barely make it to her bed, laying back in suit and boots only to wake under alarm and do it all over, before the domestic morning routine began.

As a side note, I want to add arthritis. Osteo is a common enough occurrence due to wear and tear on the body. Also rheumatoid, and for a story that may help someone. My mum, under a great deal of stress, was told by her doctors the swelling and pain in her fingers was rheumatoid arthritis. They said, at the rate she was going, she would be in a wheelchair within three months.

Being Google savvy, I looked into her plight and was pointed in the direction of gluten intolerance. She did the hardcore elimination diet, and her problem disappeared. To this day she is able to check that arthritis feeling in her hands by watching what she eats.

Talking about food, check back here next month as I am going to try my fish-eyeball-eating children on pan seared drone brood in butter.  Thanks mum, meeting ends was hard – but they were delicious as a kid. Stay tuned to see what the next generation thinks…