I love bees. They’re probably my favorite bug, though I may be overlooking another one. Like ladybugs, they’re pretty cool, but I think I love bees more.
I haven’t always liked bees. Like most children, I got stung by being too careless, so I was afraid of the pain. Pain is always so much more extreme as a child. Much more traumatic when you haven’t broken your heart yet.
There are two memories that made me afraid of bees. Ironically, I wasn’t stung in either, at least I don’t think I was. The first was when I was hanging out with some kids near a baseball diamond. I didn’t really know them. I think I was at one of my sister’s soccer games, and the siblings that were dragged along ended up playing by the nearby diamond. Everything’s blurry, so I don’t really remember the details. All I remember was there giant PVC pipes and a bee nest, and the older boys were trying to knock it down by tipping pipes onto the nest. They succeeded, knocking down the nest, but the pipe also hit me on the neck. It didn’t hurt, since I was flushed with panic & adrenaline from running away from the bees, but it did leave a mark, and I remember lying about how I got it.
The next story is much shorter. There’s been a family tradition of going apple picking since I was a kid. Many memories of eating apples off of trees, but one specific one of getting bitten by a bee that flew onto my apple looking for a snack. I’m pretty sure it was a bite and not a sting, because there was no stinger to pull out and I think the bee flew away. But I also remember an adult telling me that they thought it was a bite and not a sting, because I didn’t realize bees could bite people before that point. Maybe they were just trying to make me not freak out because a bite doesn’t sound as bad as a sting, but I’ll never really know.
So, with those two stories, I’ve explained which memories inspired my past fear. But what made me stop fearing the pain wasn’t a bee, but rather a wasp. I’d already started to like bees more, because I’d learned how bees try not to sting you and are important for nature. But I was still afraid of being stung. But then, one night there was a wasp in my bedroom that landed on me. I freaked out and ran down the hallway slapping myself. When I reached the end, I couldn’t find the wasp, but I noticed a red spot on my stomach where I’d gotten stung. Realizing that I didn’t even feel it when it happened, and even now it didn’t hurt that much, I stopped worrying about the chance of getting stung, since I knew I could handle the pain now.
Fast-forward a couple years, and I could probably be a bee keeper with how comfortable I am with bees. I still treat hornets like monsters, but bees are my friends. I used to sit out on my sunroom and put honey out for the bees to come by & snack on. There were often 7+ bees flying around me at any given time, yet I had no anxiety. I felt like my friends were visiting. I loved when they would crawl on my glasses.
It was funny, because I was at my parents house. So whenever they came out the back door, they were freaked out by all the bees flying by. But I always knew there was nothing to worry about.
Bees are friends.
♡Sugar☆World☮ 